The Thirty Years War

by on April 30, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Peter Wilson’s history of the Thirty Years War is in the end a popular, or at least, enthusiast history. But it is organized more as a series of essays with subchapters and sub-subchapters. This is appreciated as it lets him clearly organize his thoughts, but I don’t know that it actually works as well as it ought.

At an even higher level, the book is split into three parts, with nearly a third dedicated to the build up to the war, and and eighth on the aftermath. Wilson obviously lays a lot of groundwork, which is essential here. That said, I had problems. One part I appreciated, but don’t think was entirely successful was showing that the Holy Roman Empire had been through a number of crises in the previous half-century, and there was no reason to think that the troubles in 1618 would amount to anything more. What I really had trouble with is he constantly refers to the ‘constitution’ of the HRE, and changes to it, but never, ever, describes what he’s talking about. Is there a (or more likely, a set of) written document, or is it a set of unwritten, but accepted, agreements. Or is he merely trying to talk about ‘the things of which the HRE is constituted’, whatever that may be (presumably the various officials and assemblies)?

That still leaves the bulk of the book to the war itself, and Wilson never really goes through his various points, but does have a few he’s trying to make. Most notably, is confusion, on everyone’s part of just how connected a number of different conflicts going on really are. Part of Wilson’s trouble is I don’t entirely know what he thinks about it all. He seems to regard the Dutch Revolt as a separate conflict (regular enough), but because what happens there does have a lot to do with what’s happening inside the Empire, he ends up treating it in about as much detail as the rest. There another couple of rounds of struggle over who controls Italy, which is treated much more marginally.

There are various actors inside the struggle for parts of the Empire who aren’t necessarily working together while working against the same people. These are all linked enough to obviously be part of the same war, but there are separations that Wilson often doesn’t entirely explore. He hints at the idea that the initial Bohemian revolt could be separated out from the rest, but doesn’t follow up that theme. Much later, we basically have Sweden and France pursuing separate wars in central Europe that are tied together by an alliance that both are smart enough to spend effort maintaining.

We also have Spain’s efforts to maintain the “Spanish Road”, which really is a separate conflict, except that it involves all the same people. And France’s war with Spain, including involvement with the Catalonian revolt. These are also covered fairly well, though the war in Spain naturally gets less detail, though Wilson does spend a good amount of time on the climatic bits.

Among the orthodoxies of the TYW Wilson is trying to dispel is that it was a purely religious war. I think he’s fine enough there, though I think religious motivation is less separated out than he tries to present. He also goes into the religious background in the opening parts, which gave me a headache. That’s not just him though, I find that difficult going no matter who’s writing.

His final real idea is that the Peace of Westphalia set the stage for modern European diplomacy. Instead of every country being treated differently based on size, prestige, and power, various countries were treated as being of equal importance inside their own sphere. So, while two countries may wield different amounts of power, they were all accorded the same courtesies. This is a habit that has deepened over time, and informs how the United Nations works.

For me, Wilson’s real problem is not his fault. I read this just after finishing Jonathan Sumption’s history of the Hundred Years War, which weighs in at about the same page count per decade, and I found it much better. That said, I think this is a better book than C.V. Wedgewood’s history, and certainly the best one I know of on the subject.

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UR1 The Admiral’s Game

by on April 26, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

Mark and I have been playing a heavily rewritten form of “The Admiral’s Game” campaign from Advanced Missions. This is based on a version played on the SFB forums… nearly two decades ago.

I’ve thought about those old campaigns a bunch in the years since then, and that’s how I came to write up my own rules. Recently, I’ve started a thread about my rules over on Board Game Geek. Feel free to look in there and comment. Campaigns are big investments, but very tempting ones; I wish we had a bit more time to dedicate to such projects.

The current version of my rules are downloadable here.

I’ve provided some of my thinking, and overall prep work for our group’s current date of Y162 on the BGG thread.

I’ve spent a fair amount of time studying costs and worked out an overall general income schedule that I think will work (Y170-Y180 income might need to go a little higher), and I’ve talked about it in a series of posts starting here recently.

I have also started a solo campaign with the Klingons invading the Federation in Y162. I report on it in that thread as well, and in this post I show the purchases for both sides. This is generally the one secret part of the campaign, so it’s not something I can show off in the game with Mark. The next post gives the Y162 deployments for both sides. One actual battle resulted, with the other battles being too lopsided to play.

