The Great Democracies

by on June 9, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

For most of the series, “English-speaking peoples” means “English”, but for Churchill’s final volume this really widens the scope, with the United States being an ever more important entity through out the time period of the book.

However, the first section is pretty much all domestic English politics from after the defeat of Napoleon to the mid-Nineteenth Century. There’s some diversions for things like fears of Russia, and the end talks about the mass migrations that happened during this time, but mostly we’re looking at prime ministers, and the bigger events, often legislative, of their governments. For an overview book covering almost a century, this isn’t a bad thing, but as a man engaged in British politics his entire adult life, you can easily see here where his interests lie.

The second part is the American Civil War, which is by no means a bad 130-page summary. Churchill isn’t trying to put any particular ‘spin’ on things, but this means it is representative of the books he had read when composing this in the ’30s and finishing it in the ’50s. It’s not Lost Cause by any means, but elements of it are here, including a full “Man of Marble” view of Lee.

The last part is largely a return to British politics, just with more attention on the international stage, with things like the unification of Germany being called out. There is a good chapter on Reconstruction, as well as America’s emergence onto the world stage. The book doesn’t really give itself a hard ending date, but does wrap up with the death of Queen Victoria and the Boer War.

Despite only covering about 87 years, this possibly the weakest book of the set, possibly because of the variety of things Churchill has to cover, and certainly it is trivial to get better coverage of much of the contents. But it does finish up the series nicely, and Winston Churchill could write. If you don’t know much of the period, this isn’t a bad place to start, and better-written than many, otherwise, its value is more in the prose, or to see some of the attitudes of someone who once wrote, “history will be kind to me, for I intend to write it.”

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The First Stand of the Moors

by on June 5, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark came over back on the 26th, and we tried out Granada: Last Stand of the Moors, which he got recently. I don’t really have money or space, but I’m going to have to look at getting it. The main idea is to reuse the system from Sekigahara, and it does match that fairly closely. There were a number of places where I could figure out rules questions from my knowledge of that game.

It is a bit more complicated. First, there are watchtowers, which are sort of between castles and resource points. The major effect is you can’t get overrun in them, but there’s also combat complications. Second, is the addition of naval power. The decks are a bit more complicated with a number of special cards, which are generally good ideas (I especially like the handful of cards that are just for various special troop actions, but work with any faction).

I happened to be sitting on the south side of the map, and so took the Muslims. Mark won the first turn order bid (and all the others, I declined to bid more than ‘1’ all game), and had me go first. The situation is even more muddled than Sekigahara, with more spaces and more troops scattered about, so figuring on a first move was not easy, especially as my opening hand didn’t suggest any particular forces could be effectively used.

I don’t remember what the exact first moves were, but there are a few vulnerable spaces at start, including a couple of Muslim watchtowers just outside the borders of Granada proper. I abandoned the one at Lucena to besiege Archidona, and took it after moving one of the main armies north. Castles are harder to take here, since you need nine impact to kill a piece inside, unless you can manage a bombard special action to bring it down to 7. Since European castles are notably tougher than Japanese ones, that makes some sense, but I needed the large army to dig him out. Mark had taken the resource point at Vera, but I managed to chase him off with a small force, and then moved the force at Almeria up to cover that flank.


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Thick as Thieves

by on June 1, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The fifth Queen’s Thief book shifts main character again, this time to Kamet, who was last seen rescuing his master and fleeing back the Mede Empire near the end of Queen of Attolia. And he gets teamed up with Costis, the viewpoint character of A Conspiracy of Kings.

While a slave, with all the uncertainties of that position, he has a fairly good, and comfortable life. This is disrupted right at the start, and the rest of the book flows from that event.

This is basic plotting, but its well done, and there is not a long wait that some slower-paced stories use to establish the current ‘normal’ that gets disrupted. One of the more effective elements of the book is we get meditations on what Kamet’s life has been like as we go. Instead of elaborately setting everything up, and then smashing it all, we get a few pages of set up, and the rest we learn on the road.

Because much of the novel does indeed happen on the road, with Kamet and Costis fleeing for their lives. That sort of action, long-term, tends to be hard to do well, and it does make things drag a bit through the middle of the book.

As such, this is more of a ‘buddy movie’ book, and another successful change-up in format. There is also the usual reveal of a crucial bit not told the reader (nor Kamet) for quite a bit to change perceptions of what has happened. (I still have some motivation problems there.) I prefer the bigger political entries in this series, so it’s not a high point for me because they only intrude in summary here. I also think a bit more examination of the nature of various types of power could have helped the themes of the book. Still, it very good, I recommend the series as a whole.

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Heart of Eastern Europe

by on May 28, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the third in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Hearts of Iron IV. See the previous reviews here:
Hearts of Iron IV: Heart of Production
Together For Victory: Commonwealth of Iron

After Together for Victory, the HoI IV team moved on to a second country pack, this time concentrating on Eastern Europe. Death or Dishonor was announced on April 26, 2017, and released alongside patch 1.4 on June 14. As of May 2024, it has been integrated into the base game, and is no longer a separate expansion, but this review discusses what it and the patch did for the game.

