The Battle of Quatre Bras 1815

by on December 7, 2023 at 1:21 pm
Posted In: Books

I will take Robinson at his word that there’s been no single work focused exclusively on the battle of Quatre Bras before in English. It seems unlikely that there’s nothing, but with the long shadow of Waterloo, it’s all too possible.

However, I was also surprised, and skeptical, when he said that his look through French sources did not turn up anything of help in writing the book. Having read it, I now wonder just what he was looking for.

Overall, this is an account of the battle using as many low-level primary sources as possible. I assume that Robinson’s trouble revolves around a lack of Frenchmen who survived the campaign, and desired to talk about it in writing. I would still think there’d be something, but perhaps not nearly enough to assemble a narrative from the French side.

What this means is that it is a very lopsided book. To Robinson’s credit, he does draw in a lot of sources from allied contingents, so this is not presented as just a an English show. However, everything is told from the British point of view. French forces are encountered the same way Wellington’s army did, as masses of men moving around, firing, charging, seriously challenging the allied army’s hold on the field, but no unit names or other specifics are given. What is actually going on in the battle is lost. Bédoyère’s conflicting orders aren’t even alluded to.

I found following the action very rough going in this book. I think it’s partly because the one-sided nature of the book, which aids a jumbled narrative. It got a lot of—limited—detail, and worth studying for anyone wanting to dive deep into the battle. But there is still yet to be a good one-book study of the battle as a battle.

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HF4 Liehr Launches First

by on December 3, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After Unhorsing Patch, we went to the next Hatten in Flames scenario. Both sides are preparing for a new attack on the morning of Jan 10. The Germans get going first, and attack into the teeth of American resistance.

A little too in the teeth, in this case.

I had the Germans, who have thirteen squads, two late-model Pz IVs and two Panthers. The Americans are defending with ten squads, two each MMG, MTR, BAZ, and a pair of immobile HIP M10 tank destroyers, with another pair entering on turn 2. The Germans are trying to get six buildings near the J27 crossroads in 5.5 turns, and get credit for taking I28 early, and having more functioning vehicles at game end. (You know, I hadn’t really contemplated til now that they do have to be Mobile, so the at start TDs don’t even count.)

I eventually decided to follow the prodding of the victory conditions, and move on the north side of town, hoping to have a shot at I28. Two of the tanks and some infantry would attempt to hold defenders in place while I raced towards getting access to the H26 area.

Patch had one good shot, which of course was at a 9-1 and two squads. Thankfully, the 1MC only battle hardened squad and generated a hero. But, it made me a bit more cautious on the rest of my moves, which was something I probably couldn’t afford on this plan. The Panther parked in its assigned space overlooking the town, but the PzIV went slow for armored assault on the next stack through the vulnerable area, instead of parking in B23.

In Final Fire, Patch got several hits on D20 with a MTR, but couldn’t get an effect. Return fire from D20 broke the MTR HS, and revealed a concealed squad, but my lead Panther also malfunctioned its CMG in AFPh. In CCPh, Patch revealed a TD to prevent “?”… in B23! (My original movement plan would have gotten very exciting.)


Situation, German Turn 1, showing the full map area. North is to the left.
↓ Read the rest of this entry…

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Secret Mystic

by on November 29, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the tenth in a series of reviews looking at the evolution of Crusader Kings II. See the previous reviews here:
Crusader Kings II: The Second Crusade
The Old Gods: That Old-Time Religion
Sons of Abraham: A Little of Everything
Rajas of India: My Elephant for a Kingdom
Charlemagne: Back in Time
Way of Life: The Short Way
Horse Lords: For the Horde
Conclave: Lords of the Realm
The Reaper’s Due: Crusader Kings: Pandemic

The immediate goal of CK II development at the end of 2016 was a further round of optimization and some UI improvements. The next expansion, Monks and Mystics, was announced on December 2, and released, alongside patch 2.7, on March 7, 2017.

