Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

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KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

Mister Bates posted:

Cuba Libre is a great game but it is very funny that they make the Directorio, a literal, honest-to-god CIA front that for all practical purposes didn't even actually exist after 1957, a fully-playable faction

I get why they did it and it makes total sense from a game design perspective, but it's still amusing how much they had to reach in order to find anything that would work as a fourth player

it looks like Putin is strangling Stalin in that picture

Is his hand on his shoulder, or well thats free photoshop

I think the biggest flaw with Cuba Libre is how easy it is for the mafia win. So many solo games have served with them just winning pretty early.

Is almost a shame we'll probably never see an update to A Distant Plain taking it to the end of the war there

# ? Apr 24, 2023 15:56

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# ? May 26, 2024 11:02

Mister Bates: Aug 4, 2010

Every Single Soldier's Afghanistan 2011 game is, in hindsight, accidentally very good at predicting the eventual US defeat there

I don't think they understood the message they were sending with their own game, but that is, again, accidentally a very accurate reflection of the USA's real-life blindness to the failure of the war.

see, it's impossible to ever actually win in any kind of permanent way in that game. Every single village in your area of operations, by default, trends naturally towards supporting the Taliban over time, and preventing them from going over to the TB requires regular, active intervention. Any village that you do not put effort into bringing over to your side will end up supporting the Taliban eventually. The Taliban themselves can never be militarily defeated and are just always there, no matter what you do - you can shoot them, bomb them, clear out their roadside bombs, spot and avoid their ambushes, destroy the locals' poppy fields to try to cut off their funding, but no matter what you do, there's always more of them, and even if you successfully clear and hold an area from them they will always come back eventually if you ever stop covering that area.

eventually you complete the handover and turn the area over to the ANA, and when you do that, the Taliban always launch an offensive. from a gameplay perspective this is basically a test of the player's preparations - a challenge to see how well you have strategized, how good your defenses really are, how well you can play with limited resources and a serious threat. But think about it in real life terms for a second - all that poo poo you have done, to try to secure this region, defeat the Taliban, win 'hearts and minds' or whatever, and no matter how many of them you have killed, they're still able to immediately pounce in force as soon as you show any signs of weakness.

eventually the scenario is over and, if you have scored enough points, you have 'won' - but, like, have you, really? are all of the plates you needed to keep spinning literally up to the moment the scenario ended just going to magically start spinning themselves now that you have arbitrarily declared victory? are the Taliban, who you have never been able to militarily defeat, or even really slow down, up to this point going to just accept defeat and leave now that you have declared the fighting over?

you cannot build anything permanent and the game treats Taliban control as the default, a status quo that will naturally reassert itself if you are not actively working to prevent it, and this is true right up to the very last turn of any given scenario even if you nominally win.

it's so on the nose you might think they did it on purpose, but I am pretty sure it's an accident - to give you an idea of the developers' mindset, they didn't think to have airstrikes on civilian populations negatively effect Hearts and Minds until a bunch of players complained about it after release. by default you could bomb villages as much as you wanted and it wouldn't effect your local support at all, because the devs just did not think of that

# ? Apr 24, 2023 16:23

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

taliban ftw

# ? Apr 24, 2023 16:28

Tekopo: Oct 24, 2008; When you see it, you'll shit yourself.

I remember when I played A Distant Plain and realised that the Taliban and Government are actually natural allies because none of their win conditions clash with each other

# ? Apr 24, 2023 16:31

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

gradenko_2000 posted:

it seems like these HOI4 mods would be better served being text-based interactive fiction, or something closer to Suzerain or Warsim: Realms of Aslona

oh hell yeah

No, it's just TNO.

The other HOI mods, are still HOI.

# ? Apr 24, 2023 16:31

Regarde Aduck: Oct 19, 2012; c l o u d k i t t e n; Grimey Drawer

gradenko_2000 posted:

taliban ftw

# ? Apr 24, 2023 16:33

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

Mister Bates posted:

Every Single Soldier's Afghanistan 2011 game is, in hindsight, accidentally very good at predicting the eventual US defeat there

I don't think they understood the message they were sending with their own game, but that is, again, accidentally a very accurate reflection of the USA's real-life blindness to the failure of the war.