Air War

The interface and controls for air wings had been immediately tagged as a place that needed work in the game, and the results of the initial changes finally showed up in this patch. It didn’t really change how things worked, but did help with understanding it.

The most important change was displaying ranges on the map. Selecting an air wing generates a fuzzy yellow/green circle on the map to show the range of the aircraft in the wing. This helps with understanding just where they can reach and what zones are possible to cover from the base. Radar got the same treatment, making the intelligent placement of stations a lot easier. Also, a lot of air zones were split up into smaller sections (meaning new ones were split off), making localized air superiority easier to achieve.

And the air wing interface itself was massively changed. It was cut down to essentials and is easier to manage, though I think there are still problems, with over-fiddly controls to assign a number of planes to a particular unit.

Focus Trees

As a country pack, the main element of the expansion is detailing, with new focus trees, events, and national spirits, four more nations. Surprisingly, two of them were countries whose history was cut short in this period: Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia. The other two were the main “Axis minors” of WWII: Hungary and Romania. Seeing it in the light of filling out the Axis countries, it is surprising that Bulgaria and Finland don’t get included in the set. (Bulgaria would get detailed in Battle for the Bosporus, while Finland wouldn’t get its turn until the recent Arms Against Tyranny expansion).

Romania starts with twelve technologies, including motorized units, lots of oil, but hardly any other resources. With thirteen civilian, plus seven military factories, and two dockyards, there’s enough to supply an already large army (33 divisions, many of which have decent pre-war templates), but not much past that. The two starting national spirits keep Romania neutral, and fire off a number of bad events representing Carol II’s dissipated lifestyle. However, there’s also a lot of political flexibility to be found, with a focus tree where working with one major faction is not mutually exclusive with the others.

Hungary starts with the Treaty of Triannon national spirit which severely curtails the military. Sixteen divisions isn’t a bad army for Hungary’s size, but there’s only 52 men left to recruit at the start, so it literally cannot be expanded any further until something is done about that, and taking any casualties would empty the pool immediately. Ten civilian and six military factories will help with equipment deficits, but industrializing further will be a challenge, though there is plenty of aluminum to trade. Sadly, any resource bonuses are somewhat deep in the industrialization tree and there’s barely anything other than aluminum to start, though extra buildings and the first research slot (of three) are easier to access. There are some routes to expansion, but they are difficult at best.

Czechoslovakia has Divided Nation which lowers unity and available recruits, but also has Skoda Works for extra factory output. There are 16 civilian and 9 military factories, with 11 slots available. 22 divisions are a pretty good military, though they’re a bit basic (no artillery or other support other than recon companies for the cavalry), and there’s only 184 men to recruit at start (with about as many becoming available each month). The country has a little of everything except aluminum and rubber, but will need a lot more as the industry ramps up. It seems a perfect candidate for the arms sales allowed with the later Arms Against Tyranny expansion (in fact, the excellent for its day LT vz. 38—Panzer 38(t)—was originally designed for export).

Yugoslavia starts with five national spirits, which mostly outline the internal stresses of a country that seems to be trying to be a ‘greater Serbia’, and decrease unity to 30%, increase most political power costs, slow down production, and increase the cost of new leaders. However, planning gets a boost, and other countries trying to align it to their ideology have a tougher time (this last is there even without the expansion). Manpower is low, but not at the absurd levels of Hungary and Czechoslovakia, while 22 active divisions make the start of a decent army. The starting infantry template is good, but the existing armor template is merely one light tank battalion with a leg infantry regiment (“penny packets” comes to mind). However, fourteen civilian factories, plus three military, and one dockyard mean the military will struggle to equip itself, much less expand. There is lots of aluminum and chromium available at start, and the industrialization tree will add oil, tungsten, and steel, along with expanding industry and research slots.

Equipment

It has been possible to send equipment (lend-lease) or units (“volunteers”) to other countries. Now, the expansion allows you to license the production of equipment to another country. This was a fairly common thing in the period (the famous Bofors AA gun was used extensively, but developed by Sweden, which didn’t participate in WWII). This generally requires good relations, but the fascist puppets (below) generally have an easy time requesting licenses, and some focus trees (Romania’s especially) will provide licenses.

The cost of not developing the equivalent equipment yourself is that production will not be as efficient, particularly if it is a very recent technology. Also, the license itself costs civilian factories (which go to the licensing nation, just like resource trading), and creating your own variants is twice as expensive in experience. However, the license also grants a boost to researching the technology yourself so you can get off the licensed version.

Another help to production is that the expansion lets you convert equipment. This can be upgrading equipment to newer variants, or to related separate types, like converting tanks to tank destroyers or self-propelled artillery of the same general type. This can’t be done ‘in the field’, but only works on equipment sitting in storage, but will run faster, and consume fewer resources than building from scratch. This provides a great way to use older equipment; develop a new tank type, start building them, and then develop the TD and SPA versions of the old tank, and start converting them as the new tanks take over front-line duty.