Mystic Improvements

Several additions were made to the UI with the patch. First, the idea of marking that a battle will happen in a province, based on current troop movements, was taken from EU IV. Most of the rest centered around the Intrigue screen, which got a redesign to show more decisions at once, and a new panel was separated out added to show all the plots you personally are involved with.

Those who have Conclave saw improvements as well, as icons showing a character’s most likely voting stance if they were on the council were added to the selection menu with an extensive hoverover to show the reasons why. When wanting to change a realm law, you can now go to a council screen where it will show you the likely votes, and you can interact with the characters to try and change them. Also, the children’s education selection got some tips to show what they’d excel in at a glance.

The rules screen got an update as well, with save slots where you can have multiple pre-sets for use in different games. And, Monks and Mystics added one new rule for the devil worshipers.

And finally, a number of updates were done to the map, making the Ural mountains impassable (other than a pass through the middle), fixing the geometry on some lakes, and redrawing rivers to look better, as well as seriously adjusting the path of the Danube.

Secret Societies

Some of the societies introduced here operate in secret, and interestingly, they were available with the patch, instead of needing the expansion.

The societies in question are more properly cults. You can now publicly profess one religion, while secretly following another. That doesn’t have to be tied to the society; you may just privately hold a belief without being in contact with others.

This isn’t as hard as it initially looks, since you can ‘secretly convert’ to the religion of your spouse, or land that’s in your demesne. More importantly, you can tell your lord you’ll convert to his religion when he demands it, but secretly keep your old faith, or if your councilor turns to heresy, you can join him, but both keep it secret.

Each religion has a society of people who secretly follow that religion, so you can set up a network of people, and try to covertly convert others into your sect, and possibly get strong enough to go public.

In many cases, it’s not a big deal, but it does add a nice dimension of religious plotting to go along with all the political plots. It’s also makes religion a bit more personal in feel.

Monastic Orders

The more common type of society is the monastic order. There are nine of these (two for Catholics, with three more for the other major branches of Christianity, one for each of the Indian religions, and then one for the Hellenist religion). They use all the “default” society mechanics, you generally gain a bit of devotion each month for your positive (to them) traits, occasionally get missions from the head of the order (which will grant devotion), and you can trade in devotion for a higher rank in the society, possibly becoming its headmaster someday. Most of them grant a Learning bonus just for being in them (the Benedictine Order instead grants Stewardship), and as rank goes up you get some decision-like abilities, including managing yours and others traits away from negative ones.

The Hermetic Society is like the monastic orders, but has a wider range of activities. Joining causes negative relations with clergy, but can grant a number of bonuses. As opposed to just having event-chain missions, “apprentice” becomes a new minor title to grant, and there are decisions that can be taken to further your investigation of the mysteries of nature and the universe.

The Assassins became a Shiite society focused around Intrigue. Being an Assassin by itself generates more plot power when you want to murder someone, and you can get other Assassin to join in, raising the plot power even more.

And then the demon worshipers are a large expansion-only secret society. They only exist if allowed in the game rules, but always get supernatural abilities if they do (which, if not historical, is largely in line with what a lot of people in the Middle Ages thought was going on). The abilities from this society are generally more powerful than the others, but will cause a character to accumulate negative traits, including physical ones like hunchback or clubfooted.

Inventory Management

For some time, there had been some items in CK II; you could have a saint’s relic, which would get handed down through the generations, for instance. The expansion greatly expanded on this, and systematized it with an inventory screen, and a single modifier trait shows the total of all bonuses you may be getting from them.

It is a fairly basic system as such things go, but does allow for gifting them to another character, looting them from a holding that’s been besieged and such. Occasional event chains can let you search for a rumored artifact, and there are ones that you can have made.

The list of potential items is quite large; many are of course different qualities of the same thing, but even after allowing for that, there’s a lot of potential items here. These range from the mentioned relics to special arms and armor, to items for Hermetic Society missions.

