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what's the mod called though 
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Dec 13, 2022 10:20
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Kaiserreich i assume
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Dec 13, 2022 10:44
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Frosted Flake posted:I’m excited for the GMT COIN China game as well as the detailed civil war Shanghai game in development Thanks for the heads up, checked out the China game and it looks very interesting! My only GMT experience really is Twilight Struggle, but I have been hankering for something in the same vein but for more players than just two.
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Dec 13, 2022 12:13
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COINs are pretty cool board games but the more you depart from modern counter-insurgency scenarios, the more poo poo they become, so anything that has elements of conventional war (Vietnam) or that models pre-modern warfare is kinda poo poo Also their use as a serious analysis of counter insurgency is kinda poo poo, but they can still be compelling to play
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Dec 13, 2022 14:17
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yeah I had some trouble wrapping my head around Vietnam 65 and Afghanistan 12 specifically because they fundamentally accept the American premise that it was possible to "win hearts and minds" and "do nation building" as a means of "winning" the insurgency
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Dec 13, 2022 14:24
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to go a bit further, COIN as a game is based on the writings of Galuga, a French officer in Algeria, after France lost the Algerian revolution these writings were used to create a framework to model the (debatably) successful counter insurgency in Colombia, with the release of Andean abyss, the first game in the series. The system was then transplanted to other conflicts To me, that entire premise is wrong: you can’t treat counter-insurgencies as a translate framework, since each is entirely unique to the country and culture involved. Even the small changes made are not enough to account for this, thus making the games of incredibly dubious value from a simulationist point of view There’s a game which I can’t recall the name of about a counter insurgency in a Central American country, which models the cultural prominence of different factions in each region, and those differences have measurable impact on the simulation
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Dec 13, 2022 14:38
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Cuttlefush posted:what's the mod called though V. Illych L. posted:which game is this it is 100% the hoi4 mod kaiserreich. i am eagerly awaiting their russia rework which will probably come on in 2027.
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Dec 13, 2022 14:41
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Kaiserreich devs crank out updates at a steady pace, the problem with Russia is that the person working on it went off to do something else. Might I suggest a nice game of Serbia or Poland in the meantime?
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Dec 13, 2022 14:44
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gradenko_2000 posted:yeah I had some trouble wrapping my head around Vietnam 65 and Afghanistan 12 specifically because they fundamentally accept the American premise that it was possible to "win hearts and minds" and "do nation building" as a means of "winning" the insurgency What did you think about People Power about the democratization of the PI?
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Dec 13, 2022 14:44
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Tekopo posted:to go a bit further, COIN as a game is based on the writings of Galuga, a French officer in Algeria, after France lost the Algerian revolution I think the other big issue is assuming that the counterinsurgents are actually interested in doing the kind of nation building it represents- the Cuba Libre playbook outright admits that Batista's actual "victory condition" was absconding with as much money as possible and any sort of long term stability wasn't really on the radar. That said some of them are still very fun games and there's still a lot of historical flavor to them
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Dec 13, 2022 14:48
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lobster shirt posted:it is 100% the hoi4 mod kaiserreich. i am eagerly awaiting their russia rework which will probably come on in 2027. i know i just think the mod's name is funny in juxtaposition with the content, even though kaiser and reich are normal words. you know
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Dec 13, 2022 14:50
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did they ever put the cool stuff back into kaiserreich or do the fun police still rule the mod team
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Dec 13, 2022 15:10
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I like that we’ve been using the COIN games for training because if you compare idk Colonial Twilight to Ici Cest La France, at least you put people in the mindset of caring about the Algerian people, providing security, control of local as opposed to military geography - understanding this is all ideological - as opposed to assembling battlegroups of Paras and Marines to run down insurgents. The older style of COIN wargame emphasized shooting it out with the enemy, and that’s a really hard mindset to break. You want OICs to think like “Colonial Policemen”, even if that’s a tenuous concept because when they think of themselves as BG COs, we know what happens. I realize this might read as apologia, and as you said the basic premises of COIN are based on beliefs that may not hold up, but fundamentally I believe it’s better as a training tool to instil the belief that their duty is to police the local population rather than being at war with them. We’ve preordered a few copies of The British Way and have a General who was in Malaya coming in for a panel, so if you consider just function - the COIN games are providing an avenue to at least think about these things in terms other than rampaging around the countryside in LAVs trying to shoot it out with the Taliban. Institutionally Malaya is the model campaign. I realize, and the Dev blog indicates GMT does too, a lot of that is untrue. For example, openly targeting the Chinese population, conflating “Communist” and “Chinese”, it prefigures Indonesia. Still, the belief, that there was a “proper”, (British) way, is in my view better than allowing the institutional lessons to be lost and the ideology to drift towards something more bloodyminded. Promoting the myth of Malaya and Cyprus, and the COIN games often promote myths, could have it’s own value, though I’m finding it hard to articulate clearly. I don’t know, I’m open to feedback, but what I’m getting at is that on an ideological/doctrinal level the COIN games present a perspective that is less red in tooth and claw than what came before and I think that makes them useful. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 15:22 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 15:16