That one battle was entertaining. The full writeup starts here, but the summary is that a Federation CC and CA tried to take out a Klingon ship (possibly one of the two E4s present) and then escape before the Klingons can do too much damage. Random terrain generated a sparse asteroid field, which forced shorter ranges than the originally envisioned prox-torp duel. Neither side played that well (me playing both of them keeps me from coming up with anything brilliant, and I’m often doing this while distracted), and ended up with a close range pass at the top of turn 3.

IKV Desecration (D6-21) was absolutely gutted in the exchange (six power left), while CC USS Kongo (NCC-1710) lost the front shield and a good number of phasers. She ran for distance, while CAR USS Defiance (NCC-1717) couldn’t quite do internals to IKV Devastator (D7-15), but forced her away from Kongo. The two E4s also don’t do more than shield damage to Kongo, and one took a handful of internals in return.

Defiance turned in for a shot at Devastator, neither side did much, and Defiance dodged around her to get at Desecration, ending with her destruction. Defiance is now alone, and dodged through an asteroid cluster with and lost the #1 to take internals from hitting too many asteroids (in addition to what the pursuing Klingons manage). Both Star Fleet vessels disengaged off the map. The Klingons technically won, but Star Fleet accomplished the primary mission. However, both ships were too heavily damaged for easy repairs, and may sit out next year (Kongo especially).

I’m delaying getting back to the campaign right now… and may start a Hydran one to see how the campaign rules with fighters actually work in practice. I’m currently doubting whether the Hydrans can be competitive with my current setup.

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The Book of Lost Tales (Part 1)

by on April 22, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

For the recent Tolkien Reader Day, I picked up the first of Christopher Tolkien’s ‘History of Middle Earth’ series.

It takes a bit of unpacking.

This is largely the earliest versions of some of the earliest stories. However, while the initial writing project of these was abandoned, most of these stories weren’t abandoned. Much was later rewritten, and cleaned up versions of that are in The Silmarillion. So, there’s not a lot truly new to the reader to unearth.

And yet, it’s not the same, and I found it largely more comprehensible than much of the comparable sections of The Silmarillion. That may be because Christopher Tolkien is there to hold my hand with lots of commentaries between stories.

And, liking history and process, seeing first/second drafts, and some history of the thinking behind these stories is of interest to me. Reading-wise, the main problem is “The Cottage of Lost Play” is a slog. After that, I found the narrated stories of the pre-history of the world, and the interstitial bits worked very well for me, and I actually enjoyed reading those parts.

I think one of the most interesting things is that all along, The Hobbit and LotR are supposed to be happening in some long-lost past of our world. But frankly, you can’t tell, there’s no real connection. Here, this conceit is still at the surface, and Eriol is just enough to tie this large structure to our Earth. Also, some of the echoes of Germanic and Nordic myth are stronger here, and it feels just a bit more connected those long-gone and overgrown signposts. In a real sense, LotR indeed has nothing to do with our past. I started in some of the same places (here), and then grew in its own direction, and became more than that simple concept.

In a general reading sense, it’d be hard to recommend this. Certainly not in any pure entertainment sense; stick with the later, polished works for that. But, there is enough magic here that if you’d like to take a look behind the curtain, this is a good exploration of the start of J.R.R. Tolkien’s quest.

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Star Ventures

by on April 18, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Had a FtF game of Space Corp on Sunday. Mark and Jason came over to join me and Dave to make a four-player day of it. We started out with the Planeteers era to make sure we had time to get through the Spacefarers era. We also added in Ventures, which is basically a collection of special powers in various custom corporations. It’s very focused, and there’s not really any new rules, but figuring out the fairly complicated plusses and minuses of each corporation takes some doing.

I ended up with Grav Tech, and I managed to abuse their reverse of gravity penalties to get me to Jupiter early. Everyone else set up shop in the asteroids to begin with. Not that any of us did anything for a bit. Starting Planeteers with no previous infrastructure (we didn’t check the ‘variant’ section in the rulebook, though I’d think that needs some updating for Ventures) was punishing. We chewed up a fair amount of the deck just getting going, and only completed two of the contracts by the time the deck was exhausted.

Mark was the first one out to the asteroids, and got into a quick lead for his discoveries. It didn’t take long for the rest of us to get going also, and Mark was generally in a small lead as the rest of us got going in a pack that slowly separated out over the course of the era. Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the end of the era, but the asteroid belt was being exploited, Jupiter’s moons had bases (three of them mine), and settlement had started at Saturn. I abused my free starport ability to throw a team into the Oort cloud shortly before the end. Dave had been planning the same, but couldn’t quite manage it.