Overall, I find the promise better than the delivery. CK II isn’t an RPG at heart, and the item system shows that. That said, it beats trying to manage a few item-like things without having an item system, so I’m certainly glad it exists.

More Work

Councilors are mostly useful in pushing up the score of the realm in their field, but they can also do three different jobs on the map. With this expansion, each position gains a fourth job, which becomes their default activity when not assigned one of the regular three.

Chancellors can perform statecraft, which reduces threat, and can improve relations with random neighbors or vassals. Marshals can organize the army, which reduces maintenance of retinues and can cause events that improves the skills of your commanders. Stewards administer the realm to speed cultural conversion and add some positive modifiers to provinces in your demesne. Chaplains hunt heretics to find the members of secret societies which you can then deal with.

Spymasters can now sabotage a province, which will cause unrest and various other types of damage. Unlike the others, this is an ‘on map’ job. Instead, the existing scheme job becomes ‘off map’, which had always just slightly enhanced the primary role of discovering plots anyway.

This was a clever addition to the game. Giving the councilors something to do when you aren’t supervising what’s going on manually is great, and would be especially valuable for a new player, which makes it a shame that it’s part of the expansion, but it certainly adds value.

Conclusion

There are complaints that the societies aren’t that good in the long run as they keep throwing the same events at you over and over. This is valid, but there’s more than enough societies to give interest for some time.

My primary complaint is mechanical. This isn’t the first time it has come up, but it’s not hard for these events to have you or someone else in the order traveling some distance to meet for the event. Since being in a society puts you in fairly decent contact with the other members, who may be some distance away, this problem gets accentuated here. Pilgrimages/Hajj have your regent take over while on them, so it is possible to account for this. Just making the character unavailable for commanding for a set time would be enough to get rid of the worst of the problem however.

I’d rate this as a lesser expansion among the more “personal” ones. If those are what you’re interested in, don’t skip this, but certainly get Way of Life and Conclave first.

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To Brave the Storm

by on November 25, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Part two of the Romulan War series is a lot more fragmented than the first half.

Surprisingly, given the original ‘fifth season’ nature of the idea, only a small part of the book continues with 2156, where part one left off. Then, a fair chunk of the book skims over three years, and then comes in for a big climax in 2160.

That last is a good, well done, action-packed gigantic space battle, that definitely ties things up decisive battle style, with… some of the subplots coming together to help out. Others seem to have been largely forgotten. There was some resolution to them all, but not always very good ones.

The ‘summary era’ has Enterprise away from the action, effectively doing a “charm offensive”. I suppose, if you want to envision what this would have been like from a TV series standpoint, you’d have a season of more-or-less regular Star Trek exploratory adventures, with the Romulans off  in the background.

In general, the idea of a protracted (five year, long in ‘on screen’ history) war works out. The idea of Earth being on the back foot, with the Coalition slowly dropping out around her as losses mount is good. But, Martin hasn’t studied war as much as some. It is often the case that both sides are having trouble in any war, and the problems are piling up faster for the side that seems to have all the momentum. If it was me, I’d go for a structure where things go from grim to grimmer for Earth, but meanwhile the Romulans are having mounting problems of logistics and things less flashy than a ‘warp seven’ project (why are we skipping a warp six engine in the first place?), and they come apart because they just can’t feed their own fleets with personnel and parts, and suddenly they have little left and have to sue for peace.

But that’s me.

What we have is good enough, and well enough done on the character side. Well, in the first book. This also feels a bit rushed in that it feels like there’s not as much time spent on the characters here.

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Group Corp

by on November 21, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

On Sunday, we got the main gang over to try out Space Corp. Mark and I had tried it before, which helped confirm that it was likely the group would like it (we were right), and gave a leg up on teaching it.

