‘Ware Hawk

by on October 23, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

This was something of a random pick up in the middle the Estcarp books. It stands well on it own, though there is a lot that follows from the previous few books. However, a three-page summary of the major events of the previous books more than covers what is needed here.

Again, this is an independent novel, and reads well as such; the cast of characters is all new. (The early books all follow Simon Tregarth, but this period is all more independent.) Previous books had fairly earth-shattering consequences, and this is more of an adventure in picking up pieces.

This starts with the main characters, where we start with the main character, Tirtha, and slowly pick up everyone else over the course of the book. It is very much in the ‘journey’ style of plots, with both physical and mental/social travels being made. This is well done enough that it’s hard for the climax to entirely measure up. This is made more difficult by the final parts being a bit hard to follow. The worst problem is that Tirtha gets disabled for a bit during important events, and as the only viewpoint character, the narrative gets a little confused. Compounding this, it is easy is mistake just what has happened to her, and miss the corrected explanation later.

I’m pretty sure I read this back in the ’80s. I kept half remembering things as I came across them. But that would have been a borrowed book, and I’m glad to have my own copy now. Certainly recommended, and a good entry-point into the Estcarp series.

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A Little of Everything

by on October 20, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the third in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion

The next expansion for Crusader Kings II was relatively small after the large update of The Old Gods. The overall goal was to work with all three “Peoples of the Book”, including introducing Jews to the game for the first time.

Sons of Abraham was released on November 18th, 2013 along with patch 2.0. The patch itself saw Paradox continue to shift over to pure Steam support, with their multi-player service (which had always had problems) shut down, and achievements and ironman mode (taken from EU IV) were added. A bit after release, Paradox announced that everyone would be given Steam keys so that all players could move over to that version, and use Steam’s multi-player and patching service.

Patch Mortality

The patch had in-game features as well, of course. Pregnancy had been somewhat handwaved, with a female character having a roughly 9-month trait before the birth of a new child. 2.0 introduced the possibility of dying in childbirth, as well as the child being stillborn, or having the ‘sickly’ trait, reducing health, but with the possibility of recovering from it, like the ‘ill’ trait.

A more complicated change was a rebalance of levies. Direct (demense) levy size is affected by your Martial skill, so more competent leaders will have more men to command. More importantly though, vassal levies were reduced. Vassals are judged by where they are in relation to your current capital, and the further away they are (by de jure titles, not physical distance), the less they owe you in service. So a vassal of the King of England in Normandy (outside the de jure County of Middlesex, the Duchy of Essex, the Kingdom of England, and the Empire of Britannia) may owe no troops to his lord, while the Mayor of London (in the same county as the capital in Westminster) owes the full regular amount.

This cuts down the power of larger countries a decent amount, while still making them much more powerful than their smaller neighbors, as anything outside the home duchy takes a hit, and lands outside the home kingdom aren’t providing a lot, unless you can get them to provide help directly by raising their troops themselves and fighting for you.

Judaism

Jews had not been present in Crusader Kings at all; after all, there were no great Jewish states in the Middle Ages. Now, they gained a presence. Much of it was fairly abstract, as you still don’t see the Jewish quarter of your cities any more than you see the rest of the general population. That said, just about anyone can now get a loan from the Jews. It will need to be paid off with interest of course, but it’s still an extra source of ready cash.

Or, you can refuse to pay. Like was done many times in the Middle Ages you can expel the Jews, which will erase any loans, and generally net you more cash from seized properties. You do gain the trait ‘arbitrary’, and take a hit to prestige, but no one will get seriously up in arms over it.

As long as you haven’t expelled the Jews, there is a chance that one will show up as a courtier, and a possible councilor. They will generally have at least one truly good stat, meaning they can be good councilors. There’s different religion opinion penalties and the like, so often they won’t be loyal enough to trust as a spymaster (though they won’t like anyone else much more…), and everyone else will be unhappy that you’ve hired him, but if he’s the right man for the job…?

Of course the expansion makes the Jews playable as well, but like the Zoroastrians, there’s not a lot of good options. In 1066, there is one Jewish Duke in Cumania who is playable, and he has no children. With The Old Gods, it’s better, as his ancestor is an independent Khan of the Khazars. In either case, there’s still only one province who’s population is Jewish, and the religion’s moral authority is low, so conversions are difficult.

But certainly not impossible, and like with the Zoroastrians, there’s a full set of events, and the possibility of re-creating Israel and building the Third Temple.

A Red Hat

The most wide-spread addition of the expansion is actually for Catholic rulers: a College of Cardinals was added to the Papacy. There are nine cardinals, and when the Pope dies, they elect the new one from their number depending on what they think of the candidates (akin to the electors system for the HRE introduced in EU III: Heir to the Empire).

This is still completely out of the hands of the player, but you can influence who gets into the College. Every bishop is a potential candidate, and the main College interface will tell you who the best candidate in your realm is, as well as the current most likely candidate. These are selected on a number of things (including Italian culture being a big bonus), and you can donate to a campaign fund to promote your candidate (similar to the doge elections in The Republic).