see, it's impossible to ever actually win in any kind of permanent way in that game. Every single village in your area of operations, by default, trends naturally towards supporting the Taliban over time, and preventing them from going over to the TB requires regular, active intervention. Any village that you do not put effort into bringing over to your side will end up supporting the Taliban eventually. The Taliban themselves can never be militarily defeated and are just always there, no matter what you do - you can shoot them, bomb them, clear out their roadside bombs, spot and avoid their ambushes, destroy the locals' poppy fields to try to cut off their funding, but no matter what you do, there's always more of them, and even if you successfully clear and hold an area from them they will always come back eventually if you ever stop covering that area.

eventually you complete the handover and turn the area over to the ANA, and when you do that, the Taliban always launch an offensive. from a gameplay perspective this is basically a test of the player's preparations - a challenge to see how well you have strategized, how good your defenses really are, how well you can play with limited resources and a serious threat. But think about it in real life terms for a second - all that poo poo you have done, to try to secure this region, defeat the Taliban, win 'hearts and minds' or whatever, and no matter how many of them you have killed, they're still able to immediately pounce in force as soon as you show any signs of weakness.

eventually the scenario is over and, if you have scored enough points, you have 'won' - but, like, have you, really? are all of the plates you needed to keep spinning literally up to the moment the scenario ended just going to magically start spinning themselves now that you have arbitrarily declared victory? are the Taliban, who you have never been able to militarily defeat, or even really slow down, up to this point going to just accept defeat and leave now that you have declared the fighting over?

you cannot build anything permanent and the game treats Taliban control as the default, a status quo that will naturally reassert itself if you are not actively working to prevent it, and this is true right up to the very last turn of any given scenario even if you nominally win.

it's so on the nose you might think they did it on purpose, but I am pretty sure it's an accident - to give you an idea of the developers' mindset, they didn't think to have airstrikes on civilian populations negatively effect Hearts and Minds until a bunch of players complained about it after release. by default you could bomb villages as much as you wanted and it wouldn't effect your local support at all, because the devs just did not think of that

Do airstikes move zones towards opposition? I know they do in Fire in the Lake, but they only did that starting in the second edition of the game. Talk about ideological blinders.

But yeah that was my take away of the game about a US victory was always just declaring that we won, going home and not caring what happens next. Kind of like what we did to Afghanistan in the 80s

# ? Apr 24, 2023 19:56

Mister Bates: Aug 4, 2010

KomradeX posted:

Do airstikes move zones towards opposition? I know they do in Fire in the Lake, but they only did that starting in the second edition of the game. Talk about ideological blinders.

But yeah that was my take away of the game about a US victory was always just declaring that we won, going home and not caring what happens next. Kind of like what we did to Afghanistan in the 80s

yeah they now move the village you bombed towards the opposition and ding your Hearts and Minds score, which is basically your 'victory' tracker (if it is above 50% at the end of the scenario you 'win', otherwise your lose)

hilariously, because killing Taliban or local militia forces increases your popular support locally, at release, drone-striking Taliban guys hanging out in or next to a village would actually make the US more popular there!

of course, that the developers (themselves including some Afghanistan veterans) thought 'we gain local support by killing people' made sense at all is itself very telling

# ? Apr 24, 2023 20:02

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Afaik Fire in the Lake always had a support hit for using saturation bombing, I think there's a capability that can prevent it if you limit the damage it does. Distant Plain airstrikes don't inherently damage support but again a capability can change that

# ? Apr 24, 2023 20:06

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

I actually think my favorite "American" faction in a "COIN" game is the moles in Root. Can pop up anywhere on the map using ~~airbases~~ tunnels connected to an off map homeland, excellent offensive action economy but poor recruiting, and their main victory condition isn't actually controlling land or gaining support but sticking troops in completely arbitrary spaces to impress domestic politicians

# ? Apr 24, 2023 20:08

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

StashAugustine posted:

Afaik Fire in the Lake always had a support hit for using saturation bombing, I think there's a capability that can prevent it if you limit the damage it does. Distant Plain airstrikes don't inherently damage support but again a capability can change that

Maybe I'm just misremembering things its been long time since I played A Distant Plain or Fire in the Lake. I was just going over the rules for Colonial Twilight to do a single player run of it soemtime this week

# ? Apr 24, 2023 20:35

Slim Jim Pickens: Jan 16, 2012

StashAugustine posted:

I actually think my favorite "American" faction in a "COIN" game is the moles in Root. Can pop up anywhere on the map using ~~airbases~~ tunnels connected to an off map homeland, excellent offensive action economy but poor recruiting, and their main victory condition isn't actually controlling land or gaining support but sticking troops in completely arbitrary spaces to impress domestic politicians

They are also extremely susceptible to a Tet offensive or a 9/11 like event. Miserable to play for me, I could not keep my head on straight with the Moles.

