‘Soft’ ZOC and Movement in A Victory Lost

by on December 19, 2008 at 11:53 am
Posted In: Design and Effect

Crossposted from the Design and Effect blog at GameSquad.

Zones of Control have been a concept in wargaming since the very early days. The traditional version is a ‘hard’ ZOC where any unit that moves adjacent to an enemy unit must immediately stop moving. This is generally described as the idea that a unit does not exist solely in the hex it counter is in, but rather would have detachments out covering the flanks, etc. Thus an enemy unit needs to ‘stop’ and deal with the enemy in the adjacent hex before continuing through the area (i.e., combat).

I would like to point out that there are plenty of other interactions that could also have this effect. Most notably, that the defending unit is going to react to the movements of the approaching enemy, including shifting its units around to get in the way of the approaching enemy, counterattacking anyone moving by without proper flank protection (which would slow it down…). At this point, it gets easier to see ZOC for what it is: a mechanism for keeping the on/off system of alternating turns from wrecking the simulation of warfare.

There are problems with this coping mechanism, as the full stop demanded can be too limiting. Considering that the mechanism dates back to the original Tactics, a bit of primitive simplicity can be forgiven.

There have been all sorts of adjustments to the basic idea to make it work better, such as dual-impulse turns, automatic victory… and ‘soft ZOCs’ which impede movement rather than stop it. A Victory Lost, a game chock-full rules designed for maximum elegance uses an extremely effective ‘soft-ZOC’ system.

The rule effectively boils down to the fact that entering or leaving a hex in an enemy ZOC costs two extra movement points. So moving adjacent to an enemy costs three (one for the hex and two for the ZOC), and the same is true for pulling out of combat. Moving directly from one hex in enemy ZOC to another is permitted with an expenditure of five movement points (two to leave the current hex, one for the movement itself, two to enter the new ZOC).

What makes this work so well is the movement factors given to the various units. Soviet and allied Axis infantry units get a ‘4’. Beyond the usual meaning of how much mobility on the map this grants, it means that such a unit can go one hex, and then move into an enemy ZOC. If the enemy line is further than two hexes away, they will not be able to engage in a single movement. This also limits the units to a two-hex move when pulling out of the line.

German infantry (and Soviet cavalry) gets ‘5’ movement, which opens up a number of additional options. As the Germans are generally on the defensive, and will be pulling back to new lines at several points, the ability to put themselves 3 hexes away from the Soviet line from being in contact is not to be overlooked. However, 5 MP is [I]also[/I] exactly what it takes to be able to shift a hex within an enemy ZOC. While Soviet units are generally ‘stuck’ once on the line, German units retain some mobility. I find this an exceedingly elegant way to reflect the relative tactical flexibility and capabilities of the two armies.

This comparison continues to the mechanized units as well. Soviet tank corps and mechanized units have a movement of ‘6’ and German panzer and mechanized divisions have a movement of ’10’. This last makes the German panzer units (which also have very high offensive values) very dangerous. Away from the front line, they can cover large distances very quickly and can easily show up to plug a distant hole in the line. They are also capable of moving two hexes at a time in direct contact with the enemy—generally much to the frustration of a Soviet player that is trying to isolate an overextended counterattack.

Soviet doctrine was solidly a complete ‘top-down’ approach. Orders were generated at the top, flowed down to individual units, and tactical flexibility was not expected, and was discouraged. German doctrine was heavily dependent on the individual initiative of individual officers and NCOs, and was geared around principles of mobile warfare. This campaign, especially, saw the use of armored ‘fire brigades’ used to blunt and halt the Soviet breakthroughs. A Victory Lost, through a single simple rule, and some intelligent choices on factors achieves a great sense of the historical strengths of each side.

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Planets Are Big Too—Ground Combat in Space Games

by on December 16, 2008 at 9:40 pm
Posted In: Design and Effect

Crossposted from the Design and Effect blog over on GameSquad.

Civilization-conquering space games have been popular for over thirty years (reaching back to Stellar Conquest and Star Web in the 70s). With space being really (really, really) big, and a desire to provide as much of a ‘grand sweep’ as possible, planets, pretty big places in their own right, are generally reduced to a single point, which troops fight over (if there is ground combat at all) as a unit.

There have, over the years, been a few games that have bucked this trend.

Godsfire (Metagaming, 1976)
This was a fairly simple one still. Each planet consisted of four equal areas that could have separate control, production and tech level, but were otherwise generic (no terrain, etc.). It did have other features, such as hexes with a ‘stack’ of hexes in them, to represent the third dimension in a board game (a system reused in Metagaming’s Holy War).

