HF3 First Timers

by on May 9, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: ASL

After failing to get some Ukrainian partisans out of a Russian search-and-destroy net, Patch and I went back to Hatten, for the third Hatten in Flames scenario, “First Timers”.

I had the Americans, who are counterattacking in the eastern part of the map. They’re well-equipped, if a bit short on manpower, with eleven squads, two each of MMGs, MTRs, and BAZ, and four Shermans, (two 75s and two 76s). The Germans are defending one of the major roads with ten and a half squads, the usual mix of MGs, some extra “?”, and two Pz IVJs arrive on turn 2. The Americans are trying to grab 13 out of 26 building locations in 4.5 turns. There’s a +1 LV for all attacks, though I’m not sure if that’s for dusk, mist, or overcast (my biggest gripe with the set is the complete absence of footnotes).

While the Shermans are a match for the Pz IVs (and the 76s more than a match), I am painful aware that Patch’s armor tactics are better than mine, so they made me nervous. Between the squads and the “?”, Patch assembled a very formidable defense in and around the victory area. Pre-game rubbling also provided him some good positions and annoying positions to get at.

The Americans can enter some of their forces on turn 1, which lets them be further north than their setup area. I entered one pair of Shermans and a couple squads in that area, while the rest lined up near the boundary road looking to put pressure on the center. I started with a MTR WP attempt, but all the orchards meant it missed, and the other MTR merely got a -1 ACQ. On the other hand, a Sherman was able to put smoke in N22 with a sM. That was at the thinnest part of the orchard line, and allowed to to maneuver with some confidence. Maybe too much, as two squads and a leader broke to Patch’s fire. Or not enough, as Patch only had two shots at me.

I got into N22 to find it empty of more than smoke and mirrors. But it put a squad next to two more “?”, and +6 meant he was unlikely to dislodge me with fire. I also got into H27, which was also empty, which just left worries about K29, which was surely too far out there to have a real unit…?


Situation, American Turn 1. North is to the left, and the board continues to the east (up) and south for some distance.
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Paradox’s Sea

by on May 5, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Computer games

This is the eighth 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

Paradox’s next expansion for Europa Universalis IV mostly concentrated on naval matters, which also caused a bunch of changes in the free patch. The patch also redid espionage, and Mare Nostrum and patch 1.16 came out on April 5, 2016, with patch 1.17 re-balancing the new espionage mechanics on May 11th.

Stating Territory

The map had always been divided into areas (collections of provinces) and regions (collections of areas), but they had no real effect on the game. Now, areas came to the forefront with the new patch. Each area that a country has provinces of may be a territory or a state in that country.

Provinces in a state act pretty much as normal (except that they can’t be given to a trade company from Wealth of Nations). Territories have a minimum of 90% autonomy and reduced missionary effect, but they are cheaper to turn into a ‘core’ to eliminate overextension effects. In fact, a territory only needs half as much administrative power to become a core, but once a territory becomes a state, the province is still a ‘territorial core’ with 90% autonomy. You then have to pay the other half to make it a regular province (but this, at least, is instant, unlike the normal process).

There are two reasons not to turn a province into a state: First, there is a limit on how many states a country can have (with various modifiers, but administrative tech levels are the main way to get further states). Second, each state requires maintenance in money per month. These costs go up with development and distance from the capital, and thankfully the game has some very good tooltips on whether a province can be a profitable state.

As ever with these systems, it lends a bit of artificiality as you become concerned about preexisting arbitrary lines on the map. At the same time, it does add some interesting decisions, and a bit of a brake on larger countries. Overall, it’s a net plus, acts much better than the equivalent mechanics from Victoria II, and replaces the ‘overseas’ mechanic that had been in the series forever, and which could also be quite arbitrary.

Jack Tar

Paradox also decided to add more detail around manpower to the game, adding sailors to crew navies to go along with the manpower that is needed to build armies, and a new slot in the top bar was added to show them. Each coastal province contributes sailors to the nation, dependent on its development level, with bonuses for those that have trade modifiers.

Ships now need a number of available sailors, as well as money, to build, and when away from port on missions will also consume a small number per month. Repairing a ship also needs new sailors to replace injured crew, so being at war will consume a fair number of sailors for a maritime nation: large fleets on blockade, new ship crews, and repairing damage from naval battles will all consume this resource.

