291 Bridge Over the River Queen

by on April 2, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

Patch came over this last Saturday so we could celebrate getting our own leader counters in Twilight of the Reich. It’ll be a bit before the boards show up in VASL, so FtF was the answer. Only the first two scenarios use 8+1 commissars, and the second one is shorter (and has a simpler overlay setup), so we went with that.

There’s a lot to get used to, and we hadn’t really studied the scenario beforehand, so we got off to a slow start. It would have been nice to play in VASL, since all orchards are shellholes, and the river is a valley, and we had to remind ourselves of that all day. That said, the full-board length river wraps around the vertical board 19a, so overlay setup is fairly easy. However, the setup areas were a bit confusing to keep track of; I should have set out perimeter markers.

Patch took the Germans and set up first. Both sides get the same number of TotR equipment purchases, but the split between two forces makes it rougher for the Russians. Moreover, they have fairly limited setup areas. Three hex-columns SE of the valley, and the far corners north of it. Patch had a heavier setup to the east of the rail bridge, so my northern force was concentrated on the west. The Russians also place a couple of blazes before any setup, and I have to admit to having very little idea what to do with them.

You know it’s going to be a wild day when the first FF attack is ‘2’, but one die is out of the box, demanding a re-roll… and it’s ‘2’ anyway. I lost squads on both sides of the valley, and was thinking I should have bought SAN down to 2…. As it was, my sniper did go off to STUN a halftrack, and then a conscript squad went berserk to charge same HT. Other than that, I did get a 628+LMG into E12, and a couple of intact squads across the street in the north, causing Patch to self-break to evacuate.

Despite limited success in the first turn, the second turn was worse. (It did not help that the ‘2’s kept on coming.) Patch manged to break most everything on the north side, including the 10-0 commissar. Thankfully, I (*I* Com Rindis) manged to rally two of the NKVD squads to help stabilize things there. On the south side, Patch was sweating, because all I really need is to be able to have an MMC on the rails down there; alternatively, if there’s no Good Order Germans north of the valley, which is more what his setup was for, as he didn’t immediately realize how little the Russians need to win in the south.

My ATR got to range one of the PSW 222, and got a hit. Sadly, it just couldn’t get the kill. My sniper did stun the other 251/1 though.

Things went rapidly downhill from that high point. Patch knocked out my ATR squad in CC, grabbed the ATR, and then self-broke to run it away from my ability to recover.

Most everything north of the valley broke, and my attempts to force the issue only made it worse, so that there was nothing left on that side. This meant that Patch could afford to shift enough forces south that I couldn’t really win there either; his eastern HS had already crossed the valley, and was going to go after the only unbroken leader I had left.

Afterword

Patch’s count was nine ‘2’s for the day, almost all of them on his fire attacks. There was one ’12’, which reduced a broken 447 to a broken HS conscript on rally.

I had enough mistakes of my own. I had tried purchasing a light mortar, hoping to use it on the shellholes and valley, but in practice, Patch was never outside of the buildings. But it was one of the few things worth 1.5, like the LMGs. Having to split my purchases between a pool of 5 and a pool of 4 was a definite problem. That said, another ATR seems to be a must, and a DC would be wise. I wanted the LMGs for flexible firepower, and to put the NKVD squads into the 8 column, but it doesn’t seem to be needed.

It’s a fun enough scenario, but my biggest problem is that I just couldn’t figure out how it was going to play ahead of time, as there’s a lot going on here.

And it was great to see Patch for the first time in a couple years, I had a fair amount of show-and-tell for him.

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The Unbound Empire

by on March 29, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The third “Swords and Fire” book wraps up the trilogy well. My objections from the first book persist, but are better here, as the story and politics have grown.

And all the strong points remain. There is a good mix of action and tension. A couple of beats are a little predictable, but mostly the calm parts of the book are undercut by waiting for the other shoe to drop, and wondering just what that shoe will be.

Amalia’s quest for better conditions for the mage marked in the empire is nearing completion (or at least a vote to see if she can change things). And the handling of this part is one of the places where the series and her has grown. Meanwhile, the series villain, Ruven, is still loose with a bevy nasty powers and the will to use them. The various things he has access to make it hard to see where things will go, as he has a lot of options. Perhaps a few too many, as he’s something of an always-prepared supervillain. But… it’s actually well handled, and he drives the action well.