If a cardinal from your realm votes for the new Pope, you gain a sizable relations boost. And if a cardinal from your realm becomes the new Pope… you can start asking for favors. They cost piety and cause a relations hit, but you should have credit to burn from the relations bonuses as you ask for money (time to make back what you spent on cardinal elections), or a crusade, or sanctioning an invasion (what William of Normandy got for his conquest of England), or a number of other actions.

The two-step process is an interesting way to keep true control out of the player’s hands, while still granting tools for a potentially big bonus. Sadly, the election mechanic is a little too deterministic (there is variation) and simple for some episodes of the Middle Ages. Notably, there’s no way for the College to get hung up, and refuse to chose any one candidate for months on end.

Islam

There’s also a new feature for Islam, but it is very limited. Every Shia character with a minimum 50 piety can adhere to one of the two main schools of Islamic thought: Mut’azilite and Ash’ari.

Doing so does not cost anything, and does grant a bonus. Mut’azilites are rational, and gain a bonus to their learning, and to technology spread, while the more clerical Ash’arites get a monthly bonus to piety. Both are worthwhile bonuses, but all characters from the competing school have a relations penalty.

Knights of Religion

There’s a number of other bits that were thrown into the expansion. The most prominent is that holy orders were made more available. All religions now have at least one (only after reforming for the pagans), and the expansion adds two more for Catholics: the Knights of Calatrava and Santiago (which were more local to Spain than the more famous orders).

Furthermore, new mechanics were added to all the orders (with use of the expansion). You can get loans from them (like with the Jews), with the condition that the order currently has the 300 gold standard amount (not likely when it’s new, but easy if it has been successful), and you will owe them a favor which will come due later, such as sending one of your relatives to take the vows with them.

You can also donate money to an order, gaining piety and a relations boost with the order, the head of the religion, and your clerical vassals. Finally, the order will occasionally ask to build its own castle within your domain. It won’t be one of your vassals, but it will again strengthen ties with the order, and if you’re on the religious frontier, they will be readily available to help defend in holy wars.

Conclusion

Discounting Sunset Invasion, this expansion is the most optional one yet. The others tend to be either something you’re interested in, or something you skip. This one is more of a grab-bag of content.

That said, there’s a lot of interesting content here, and this review only covers the more prominent features; there’s a lot of events included that are not part of any of these, including some really off-the-wall ones. If you’re really into CK II, it adds some nice touches, and if you’re more into general content than the particular features of other expansions, this might be a place to start.

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Fid’s Crusade

by on October 17, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

David Reiss is a friend of mine, so I’m a little embarrassed that I took this long to checking out what he’s written. I also know some of the things he’s into, fiction-wise, and they don’t always mesh with my tastes. So, I started Fid’s Crusade with a little trepidation, and a few mental nods, ‘okay, yeah, this is the type of character he gravitates towards…’.

And all of that went away during chapter 2, and the story took over.

Fid (a phoneticization of ‘Ph. D.’) is a supervillain by choice. And he’d have a hard time being a hero, as he’s got a tremendous ego, and enjoys the adrenaline rush of fighting. But, he has a bundle altruistic motives as well. Technologies that his alter-ego creates are directly aimed at trying to solve some of the bigger problems the world faces. There’s a passel of technologies known to be developed by the villain, and he does try to get the safer ones that can help into the right hands. The primary, and really problematic one, is a desire to punish all the superheroes that don’t live up to his own standards of what they should be. The glory seekers, the ones that don’t endeavor to keep collateral damage (especially to non-combatants) down, and the actual jerks are all targets of Fid’s ire.

The story is told by Fid himself, and shows a high degree of genre-savvyness. I certainly appreciate the occasional bits where he learns of some adventure of a hero getting back from another dimension or the like and just shakes his head over how odd the lives of superheroes can be. On the other hand, the constant knowing nearly everything he needs to about most heroes through pervasive searches and system hacking gets a bit old, if only because no one else seems to have really wised up to this yet. (Though his primary nemesis is a forensic accountant, so there is that.) However, this is all done with a lot of wit, which makes the entire story a joy.

There’s some nice world-building done. It was a fairly normal universe until something happened that allowed superpowers to emerge. And it’s not a local phenomenon to Earth, but more galaxy-wide. It’s a nice bit of background… until it starts becoming more and more central to the plot. But even still, there’s plenty of unanswered questions that I hope the further books look at some.

Good job, Dave. I’ll need to get to the second book (looks nervously at the pile of unread books) …soon.

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Great War of the Inner Sea

by on October 14, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark finally got back in contact, and we had a 2-player day on September 28th. It was his ‘pick’ on our schedule, and his primary desire was to try out Great War Commander. It’s a WWI variant of the Combat Commander series done by Hexasim. I’ve never done anything with that system, so I don’t know how close the two are, but going through the rulebook ahead of time had me pretty lost, as I wasn’t able to hold the general shape of the system in my head.