# ? Apr 24, 2023 20:53

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

corvid bombs can't melt steel beams

Ime the way to play moles "normally" is to not put down buildings until you have to, being careful with cards and relying on actions for recruiting; and then judging when you've been whacked enough to start needing citadels for recruits but not hard enough that you can't defend them yet. There's a couple alternate strategies involving exploiting market card draw (either turtle up and ditch cards to the banker or just build them and forget in order to craft whatever you can) but I haven't tried them

# ? Apr 24, 2023 22:07

fermun: Nov 4, 2009

looks like Rule the Waves 3 will be pushing the start date back to 1890 and the end date up to 1970
https://www.matrixgames.com/news/rule-the-waves-3-dev-diary-1-what-is-rule-the-waves

# ? Apr 24, 2023 23:34

Parakeet vs. Phone: Nov 6, 2009

Mister Bates posted:

yeah they now move the village you bombed towards the opposition and ding your Hearts and Minds score, which is basically your 'victory' tracker (if it is above 50% at the end of the scenario you 'win', otherwise your lose)

hilariously, because killing Taliban or local militia forces increases your popular support locally, at release, drone-striking Taliban guys hanging out in or next to a village would actually make the US more popular there!

of course, that the developers (themselves including some Afghanistan veterans) thought 'we gain local support by killing people' made sense at all is itself very telling

Interesting, since Vietnam '65 has the same kind of thing going on. It captures a feeling where you're just sort of holding back the inevitable. Their endgame is slightly less pessimistic because the villages don't necessarily revert back to Vietcong support. You build Hearts and Minds by visiting the village to hand out aid/intimidate them and assert that you're not going to abandon them and I believe you only lose support if Vietcong or proper NVA manage to threaten or reach the village. But the endgame is stuck with the same problems that you're just sort of declaring victory when obviously the lightly trained allies (who you only use because you don't lose domestic support if they get wounded or die) you're leaving behind are going to get hosed up as soon as your artillery isn't there to save them.

Makes for a weird feel in the game.

# ? Apr 24, 2023 23:48

skooma512: Feb 8, 2012; You couldn't grok my race car, but you dug the roadside blur.

Mister Bates posted:

yeah they now move the village you bombed towards the opposition and ding your Hearts and Minds score, which is basically your 'victory' tracker (if it is above 50% at the end of the scenario you 'win', otherwise your lose)

hilariously, because killing Taliban or local militia forces increases your popular support locally, at release, drone-striking Taliban guys hanging out in or next to a village would actually make the US more popular there!

of course, that the developers (themselves including some Afghanistan veterans) thought 'we gain local support by killing people' made sense at all is itself very telling

Me giving cigarettes to homeless people : UN AID DELIVERED

# ? Apr 25, 2023 00:36

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Mister Bates posted:

Every Single Soldier's Afghanistan 2011 game is, in hindsight, accidentally very good at predicting the eventual US defeat there

I don't think they understood the message they were sending with their own game, but that is, again, accidentally a very accurate reflection of the USA's real-life blindness to the failure of the war.

see, it's impossible to ever actually win in any kind of permanent way in that game. Every single village in your area of operations, by default, trends naturally towards supporting the Taliban over time, and preventing them from going over to the TB requires regular, active intervention. Any village that you do not put effort into bringing over to your side will end up supporting the Taliban eventually. The Taliban themselves can never be militarily defeated and are just always there, no matter what you do - you can shoot them, bomb them, clear out their roadside bombs, spot and avoid their ambushes, destroy the locals' poppy fields to try to cut off their funding, but no matter what you do, there's always more of them, and even if you successfully clear and hold an area from them they will always come back eventually if you ever stop covering that area.

eventually you complete the handover and turn the area over to the ANA, and when you do that, the Taliban always launch an offensive. from a gameplay perspective this is basically a test of the player's preparations - a challenge to see how well you have strategized, how good your defenses really are, how well you can play with limited resources and a serious threat. But think about it in real life terms for a second - all that poo poo you have done, to try to secure this region, defeat the Taliban, win 'hearts and minds' or whatever, and no matter how many of them you have killed, they're still able to immediately pounce in force as soon as you show any signs of weakness.