And there is a lot of action. I flew through the book because there’s a lot of really page-turning bits in here. At the same time, the book does not become overburdened with action as it’s well spaced out. So, this is one of the better roller-coaster concluding books I’ve seen, and the series is certainly recommended.

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Pursuit of Glory for Vassal 2.0.2

by on March 25, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Of course, there’s always a few things I miss in any major release. I put out an emergency fix for some trouble with the AP reinforcement card right after getting 2.0 out, and then there were a couple of setup mistakes, which are now fixed. I really do hope this version will be stable for a bit.

New features:
* Beachheads have ‘send to Corps Assets box’ command
* New Open Hands window icon
* Zoned player hand windows for better reporting
* Added button to remove all OPS (attack/move) markers

Fixes:
* Added BU entry flag to 2nd stack in Galicia
* Fixed spelling of Salonika in AP Reinforcements
* Removed 2nd beachhead from Salonika Invasion forces
* Fixed send-to commands for Jafar Pasha and No Prisoners (and they count in hands now)
* Fixed Serbian setup
* Reworked spaces in Mesopotamia (beware stacking oddities) & corrected spelling of Diwaniyeh in reporting

I recommend everyone update to this version, available at the Vassal page.

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Triumph and Illusion

by on March 21, 2024 at 1:44 pm
Posted In: Books

The final volume of Sumption’s history of the Hundred Years War does exactly what one would expect. Another eight-hundred pages on a bit more than twenty years of history. It’s excellent stuff as always, but I do feel like it’s a bit lacking. Sumption has always been light on the personalities of the people who haunt the pages of his history, and this more evident here, where both Charles VII and Henry VI are hard figures to understand.

Of course, his main strengths continue in this volume: Clear recounting of narrative history, and attention to the details of finance, recruiting, and wasted motion that inevitably rob large armies and successful campaigns of any ability to bring a large war to its close.

In particular, English finances are in poor shape thanks to all the borrowing Henry V had to do to finance his campaigns in France. However, he had finally converted England’s successes into a real treaty, and gotten a chance to set up an administration across much of northern France. This allowed for tax collection in France to pay for the war in France (well, only part of it, but that was the theory). At the same time, the rump Kingdom of Bourges has little political power, and less money. Once Charles VII is actually crowned, political capital recovers, which is used to re-impose disagreeable levels of taxation, and the financial situation reverses as England deals with declining revenues at home and abroad.

Indeed, the start of the book in 1422 sees both sides politically crippled. Henry V’s heir is eleven months old when he inherits the crowns of England and France, leaving a long regency. The top men are mostly competent, with the Earl of Gloucester being more of a bull in a china shop, but generally kept under control. The real problem is that as the situation grows worse, the main sticking point to negotiations are the English claim to the title “King of France”, and no councilor wants to have to explain to his King on his future majority how he lost that title. It’s something that needed doing (but may still have been insufficient), but since the King was too young to take the step himself, negotiating it away without him invites a treason charge later. And of course, when Henry VI does grow up, there’s no saving Lancastrian France, but there’s no talking him out of the title either.

Meanwhile, Charles VII’s court is still crippled by the internal divisions of the civil war that let England win much of northern France, and get the Duke of Burgundy in their camp. There are several more rounds of internal fighting and deposed councilors, which continue to waste the political strength of the administration in Bourges. But, even when unpopular, the men at the top are generally competent, and the internal fighting slowly winds down with factions largely swept away. This gives Charles VII the strength to go on the offensive, and erode the English position in many of the same ways as the English had done to the French for the last century, devastating areas, taking individual fortified posts by surprise and destroying the ability to generate revenues from the area (nor generate much of anything else…).

The primary dramatic moment comes early, with the English high-water mark. A controversial campaign has devolved into a punishing siege of Orleans, but despite being painfully overextended, the English are winning the battles. Money is nearly out, the garrison is dwindling, and court in Bourges is contemplating moving east to retain what they can there, but they’d be largely cut off from outside help from Scotland or Castile. Joan of Arc’s arrival turns things around, probably more from morale effects as anything else. After the English are defeated at Orleans, the self-confidence of both sides largely swaps, and the crowning of Charles VII just cements this development.