To go along with this, the expansion also featured two new technology nodes on the industry screen, which branch off of the 1937 Improved Machine Tools (efficiency cap bonus), and grant a bonus to the speed of converting equipment.

Overall, these are really nice bonuses to equipment production, and is the central reason to look at this expansion. Sadly, conversion isn’t quite as friendly as this in real life, and there should probably be a reliability hit to the results of many of the cross-type conversions. However, it could be seen as just consuming spare parts and re-using tooling for the old types too, and the build up of older equipment types is a problem that needed addressing.

Reichskommisariat

The puppet system was re-done again for this expansion. The British states still use the system from TFV (assuming you have it) and so will other powers, but now fascist puppets use their own variation. The general idea is that it is harder to get from under the thumb of your master as a fascist satellite, but you do get free equipment licenses from the master country, which can be a big help.

There’s only three levels of (non-)independence for Axis puppet regimes, but each one needs more autonomy, so going up and down the scale takes longer. Unlike the Commonwealth version, these will mostly only come about in play. Japan is considered fascist, so Manchuko and Mengkukuo will be reichskommisariats (the lowest level of independence in this system) if you have this expansion, and Slovakia also starts the 1939 scenario as a reichskommisariat of Germany.

Since the actual names of any puppet states will be determined by who actually holds them, those will still be appropriate and the naming is not a big deal, but it still appears in the relationships and the solidly Germanic names can be a sore thumb there.

Conclusion

The central question of any country pack is ‘am I interested enough in the countries involved to get this?’ In general, I think central Europe is an essential area to detail, and it gets the two most prominent Axis minors in the process. On the other hand, I think Finland deserved attention sooner rather than later, and I consider it a missed opportunity here.

The new puppet types aren’t nearly as interesting the second time around, though making fascist puppets work differently than democratic ones makes sense. The various miscellaneous improvements for the patch don’t look like much, but the AI certainly got better, and the air war is easier to manage.

Outside of wanting to try out Czechoslovakia or the like, the new equipment abilities are a good draw. They’re not needed, but made this a good package and I’m glad to see everyone has access to that now.

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Wasteland of Flint

by on May 24, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

After way too long, I’ve finally gotten to Thomas Harlan’s Time of the Sixth Sun series.

It is well written and therefore easy to get into. It’s also potentially very hard to get into.

At one level, this is general SF: humanity has invented FTL, and is slowly exploring the galaxy (or at least nearby parts of it), we’ve met some alien species, and there’s a number of colonies out there.

However, this is alternate history, one where the Aztec Empire not only survived the Sixteenth Century, but eventually came out on top. The government isn’t really gone into, but is Aztec, with a lot of cultural synthesis going on in the centuries since. In fact, a lot of this is deliberately not gone into. There’s no big ‘as you already know’ speeches. This is the world we have, and you get to roll with it. (Apparently there was a wiki that went into this, but it seems down now; so just think of something in the future of The Gate of Worlds—which is a book that distracts itself too much with setting for the foundation of its alternate history.)

But, people are still people, so while the culture is somewhat alien, everything else is quite understandable. There is some mixing of tone/genre. The opening part has a lot of really good description of a broken world (literally) and an ultralight that’s used to travel across it, along with survival gear, and camp proceedures… it really sets up a nice, grounded, scene in an alien environment, and introduces the story very well. However, later, the novel has split into two major plotlines, and one of them features the kind of pea-soup asteroid belt you get in space opera… which while great entertainment, is very at odds with the harder SF feel of that start.

The bulk of the novel is classic science mystery, revolving around a planet that someone partially took apart in the distant past, and didn’t quite put together right (which does all sorts of things to the geology and atmosphere—I think the thoughts on local gravity are a bit off though). And that’s generally the best part of the book.

However, the alternate history timeline comes into play to give the book a separate feel from the normal. This isn’t necessarily something to puzzle over and pick apart until all the answers are revealed. The series title refers to the Aztec calendar, which plays upon ideas of cycles of civilizations, and in this universe, humans have found remnants of previous civilizations, which are referred to in accordance to this cosmology, and artifacts found here are referred to as coming from the First Sun. This is a somewhat inimical universe, where humans have been staying carefully away from anything that might attract too much attention. (Imagine going to the stars, and finding we’re in the middle of a game of AI War.)

Well, possibly. There’s a lack of a lot of hard evidence for much of anything here, and while there are parts of things still functioning, just what they would do, whether they would contact anything else, etc., is unknown. There is evidence of another civilization that did get the attention of something… and is no longer around, so perhaps caution is indeed the best policy.

The real shame is that this series seems to be the last thing Harlan got published. While there’s a few difficulties here, and it certainly doesn’t hold the reader’s hand, it is very good, and I’d like to have more to read from him past the next two books of this series.

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