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I think the problem isn't that it's necissarily a bad strategy either militarily or morally, the problem is that it assumes the counterinsurgent faction is actually committed to it. It's sort of an extension of the "idiot problem" in wargames- how do you make the Union player act as if Washington DC is under threat when it's the most fortified city on the planet? If you're trying to drill in that "this is how it ought to be" then you're more or less correct, but I disagree that's how it actually is. And of course you get into the problem that the way to "win" Afghanistan or Vietnam was not to invade in the first place E: I do agree that they're useful for making people consider that insurgents have their own political agenda and their legitimacy rests on being able to build their own parallel state
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Dec 13, 2022 15:23
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Frosted Flake posted:What did you think about People Power about the democratization of the PI? I was excited for it just because of ~representation~ but it's not actually a very good depiction of the politics surrounding the People Power Revolution at all
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Dec 13, 2022 15:26
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Btw Root is very much not a grog game but I really like how it presents all the factions as having very different relationships to popular support: the extractive imperialist cats just want to subvert the local nobility and everyone else is just labor, the parliamentary moles want to demonstrate popular support for purely domestic concerns, the feudal birds have to build relationships with the people and failing to fulfill that bargain collapses their government
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Dec 13, 2022 15:29
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Frosted Flake posted:I like that we’ve been using the COIN games for training because if you compare idk Colonial Twilight to Ici Cest La France, at least you put people in the mindset of caring about the Algerian people, providing security, control of local as opposed to military geography - understanding this is all ideological - as opposed to assembling battlegroups of Paras and Marines to run down insurgents. The older style of COIN wargame emphasized shooting it out with the enemy, and that’s a really hard mindset to break. You want OICs to think like “Colonial Policemen”, even if that’s a tenuous concept because when they think of themselves as BG COs, we know what happens. You should train troops to obstinately refuse to go on colonial missions and shoot their own generals if they order them to imo.
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Dec 13, 2022 15:41
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Wasn't the British Way in Maylasia committing mass genocide?
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Dec 13, 2022 15:48
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KomradeX posted:Wasn't the British Way
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Dec 13, 2022 15:52
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StashAugustine posted:I think the problem isn't that it's necissarily a bad strategy either militarily or morally, the problem is that it assumes the counterinsurgent faction is actually committed to it. It's sort of an extension of the "idiot problem" in wargames- how do you make the Union player act as if Washington DC is under threat when it's the most fortified city on the planet? If you're trying to drill in that "this is how it ought to be" then you're more or less correct, but I disagree that's how it actually is. And of course you get into the problem that the way to "win" Afghanistan or Vietnam was not to invade in the first place Those are good points, and of course the idiot problem is a huge problem with war games generally. Some have become so overused that there’s hardly any point to it. Waterloo is so integral to the culture of the Commonwealth militaries that you almost can’t actually use Waterloo wargames or tabletop exercises (of which there are countless) because Hougoumont and the reverse slope are so drilled into people from even their Lieutenants’ course that “Napoleon” will never act like Napoleon. This was criticized as early as 1900 but it’s become almost a ritual I guess? I’ve heard the US Naval Academy has the same problem with Midway - everybody knows the classic mistakes, it’s been drilled into them, so what is the training value of the IJN side either not acting like the IJN at all, or ritually reenacting the story everybody is familiar with? I imagine that’s a problem with commercial war games as well, I remember the Task Force Admiral people discussed it. In terms of how it ought to be versus is, absolutely. I don’t want to say it’s kabuki theatre because it’s probably socially, institutionally and politically complex, but Petraeus became famous for being “the COIN guy”, was given command on the basis of that, more or less, and then didn’t actually do the things he rose to fame arguing for. I can’t say if that was political limitations, institutional issues, if he knew he would not act in the idealized way, or if it was all self deception. He married the West Point Commandant’s daughter as a cadet and then had an affair with his biographer so I lean towards self promotion. It was a great career move to promote the theory but not to do it. So does that explain why the theory didn’t materialize? Well, how the heck do you put that in a board game? Which brings me back to ritual play acting. If you create a paradigmatic model of behaviour, instil it through training, institutionally reward it, reinforce it through doctrine, the hope would be it leads to, you know that translating into conduct of operations. If you model things as-is, which is like: “Yeah, it was never going to be supported politically, casualties were unacceptable at home which meant no dismounted local presence and instead holing up in fortified camps and throwing firepower around, the Afghan state was always going to be completely rotten and hollow, oh and by the way the White House was running a drone assassination campaign while JSOC had their own nighttime raid assassination campaign, both of which were ‘outside’ of the war and couldn’t be stopped” Any one of these ensured the war was lost before it started as you said. That’s not even getting into Canada (and Australia, Denmark, Netherlands etc.) real priority, which was “Keep America happy, while keeping casualties low”, which meant regionally the war was lost in any of those provinces before it started. Or whatever was going on with opium. Or Pakistan. Or whatever else that ran counter to any of the stated goals of the war or fundamentals about how to do these things. All of that to say, you’re right, but the decision to invade was kind of like taking a game off the shelf, setting it up, and then not really playing to win, or knowing and following the rules, but just something you decided to do to give money to the board game company, or to keep your kids busy, or something. How do you make a game that represents how Capitalist Western Liberal Democracies wage war?