So, I started Starfarers with a team at Alpha Centauri (my first time in three games, I usually end up with 2nd Beyond). I had also partially lucked into leading the charge on genetics and revelations, and started collecting those as the era got going. (I also took Matter Shifting early on to help with that.) I don’t quite remember what I took first, I thought it was something other than Cooperative Empathy, but I don’t know what; I know I got Radiation Resistant partway into the era, which was a big help. (A good strategy for Grav Tech would seem be to specialize in move infra, and then take Cooperative Empathy, but that does require the other players to have good build/explore infra which wasn’t so true here.)

I burned a Time card to get to Luhman 16 and immediately arrive, with the others scattering to other systems afterwards. I eventually got to 61 Cygni as well, and built colonies at all three. Of course, the problem was with only primaries at the first two, I had to really scrape for colony points, giving up two of my teams.

Jason and Dave also built three colonies each, while Mark scattered himself around, as part of his alternate scoring. (In fact, we all went for alternate scoring.) Dave got a team into the Orion Spur, and settled a couple contracts to catch up to Jason. Both of them were lagging behind me and Mark. I was doing fairly well during this period, but Mark kept doing ‘produce 2’ actions for 6T each time (I briefly contemplated the same thing before Mark started, but went after colonies and on-board position instead).

The deck ran out early again, though there were a few more turns of inertia this time (I tended to start passing early both times from a lack of things left to do). We completed four of the contracts this time, and the board was much better developed.


Green = Mark/Discover Prime?; Blue = Rindis/Grav Tech; Purple = Dave/New Nomads; Yellow = Jason/Space Corp

Afterword

Doing the Planeteers start, but giving the infrastructure and starting money would work a lot better. The companies in Ventures integrate into the game very well, but I do find them complicated to play, as half the important stuff is hidden away in multiple locations in small text. I like them, but they require you to pay a lot more attention than most ‘lets make everyone different’ mechanisms I’ve seen.

Mark got an early lead, and largely kept it all game. I stayed neck-and-neck for a while, and even passed him, but he got ahead and stayed ahead in the final stretch, despite some good scoring from me. He ended at 62T, while I was second at 57T. Once Jason and Dave fell back in the second half of Planeteers, they never caught up again, and Dave was trailing in last for a good while before turning it around to pas Jason at the last minute with 43T, while Jason finished with 40T.

Overall, it was a good time. I do agree with some sentiment that the game shines better in the first two sections; I do like Starfarers, and there’s some really good choices to make, but it seems to drag more, mostly from the burden of getting high move scores.

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First Moscow

by on April 14, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eleventh in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Europa Universalis IV. See the previous reviews here:
Europa Universalis IV: A Fantastic Point of View
Wealth of Nations: National Trade
Res Publica: A Tradition of the People
Art of War: Reform-Minded Patch
El Dorado: Expansion of Gold
Common Sense: Uncommon Changes
The Cossacks: Cossack Estate
Mare Nostrum: Paradox’s Sea
Rights of Man: Institutions of Man
Mandate of Heaven: Mandated Ages

After a full expansion with a regional focus, Europa Universalis IV development focused on a number of small “immersion packs” that focus on flavor elements for certain regions. These tend to be priced at $10 instead of the usual $15 to $20 for a full expansion. Third Rome, the first of these, was announced on May 12, 2017, and came out with patch 1.22 on June 14.

Governments

Three new unique government types came with the patch. The first is the Russian principality, which seven states start with (most notably Muscovy), which get tax and unrest bonuses.

Meanwhile, Novgorod and Pskov are veche republics, which are variant merchant republics. They get an extra merchant, and if Res Publica is in use, they get to build trade posts and have a faction system like a merchant republic. Instead of getting caravan power (inland trade power), they cause extra production in provinces they don’t own, but have a lot of trade power in (which directly increases revenue for the other countries, but indirectly increases it for the veche as they’ll get the increased trade value caused by the production).

Any of these that manage to form Russia automatically switch to a tsardom, which has a strong number of bonuses, including increased manpower, absolutism, and decreased autonomy (this caused complaints, and great veche republic was created as the republic version of tsardom later), and with the expansion it gets the ability to claim an entire area. It costs more from a spy network, but generally less than claiming the provinces separately, so Russia is uniquely able to spread claims faster than anyone else. The former two are locked as duchies, while tsardom is automatically an empire. That kind of goes against the idea of how the ranks should work in Common Sense, but it does help if you don’t have that expansion.