As there could be occasional nova events in the game (which happens in a small star cluster) the zones also became important as you would have to determine which two got burned and which two were in the ‘shadow’ of the event and were relatively untouched.

Star Viking (DwarfStar, 1981)
In some ways, this game may have been the most ambitious treatment of the subject I’ve seen. However, it isn’t directly related to the typical 4X-space genre, dealing with a scenario straight out of H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, with a defending Federate player trying to fend off the depredations of the Viking player.

Each system has it’s own card that depicts the worthwhile areas of the system: worlds, moons, asteroids and space stations. These are grouped in different orbits, and each orbit has a “deep space” zone, the area around the same distance from the star, but far away from everything else. Each world has a habitability index which determines what kind of troops can operate there. (Primitive units aren’t going to be shipped to Mars and do anything but stay on the ships that brought them.)

In the end, there’s not quite enough to be fully satisfying. The biggest of worlds still have 10 undifferentiated zones (two bands of 4, plus the poles), which do wrap around the sides. But there is still no terrain.

Buck Rogers (TSR, 1988)
This game keeps the scope down to the inner solar system, but that allows it do a very nice presentation of what is covered. The planets are actually less detailed than in Star Viking, with Earth being split into seven somewhat geometric zones with no rhyme or reason.

The (much appreciated) strong point of this one is the orrery of the inner solar system. The center of the board is dominated by a display that gives tracks for all the planets (and asteroids) to move around each turn. Turns are apparently 44 days, as Mercury has two spaces in it’s orbit, and it therefore takes two turns to make a complete circuit around the Sun. The structure demands that each ring has twice as many spaces as the next one previous. This actually works very well through Mars, and continues to work for the Asteroid Belt by inserting an extra ring between it and Mars.

Star General (SSI, 1996)
SSI’s expansion of their successful Panzer General system to the reaches of outer space was a mixed success. It built well on a good engine, and brought a couple unique things to the table. However, the lack of most of the concerns endemic to science fiction warfare made it very weak title overall.

The main map is a hex grid that is mostly empty, but has planets scattered about and occasional nebulae that slow movement. Presumably, the planets are merely stand-ins for the main settled body in an entire system. And the tried-and-true ‘rock, paper, scissors’ combat of the original works well with the small multitude of ship types available for each side. However, ships cannot stack with one another, and you end up with neat formations of ships covering each other, as seems logical… over distances that must be measured in parsecs.

However, the game includes troop transports, which must be loaded with units, and moved over to an enemy planet to invade it. These units are straight out of the Panzer General mold, redressed in SF clothing. Since the combat in PG always worked very well, that is not a problem.

The ground game consists of a traditional hexagonal board with terrain varying depending on the general planet type. The size of the board could vary a bit, along with the number of cities available. When you first possess a planet, you can spend on various resource-producing facilities—up to two per city (these can be destroyed in combat). Once a planet one each of the normal money-producers, two special facilities can be constructed: military complexes, which allows the construction of normal ground units (as opposed to the weaker militia, which can’t leave their home planet), and a starbase, which allows construction of spacecraft.

While the combat is good, there’s still quirks. The planet map is square, with no wrap around. I guess these are all geographically limited colonies. Also, there are certain designated ‘landing spots’ along one edge, which is the only place where the landing ships can come down. Enemy units that are adjacent to these when a ship lands are automatically destroyed.

There’s obviously a lot that was done in the interest of the game, rather than logic. Still, the game generates plenty of interesting opposed landing scenarios. And the combat systems themselves (space and ground) are fun.

Emperor of the Fading Suns (Holistic Design, 1996)
This is probably the most thorough-going look ever at ground combat in a game that also features space combat. This is balanced by having space combat be simplified.

Combat is a fairly simple affair of a ‘stack’ attacking another ‘stack’, and things are automatically determined over a series of rounds until all of one side’s units are forced to retreat or are destroyed. This holds true for space combat, and while everyone may have fleets in orbit around the same planet, there’s no maneuvering involved beyond the strategic concerns of which system your fleet should be garrisoning.

In broad outline, the ground portions are much like Star General‘s, however, it is a much richer and more diverse experience in this game. Buildings can be constructed, but these are in the service of a very complex resource system, with a dozen or so things to mine, harvest, or create. The maps are much bigger and diverse, and wrap around from east to west, feeling more like Civ on a hex-grid. Not only that, but the maps feel right, like a world with that geography could really exist. Sadly, that last is also a limitation, as they work so well because they’re fixed, hard coded for each world.