The secondary dramatic moment is the end, when the remaining English positions in Normandy fall in one vigorous campaign. After over a decade of continual losses and ever-deepening financial troubles, there’s precious little will left, and the entire area submits with very few people willing to put up with a siege over was has been an increasingly lost cause. For a denouement we get the end of Gascony, a sudden reversal as an English army actually gets there, and then that campaign’s collapse. We also see the start of the Wars of the Roses as factionalism in England deepens in the wake of failure.

The series weighs in at about 3580 pages of text covering one hundred twenty-five years. It is possible to go much deeper into the weeds than Sumption does, but outside of the things routinely studied of the war, you truly are in the weeds. In fact, the value of his books is all the things he covers from independent captains holding enemy countryside hostage to details of taxation and loans all put into a single framework. Its a truly amazing and readable series, enjoyable for anyone with an interest from start to finish.

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No Place Among the Stars

by on March 17, 2024 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the third in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Stellaris. See the previous reviews here:
Stellaris: Paradox Among the Stars
Leviathans: There Be Dragons Here!

After Leviathans, Stellaris got its first (large) expansion. Utopia focused on large engineering projects (“megastructures”), and introduced a new major mechanic in patch 1.5, which was released on April 6, 2017 (the same day as EU IV: Mandate of Heaven). Since my initial review was about a later patch, this is mostly about the expansion, but a new feature neglected in my review was introduced at this point.

Tradition

As a larger expansion, Utopia introduced an all-new mechanic to the game, traditions. They were originally an expansion-only feature, but were added to the base game in patch 2.0, though you still get an expanded list of options with the expansion.

A new currency, unity, was added to purchase traditions. It has a few other uses now, but at the time was purely for this mechanic, and it is still the main thing it gets used for. Each tradition purchase costs more, so that the addition of extra buildings to generate unity will not race an empire through all the possibilities in a hurry. Purchases are selecting a tradition, and then unlocking the five bonuses within it. Each tradition grants a bonus when it selected, and a second one when the last bonus of the set is purchased.

This is basically the idea groups from March of the Eagles and Europa Universalis IV. Like EU IV you select which groups you take, and in what order. Unlike Paradox’s other games, there’s no fixed order you have to purchase the individual bonuses in, though there are mini-trees in each set restricting you to two or three choices at a time. Also, the overall tradition is a purchase in itself, instead of being unlocked by technology, so you could buy seven traditions (the maximum number you get to use, and until patch 3.1 all there are) straight off for the starting bonuses, and then go back and get the internal and finishing bonuses in each later (I doubt it is often done, but it is possible).

The reason there are seven traditions is the eighth slot in the panel for them is taken up by ascension perks. These are an extra bonus you get to pick every time a tradition is finished.

Some perks were part of an ascension path, which are only accessible with the expansion. These are generally more powerful, and can change how an empire fundamentally works, but require going through several perks to get at. As of patch 3.6, these were changed to just needing one perk, but then opened up a new tradition (this accompanied an overall increase to the number of traditions available) with its own tree.

To a very real extent, traditions aren’t needed for the game, so they wouldn’t have been a bad expansion-only feature. But, they’re still a good a good set of bonuses, and Paradox has liked the ideas mechanic ever since their introduction in EU III. With them being part of the base game, they fall under Paradox’s current model of getting the essentials of a mechanic for free and a fuller version with the expansion. Also, several other expansions have featured their own new ascension bonuses since, and this way it only takes one expansion purchase to get access to them.

Government

In the patch, one of the ethics pair names were changed (from collectivist/individualist to authoritarian/egalitarian), as much to get names that fit the mechanics better as anything else. At the same time, the central gestalt consciousness ethic was introduced in the expansion for use with hive minds.

Hive minds are an alternate authority type with some good bonuses (faster population growth and decreased effect of empire size), and never worry about population ethics or other related mechanics. This makes them a bit less adaptable (since they can’t change ethics and the bonuses from them), and any population not part of the hive mind will get killed, driven out, or assimilated. Generally the first two, leaving the hive mind with a non-diverse population, also inhibiting the ability to colonize non-native types of planets. Authority itself was added in the patch to help better define how governments work, and when/how the leader changes.

Hive-mind populations outside of the hive can be subject to purging. Actually, nearly anyone can be, but even otherwise very accepting governments can get rid of people who are now mindless drones. New government policies dictate when you can declare this and slavery to be legal, with more detailed management happening at the species level. I haven’t really done much with either, which have extra options with the expansion, but you can play as the more brutal forms of empires with these policies.