It’s an interesting attempt at an extra bit of simulation for the game. A rich nation can’t just build itself a huge navy, it needs to find the manpower for it as well. Of course, there’s all sorts of detail built into various bonuses, like impressment. Even better, with the expansion, some nations can get the coastal raiding idea, letting them raid other nations for more sailors (slaves forced into the galleys), which is another big part of the period otherwise ignored. However, the AI was never able to properly manage its sailors, and was vulnerable to being deliberately run out of them, and Paradox was forced to let the AI never run out of sailors in a later patch, undercutting the entire system.

Raiding and Other Missions

The interface for naval missions was reworked, allowing the player to set how much damage a fleet could sustain before automatically seeking a friendly port for repairs.

But the bigger reason was so the number of types of missions could be expanded. With the expansion, it is now possible to set a fleet to automatically blockade as many ports in a region as possible (splitting it up as needed), hunt down weaker enemy fleets or try to intercept fleets with transports in them. I’ll admit I haven’t quite trusted the AI enough to try these, but the new interface is an improvement.

Also, the Barbary nations (north coast of Africa) get a mission for raiding nearby shores, letting them loot the province (in peacetime), and take slaves, which go into the sailor pool. This sort of thing was endemic to the Mediterranean for the entire period (American efforts to stop it are where the “shores of Tripoli” line comes from in the Marine Corps Hymn), so its a nice bit to work in. Later, the mission would be reused in Golden Century.

Espionage Networks

Espionage was completely reworked. Instead of directly attempting to do something underhanded (such as claim a neighbor’s territory), you now send a diplomat to a nation to create a spy network (which then has a size from 0 to 100).

The speed at which this happens uses all the old modifiers to spy efficiency, and the diplomat can be discovered and sent home, which will also take a cut out of the network and keep you from sending a diplomat back for a while.

You then spend part of the network’s size for the same actions that the diplomat used to do directly, whether this be creating a claim, supporting a rebellion, or other actions. Overall, it makes the system a little more streamlined (since you can decide what to do after sending the diplomat, instead of before), but isn’t a major change to the results, even though the process changed.

Corruption

Another new statistic on the top bar is corruption, which tracks how well a country’s administration is running, and acts as a potential brake on larger countries. As it rises, spy network creation and detection become slowed, all monarch power costs increase, local autonomy increases, but the estates will tend to be more loyal (i.e., the loyalty value they tend towards over time goes up).

The main drivers of corruption are being overextended, and having a low religious unity. Being further ahead in one technology can also drive up corruption, though being ‘ahead of time’ in administration or diplomatic technologies also brings corruption down (in addition to the tax and trade efficiency bonuses introduced in patch 1.7).

Overall, its a minor system most of the time. It’s an extra thing for a new player to be overwhelmed with, but safe enough to ignore while learning the game. When you do successfully conquer new territory, it does become a potentially major problem, and is a generally worthwhile attempt to show the stresses on a fast-growing empire.

Grant Unconditional Surrender

An interesting new option in war was the ability to just give up on a hopeless war. The enemy may need to spend a lot of time (and possibly troops) besieging fortresses and taking territory to drive up the war score to something that allows a peace offer that the attacker wants.

Unconditional surrender automatically puts all unoccupied territory under the enemy’s control, and all your armies under “exiled” status, and unable to fight. On the other side, the country surrendered to gets 100 war score, a notice of the surrender, and after a couple months his war exhaustion will start ramping up.

This gets what could be a protracted and depressing situation over with quickly, and can let the country get back to other matters; perhaps a different war that can be won….

It’s actually a smart idea, though one that’s largely beyond the ability of the AI to judge, so it will almost never offer one. On the other hand, the AI can be very stubborn about slowly prosecuting a war that it’s essentially already won, while rejecting peace proposals, and this can be a good escape hatch from that.

Conclusion

Overall, the changes to “coring” that came with the new state and territory feature is the most important and widespread change in the game. It made it a bit rougher to administer your country, but the interface lives up to the challenges, and the cheaper “territorial” cores actually make things easier for an expanding nation in the short run. The diplomacy changes (especially around espionage networks) were also nice improvements. Those alone make patches 1.16 and 1.17 a net positive to the game.

On the other hand, sailors added more complexity, and the development team bit off more than the AI could chew. The instincts around them were good, but in the end its an extra system I think the game was better off without (I’d consider it neutral to slightly positive if not for the AI problem). Corruption is also yet another minor worry that can blow up into a big one, and joins a fairly tall stack of things that a new player should ignore for quite a while.