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Dec 13, 2022 15:54
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KomradeX posted:Wasn't the British Way in Maylasia committing mass genocide? Yeah pretty much. Even before the Boer Wars, the British COIN strategy usually involved mass starvation, murder and collective punishment and that sure as poo poo didn't improve post-WW2. Really makes ya wonder why they treated the Nazi's (orthe Italians for that matter. If you're ever on a trip to Rome, try to take a good look at things like 20's buildings and monuments and even poo poo like manhole covers and grates. Even 80 loving years later, these common city objects still refer back to the 'Era Fascista' with the March on Rome as the start of a new calendar era.) with such kid gloves
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Dec 13, 2022 15:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:I was excited for it just because of ~representation~ but it's not actually a very good depiction of the politics surrounding the People Power Revolution at all Oh interesting. Can you say a little more about it? I heard good things about Gandhi and read the long treatises on non-violence and political change on InsideGMT, but I know nothing about Marcos. It probably dovetails with what we’re saying here about A Distain Plain and The British Way, so I’d love to hear what you think. oscarthewilde posted:he Italians for that matter. If you're ever on a trip to Rome, try to take a good look at things like 20's buildings and monuments and even poo poo like manhole covers and grates. Even 80 loving years later, these common city objects still refer back to the 'Era Fascista' with the March on Rome as the start of a new calendar era.) with such kid gloves There’s a book about that, from I want to say Harvard University Press? It’s published under Italian American Studies, title escapes me. Building on the work by Claudio Pavone, Italy had a full blown civil war from 1943 on. The Italians that won that civil war were not all Communist, but the communists were a major part of that coalition, and liked and admired even by the Catholic partisans. Even the Italian Co-Belligerents who fought for the Allies skewed very far left by the standard of Free X Armies. So they were going to be major players in post-war Italian society and politics, which is why the Americans intervened. The Americans helped the right, who were not at all popular post-war, regain power, then in the 60’s rewrite Italian history, including that of the civil war. The rehabilitation of Fascism in Italy was, in part, imposed on them. In Germany too, in May-June of 1945 you had people start to rise against the Nazis in some areas during the last days of the war and there was a real chance of that spreading so again - it wasn’t the German people’s choice per se, so much as in 1945-46 decisions were made to check the left, and in the 60’s it led to formal rewriting of history. I guess what I’m saying is, it wasn’t kid gloves permitting so much as an iron fist, imposing this compromised telling of history. Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 16:08 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 15:58
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Raskolnikov38 posted:did they ever put the cool stuff back into kaiserreich or do the fun police still rule the mod team kaiserredux added most of it back in and added a bunch of other weird crap https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2076426030 did you want a complex branching focus tree for sikkim, a nation so tiny it doesn't appear in hoi4? here you go 
Lum_ has issued a correction as of 17:18 on Dec 13, 2022 |
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Dec 13, 2022 17:16
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Frosted Flake posted:Oh interesting. Can you say a little more about it? I heard good things about Gandhi and read the long treatises on non-violence and political change on InsideGMT, but I know nothing about Marcos. gradenko_2000 posted:I want to call back yet again to the People Power Movement of February 1986, where two senior military officers from the dictatorial regime of Ferdinand Marcos Sr. decided to mutiny, and the Catholic Church and the liberal opposition decided that THAT was the time to seize the moment, and they called out as many people as possible to form a human shield around the army camp that the two mutineers were holed-up in, and Marcos sent in troops to try and break it up, and there were way too many people to be dispersed, and the troops were unwilling to open fire on that many people.
