Box of Mystery

by on September 6, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: D&D

TSR’s eighth FR-series module was odd even by the standards of the odder entries in the series. It was a slim boxed set, containing a booklet of advice about how to run city adventures, four sheets of miniatures-scale maps (meant to be cut down into a total of 12 segments), and several cardstock sheets of TSR’s latest round of paper props (like pretty much all of the others, done by Dennis Kauth).

Despite it’s position in the FR series, and the branding on the cover, this supplement has nothing to do with the Forgotten Realms at all. Well, other than the fact that there are cities in it that haven’t been detailed yet that a DM might want to work up. The bulk of the 64-page booklet is an introductory treatise on cities (very introductory at the beginning), starting with likely locations, sizes, governments, and so on. A pair of adventurers discuss the topics themselves (in boxed text), which doesn’t help the presentation. More usefully, an example city is fleshed out during the course of the booklet. One might expect it to serve as an obligatory tie-in to the Forgotten Realms, but it’s an entirely new location, in its own world (in fact, it is described as being on the northern coast of its continent, a location that wouldn’t work with any of TSR’s settings of the time).

It’s obvious that the main target of this package was new DMs, who are just expanding their campaigns out of the dungeons, and starting to explore the world around. The middle part of the book starts getting into some good advice, encouraging thought about what the city leaders (who, in a small city, adventurers could easily encounter) are like, encouraging some actual fantasy elements to crop up, and of course providing random tables for leaders, businesses and encounters. There’s a very basic form provided to write up all these notes, but it’s not well organized.

The map sheets are marked in 1-inch square grid, much like the 3D-Adventure products (such as AC3 and AC8), but are double-sided color sheets and meant to be put together in any number of ways as geomorphic boards. The ideas there are probably the highlight of the product, even though all the maps are fairly dense with buildings. The buildings marked on the map are in standard sizes, that can take the various papercraft buildings in the set. Some of these are flat topped, and designed so they can be stacked together to create taller buildings.

Interestingly, the buildings only anchor to the roofs on two sides, and are scored down the middle of the unattached sides so they fold flat and don’t take much room to store. However, this leaves buildings that will want to return to their flat configuration as you stand them up. Still, long-term storage is better in this set. Getting some removable tape and bracing the insides will do a lot to solve the problems, though even that will damage what is always a transient prop in the long run.

The last section of the booklet are five example mini adventures, and then a dozen plot hooks for adventures. The plot hooks are generally good, and are all urban-based. The mini-adventures all have bare-bones suggestions for a street layout, and do generally happen in/around more than one building, so there is motivation to set things up and show the local scenery. They’re all short (the module suggests most of them will go an hour or two except for the longest, which should go a fair bit longer), generally getting two page writeups. The good news, is they’re all fairly well described for their length, with the main background, the main encounters, and descriptions of the people involved. I wouldn’t want to run all of them (“The Horrible Haunting of Mycky Fynn’s” seems problematic to me, though “A Grand Illusion” looks well worth the effort), but they are good examples of in-city adventuring.

I can only assume that the Forgotten Realms branding on the cover gained TSR more sales than they lost from people who were skipping the line who might have been interested in a general city adventures product. However, there was never a sequel (one is discussed in the booklet), and I imagine positioning this one in the FR series only hurt the chances of that happening. If you want some easy-to-use buildings for miniatures, this isn’t a bad set (if you can find an intact copy, or print out the sheets from PDF onto good cardstock). Past that, there are much better (longer) sourcebooks for city adventuring, though this is a good start, and could have fit well into the DMGR line (assuming a willingness to play with its format, which leads me to wonder if this started as a proposed City Guide for that series). A final irony is that while the slim boxes TSR was moving to at this time look much better than the old fold-up style ones, the partly-assembled buildings inevitably need more space, and the slim box has trouble holding it all, while the older ones would be a much more comfortable fit.

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Four Princes

by on September 2, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

Norwich’s book on the beginning of the Sixteenth Century successfully covers a lot of ground, is a great, somewhat light, read, and if you’re like me, perhaps to be missed.

I do generally recommend the book, and if you know just a little on the period, this a great entry point. This has been called Here I Stand, the book. And if you’re a fan of that game, then this will help give some background to what’s going on. The real point of both is the number of things that we hear about separately that were happening all at the same time. This is a very dynamic period in Europe’s history, and that gets lost in all the examinations of individual bits. And my biggest problem with this book is that Here I Stand shows all of this so much better than Norwich does.