eventually the scenario is over and, if you have scored enough points, you have 'won' - but, like, have you, really? are all of the plates you needed to keep spinning literally up to the moment the scenario ended just going to magically start spinning themselves now that you have arbitrarily declared victory? are the Taliban, who you have never been able to militarily defeat, or even really slow down, up to this point going to just accept defeat and leave now that you have declared the fighting over?

you cannot build anything permanent and the game treats Taliban control as the default, a status quo that will naturally reassert itself if you are not actively working to prevent it, and this is true right up to the very last turn of any given scenario even if you nominally win.

it's so on the nose you might think they did it on purpose, but I am pretty sure it's an accident - to give you an idea of the developers' mindset, they didn't think to have airstrikes on civilian populations negatively effect Hearts and Minds until a bunch of players complained about it after release. by default you could bomb villages as much as you wanted and it wouldn't effect your local support at all, because the devs just did not think of that

The Canadian War Museum is considering changes to the Afghanistan gallery, which is presently the "end" of the galleries, and one thing that was pointed out is that there's no narrative structure for PRTs driving around and getting blown up that can be turned into a visitor experience. There's no story after a certain point in the war. It creates a very anticlimactic experience for visitors that have been through 4 galleries that started with warfare in pre-colonial Canada, had them disembark a landing craft on Juno beach, walk through trenches in the Ypres salient, wander through a checkpoint in Cyprus etc.

Someone smarter at museum studies stuff could probably elaborate, but the Afghanistan gallery starts strong with 9/11, JTF-2, the Northern Alliance, Anaconda, the occupation of Kabul, then has a separate area cover the big battles after the move to Kandahar, White School, Medusa, but around ~2008-10 it kind of trails off. You see a blown up G-Wagon, someone training Afghan soldiers, girls going to school, and then you're back in the main hallway of the museum.

Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 01:24 on Apr 25, 2023

# ? Apr 25, 2023 01:21

Slavvy: Dec 11, 2012

??? That sounds like it mirrors the average western citizen's experience of the war perfectly though

# ? Apr 25, 2023 01:25

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

fermun posted:

looks like Rule the Waves 3 will be pushing the start date back to 1890 and the end date up to 1970
https://www.matrixgames.com/news/rule-the-waves-3-dev-diary-1-what-is-rule-the-waves

pfft this scrub hasn't been following RTW 3 on their ancient message board even before they decided to work with Matrix

https://www.navalwarfare.net/files/SAI/RTW2_Expansion_Catalog.pdf

Slavvy posted:

??? That sounds like it mirrors the average western citizen's experience of the war perfectly though

Yes, but it sucks for a museum.

https://www.warmuseum.ca/cwm/exhibitions/afghanistan/afghanistane.html

e:

Frosted Flake has issued a correction as of 01:36 on Apr 25, 2023

# ? Apr 25, 2023 01:27

fermun: Nov 4, 2009

Frosted Flake posted:

pfft this scrub hasn't been following RTW 3 on their ancient message board even before they decided to work with Matrix

https://www.navalwarfare.net/files/SAI/RTW2_Expansion_Catalog.pdf

rad! thanks for that, looking at their message board showed me that it's available to wishlist on steam
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2008100/Rule_the_Waves_3/

edit: they also said that if you purchase from matrix instead of steam, you get a steam key with your purchase and the guy that makes the game gets a slightly larger amount without the steam fee

fermun has issued a correction as of 01:45 on Apr 25, 2023

# ? Apr 25, 2023 01:40

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

The British Way just charged for me and gently caress did USPS shipping get ridiculous

# ? Apr 25, 2023 18:58

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Frosted Flake posted:

Someone smarter at museum studies stuff could probably elaborate, but the Afghanistan gallery starts strong with 9/11, JTF-2, the Northern Alliance, Anaconda, the occupation of Kabul, then has a separate area cover the big battles after the move to Kandahar, White School, Medusa, but around ~2008-10 it kind of trails off. You see a blown up G-Wagon, someone training Afghan soldiers, girls going to school, and then you're back in the main hallway of the museum.

Make the exhibit from the perspective of the Taliban. You're welcome.

