Excited by my experience with the Battle of Lepanto mod, I noticed that there are also user-made mods and scenarios for Pike and Shot which will bring me into the 18th Century. At least some of them have been added since the last time I played the game. I downloaded one for the Battle of Blenheim to test whether this game can be reworked to suit the later period.
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Marlborough leads the left wing forward.
Even as the file downloaded, I wondered whether I was not just fooling myself. Pike and Shot is a fine game for the period which it covers – why torture it into being something that it is not? The problem is, there doesn’t seem to be much out there for someone interested in the 18th century at a tactical level. This seems odd. The modern wargaming hobby seems to have such foundations in the infantry/horse/cannon armies of the period, leaving one to puzzle why that field is so sparsely populated today.
Granted, Napoleonics and the American Civil War are more than well represented. Where, though, is the equivalent of a Field of Glory or a Pike and Shot (or even an Age of Rifles) once one ventures back in time from the French Revolution? Is the audience just not there for a War of Spanish Succession or a Seven Years’ War? Do the linear, structured battles that make for a nice miniatures setup lose their appeal as things get automated? Or is this just a case that the attempts at “doing” this era have tried but missed?
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Oh, my eyes!
To find another attempt at the Battle of Blenheim in my own library, I have to go back to the Shrapnel Games release of Horse and Musket. My version, itself, was something of an enhancement* of the game Dragoon: The Complete Battles of Frederick the Great, which came out in 1998. Note that it debuted the year after Great Battles of Alexander was released. There is an obvious similarity between Dragoon and Great Battles, which is surely no accident, although Dragoon looks a little rough around the edges by comparison.
It may seem strange that I’m going back 20 years, especially since Horse and Musket has gone down its own winding path since that time. The developer of that first set of games (Boku Strategy Games), following a reasonably successful run courtesy of Shrapnel, began work on a new version. Horse and Musket 2 was released as Dragoon: The Prussian War Machine in 2003 and then was followed by Prussia’s Glory. My memory is a little foggy but, as I recollect, the focus in the upgrade was mostly on the graphics. The scenarios matched the original lineup (maybe a handful of additions) and the lackluster AI, along with the nitty-gritty of game play, remained largely the same. It hardly made a strong case for repurchasing a slightly better-looking (albeit still fairly ugly) version of what I already had. I recall reading rumblings about a Horse and Musket 3 and pinned my hopes on that effort to bring the game up to my expectations.
Somewhere in all of this** Boku parted ways with Shrapnel. Matrix Games, in the 2008-2009 time frame, announced that Boku had now partnered with them, presumably to continue work on that next-generation version of Horse and Musket. What came out of Matrix, however, was an H&M 2.1. It repackaged all the scenarios from Version 2 along with another rework*** of the graphics. This was combined with a greatly-expanded scenario editor, opening the door to additional user-made scenarios. The Matrix version is currently sold as Horse and Musket: Volume I.
I passed again on this latest upgrade. First of all, while my gut reaction to playing Mark I of Horse and Musket is the horror of early Windows graphics, one quickly gets used to it. What I really want is not a graphics makeover but better AI, better battle generation tools, and a modern user interface. In short, all the things that Pike and Shot (and Field of Glory II) have done so well. I also resent being offered a third version of a program I paid for 20 years ago (for a price that exceeds what a lot of us paid for Field of Glory II shortly after it came out). I like to support developer efforts but I can’t afford to carry everyone.
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Decades on, Frederick seizes objectives at the Battle of Rossbach. Everyone seems overly-eager to put towns to the torch.
I may have only myself to blame but, here, I’m left wondering why I don’t have a decent tactical engine for the 18th Century. Oddly enough, though, maybe I do.
For whatever reason, this period attracts the lone developer. The Horse and Musket saga is a tale of tiny, indie development teams and so it is with The Seven Years War (1756-1763), which sits in my Steam library. According to Steam, the game has been out for nearly five years now. I also recall it spent considerable time in Early Access and I don’t know what was before or after the official “Release Date.” I know I had it on my “Wish List” for a long time and then also kept it, unplayed, in my Steam collection for another stretch. The time has finally come, though, to install and play it.
