From Raiders to Kings

by on June 29, 2014 at 10:50 pm
Posted In: Books

Lars Brownworth’s first book catapulted to success on the back of a related podcast, and he used the same formula this time. The Norman Centuries has been another good history podcast from him (though very slow, fourteen episodes in four years, and a note saying the next episode is under production is still the most recent note a year later), and his latest book is more directly tied to it than the first time. With Byzantium he covered (in passing) most the entire history in the book, and picked the highlights for the podcast; with the Normans, it feels more like like each chapter is one of the podcast episodes.

The Normans only held sway in Europe for a couple of centuries, and Brownworth’s writing is stronger for having a more limited subject than the thousand-year life of the Eastern Roman Empire to talk about. As always, he does a great job with bringing history to life, and is at his best describing larger-than-life characters. The Normans provide plenty of larger-than-life people to write about.

My biggest complaint is that the book skips around more than I’d like in time. It starts with Normandy and the conquest of England, before stepping back to the early Norman conquests in southern Italy. The book then goes on to a brief history of the founding of the Crusader state of Antioch, and then spends the bulk of its time talking about the Kingdom of Sicily. The other complaint is that it’s all about the big-name leaders, and nothing outside of that. But, as a light popular history, that is what the book is about, and as I already said Brownworth handles them very well, and very enjoyably.

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After Tamerlane

by on June 21, 2014 at 9:53 am
Posted In: Books

John Darwin’s After Tamerlane is a look at empire making from 1400 to pretty much the current day. His beginning idea is that the Timurid state represents the last time that the age-old pattern of a vast Eurasian empire based out of the Iranian plateau played out, and he then goes on to examine the patterns of force that happened in place of this usual pattern of empire.

He effectively splits the Eurasian land-mass into four parts: Europe, Middle East, India, China, and examines what was going on in each of these places as the centuries roll on. As he stays pretty much in a chronological frame work, this makes the book handy just as a cross-reference to which periods are contemporaneous. However, those four general regions don’t quite add up to all of Eurasia, and he actually says surprisingly little about the region of Iran/Persia (and precious little about southeast Asia and inland central Asia, but that is less surprising).

Any book covering from 1400 on is pretty much going to be about the rise of European states to dominant roles in the world, but the emphasis here is on re-balancing the traditional triumphalist narratives that see this as an inevitable result of superior European culture. He very carefully points out just how constrained early European ventures were, and how limited the actual effects of most colonial ventures were. I think he is a little too strident on this at times, pointing out just how limited the initial Portuguese trade around Africa to India was, without really acknowledging that no one else was really able to skip an entire large zone of trade to get at the next one beyond it.

If there is a major failing to the book, it is that after Darwin successfully shows the non-empire-building motivations of several earlier eras, in the 20th century he tends to assume most empire-building that was going on had more consistent motives and agendas than they did.

In all, this is good big-picture history that tries to remove a lot of Eurocentric bias, and will certainly give the reader plenty to think about.

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Medieval Russian Fortresses

by on June 18, 2014 at 10:48 pm
Posted In: Books

Osprey’s Fortress series is quite interesting, as it tackles all sorts of subjects I had not thought about (nor seen anything else on), as well as more familiar ground. For example, I’m used to seeing quite a bit about western European castles (which probably are siege engineering at its most interesting), and I know how much of that was borrowed from what was in already developed in the Near East, but, there’s almost nothing outside of that.

This volume is a very good, and dense, introduction to the fortifications of the Medieval ‘Rus, and shows off a number of features not seen in the more familiar west. Most fortifications were simply earthen ramparts with wooden walls on top (stone fortifications generally came much later than elsewhwere). The Kievan state built ‘snake ramparts’ that ran for over 500 miles to protect the southern borders. The common forms of all of these and these are explained in some detail, with common features and styles gone into.

In all, the book suffers most from having to be crammed into the standard Osprey page count, but still manages to give a pretty good look at most everything, and as usual, illustrations and photographs go a long way towards making everything clear.

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F&E Vassal Module 2.0 work

by on June 11, 2014 at 7:29 pm
Posted In: F&E

Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

One thing that has been on the back burner for the last couple years is the proposed version 2.0 Vassal Module for F&E. In addition to just not doing much with F&E lately, I’ve been trying to get some new features done for the module, and they have not been happening.

The first one was reporting the number of ships, and the Ship Equivalents separately (that was easy enough), and adjusting the SEs for crippled ships. Extensive testing has shown that Vassal 3.2 just can’t handle non-integer numbers in the stack viewer in any form. Here’s hoping for 4.0.