# ? Apr 25, 2023 21:46

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

KomradeX posted:

The British Way just charged for me and gently caress did USPS shipping get ridiculous

# ? Apr 25, 2023 22:01

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

So I get why they don't want to get into the supression of radical labor unions, but I feel like it might just play into why the Communists got crushed

# ? Apr 25, 2023 22:18

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

From talking to the Emergency veteran General that share's my Old Man's mess, it was no more complicated than "Chinese Malays = Communists".

# ? Apr 26, 2023 01:03

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

Frosted Flake posted:

From talking to the Emergency veteran General that share's my Old Man's mess, it was no more complicated than "Chinese Malays = Communists".

Well yeah just like how in El Salvador being Mayan meant you were Communist. Political cover for outright genocide. Which this is another one where air strikes down push population centers towards opposition

# ? Apr 26, 2023 02:11

KomradeX: Oct 29, 2011

So it looks like WARNO finally added its Operations, can't wait to give the drive on Frankfurt a shot

# ? Apr 28, 2023 06:45

Orange Devil: Oct 1, 2010; Wullie's reign cannae smother the flames o' equality!

Frosted Flake posted:

From talking to the Emergency veteran General that share's my Old Man's mess, it was no more complicated than "Chinese Malays = Communists".

Same thing happened to Chinese Indonesians. Then they were murdered in large numbers.

This is actually the reason China to this day doesn't allow its citizens to have a dual passport: an effort to protect ethnic Chinese living abroad from being genocided for being perceived as communists for having a Chinese passport.

# ? Apr 28, 2023 09:28

fermun: Nov 4, 2009

Rule the Waves 3 will be released on May 18th according to Slitherine's monthly news video (at 1:29)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFms3fho150

# ? May 3, 2023 04:02

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/micro_prose/status/1654169848325308416?t=_G6mzqGpMfYQNK_B7AiOHA&s=19

quote:

MicroProse is proud to announce that we have re-acquired the copyright to the Falcon series games, and Falcon has officially returned to our line-up. We are thrilled to continue the Falcon franchise with new products in the future, building on the legacy of this iconic series.

All the Falcon games are now on Steam

# ? May 5, 2023 12:41

Frosted Flake: Sep 13, 2011; Semper Shitpost Ubique

Falcon 5.0 is coming, according to Stormbirds. Apparently MicroProse and the BMS team have worked out something really cool.

# ? May 5, 2023 12:45

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Weird but I'm kinda more interested in Great War Western Front after finding out its by the company that did Empire at War, which wasn't great but I still played the poo poo out of it as a kid

# ? May 6, 2023 12:25

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Also reading Villa and Zapata and reflecting on how Paradox needs to make vicky 3 intelligentsia more racist

# ? May 8, 2023 01:36

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

They already oppose multiculturalism, anymore and what would separate them from chauvinists and jingoists?

# ? May 9, 2023 04:55

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

Age of Wonders 4 is the least grognard the series has ever been.

# ? May 9, 2023 14:11

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

Lostconfused posted:

They already oppose multiculturalism, anymore and what would separate them from chauvinists and jingoists?

Yeah tbf I'd forgotten that they changed that recently. Also thinking about it, arguable that in vicky the cientificos would be represented by the industrialists. Probably not worth think any more about it until they introduce land reform stuff in the next patch

# ? May 9, 2023 14:30

gradenko_2000: Oct 5, 2010; HELL SERPENT; Lipstick Apathy

https://twitter.com/tombomp/status/1656050692648316929

# ? May 9, 2023 23:49

KirbyKhan: Mar 20, 2009; Soiled Meat

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/tombomp/status/1656050692648316929

# ? May 9, 2023 23:57

Lostconfused: Oct 1, 2008

Never ran into that problem with laissez faire personally.

Capitalists in my games built way too many arms factories as it is, even though they weren't operating at any sort of capacity most of the time.

And wars are generally dependent on getting one of the good historic generals like Moltke.

# ? May 10, 2023 00:52

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# ? May 26, 2024 11:02

StashAugustine: Mar 24, 2013; Do not trust in hope- it will betray you! Only faith and hatred sustain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keUR15gYwSM

Pretty interesting video with the designer of The British Way and The Guerilla Generation talking about the modeling of the COIN games and their limitations

# ? May 10, 2023 22:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > C-SPAM > Strategy & Wargames - middlebrow autodidact "history buffs" who yearn to pull levers

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