But while the patches were an overall benefit for the game, the expansion itself is more of a collection of minor quality-of-life features, some of which I haven’t even talked about. Unconditional surrender is the best feature of the bunch, as it can end a war that the AI is insisting on dragging out for no reason. Along with the extra naval missions, there’s extra espionage missions that I’ve barely noticed, the ability to rent out troops (condottieri, potentially important), and the ability to increase mercantilism (and income) at the cost of the loyalty of your colonies. While these are nice features, I don’t consider this expansion any sort of “must have”. Get it as part of a package, or on a really good sale—there’s no reason not to have it—but it is at the bottom of the priority list.

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Strasbourg AD 357

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

Julian the Apostate is known for his disastrous defeat by the Sassanids in 363. d’Amato and Frediani go back six years to show Julian’s very successful campaign in Gaul.

This is a typical Osprey Campaign book with its conventional format, length, and topics. With two exceptions, all the photographs are in color, and Florent Vincent’s illustrations are good (there are three two-page spreads), better than many from Osprey, but not the best. There also a few older small illustrations showing sample figures with equipment by Igor Dzis. The bibliography goes two pages, the section on the battlefield today is merely one paragraph, but there are several good photos of it in the book.

The authors go into the political background that kept Julian out of the spotlight before he finally ends up in command in Gaul. This also has implications for his relationship with the court of Constantius, and Barbatio, who was effectively a co-commander. This is followed up with events after the main campaign being discussed, and fills out the situation well.

d’Amato and Frediani point to Julian’s background in the classics as explaining his successes here. Roman practice of the time had become very conservative, endeavoring to take as few chances as possible, and manage the various crises that had come up. Julian, his head full of Julius Caesar’s Commentaries, went for a much more bold approach, looking for decisive battles after which he could dictate terms.

They don’t go into the reasons why Roman practice had evolved this way. But Julian’s approach certainly worked here. The battle at Argentoratum (Strasbourg) led to the surrender of the main Germanic commander, and Julian got time to arrange a series of buffer states on the other side of the Rhine, instead of settling people inside of Gaul. Northeastern Gaul especially had taken enough damage that this may never have been a stable arrangement, but we (and Julian) never got a chance to find out, as he and most of his Roman army got transferred to the east because of the latest disaster from the Sassanids, and the frontier collapsed again without them.

Short of some of the imponderables, Julian certainly made it work for a few years, and Osprey has another very good book in their Campaign line discussing the central action.

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The Wagoneer’s Flight

by on April 27, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Boardgaming

Mark and I returned to GCACW a bit ago, and after casting around a bit ended up with this unusual scenario from Roads to Gettysburg. It is July 4, 1863, and the Army of North Virginia is headed back to cross the Potomac, going south. The scenario concentrates on the effort to get the supplies away, while the main armies do their thing… outside of the scenario.

There’s some complex restrictions on who can go where (presumably because that’s where the main armies are). Thankfully, the Vassal module has nice a nice way of marking it all out; I don’t think I’d want to play this one FtF because of that, though once away from the start lines, it’s not a big problem, and the unit density is low enough.

I had the Confederates, who have several cavalry brigades scattered around, one exhausted infantry brigade (Iverson’s), and four wagon trains which need to get to Williamsport in three days. They can move with cavalry, and move about the same speed, but drop a movement point as soon as they go off-road, and are extra slow through woods or each other.

The Union goes first, and has most of the 1st-3rd Cavalry Divisions, plus a couple of independent regiments. East-west travel is restricted by South Mountain, Mt Alto, and other ridgeline spurs, with two main roads: The Chambersburg Pike over Newman’s Pass directly east of Gettysburg, with three of the wagons lined up on it (and Union access is largely cut off from it by the scenario rules), and the Westminster Pike over Monterey Gap somewhat further south. Both of our initial moves went towards securing this road. I got there first, and Buford went further south, exploring trails over Catoctin Mountain

I had some very good movement rolls, including a 12 for the second activation of the main set of wagons, which let them get past Chambersburg and on the Harrisburg Pike to Williamsport without straining. That said, the 1st NY/12th PA was able to get onto the pike ahead of them. Wagon 4, on the Fairfield Pike towards Monterey Gap, also did well, passing through Waynesboro at the end of its second move. As the turn wound down, Merritt had a shot at a prepared attack at Chambliss, who was guarding the paths south of the Westminster Pike, and Chambliss’ unit scattered under the pressure of a cavalry retreat.