In the long run, game starts to pale, generally because of the amount of micomanagement needed to continue growing the economy towards the more outre materials. The combat system is also slightly lackluster, although I could not really say why. (It is certainly light-years ahead of anything seen in a Civ game.)

Conclusion:
While there are doubtless more space games with planetary maps out there, these are the ones I’m aware of. None of them is a perfect mix of both elements, and the micromanagement that bogs EotFS down shows that it may be impossible to do at the level I’d like to see. Nevertheless, I think something like a slightly more complicated Star Viking would be well worth trying.

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Another Successful Vacation

by on December 8, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Posted In: Life

Well, I’m back home after the annual visit down south. Trip down was pretty smooth, with a very tiny amount of sprinkling as I entered the Grapevine.

Parents are doing well, and are much more settled into the new homestead now. As you saw previously, we managed three games while we were together. I also hooked him on Starfleet Command while I was there, and set him up with Vassal, and hopefully something will come of that.

Did a repeat trip to Cherry Valley (or really a bit north of there, but Oak Valley seems to have no official presence). Had too much good food at the same place as last year, and brought home some apple cinnamon jelly for the household.

My Aunt Ruth isn’t doing as well, sad to say. She’s recently had to move from Fallbrook to Hemet herself, and don’t know anyone (other than my parents) in the area, and can’t get around too well. We all went to visit the water museum the MWD built at nearby Diamond Valley Lake. We visited the Western Museum (archeology & paleontology) a couple years ago, but this one wasn’t open yet. Not bad, decidedly purposed towards kids (and we cut our visit slightly short in the face of invasion by a couple bus loads of them), but seems a little lacking.

The final weekend was a trip over to Mike and Elaina’s again. They moved a couple months ago, and seem quite happy with the new place. It certainly has a very nice floorplan for the size. Ended up setting my computer in a hurry (which I hadn’t planned on), and we participated in a fun Zul’Aman run that we’d all signed up for without thinking about what Friday this was.

The trip back up went well, and I made very good time (eager to be home). The Grapevine itself was fine, but I hit a storm as I came out of it, saw two huge lightning flashes (couldn’t hear the thunder), had about three five-minute downpours with pinhead-sized hail before it trailed off. The weather slowly improved up the length of I5, and then started clouding again when I hit Gilroy.

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King Heracles

by on December 3, 2008 at 9:14 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

Well, I let my Dad talk me into trying a two-player game of Successors. I was hesitant, because I could tell that it really needed four players to work right. However, he’s much more interested in the Diadochi than World War I, so we eventually went for that.

It does actually work decently for two players. It isn’t as good as with four, but it is still a worthwhile game. Since we had to start with pretty much a full explanation of the game, it took a while to get going, but play accelerated nicely as we went along.

We did the four generals option, and I got Perdiccas, Ptolemy, Antigonus and Craterus. This gave me a fairly nice starting position, mostly towards the center and south. My Dad got Leonatus, Antipater and Lysimachus giving him a very solid block in Europe and Asia Minor, as well as Peithon, out east in Media.

The ‘extra’ cards your supposed to draw to make sure that certain events happen with enough regularity only did something twice during the game. The relative positions ensured that I was the Usurper (thanks Egypt, that 6 points does a lot for that). Most all the fighting happened in Asia Minor. I claimed the King of Asia title fairly early, while my Dad nailed down the Hellespont.

From there it was mostly a slow retreat eastward for me. I could (and certainly did) win battles, but it was hard to keep the same concentration of force in the area as he could easily manage. The later parts of the game featured front-line armies of 8 units (the maximum before attrition sets in) with a combat value of 16. I generally had a bit more to spare, and was working a scheme to join one army with another, and then hit him with the combined force all in one move, but it had yet to happen by the end of turn 3.

The battles see-sawed back and forth a bit, but I lost Perdiccas in the first turn, which in turn led to losing Phyrgia (as it turned out, for the rest of the game), as I didn’t trust a minor general to win against the remaining enemy forces, and it took some effort to get Antigonus up there (everyone else was busy), as well as taking on Demetrius early in the second turn. I generally ended up defending behind the pass in Cilisia.

However, the threat I generated eventually led him to abandon the low-level sparring that was happening in the east (some movement and a lot of worry on both sides), and march Peithon west to Asia Minor. This led to me eventually abandoning Champion status at the end of turn two, as I besieged Ecbatana and took it, eliminating all of his influence in the east from isolation.

Turn three was a desperate race against the clock for my Dad, as I had control of the heir, Heracles, and we were nearly equal on Prestige (I was three below him due to Condemnation, but that was it), and I had a comfortable eight point lead in Victory Points (which was narrower than it had been…). This led to a risky battle that he lost, but was about his only chance to open things up enough to destroy my VP lead, even temporarily. As it was, I barely won, and he couldn’t come up with much else during the turn. So as of the beginning of turn four, I declared Heracles King of Macedonia, with myself as Regent.

