The Horse, the Wheel, and Language

by on November 9, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The problem with getting an idea of the origins of civilization is that no one that far back had yet started writing anything down. But, there are still clues we can gather in the absence of records. David Anthony tries to tie the main two together here.

He notes that there’s a lot of professional resistance to trying to tie historical linguistics to the physical artifacts found by archaeology. One problem he notes is the two disciplines use very different jargons, and both are specialized enough that there’s no one who’s fully qualified in both fields. Anthony himself is an archaeologist and admits his deficiencies, but from my passing knowledge of the subject, he seems well read enough on Proto-Indo-European to say intelligent things. What he has to say certainly seems intelligent to me.

The first part of the book sets the scene by going through the basics of why people think there was an actual Proto-Indo-European language, and what we can deduce from that small part of it we can reconstruct. He also tackles some limitations that I had not seen discussed before, which was nice. And then the general archaeology targeted in the likely time and region, finishing with work on trying to set bounds on the likely time period PIE existed in. He he gets into arsenical bronze, which I had not known of before (bronze made of copper and naturally co-ocurring arsenic). Also, the intellectual history of ordering prehistory ‘ages’, which I suppose I must have seen before at some point, but I had forgotten it all.

One point he goes into some different terminology used in Soviet, and now post-Soviet studies, though I wish he’d gone a little further with it. Naturally, the main part of the book has a lot of more detailed looks at the archaeological record in it. It can get a bit much on the minutiae, and certainly trying to digest all the archaeology of a broad area of land and time means things sort of fly by.

He and his wife have also done work on trying to figure out just when and where the horse was domesticated. There’s some limits to what they’re doing, but it’s a much better study of the subject than we’ve had before.

In the end, this is guesswork. However, its very well thought out guesswork based on what we do know. If you’re interested in early history, if you wonder just how one language group came to dominate much of the planet, this is a very interesting book. I do think he’s on the right track, and is as good of a guess as we’re going to have until continuing archaeological discoveries can say more.

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UR1 Y78 Planets of Tripoli Region 3

by on November 5, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: SFB

Back at the end of June, Mark and I got to playing the first region of the second year of our SFB campaign. The available fights are two base battles and three open space ones, and we started with the most interesting, and probably most balanced one of the latter. I’m up about 40 BPV in Region 4, and down about that much in the other two. But Region 3 features the brand-new YCA USS Republic as my command ship. While its not as far above the W-series as an X-ship compared to General War ships (while the extra warp, and speed, is very important, its still stuck with the same weapons as an older ship), as the only one in the campaign so far, it has an outsized importance. So we started there.


Also of note for me is USS Texas. The WCL is the only early class that can upgrade to later technology (eventually becoming the middle-years CL). Light cruisers have been lackluster, and I have a feeling that the YCL version would be a lackluster Y-series ship; but that still beats any W-series ships, which everything else is stuck as. And it is the second Federation Y-class, so it can be prototyped next year. So, my hope was to push out out in front to take enough damage to be worth putting in drydock, but not get it destroyed, at which point it would get refitted.

As an open space battle, we started with determining terrain, which ended up in empty space. Setup areas were also fairly standard, but I ended up with Weapon Status I, and Mark at WS-III. I started out with needing to charge phasers and photon torpedoes from scratch, while the Carnivon fleet was fully loaded including a full set of death bolts on the launchers, and he immediately set about moving new ones out of storage into the racks.

All this let him start with a fleet speed of 14, while I was mostly speed 6, with the WOD going 7 and the YCA going 8. With ranges dropping, USS Republic (NCC-1600) sprinted ahead on turn 2 at speed 16, and the WOC sped up to 7, while the Carnivon force dropped to speed 4 but running full ECM. On impulse 32, the YCA was four hexes from the Carnivon fleet, and the #6 shields of half of it. I tried a full spread at one of the DDs (Blackdog) with ECCM from batteries to counter the ECM but rolled horribly to do one damage with a phaser (all 5s and 6s outside a single 3 for the phaser). And the one point didn’t even register on the shield.