The next day saw Kilpatrick and Buford work their way around Jones’ blocking force through Eyler’s Gap, and then Kilpatrick forced Robertson out of Hagerstown (worth 5 VP) with an assault (Custer failed to participate, and Richmond went to 4 fatigue on a Fa), disorganizing the unit, and interrupting a hoped-for recovery from exhaustion.

The rest of the day was partly Mark failing to bring in some of the more widely dispersed units (they had some very poor movement rolls), and maneuvering for position between the wagon trains and Hagerstown.

The first action of July 6 was Fitz Lee pushing the 1st NY/12th PA back towards Williamsport, but not actually clearing the road (I had fairly good odds, but rolled poorly) while hitting fatigue 4. The wagons moved up as far as they could, and Imboden came up to clear the road thanks to the Union squadrons being disorganized after their retreat. Kilpatrick started moving towards Williamsport, and I got the wagons there, sending Imboden to block the main road.

Maneuvering continued, with Buford coming up and Confederate units establishing a screen around Williamsport. McIntosh and Huey surrounded Jones, who retreated down South Mountain (losing 1 manpower) after partially blocking the pass for a day. Richmond forced Imboden back into Williamsport, Gamble pushed Fitz Lee back, and Jenkins retreated in the face of being flanked by the Federals. Custer lost part of his unit failing to shift Robertson. All this ended with the Confederates hemmed into a small pocket around Williamsport, but intact, with the wagons safe.

Afterword

The overall manpower losses were equal, so the only VPs were from the capture of Hagerstown, giving me a substantial victory. I got lucky. We both had some really good and some really bad movement rolls, but my wagons got average to way above average rolls on the first day, letting them cover a lot of ground undisturbed. Slow, or even average, wagons would be a very different start.

We both contemplated switching sides and going again, but I decided against it because our backlog is so huge. But its a very interesting scenario. Since most everything is cavalry, the action ranges over a fairly large area for three days. I also think it could be an usually good scenario for double-blind play. There’s more ways through then there are units to cover them all, so guessing what routes the enemy is using would be very important and make for an extra tense game.

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Divided Houses

by on April 23, 2023 at 12:00 pm
Posted In: Books

The third book of Sumption’s history of The Hundred Years War continues the excellent job of the first two. This one is less “sexy” than the others as none of the famous battles fall in the thirty year period of this book (1369-1399).

There are a couple of battle in here, the most prominent of which is Aljubarrota (1385), where a Castilian army managed to march around an allied English/Portuguese army, and hit it from behind, and still lost heavily. I’d definitely like to see a treatment of this one in Men of Iron. It’s only one of about two set-piece battles, and they’re much smaller than the great clashes you mostly hear about.

Mostly, the book is given to the slow grind of warfare between two powers short on cash. The French overrun much of Aquitaine near the start of this period because the English just couldn’t get the cash to pay for an army to stop them. However, this grinds to a halt from a combination of running out of money and political will. The theme, as much as a history like this can have one, is reflected well in the title: both sides have deep internal divisions that sap their ability to wage a war to the finish.

In both cases this is largely a result of change of generations. The Black Prince falls ill and dies over the course of a few years, and is followed by Edward III, leaving the government in the hands of his brothers and Richard II. The latter is not a horrible king, but is not a strong or wise one, which is not a workable combination with a nation in a war with a larger neighbor. The book basically ends with him deposed in favor of Henry IV.

Meanwhile Charles V dies in 1380, leaving the throne of France to his eleven-year-old son, Charles VI. Similar to England, his uncles take over much of the administration of France, and war aims get diverted to personal pet projects. Worse, after taking the reigns of government, he goes mad, suffering a psychotic break in 1392, with frequent relapses. The unpredictability of these bouts leaves France rudderless again while still at war.

During this period, both sides suffer peasant rebellions caused by taxation for war expenditures. Both are put down, and France eventually exerts control over taxation again, while England continues to need Parliamentary grants, but it’s clear signal that this can’t go on. Castilian finances also collapse after a few years of heavy taxation, causing peace to be the only practical solution.

So one of the major themes of the book, especially in the second half is the continual search for a peace that both sides can live with. The problem is the root issues of the war have yet to be resolved, and when the competing claims are for England to give up all its extensive possessions in France, or for France to give up claims to sovereignty in its own territory, there’s a big gap to be bridged. So there is a series of truces, peace conferences, and outside arbitration trying to find a way to resolve the irresolvable. Overall, Richard II was seen leaning heavily towards peace, and the crowning of Henry IV was seen as a disaster in France because he was obviously a creature of the war party. (Tune in next time for Cursed Kings….)

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