My second biggest problem isn’t Norwich’s fault. Knowing all the things that were happening already, I have already done a fair amount of reading on some of the subjects here, and this light overview can’t—and shouldn’t—compete. So, if you don’t know so much, I do recommend this book, and then I recommend going on to some very good popular histories on the period. To that point, I would recommend Roger Crowley’s Empires of the Sea, James Reston, Jr.’s Defenders of the Faith, Leonie Freida’s Francis I, and Alison Weir’s The Six Wives of Henry VIII. That certainly doesn’t cover everything, which does point up just how much Norwich is tackling here.

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Institutions of Man

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

This is the ninth 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

After Mare Nostrum, the development team for Europa Universalis IV next decided to tackle a game mechanic that had been in place since the original game for the next big patch as well as add a number of new features in the next expansion. Patch 1.18 came out on October 11, 2016, to support the expansion Rights of Man. The follow-up 1.19 patch came out on November 24.

Institutional Progress

Ever since the original Europa Universalis computer game, nations had been placed in technological “groups”. Most of Europe was in one, the Ottomans started with better technology, but were in a group that meant that they paid more to advance, and things go downhill the further from Europe you get. It was a fairly simple system meant to showcase Europe’s rise to dominance in the period of the game, and a bit of flexibility was added early on with the ability of countries to “Westernize”, shifting them to a better (cheaper) tech group.

Patch 1.18 did away with this system, replacing it with institutions. There are no groups, no fixed cost penalties, and no Westernization. Instead there’s a series of eight institutions, with one active well before the game begins, and the other seven cropping up every fifty years, and not adopting them causes penalties to advancing in technology.

The first institution is Feudalism, which is described as a variety of means of putting together a centralized state. Most, but not all, of the world has embraced Feudalism as the game starts, but tribal areas (most of Sub-Saharan Africa, the New World, and darkest central Asia) have not, and start with a +50% penalty to technology costs.

In 1450, the Renaissance starts, with one Italian capital getting it, and it spreads from there. Any European (with a very generous definition of “European”) province with good development will start embracing the Renaissance on its own, but bonuses from adjacent provinces means it will spread throughout Italy first, and then into Europe before the rest of the world sees it.

Once an institution starts there is a cumulative +1% to technology cost per year for countries that have not embraced it (with a +50% maximum per institution). Even better, each institution grants a bonus when adopted, so it’s not just a race to avoid penalties, but one to get benefits as well. The technology penalties aren’t that bad at first, but it starts adding up, and if you’re still struggling to adopt the Renaissance in 1500 when Colonialism starts, you’re going to have a problem.

There are ways out of the trap. You only need some of your provinces to adopt the institution before you can force your country to adopt it. You just need to spend ducats (money) for all the provinces that haven’t adopted it yet (yes, that is very expensive for a large country). Adding development (introduced in Common Sense, but added to the base game in patch 1.28) to a province also adds to progress towards the next institution to be adopted there, so you could develop a province until it has the institution, and let it spread from there (also expensive—in monarch points, but you’ll be sinking a lot of extra monarch points into technology if you’re behind in all the hot philosophical fashions).

This is one of the bigger changes to core mechanics in EU IV during its post-release development, and a very good one. The overall idea is inspired, and feels a lot more natural than the old tech groups. Its nearly the only feature of the patch, and it overshadows the Rights of Man expansion, which does have a lot of features.

Cultured Court

The other real feature of the patch allowed better internal management. Each province has a culture, and these cultures are arranged in groups. Provinces of “unaccepted” cultures cause trouble, and will never be as productive. It’s always been possible for things to shift around depending on how prevalent a culture is in your borders, but now there’s a way to manually shift this around. Its generally not a big deal, but is a nice extra bit of control when needed.

At the same time, the expansion greatly increases mechanics around the court. Where normally there is the current ruler and his heir (for monarchies at least), there is now a permanent consort position, which takes over when a regency is needed (instead of a generic ‘regency council’). There’s events and such that can happen around the consort, but mostly it’s there for the regency.