End of Turn 2. If at first you don’t succeed….
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Waterloo: The Campaign of 1815 Part 2

by on November 1, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The second book of Hussey’s study of the Waterloo campaign starts with both armies struggling to deal with the aftermath of the large battles of June 16th. It starts with chapter 31, which shows how much this considered one study in two covers, though you could read either independently, I think.

At any rate, it picks up right where volume one left off, and continues much the same kind of analysis as before. It’s not quite the same, as circumstances have changed. Before, a lot of attention was paid to the initial planning for the upcoming campaign, and we’re now in the middle of it.

So, a fair amount of the book is spent dealing with everyone’s movements on June 17, and what they knew. I think we could use just a bit more focus on Grouchy here, and the French fumble of finding out where the Prussian Army is retreating to. But, it does actually get a lot of attention, especially Napoleon’s misapprehensions possibly diverting Grouchy’s attention in the wrong direction.

And of course, there is a quite thorough look and analysis of the Battle of Waterloo itself.

But we don’t end there. Instead, the book takes a look at the Allied advance on Paris, and path of the main remnant of the French Armée du Nord in front and to one side of the advance. This occasionally breaks up a bit more than I’d like, but there is a lot to cover, and Hussey certainly covers it well, most especially including Prussian and English disagreements to the fate of Paris. This is the main part that makes this book different than others, and as valuable as the planning analysis of the first book.

For anyone studying up on the Napoleonic period, this set is some of the most important books to get. There’s a lot of import here that gets missed elsewhere as everyone is eager to get to the action. But this is much more than that, and has a lot to say about the troubles inherent in fighting as a coalition.

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Commonwealth of Iron

by on October 28, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the second in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Hearts of Iron IV. See the previous review here:
Hearts of Iron IV: Heart of Production

After a couple of major patches, the first expansion for Hearts of Iron IV was announced on November, 1, 2016. It was a ‘small’ expansion, termed a country pack, which focuses on adding flavor to the game by adding new focus trees for countries outside the main seven (and the free add-on of Poland). Together for Victory focuses on the British Commonwealth, and came out alongside patch 1.3 on December 15, 2016.

Autonomy

Without the expansion, Britain has two subject states (or puppets) at the start of HoI IV: the British Raj (India), and British Malaysia. The rest of the Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and South Africa) are merely parts of the starting Allied faction (with no other members, including France, at that point).

With the expansion, they are all considered puppet states of the United Kingdom. However, a fair amount of nuance was added to support this. There are four autonomy levels for any puppet, ranging from “integrated puppet” to “dominion”. Autonomy goes up or down, and will then cause a puppet to shift which level it is at.

Each country held as a puppet shares in a technology sharing pool; each country that has a technology in the pool gives a research bonus to everyone else. These are only available with the patch, and can be set up outside of a set of puppets, but they create them automatically. This is generally a 10% bonus to research per country, but colonies and puppets (the lowest two autonomy levels) get half that. Even at the reduced level, it’s still important for countries that are probably disadvantaged in technology to start with.

Various things will affect autonomy, with the biggest opportunities coming from participating in wars. Actively fighting in a war under the overlord country will generate war participation score which will transfer into autonomy. Similarly, lend-leasing equipment the master needs and exporting raw materials to it will also help. At the level of colony or lower, the overlord can actually build new factories and infrastructure for the puppet, and this lowers autonomy.

Other countries will work under this system too. Manchukuo was split off as a separate country from Japan in the patch (this was as much because of AI improvements as anything else, though the Japan AI seems to struggle in this patch), and it holds that and Mengkukuo as integrated puppets in the 1936 start.

New Trees

The central element of the expansion is five new focus trees for the British Commonwealth (British Malaya does not get this treatment here or in any further expansion; on the other hand there’s extremely little to work with there as a player nation with a grand total of one factory of any type). All of them allow the countries to go fascist or communist (with a fair amount of work), or work for straight independence. (This can all be done without the expansion or using the focus tree, but they are intended to make the process simpler, and give aid to those ideas.)

They only have national spirits (unique country bonuses) with the expansion, and all start as dominions (the highest level of puppet) except the British Raj, which is in the next tier down as a colony.