Naturally, actually playing the game was a lot better. We did the first scenario, with out the Strategic cards. I had the French, defending a small town in Belgium from an equal number of Germans at the beginning of the war. My Victory chit draw got me the side edge road, while Mark’s was in the center of town. The French setup is fixed, other than the position of the MG, which went near my VP area (which is where I was already thinking for it) as it had a decent field of fire from there (the field in the center cut off more than I expected), while Mark put most of his troops on the opposite side, and advanced to the trench outside of town. Two platoons went on the other side, and were successfully held off by the MG the entire game.

The first part of the game was pure frustration for me, as it is tough to have any effect on an opposing unit with individual fire, and when I did manage such a thing, Mark would play Recovery shortly thereafter, getting rid of the suppression markers, and very good odds to rally anyone who had broken. Thankfully, he took a while to manage anything against me, as I didn’t see more than one Recovery in the entire game, and, just like in Up Front, I saw entirely too few Move cards.

I did stymie Mark’s advance a little way in as I sprung some ‘hidden wire’ on him as his commander advanced up the trench, and his main group broke up in confusion. He recovered from that, but it took time and work. However, my initial outpost collapsed under his advance, and he got the first casualties as the time clock ticked forward. Shortly after Mark had gone through his deck the first time, we both got time advance rolls, which put some pressure on the Germans as my VPs moved up, and available time moved down.

But the Germans finally got to grips with more of the defenders, and eliminated my overall commander in a melee, though had at least taken some with me. In fact, casualties mounted up fast, including getting an event that eliminated another German platoon outright. We ended up with another set of melees, and I had to make some tough decisions on where to play my actions to shore them up. I picked well, losing one, but winning the other, taking out two German platoons with my remaining officer, and sending the Germans over the surrender limit.

It was a really dramatic finish, and a big turn around from the early-game helplessness of the French. We both had a few problems with the game (like overriding our ASL instincts that woods should follow art, and not be Inherent Terrain), and I have to wonder about the non-geomorphic maps that would seem to keep the scope of possible scenarios down. But its an entertaining system, and I’m certainly willing to see more of it.

After a late lunch, we broke out Ancient Civilizations of the Inner Sea, which Mark had recently gotten (after I had pointed it out to him) but hadn’t had a chance to look at yet. It’s a fairly simple and streamlined game, and we were able to get into the basic 2-player Egypt-Troy scenario and through the first Epoch with the available time from a standing start.

In some ways, it’s certainly no Civilization replacement, as you don’t have the real sense of building up from almost nothing (the 12- to 16-disk setups kind of rob you of some of that), and the lack of trade and advancements keep you from feeling like things are really changing. That said, it does seem to get a lot out of what it does have. We’ve barely scratched what the card deck has to offer, and didn’t get any chance at long-term conflict.

I got off to a strong start as Egypt, with VPs leaping up from plenty of cities. Of course, settlements are important too, and I ended up with too few of them, but I managed, with some help from Eygpt’s main power. Mark struggled a bit more, especially as the cards mostly aligned against him. Things went better for him on the third turn, and he caught up a bit, but I had settled Cyprus while he’d had trouble keeping a presence at any distance from Troy. I did denude my treasury on the last turn paying for keeping losses from affecting me. Neither of us got to building a wonder, as we were mostly looking at getting a handle on the main sequence of the game.

It looks like it will live up to its promise, and we will have to introduce it at a multiplayer day soon!

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Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

by on October 10, 2019 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

So, we’ve got a few different things going on here. Jack Weatherford is an anthropologist who has spent a lot of time in modern Mongolia, and has a much better grasp of Mongolian culture than anyone else who will write in English. Along with modern, full, translations of The Secret History of the Mongols (which was, despite what he says, available to the west in various partial translations from the 19the Century on, and Lamb’s 1927 biography also references it, though with a lot of definite differences), this is probably the best biography of Genghis Khan we will ever get.

And this volume is great at getting into his motivations, and how he thought about a lot of things, where his tactics came from, etc. It isn’t just a biography of Genghis himself, and goes into his heirs, and the unstable state that was established until it finally breaks up for good in the mid-14th Century, with lots of help from the Black Death. There is some talk about the finances of the empire, including the strain of funding everything through commerce instead of looting. Sadly (understandably, but sadly) there’s not a lot of detail here, though there are some interesting observations that the various Mongol leaders were kept financially dependent on each other, possibly to counteract the political strains between them.

Much of the later part of the book goes into the ‘making of the modern world’; showing how Mongol-sponsored trade, and their habit of appropriating anything that looked useful spread plenty of inventions and ideas from China to Europe and back. He contends, with good reason, that this made some of the Renaissance possible, and Europe benefited from many inventions spread by the Mongols throughout Eurasia.

However, he at no point goes into how much of a demographic and cultural disaster the Mongols were. He mentions cities that were destroyed as an example to others, of populations rounded up and forced to assault another city in front of the Mongol army. He mentions artisans being valued and saved out of the populations… and sent back to Samarkand to work there. At no point does he look at just what all this did to the populations involved (and admittedly, in most places its overshadowed by the Black Death), nor contemplate just what happens to a culture who’s just had all its best skilled people, especially artisans, forcibly removed from it.

So as an account of what happened, its good, and is excellent on Genghis’ early life, but it gets overenthusiastic on other subjects.

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