Of course, like just about all other unique government forms, you can’t voluntarily change from these, though the veche can fall to a despotic monarchy/republican dictatorship like a merchant republic.

Additionally, with the expansion, three special abilities are granted to all of these countries (one per type of monarch point). A special form of power is collected for each, based on the current ruler’s abilities, and when it reaches 100, the appropriate ability can be activated. Admin reduces autonomy in all provinces, diplomatic reduces the progress of all rebellions (that can be handy…), and the military recruits streltsy units.

These are a new unit category that costs no money, manpower, or time to recruit, but afterward they act the same as anything else, so they cost the normal maintenance and manpower to refresh. However, recruiting them grants a temporary combat bonus that only applies to them, and can be refreshed by recruiting more in the future (streltsy units have a gray background). However, using them also increases stability costs.

The government types are nice, but I think the abilities are mechanically weak. There’s no variation in the growth of their meters, and there’s only one choice with each of them: hit the button or don’t hit the button (to save it for a more opportune moment). It doesn’t really cost anything else, so the stability cost of streltsy is the only trade-off in the entire set.

Orthodoxy

Naturally, Orthodox Christianity got new mechanics for the expansion. Orthodox countries have a new state-level ability, consecrate metropolitan. This adds to the maintenance cost of the state, but causes it to recover from devastation faster, and adds to patriarch authority.

Patriarch authority is another religious 0-100 meter, and grants missionary strength, manpower, and reduces unrest as it goes up. This actually already existed, but outside of creating new metropolitan seats, it tends to be fairly static (there are events to affect it, which is all there was previously, and still without the expansion), and consecrating a new metropolitan only boosts it by 5. So it takes a bit of work, and a large amount of territory to get it very high.

Also, authority can be used to commission icons. This is like the temporary bonuses in other religions, but of course consumes a currency that is generally in short supply. The bonuses last two decades, and each icon provides two (related) bonuses, so they tend to be fairly strong.

Both the icons and the metropolitans have events that are possible while those are active. The vast bulk of icon events are positive, so that’s another benefit.

Ideas

All the culturally-Russian countries had either a unique idea and tradition set, or used a general set just for them already. But the Russian set itself was changed so the second idea is Siberian frontier.

Normally, it just auto-discovers empty terra incognita provinces in the area, but with the expansion you can also establish a form of colony that will settle an empty Siberian province. Unlike a normal colony, it costs no maintenance, and won’t be attacked by the locals. They have good base rate of growth, but since there’s no colonist to help them along (without going for colonist ideas), they will be a bit slow to grow into cities, and they get no help from the usual diplomatic tech bonuses to colonies. This lets Russia colonize out to the Pacific at a cost of 20 diplomatic power per province without having to take Expansion or Exploration ideas just to get an actual colonist to do it that way, which is a big improvement.

Formerly, Muscovy and Russia shared the same idea set, but now Muskovy’s are separate (with an option to keep or change when forming Russia), mostly concentrating on small military bonuses, though one of the initial traditions is +10% shock damage, which is not small at the start of the game.

Conclusion

Naturally, all this came with a map rework of the area, which allowed a couple of one-province minors to become two or three provinces. Additionally, Rostov and Beloozero were split off into vassals of Muskovy at game start (giving them the maximum number of relations already in vassals; be careful).

That part is certainly well done and always appreciated, and the new government types are nice; I certainly like the idea of a variant merchant republic. The expansion bonuses are a bit of a mix for me, as I feel too much of it (which would be any part at all) is too static and devoid of interesting decisions. That said, the new Orthodox mechanics are nice, and the ability of Russia to automatically colonize Siberia is something the game actually needed. It’s certainly an overall benefit, and if you like playing as Muskovy or Novgorod (or the smaller states in the area), it’s worth getting, which is the entire idea.

It does occur to me that they don’t play around that much with Russia’s self-image of being the successor of Rome and Byzantium (referenced in the title Third Rome). Ambitions in that direction are, I believe, already in the missions that can come up, but an event that triggers on the taking of Constantinople by the Ottomans (very likely in most games) would have been a good flavor addition, even if it didn’t do much mechanically.

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