India (British Raj) has four debilitating national spirits, one of which lowers autonomy each day. It is politically non-aligned and starts with a grand total of seven techs researched in 1936, and only two research slots. Five slots is possible, but they’re not the most accessible. The army is tiny, and vastly under-equipped (the existing infantry divisions are at about 30% equipment). The two military factories will be needed just to equip the infantry. The three branches of the focus tree concentrate on independence, expanding the army, and infrastructure. Independence has an early split between going fascist or communist, and working on those national spirits, but it can’t even be started until world tension reaches 10%, and the path that works on the national spirit and peaceful independence has several medium-term pitfalls.

South Africa’s two national spirits cripple its manpower and lower production. Politically, it is democratic, but one national spirit will cause a small drift towards fascism. Technology is not bad for a small country in 1936, but it will need to import almost all resources, and starts with only one military factory (and no dockyard). The focus tree is divided into six branches, including a sub-branch for going communist where South Africa attempts to kick all the other colonial powers out of Africa.

New Zealand has no beginning national spirits, but suffers from its small size. It only produces tungsten (with some oil and steel available in the focus tree), and will have to trade for everything else with four civilian and one military factory (two of the civilian factories are needed to produce consumer goods at start). There are three available building slots, and the focus tree can net another seven factories. Its three starting divisions use up almost all the available manpower. The focus tree has a number of good bonuses in it, but you’re starting from a tiny base.

Australia is suffering from the Great Depression, which lowers factory output and national unity, but has no other national spirits. It starts with a very low manpower warning (what is available is less than half of what starts in the seven divisions of the army), which could be solved with limited conscription, which requires going three deep into the focus tree. However, that branch also has two research slots and the ability to remove the Great Depression. Four military factories to start feels luxurious compared to other Commonwealth countries, but there’s only nine free building slots to start with, two of which are in New Guinea and the Bismark Islands.

Canada starts in a similarly poor position, with the Great Depression and a conscription crisis putting it at very low manpower. The focus tree allows for a lot of industrial expansion, but it is locked behind world tension and/or being at war. Short of that, there are three available civilian factories, five military, one dockyard, and fifteen building slots at start. It is the only dominion that starts with three research slots, and while it starts with only tungsten and minimal steel production, there is a focus slot that adds 14 oil production that isn’t too hard to get to, and steel and aluminum production in the restricted part.

And finally, the patch added the idea of continuous focus. This is a small set of abilities that can be used instead of the normal focus slots, and will give a bonus as long as it is active. A country is limited to taking them after unlocking ten regular focus slots, so they can’t be used before the end of 1937. Most of the options are increased production (of various types), but can also reduce training time, or speed up repairs. In conjunction with the expansion, they can also generate autonomy points (if a puppet), or reduce them (if an overlord).

Improvements

The country selection screen got a small change. Namely, there is now a second row of options that take you to all the countries that currently have a unique focus tree, but aren’t one of the major seven powers of the game, which is a nice touch now that there’s going to be an expanding list of such countries (and it would get refined a bit as the number of countries grew).

Garrison orders now have the ability to dictate what kinds of things should be garrisoned. And since you can have separate armies covering the same area with different selections, you could set up an army to cover the beaches and airfields, and another to suppress resistance, and so on. It will also now tell you how many divisions are needed to cover all the individual locations implied in the order.

A new type of order was added in the expansion. A normal offensive line will try cover its flanks, causing it to spread out, and cause a fair amount of drift and overlap in crowded fronts. A spearhead order will confine itself to a narrow front, and is designed to be useful for encirclements and the like. This caused ire at having to pay for what should have been a base mechanic (and I agree), but it has remained the only such expansion order type (or new type at all), and letting it unlock with the purchase of any expansion could have been a good idea.

A few new controls were added to the theater interface. You can now set reinforcement priorities for an entire theater, and some new icons will tell you how offensive and defensive combats are going. There’s also a log of all the combats in the theater for the last year, with some more detailed logs available with the expansion. That last might also have been a good idea to offer with any expansion, but frankly they’re not worth worrying about. The extra data available just doesn’t begin to answer any of the questions that might be asked. It might show you that some of your divisional templates aren’t working out, but won’t give any statistics that might tell you why, nor, when it shows lost equipment, give any info beyond the general type (so you might know the enemy is already using the next tank type, but it won’t tell you that it’s been up-armored and up-gunned from the base statistics). But all of this does make proper theater organization more important, as that’s also the main “sort” function here.