The second one has been the major roadblock. I’ve been hoping to get the fleet markers to report the stats of their contents in the stack viewer. I figure there’s two potential routes to this: Since you can see the totals in an inventory window, it seems like it should be possible to just query for the sum of, say, SE in a particular zone/map and use it directly; sadly, this doesn’t seem to be supported. The second method would be to keep track of the numbers in a global variable which gets adjusted as units are moved into/out of the box. Recently, a demo module was done showing exactly this. So far, I have not been able to get it to work in my F&E module, and even if it does work, it could very well bog down performance to keep track of all stats of all the fleets with hundreds of units sending data out.

However, I’m writing this because I do now have a new feature that is working!

I now have a submenu for ships that allows you to flag a ship as ‘captured’ by a particular empire, so that it will report as belonging to that empire in the inventory, and there is a visible marker to show its status on the counter.


How about we just trade back and call it even?

And no, I’m not planning on adjusting AF to account for Hydran hybrid wackiness. gulp

So, this is about where things stand:

New features:
x Choice of regular and large-scale maps. (Hope to figure out an Early Beginnings set up…)
x Stack viewer & inventory counts *ships* and *SEs*
x Flag captured ships to new empire.

Not appearing in this module:
– Crippled SE values (non-integers not possible under Vassal 3.2)
o Display fleet stats on hover over. (still being worked on, but will probably bog down module, even if it works)

Still planned:
* Large Fleet markers. May need a second set for the ‘small’ map.
* Fix ‘crippled’ reporting on single-sided units.

Needs thought:
* How to mark captured planets, etc, on LSM: bigger markers, smaller planet symbols, what?
* Mark the Cordon borders like the sector borders? (And how to keep it from being too busy?)
* Mark EW/AF status for ships that drop AF for EW and vice versa.
* Mark repaired/built ships as capable of free Strat Moves (wipe automatically when moved?).
* Mark hexes for retrograde (some sort of ‘done’ version for battle hexes?)

As always, feedback is appreciated, and as this module is still being pounded into shape, its easier to do something now than later.

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FB7 The Terror of the Castle

by on June 5, 2014 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Patch and I headed back to Budapest after our second desert adventure, reaching the end of January 1945 with FB7 “The Terror of the Castle”. Having been the defense the last two games, I took the attacking Soviets, and while the ROAR/Archive record is a little thin, it is showing a pro-Russian tilt, so I gave Patch the Hungarian balance (an at-start Hero).

Even for Festung Budapest, this is an unusual scenario. The Hungarians are defending against a Russian assault that will take them to the base of Castle Hill and have three different setup zones (four squads + MMG & HMG in the Postal Palace, two squads in the victory buildings, and six squads in most of the rest of the available map). The Russians have twelve squads (three of which are 628 assault engineers) a MMG, two FTs and two T-34/85s, entering from offboard. But, up to six squads (three each, in two buildings) can set up on-board, within the Hungarian setup area. The scenario is nine turns long, with control of the Z12/BB11 building Locations evaluated every three turns to grant one VP. Best two out of three wins.

A large part of the strangeness is the fact that the side that claims a VP goes last for the next three turns, meaning that the turn order will flip somewhere along the way (probably turn 7, as the Russians start out going first, and are unlikely to get the first VP). Finally, both sides get to purchase reinforcements (which appears in several FB scenarios, but this is the first we’ve gotten to that does it), with the Hungarians getting theirs on turn 4 and the Russians getting theirs on turn 7. Oh, and on turn 7 the Hungarians get a flamethrower in the possession of any unit they wish. The Hungarians are up to Ammo Shortage level 3, and as ever, there is ground snow.

Looking at some on-line discussions of the scenario revealed that one of the Russian set-up buildings, CC15, was essential for the Russians to use to suppress likely Hungarian defenses. Naturally, the pre-game rubble checks knocked down eight of the thirteen hexes of this block, including the entire useful SE end (mostly thanks to falling rubble taking out further hexes). I didn’t quite like the direct, close, route to the victory buildings, with a large number of Hungarian ‘?’ lined up along the Bela-Kiraly ut, and ended up entering my forces on the north end, with the MMG, a FT and best leader in the CC15 block, ready to advance into the intact Y14 area, and the FT and DC in the Postal Palace, out of immediate LOS and ADJACENCY to the Hungarian defenders in the upper floors.

Despite my best efforts, Patch could see most of my movement, and I lost a Dummy stack in W17. A pot-shot pinned a squad in R14 as they tried to reinforce the Postal Palace. My main stack entered along the Vermezo ut in Armored Assault, but HMG fire from the Postal Palace broke both the 458 and 628, even after the 8-1 passed. Further fire also broke the leader who was going to guide the backup troops through the high MF cost rubble, but the squads were okay. The HMG got several ROF shots, pinning the 8-1 and CRing the 458 on its last shot. The 8-1 self-broke to stay with his men, while my 8-0 was wounded trying to find safety in R6.

FB7 1R
Situation, Russian Turn 1. Colored hexes are off-board entry areas (red=Russian, blue=Hungarian; yellow and green only have one legal entry hex). North is to the left.)
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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