Further control was also added in that a monarch can retire in favor of his heir. This is mostly for those very poor-stat monarchs that you just wish would die so his competent son can take over. And there’s a few other wrinkles, such as disinheriting the current (hopeless) heir, so you can try to get a better one.

Additionally, the expansion enables a list of eight great powers, kind of like in the Victoria series. Those that make the list get bonuses, meaning those powerful nations get some extra help with the expansion. What I find interesting is that the ranking is by total development divided by the current institution tech penalty. So Ming starts as the top power, but will quickly drop off as it has no hope of getting Renaissance quickly, and without some very deliberate player actions, no chance at Colonialism either, which combined will eventually reduce its effective development by half.

Traits of Man

All these rulers, heirs, consorts, and military leaders, also got more fleshed out with traits in the expansion. A ruler (or heir) generally has one as soon as they are of age, and then generate a second one after ten years of rule, and a third after twenty-five years in charge. Military leaders get theirs randomly after battles.

This is basically the version of traits seen in Stellaris, mixed with the leader bonuses seen in Hearts of Iron games. Most of these are bonuses to one government statistic or another, but a few are also negative. An interesting twist is the ruler traits will also determine AI behavior. In addition to the five basic personality types in the base game, an Industrious ruler will spend more on building improvements, a Sinner will raze and plunder provinces, and so on. And of course, some traits will open up new options in some events (which will be highlighted, a bit like in Crusader Kings II).

This is a really nice bit of flavor and since it affects everyone, I’d say it is the main reason to get the expansion.

Governments of Man

The expansion also gives access to two new unique government types. First, the Ottomans get a unique monarchy form. It can’t be voluntarily changed, but the general revolution disaster can change from it, and changing religions will revert it to a despotic monarchy.

The main point of the new type is to keep Osman as the ruling dynasty. There will be no shifting to the dynasty of a royal marriage, if there is no heir for too long, an event will fire to present you with a choice of new heirs.

This doesn’t mean there’s no dynastic worries. There’s a number of new events around scandals in the palace (which can turn into a too-easy source of prestige), or the heir may try to depose the current ruler. This turns into a normal noble revolt, but it is fired by Ottoman-specific events instead of the current revolt system. I’ve only seen the “small” version, which is a fairly typical revolt, but the events imply much bigger ones are possible.

The Prussian Monarchy, meanwhile, has some fairly good bonuses, like most of the unique governments, and also gets a militarization mechanic. This is another percentage scale that grants bonuses to discipline, manpower, and maintenance the higher it goes. Legitimacy and army tradition add to it, while having more provinces causes it to go down. Overall, if Prussia has any reasonable amount of territory, it will tend to go down, so it doesn’t feel like the most useful of bonuses. However, military monarch points can be spent to push it up, and at the historical size of Prussia in say, The Seven Years War, it won’t go down very fast.

Finally, factions were added to revolutionary governments in the expansion. I haven’t done much with that, but it makes a lot of sense for Revolutionary France, or any other government undergoing those kinds of stresses. It also adds an appropriate path from a revolutionary republic to empire, as the diplomatic faction, The Imperials, will shift the government type if they get too powerful.

Coptic Fetish

Two more religions got extra mechanics with this expansion. The Fetishist religion (found in southern Africa) gained cults, which are akin to the Hindu gods in Wealth of Nations. Like them, you pick a bonus from a list every time you get a new ruler. However, it’s not a static list of possible bonuses, and depends on where the particular country is. Also, as they come into contact with other religions they can gain access to new bonuses. So it starts out more limited than Hinduism (there’s typically only three possible bonuses at the start), but can become more flexible over time.

Coptic countries get bonuses from holy sites with RoM. There are five provinces considered holy to the Coptic faith (this is an idea from Crusader Kings II), and every Coptic country can get a bonus (“blessing”) for each one held by any Coptic country. Because of this, success for one can breed success for all—if they don’t spend too much time fighting each other instead.

At the start, two holy sites are under Coptic control, with Askum in Ethiopia, and Qasr Ibrim in Makuria, though the province itself is not Coptic. The other three are further away, with the closest being Alexandria, which means conquering the Mamlukes, or taking on the Ottomans. So, don’t expect many powerful AI Coptic empires, but it is not a bad goal for a good human player in search of a challenge.