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Dec 13, 2022 17:24
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Thanks. I can skim the playbook, but how does GMT do it?
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Dec 13, 2022 17:40
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Frosted Flake posted:All of that to say, you’re right, but the decision to invade was kind of like taking a game off the shelf, setting it up, and then not really playing to win, or knowing and following the rules, but just something you decided to do to give money to the board game company, or to keep your kids busy, or something. How do you make a game that represents how Capitalist Western Liberal Democracies wage war? Yiu can make that game, you just can't make it a war game.
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Dec 13, 2022 17:56
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Frosted Flake posted:Thanks. I can skim the playbook, but how does GMT do it? I will cop to not actually owning or having played People Power, but skimming the dev diaries, it assumes that the NPA could ever build enough of a power base+momentum to overthrow the government (was not happening), and that the liberal opposition was running as an organized long-term movement rather than an opportunistic mass of disparate political factions. There was no congealed opposition party - it was Ninoy and everyone who sympathized with him in death, and that was it. The left was organized, sure, but they even made the strategic decision to sit-out the protests at EDSA because they thought the time wasn't right yet (which was a huge missed opportunity because it turns out, yes it was). I'm sure People Power is a fine game as far as conveying the concepts it wants to, in much the same way that the other COIN games are fine games if you accept the framework for what it is, but the framework is not a historically accurate rendition.
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Dec 13, 2022 18:19
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I can think of two options to get some variety for one of the sides, either give the player more freedom in terms of game mechanics to do other things. It's the Suzerainty joke from disco elysium. https://twitter.com/lydianchord/status/1216944269707137024 You just need to give the player the option to do something else. It's ideology, but it's also unavoidable because people do bring their ideas and preconceptions when playing a game. So you either give them enough room to do things other than "play in this specific way" and let those ideas and preconceptions dictate the way they play. Or you find someone who did not have their had broken in to use specifically the most optimal solution to the scenario you're playing out.
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Dec 13, 2022 18:31
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Frosted Flake posted:All of that to say, you’re right, but the decision to invade was kind of like taking a game off the shelf, setting it up, and then not really playing to win, or knowing and following the rules, but just something you decided to do to give money to the board game company, or to keep your kids busy, or something. How do you make a game that represents how Capitalist Western Liberal Democracies wage war? like i mentioned before, though it's very very abstract i like how Root handles the Underground Duchy/moles as a sort of loose fantasy representation of interventionism. they've got an offmap space connected to tunnels, analogous to air/naval resupply from a foreign homeland; and both their action economy and points engine is based on garrisoning troops in various semi-random regions in order to bring domestic government officials into the war- they dont have to actually rule the region, just make a show of force. so their goal isn't to actually occupy the whole country, except for a few "green zones" where their infrastructure is (losing these costs a lot of domestic support) but to win political favor at home by meeting arbitrary metrics
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Dec 13, 2022 18:35
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I like this Regiments game.
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Dec 13, 2022 21:17
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gradenko_2000 posted:yeah I had some trouble wrapping my head around Vietnam 65 and Afghanistan 12 specifically because they fundamentally accept the American premise that it was possible to "win hearts and minds" and "do nation building" as a means of "winning" the insurgency  Afghanistan '11 was fun enough, but rings hollow since the main objective of a campaign is turning everything over to the ANA, whose reputation was overrun by events, to say nothing of the Taliban. UN AID DELIVERED
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Dec 13, 2022 21:20
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skooma512 posted:
Well, turning everything over to the ANA did end the war in Afghanistan
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Dec 13, 2022 21:23
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Minenfeld! posted:I like this Regiments game. Its v good n fun
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Dec 13, 2022 21:46
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New victoria 3 patch with some changes, and fixes the capitalists and shopkeepers in some buildings. Doesn't seem to work completely with an old save.
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Dec 14, 2022 16:19
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finally, an hoi4 mod for the discerning strategy game fan: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2868085985
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Dec 15, 2022 05:01
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I'm still waiting for Black Ice to be fun.
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Dec 15, 2022 05:25
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you don't like railroading?
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Dec 15, 2022 12:56
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lobster shirt posted:finally, an hoi4 mod for the discerning strategy game fan: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2868085985 I am once again asking for cspams endorsement 
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Dec 15, 2022 20:50
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wargameds.com is having a holiday sale, and so of course I just had to pick up Fulda Gap '85: warming up with a 10-turn scenario about taking just Fulda on the first day of the war before jumping into the full campaign Seven Days to the Rhine? let's see if it'll work
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Dec 19, 2022 16:24
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Aren't you going to get nuked?
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Dec 19, 2022 16:29
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