Again, it worked surprisingly well as a two player game, and I’d be less adverse to playing it that way in the future. It was a good time, and, I think, a good introduction of Card-Driven Games to my Dad. (Not that I’ve played any of them other than Successors.)

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Philip the Lionhearted

by on December 1, 2008 at 9:40 am
Posted In: Boardgaming

…And we ended up playing the Third Crusade scenario for Onward yesterday.

After playing the small 2nd Crusade scenario twice in a row, it was almost startling to see the system back in it’s full glory. It really pointed up just how limited of a scenario 2C is. As it turned out, we both wanted different sides, and I ended up with the Crusaders again. (My Dad wanted to be on the defensive, and I wanted Richard.)

At any rate, the scenario picks up in medias res, with Richard I just arriving off the coast of Cyprus, Philip II having just arrived near Acre while the combined armies of Guy and Leopold sit and besiege Acre with Saladin encamped nearby.

Historically, Richard took Cyprus (from the Byzantines), landed at Acre, took over the siege while ill, fought off a couple minor attacks, took the city, headed south, won a deservedly famous victory at Arsuf, but was unable to take Jerusalem when Philip and Leopold left him to return to Europe; nor was he able to secure a peace that could guarantee the long-term viability of the Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Not wanting to disturb a winning formula, the major event of the first turn was Richard taking Cyprus. However, instead of proceeding directly to Acre, Richard then landed in the Holy Land at friendly (but neutral) Tripoli.

Richard eventually decided that the siege of Acre was well in hand, and moved north up the coast, taking Jabala as he went before stopping to assault Lattakiea. Saladin moved north, worried at the possible loss of Antioch and Edessa. In two pitched battles Richard defeated Saladin, allowing him time to take the city, and Saladin retired to get more troops and perhaps face someone a little less energetic.

Saladin came south, gathering a mighty host from various garrisons and arriving reinforcements along the way, and hit the Frankish army lead by Philip at Acre, where the siege was slowly grinding away. Philip was forced to retreat with moderate losses, ending the threat to Acre.

Fate intervened at this point, with a revolt in Hamah, which forced Saladin back north in a hurry with a minimal force. Richard would have liked to test him again with nearly equal armies, but was held up at Antioch. Saladin was, however, able to fly back south and resume control of his army fairly quickly.

Faced with an army too big to safely fight, and with Richard far away and with too small a force to face Saladin, Philip gambled: He marched around Saladin and down to Jerusalem as the rainy season started, which was defended by a small force under Taki. Too small for Philip’s combined force, however. Philip established a siege.

Richard tried to race down the coast to help, or at least do something while Saladin was distracted, but was stymied by the rains and the need to support his armored knights (3 AK + 1 army size +2 weather—soon +3—really slowed him down, even with a ‘5’ campaign rating to continue with). Saladin staged out of Jericho and attacked the Crusader army.

Saladin, however, was not up to his usual mettle, and Philip’s army stood its ground. In a second battle, things went even worse, and Saladin was forced to retreat. He had, however, accomplished his primary goal: Philip’s army was now too small to besiege Jerusalem effectively. Philip grimly determined to continue to ravage the countryside and assault the walls, to force Saladin to continue bleeding his army against him, while the other scattered factions of the Crusaders collected themselves.

And then fate intervened again. Saladin launched a third attack against Philip and again failed to dislodge him from Jerusalem. However, Saladin himself took an arrow in the eye during the battle, and died shortly thereafter. With no effective Saracen leadership left nearby, Philip was able to carry the walls of Jerusalem during the winter of 1191. This ended the game, and no doubt left Philip as the primary figure of the history books.

It was a very good game, and exciting all the way through. I considered my move to Jerusalem to be very risky, but worthwhile if I could avoid any true military disasters, as Saladin’s larger army would bleed down faster than mine, and would allow time for Richard to collect a slightly more effective force as Saladin was pretty much forced to react to the game-ending threat. Continuing after the siege had failed was a gamble I was pretty sure would backfire, as if I took the city, Philip would either have to defend outside it anyway, or let Saladin assault when the walls were still only worth ‘1’, making it easy to loose the entire army. Saladin dieing was extremely unexpected, especially as both Saladin and Philip had rolled ’11’s for the leader loss check in the previous battle.

Anyway, the next game will probably be on Tuesday, and I’ve been pressuring my Dad to try out Pursuit of Glory—we’ll see though.

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