In patch 1.3.3, a couple more tweaks were made to the game. Infrastructure now grants a bonus to the time needed to build a factory. This encourages a natural concentration of industry in well-developed areas, but it’s also fighting an overall slowdown on factory building put in to keep the mid-to-late game from seeing too much production. And tooling time (production efficiency) was changed so that it increases rapidly at low values, and slows down as you reach maximum efficiency.

Conclusion

The idea of starting with a smaller expansion that is not aimed at new mechanics points up the lack in HoI IV’s basic design here. There is so much to fill in for details on various countries that this expansion just barely scratches the surface.

Of course, stepping away from the major powers in a WWII game is generally less interesting than for a long-form game like EU IV; a decade isn’t really enough time to fix all the problems of a smaller, less-developed, country. So the other Commonwealth countries are among the more interesting ones to flesh out; also, the new autonomy mechanics make the relationship more interesting for the UK as well. So in the end, I consider it a worthwhile expansion, even if you just want to play as Britain. And there’s a good number of people who will want to play as Canada, Australia, or New Zealand (and presumably South Africa and India, but the former three is where I encounter most of the demand). The new order type and three extra music tracks are a minor bonus on top of that.

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Dungeons & Sorcery Spells 12

by on October 24, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: GURPS

Well, it’s been three years, but occasionally, I dust off this project. I actually wrote up a new general section, which is a tiny step towards the rules for a character creating their own new spells, or one-off castings. So, I’m presenting that along with the twelfth set of new spells for Dungeons & Sorcery.

Creating a Spellbook

Normally, creating a new spellbook is easy. Find a shop that sells blank ones (or make it yourself!), cast Copy Magic, and copy a spell from an existing written copy (no matter whose) into the new book.

It is possible for a magic-user to lose all of their spellbooks. A wise one will have spares back at home, but even those could be lost/destroyed. That requires the character to replace everything. The points spent for the spells represent the fact that the character has spent time and effort thoroughly learning the spell, and will be able to cast it without studying the spellbook (at a risk of the penalties from fickle). This means the magic-user can get a new empty spellbook and start writing spells down from memory for proper study later.

Copy Magic requires an existing written version to copy from, so starting from scratch does not use that and requires one hour of undistracted time per page (see the third paragraph of Spellbooks above) of the spell, and a roll against the appropriate specialty of Thaumatology (see Custom Spellcasting below). Success writes down the spell in a usable format without any problems. (Most likely the character would be inserting small notes and addenda over the next couple weeks as they’re thought of, but that isn’t explicitly called out in play.) Failure uses up the pages, but does not generate an entirely stable version of the spell; every cast of the spell from studying this version will need to roll for fickle, but at a ‘0 days’ penalty for not studying it.

Critical failure is similar to the above, but the magic-user will not realize there is a problem (at least not until the spell fails to work properly). It will always need a fickle roll (from the GM), with a –⁠2 to the roll on top of any “time since studied” penalties.

When writing a spell fresh like this, the character can alter it a bit, by writing down a higher-level version (not alternate spells that may be listed together, just levels). This can also be done with a spell that is available to hand, but still requires a skill roll (at +2) instead of use of Copy Magic. This causes a skill penalty equal to the number of increased levels of the spell, or the difference in number of levels of Sorcerous Empowerment required to use the new version, whichever is greater (in practice, this means use levels for spells that just gain a greater duration, and use Empowerment for maledictions). The character will also need to spend points to have access to the new higher-level version. (It would also be possible to lower the level of a spell for a skill bonus; this will not refund points, and the magic-user can always attempt to cast the full version they paid for, with fickle, and the modifier for time since studying it capped at the level difference. This could also be done to lower a spell to a cost that someone else could afford fit into their Sorcerous Empowerment and then copy into their spellbook with Copy Magic.)

A critical success with writing down a spell in this fashion allows the character to add one level to the spell automatically (this is on top of any deliberate increase made in the attempt as outlined above), if they wish to spend the points and it doesn’t go over their current Sorcerous Empowerment.
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