Two new civics are available with the expansion: Ascensionists are restricted to spiritualist governments, and get greater benefits from planetary ascension buffs (added in patch 3.6 with that mechanic). Fanatic purifiers get bonuses to space combat, but can never lose the trait, must be either spiritualist or militarist, and fanatic xenophobe, and cannot engage in normal diplomacy with anyone else.

Three new origins are available with the expansion (two of them were civics until origins were invented with patch 2.6). Mechanists start with robots available, though they’re not as good as the ones available if the technology is gotten during the game. Syncretic evolution starts you with a population of a second species that evolved with the main one on your home planet, though they get the “servile” trait. And tree of life gives the homeworld agriculture at the expense of mining; colonies can also get their own, and are severely hampered without one.

Finally, three new pre-built empires are available with the expansion, to show off the new features. The Xanid Suzerainty are arid-dwelling arthopods with a population of strong, industrious servile species from syncretic evolution. The Lokken Mechanists are democratic mechanists, giving them early robots to make up for being slow breeders. And the Ix’ldar Star Collective is an arctic hive mind in the usual SF insectoid tradition. Their civics allow extra research from unemployed pops, and an extra leader.

Megastructures

The “big” feature of the expansion is the ability to construct some of the largest projects ever imagined. Ringworlds and Dyson spheres are the hallmarks of this feature, though there’s plenty of lesser projects as well.

Habitats are large orbital facilities meant to house large populations. They operate as small planets, with improvements available to increase the size as your empire gets experience with them. Originally, they were size-12 planets with their own set of buildings that did well for energy and research, but poorly for minerals and food. After the change to districts in patch 2.2, they went to size-4 (with improvements to ‑8; and are size-6 as of patch 3.9) with their own district types, replacing agriculture and mining with research and amenity-producing ones. In all, they’re a bit limited, but a good help for an empire forced to “grow tall” by close borders and a lack of habitable planets.

Gateways are effectively artificial wormholes, capable of instant transport across the galaxy, but with some real improvements. First, they are a one-to-many network; travel can be between any two active gateways. Second, both ends must be friendly controlled. So having one next to your home system will not allow a hostile empire to instantly move to the center of your empire, but they can allow you to shift forces to a distant frontier quickly, as long as you can hold on to the far end. Gateways are constructed in two steps: first a construction ship must prepare a site (expensive and time-consuming), and then it can be activated without the ship (also expensive and time-consuming). Ancient gateways will be randomly scattered about, which effectively have already gone through the first step. The proper tech will allow them to be re-activated… even if you don’t have the expansion, though you can’t build new ones without it.

The real megastructures all have multiple steps and require rare advanced technologies to get to. Occasionally, ruined versions of these can be found in the galaxy, while new ones can only be built with purchase of Utopia, ruined ringworlds can exist and be repaired without it. The two “regular” ones are the science nexus, which has four stages, consumes a lot of energy, and generates a lot of research as well as a boost to research speed, and the sentry array, which is similar to build, but gives a scan distance of the entire galaxy. The Dyson sphere generates insane amounts of energy (and costs a lot of unity), while the ringworld is counted as four very large planets with their own unique set of districts.

While habitats have had development problems, the rework in patch 3.9 has helped a lot, and they do their main job quite well. They are also the only representation of largely residential space colonies I can think of in a space 4X game. The bigger ones are only limited by the high requirements to be able to build them and then actually do so (this is perfectly fine). Gateways can be very handy, especially if you like playing in the larger galaxy sizes. The ability to always repair an existing ringworld and gateways is another good example of letting players get a taste of new content without any purchase, and the (occasional) existence of ruined megastructures helps with Stellaris’ goal of having a ‘lived in’ galaxy.

Conclusion

Stellaris’ first big expansion is a solid one that has gotten better over time, and I certainly recommend it. There’s no pressing need to get it though, and is recommended for players with at least a couple games under their belt. The base game went through some evolution, and (at the time) two new major features were included.

Since traditions are part of the base game now, this isn’t as essential a package as at launch, but what is here is still very nice. The expanded ascension perks are ones I generally don’t go for (other than chasing down megastructures…), but they are good, and I should spend more time with them. The megastructures themselves are the big star, and well worth it, though they are naturally a late-game item.

Of more general use are the extra civics and origins made available with Utopia, and that is also a good reason to get it. I haven’t done a lot with the particular ones in this package, but they’re good, and hive-minds are staple of SF.

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