We got through the end of Mariners by lunch, with taking a somewhat shaky lead. Dave had initially kept up, but then fell behind, with Mark and Jason trailing in between, but Dave managed to land two of the contracts at once at the end, and the profit put him back at the front. Only he and Mark had any producing sites at the end of the era to save as legacy production. I had concentrated on the Lagrange stations to grab that contract, and eventually got the 1st Beyond marker (I was actually tied with Dave at the end, but counting that as 3T, as if we were ending the game there, would put me ahead).

I’d also managed to get two Genetics actions, but couldn’t find life to build a Bio station for a third (I learned to concentrate on that if I got a chance after the first game…). Mars was pristine until near the end of the era, when everyone converged on it (except me, I just couldn’t get there in time). And the era ended from a lack of cards, with only about 3-4 contracts done (this seems to be usual).

After lunch, we dove into the Planeteers era, Mark had taken 2nd Beyond, so the pair of us duked it out for control of the asteroids. At one point, I screwed up, left a site before building the base, and that let Mark get three bases and that contract. By that point, competition had heated up around Jupiter, and I’d sent my second team to Saturn. I was slow enough developing there, that I only got two bases, but the second one was a secure base to grab 3T.

I also managed to stay ahead on adaptations, grabbing Cooperative Empathy early in the era, and abusing it for the rest of the game. As the era wound down (we could coast along on existing infrastructure a long time after the deck ran out), Dave managed to get himself into the Oort Cloud for 1st Beyond, while I followed with 2nd a while later. I managed to get two exploration upgrades (e1->e2, e2->e3; sadly not on the same draw), and found Alien Artifacts, which helped get me close to a breakthrough, but I never managed one in that era. The final bit of drama was the exploration of Umbriel turning up Pirates, which Jason didn’t have cards to deal with (the B+2 penalty), especially in the one move left after the passing started.

I didn’t take notes, and should have. I won by the end-of-game scoring, though Dave was still right behind me, and Jason wasn’t far behind. Mark ended up holding Time cards too long, and had three with nothing to do with them, and was trailing all of us in terms of profit.


I’m Blue, Dave is Green, Mark is Yellow, and Jason is Purple.

There was still a decent amount of time left, though I knew it wasn’t enough to finish Starfarers, but we pressed on to see the early bits of it anyway. Dave managed a decent colony in in Alpha Centauri, but had to give up a team to do it, while the other two pressed on to Wolf 1061 and Groombridge 1618.

I repeated my early double (Time) move to Epsilon Indi and Epsilon Eridani. I found a Primitive Culture in Luhman 16, but never could manage the Build 12 for bases there. I did hurry things through a bit so that I could build a colony at Epsilon Eridani right before we had to pack up for the day.

Mark had also scattered his teams around, though he only got a chance to explore and build in Lacaille 9352. Jason sent a pair of teams to Groombridge 34 and 61 Cygni, hoping to have a colony built to provide a nearby bonus by the time the second was ready to develop. However, he got an alien culture, which turned out to be the Phobes, who sent the team back to Earth.

Afterword

As expected, it did well with the group as a whole. I think we certainly can do a full game in one day, just not the first time out. We may even want to start with Planeteers next time to make sure there’s plenty of time for Starfarers to finish.

Everyone agrees that Cooperative Empathy is just way too annoying/good. Always being able to leech off someone else’s infrastructure without worries of giving them profit just bends the incentives too much. I mean, I tend to be an infrastructure guy, but once I had it, I never upgraded again, as there was just no need during all of Planeteers, and not a lot of need in Starfarers. The main suggestion is for it to be more cooperative, and a two-way street. That is, using anyone else’s infrastructure is free for you, but it’s also free for everyone else to use yours. I don’t think that’ll really solve anything, but it moves in the right direction.

Mark also has Ventures, which we will need to contemplate adding in, though I think I’d like the group to get in a full Starfarers era first. But that’s without knowing exactly what it adds into the mix.

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