My hesitancy to buy the game was driven by the online reviews. It now rates as “Mixed” on Steam but it long had pretty positive rankings leaving me to think that much of the negativity is more recent. Even many of the positive reviews, if you actually read through them, have been mixed in their verdict. The positive comments relate to the game’s vision and concept. For the execution, even the most generous reviewers suggest that the game needs some refinement. While I finally bought the game on those positive comments, the “mixed” side kept me from installing and playing.
Having now played the game I can say that the reviews get it exactly right. Before I get into those details, I’ll comment on the game generally, particularly for those not familiar with it.
It should go without saying that a game called The Seven Years War is about the Seven Years War. In many of our minds, that title refers to the war centered around Frederick the Great and in continental Europe. Conceptually, the concurrent war between the French and Spanish colonists in North America, The French and Indian War, is a separate thing. Most period games cover one theater or the other. This game is intended for both.
One review calls it an attempt to improve upon Total War. I wouldn’t have come up with that thought on my own but, now that I’ve read it, it seems about right. The Seven Years War is an attempt to get right all the things that Total War: Empires got wrong. There is a strategic layer with a series of historically-focused campaigns. A handful of historical battles are included with what appears to be an emphasis on historical accuracy, both in terms of the scope and modeling of battlefield tactics. I see bits and pieces that have me shouting “yes!” There is a siege mini-game that requires the gradual construction of trench works. I notice a naval squadron tacking as it crosses the English Channel. The economic system seems to be designed so as to provide just enough realism to drive the wars, as opposed to simply funding them. These are the things that I would have put into such a game, had it been my own project.
In the end, as I said, those mixed reviews were exactly right. This game is trying to do everything right. It has nearly all the parts**** that would be on my ideal feature list and the developer has put in a valiant effort. Unfortunately, he didn’t quite get there. More unfortunately, the shortfalls are bigger than the game simply lacking “polish.” Some of the pieces that just don’t quite work right are probably because of bad design decisions rather than minor flaws in execution. More importantly, after 5 years and two DLC packs, I’d say holding out hope for some magical fix to come down the pike is unreasonable.
Another reason I decided to install and play this game now was the (then imminent, now achieved) release of the developer’s follow-on Civil War game, currently in Early Access, Grand Tactician: The Civil War (1861-1865). It is early access, so while the online chatter is of bugs and other problems, that is to be expected. Even more so than The Seven Years War, positive reviews of The Civil War describe a game that includes in all the details that people like me want in a game. For example, the use of period maps for the strategic and operation interface is brilliant.
I assume the developer hopes that the American Civil War will be a more commercially-viable subject for a game. We may even hope, if Grand Tactician is successful, that it is the first in a series of Grand Tactician games, allowing him to return to the 18th century. We also have to hope that the Early Access phase allows him to pull it all together. He needs to get more than the concept right. He’s also got to compete with the likes of Ultimate General on spit and polish.
Even focusing on The Seven Years War purely as a tactical game, it has plenty of merit. It may even be that this is THE game if you’re interested in the subject; filling in for the likes of Scourge of War. I have not yet purchased the DLC, which adds a battle generator, although I’ll probably pick it up sooner or later. How well it is implemented may be the make-or-break feature for whether this game has a future claim on my gaming time.
Expect to get back to this topic.
*It’s possible that I have the names all mixed up and backwards. The original versions of this series are no longer out there and even simple descriptions of the games are rather hard to come by.
**Once again, my memory is foggy and the online record of all of this is pretty sparse. If I had to guess, I think Horse and Musket 3 was announced as a project with Shrapnel, but then Boku left before work really got underway. It could just as easily be the other way around.
***I have to say, the graphical rework could hardly be considered a “modernization.” The isometric hex representation is very similar to the Tiller family. It’s not as circa-2001 as the Talonsoft stuff, but it is the same general look.
****I’ve not been able to force a fleet engagement yet, so I don’t know exactly how these are resolved. I assume it is abstract and simplified, otherwise I’d be seeing screenshots of the nifty naval tactical UI.