Conclusion

Patch 1.18 saw another high-level mechanic change to the game. And again, it broke with tradition, and made the game better for the change. Personally, I like the system a lot, but it does seem to be comparatively easier for the rest of the world to keep up on the institutions. Large portions will be behind for long periods, but they do spread, and this means non-European powers can do much better in late-game technology than previously, which robs some of the historical feel, though from a player perspective the decisions around all this are more interesting.

The expansion is overshadowed by all this, but is still a good expansion. I do have problems in that some of it seems too convenient, namely retiring and disowning rulers and heirs. Also, being a great power confers extra power projection (reasonable), which makes it much easier to float over the 25 limit for an extra leader, and at the top end consistently be at 50 to get extra monarch power, which seems too much of a ‘rich get richer’ effect for me. Similarly, the expansion also allows you to debase currency, effectively taking a loan, but getting corruption instead of the usual loan penalties. Since you normally pay monthly money to fight corruption, this is pretty much just extra loans without having to worry about paying it back.

The religious mechanics are expected at this point, and Coptic is certainly a good choice for expanding the mechanics. The two new unique government types are also interesting choices. For me, the biggest draw are the leader traits, which help add another layer of uniqueness, and bit of potential role play to them. I don’t know that I’d recommend the expansion just for that, but it’s a good foundation for deciding if you want the other features.

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Two Rounds of Lauron

by on August 25, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: CC:Ancients

After Unhorsing Patch, we turned to our usual set of Commands & Colors: Ancients while we prepare for the next big thing. This time was the Battle of Lauron from Expansion #3. This is the initial fight between Sertorius and Pompey in Spain, and is certainly a tough fight for Sertorius, as he generally has to rely on lighter units than Pompey, though he does have the only two Heavies on the field. He also has an “ambush” force, though it starts on the board, and is just on the ‘wrong side’ in some hills.

I had Sertorius the first time, and started by Ordering Lights, deploying a bit forward, but could not get any hits with ranged fire. Patch Ordered Mediums, and knocked out an Aux and traded two blocks on a Medium for two on his MC. Double Time allowed my ambushing Warriors to get at the flank that just hit me, finishing off his MC and doing a block to a LB. Order Two Left let Patch do a hit each to a Warrior, Heavy, and the weak Medium, either at range, or forcing them to retreat for no battle back.

Order Four Center let me redeploy to destroy his two forward Mediums, at a cost of one of the Heavies, and two blocks on the other. Order Three Center let Patch trade three hits on an Aux for two on his Medium, while Order Mediums saw a lot of motion from me (especially organizing my right), and let me knock out a Medium, but lost my Warriors on momentum after doing two blocks to another Medium. Then Patch Ordered Mediums and killed a LS with losses and a blocked retreat while doing a block to a MC, and continued with Leadership on his left to drive off my cavalry.

Order Three Center let me finish off a Medium, and do a block to another, at a cost of three blocks on one of mine. Line Command saw Patch break his line apart to engage his center and left, finishing off a LC, and destroying an Aux, but not before First Strike did three blocks to a Medium and killed Afranius (who had actually survived the destruction of at least three different units). He then did three blocks to another Aux, and finished it off with a ranged attack. 6-7

For the second round, Patch led with Inspired Left Leadership to bring the ambush out of the hills and take my flank from the rear, doing two blocks each to a Medium and MC, but nearly losing a Warrior to blocked retreat. I Rallied to bring one block back on both units, and finish off the weak Warrior, losing the MC’s recovered block again. Order Three Left forced my MC to retreat and my LB to evade twice, losing a block along with my Medium who did a block to his Aux. I Ordered Two Right to finish off the Aux.

I shifted to Order Three Left to get a pair of lucky hits on his LB, and Patch Out Flanked to finish off a Medium. Mounted Charge then let him destroy a MC (retreat cut off), and then destroyed a Medium, taking two hits on a MC. Order Two Left let me clean up the mess from that a little and drive off his MC, while a Line Command let Patch bring up his center. Order Three Center did the same for me, and Order Three Left let Patch drive off a Medium with a loss.

Line Command let me re-engage on that flank, destroying a Medium at the cost of my weak Medium. Order Lights cost me a block in my line, and drove off my LB. Leadership Any Section got my Center engaged, destroying a heavy and Aux, while taking two hits on a Medium. Order Two Center let Patch do two hits each to a pair of Mediums, while taking two hits on an Aux. Clash of Shields killed a Warrior and drove off his LS, but I lost a Medium to a First Strike. Order Two Center finished off another Medium and nearly got another. With only scattered units in the center, my turn did nothing, and Patch finished off the weak Medium with a Double Time. 6-7

Afterword

Both battles were really close and down to the wire. Patch had an initial advantage the first time, but I had caught up, and nearly won just before he did (not great odds, but certainly possible).

Once again, the ‘ambushes’ have trouble in CC:A, since you end up retreating the ‘wrong way’. However, the on-the-board version here seems to help, and the ability of the Warriors to go two if they will attack makes it a fairly easy force to use. The walled city of Lauron makes for an interesting obstacle, and kept to much from happening on that side of the board.

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Cursed Kings

by on August 21, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The fourth book of the excellent Hundred Years War series by Jonathan Sumption picks up in 1400, with a visit by Byzantine Emperor Manuel II to Paris. This echoes the start of the first book with the funeral procession of Charles IV; both are used to set the scene and show the current physical state of Paris.

Past that, the start of the book feels much like the third one. There is a slow grind of positional warfare as peace talks and truces continue. Extra tension has been caused by the accession of Henry IV, who the French refuse to see as the rightful king of England. In fact, the cash-strapped nature of the war gets much more acute in England as rebellion flares up in Wales, troubles on the Scottish border rise, there is internal trouble, and Henry IV needs to make grants to various nobles to shore up his own support. This leaves England nearly completely unable to prosecute the war, and barely able to defend important enclaves such as the Pale of Calais. About the only thing to go right is naval raiding in the Channel, which is stepped up by the French, but ends up with the English doing far more damage.

But all of this is increasingly sidelined by troubles in the French Court. Charles VI suffers continued “absences” where psychotic episodes leave him unable to govern, and governance devolves to his uncles, with the balance of power tilting towards his brother, Duke Louis of Orleans after the death of the first Duke of Burgundy. The fight over royal power and the money to be skimmed off of the French treasury turns more personal, with the assassination of the Duke of Orleans by the second Duke of Burgundy.

From this point, France is effectively in a state of civil war. However, it is easy for us to think of such things as clean political breaks, with declarations and articles making the political case for one side. And… that latter is generally true here with John of Burgundy issuing letters denouncing the extreme wastage of money, and using a broad platform tax reform for popular support. At the upper levels, it’s a lot murkier, as there’s no clean break in the political community, with elements of both sides looking for a moderate solution to how to distribute power.

And then the English are back. Henry V’s finances are much better than his father’s, and he is very much a ‘warrior king’, eagerly going on campaign in France in an attempt to enforce the terms of the Treaty of Bretigny, or something much like them. It is at first a failure, with the siege of one port wasting much of the large English army, and despite some hard marching, the English are outmaneuvered and forced into the most famous battle of the war: Agincourt.

Such a stunning against-the-odds victory pays dividends for Henry V, who manages to take most of Normandy, even as the French are still fighting themselves, and trying to figure out how to all fight the English instead. All hopes of this are destroyed with the assassination of John of Burgundy by the most hard-line elements of the opposing faction. The leadership of that faction has already changed some from time and attrition. French troubles in this period are made greater by going through a couple crown princes (Dauphins) in a couple of years.

And as things get worse, Henry V decides to go for it all, declaring himself the true King of France, and later marrying a daughter of Charles VI with a treaty that he’d inherit when Charles VI finally dies. Sumption spends a little time trying to unpack this. It is generally seen in a very nationalistic French light, but much of that rhetoric comes later. It’s much harder to tell what general opinion was at the time. Certainly, it did not break up the Armagnac/Orleanist faction, and doubtless made them dig in their heels in further determination to prosecute their side of the civil war.

The book ends in 1422, with deaths of Charles VI and Henry V. As ever in a conflict largely conceived of in feudal terms, deaths of prominent people mark a major change in the fortunes of war, and pretty much the entire rest of the cast has already changed out before we get here. The fifth and final volume of this series is due out soon, and it’s going to have to do a lot of heavy lifting to finish off the story. It will also just be heavy lifting. These books have grown from around 700 pages just about 1000, and I don’t think the last one will be any shorter.

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