Was that a reply to me? I think you may be mixing together two topics in that post - the top part was a reference to Ancient World (which is a Berg game) and the lower was about Miranda’s game.
Played one of them (Trajan, I think), many years ago using a club copy of S&T. Did find the BGG rules for Trajan; would really like to see the updated “tie everything together” rules, but it seems that those are only available with the reissued version from 2004, and that sells at crazy prices now.
I managed to snag a copy for $70 some months ago, but it was due to a mislabeling by the selling company and a refund.
The Ancient War Expansion Kit includes the full rules and comes with either 1 or 2 of the 4 games (says 1 on the box, but many have 2).
I’m on holidays now, so I can’t scan my copy now. PM me in a month and I’ll try to run it trough the scanner (I want to save a digital copy anyways).
Wombat, I’m finishing a book on Hitler’s personal experience in the war and while directing the effort he is always presented data on the number of panzers and other heavy equipment various formations have. This is how the overall commanders evaluated things, I’m sure you know that too, so these are the datapoints used, and if these numbers are available to the commanders why not players, as long as it’s also historically meaningful in the game?
Yet in WitE I’ve never played while paying attention to these numbers. You can use the derived factors the game presents to you and you just gain a feel for their effectiveness – until they aren’t and they stop performing… and your offensive grinds to a halt. Just like real life.
Now I understand that there is always doubt about the accuracy of the game universe, but if it’s a rational assessment and correlates to the datapoints then it seems like its a pretty nuanced approach that mirrors real life in some important respects. Which definitely has some appeal to me if it works.
Well, I’d hardly use Hitler’s operational control of the Wehrmacht as a baseline for how I’d want to run a war! :) I see your point, of course. I’m also not at all adverse in certain situations to diving into the nuts and bolts. I don’t see, though, that such detail often gives me as a gamer much insight into how this division or that division might perform. Yes, gross number of operational vehicles might be very useful to know, but exactly how many are IIIf vs. IIIg? Or how many MG32s are in a battalion? To me, not so much. It’s not the numbers, it’s the sheer volume and how far down the rabbit hole they go.
I mean, German armored formations are a great example Combat power for Panzer divisions at various stages of the war doesn’t usually correspond directly to how many tanks they have, if you look at how effective these formations were even when they had comparatively few operational combat vehicles. That number is not a trivial piece of info, but I question its value compared to things that are much harder to quantify in game terms. Conversely, many American or Soviet units had much fuller TO&Es but underperformed in relation to their book strength. Counting tanks isn’t going to help much there, though I agree it is still a valid piece of info.
Part of the issue may well be the way things are displayed. I agree, when I play these sorts of games I do not use that info to make decisions usually, but I still get bombarded with it and have to take it into account more than I want to. Perhaps its more of an issue of UI than anything else (and I haven’t played WITE in a while so I can’t even recall much about how it shows things, then or now).
I read Glantz´s Stalingrad opus recently, and the German documents quantify unit strength according to a 4-tiered (I think) system that took into account both raw numbers and subjective evaluation by the respective commanders
His Generals were consistently very exasperated by his NCO instincts…wanting to count and account for minutia way below his pay grade.
@Lohengrin, The question I’d ask, is echelon? What echelon is the data provided for? If you are are, say an Army Group commander, you care about your Armies, support down to and including the Corps-level. The Division Commander wants fidelity to include his Battalions. And so on. The “up” regards being privy to orders and Commander’s Intent(s).
The rule of thumb in military command is “2 up and 2 down”. Anything below that and you are usually “in the weeds”. Concern above that regarding intent is nice to have, but “in the clouds”.
Yeah, and it’s that latter that is tough to get. I think you need both. There’s no way you can get around the importance of numbers and stuff. You don’t have the tanks, there are things you simply can’t do. At the same time, you can do a lot more than the numbers of things indicate, depending. That sort of thing is a bitch.
It’s sort of why we now have come full-circle, or some have, to the old basic combat factors. Folks reacted against the simplicity of the “3-4” division and wanted the values broken down, so you got first attack-defense-movement, say, then those plus a morale number, then maybe other special data points, etc. Now though the pendulum in some ways is swinging back, as folks are thinking, “hmm, overall, someone is going to look at this unit and say, well, they’re pretty solid, let’s throw them against the enemy.” That pretty much is the same as guestimating a a combat value of like four.
Yeah, I’m thinking of the recent Korea game with no combat values whatsoever (just taking into account circumstantial factors).
I really want to try that.
Panzeh
4634
The BCS games have infantry units not really having a combat value, just the ol’ OCS action-rating which is pretty important.
I’ve been meaning to try that series.i read the rulbook (not a deep read) and I liked what I saw. The 4 maps of Last Blitzkrieg made me wait for an smaller game, though.
Panzeh
4636
Both of the games have huge maps, unfortunately, though some of the Last Blitzkrieg’s scenarios only use one. Baptism by Fire has far fewer units, but the map’s still the same size.
I am really hankering to play Tunisia II (OCS). Does Baptism cover the whole Campaign or just Kasserine?
Panzeh
4638
Baptism is just Kasserine. BCS isn’t really made for something with the scope of Tunisia II.
Start date? Feb 12? Or do they give you lead up time?
Panzeh
4640
Feb 14-23 is the date range. Starts with the attack on CCA/1Arm.
Brooski
4641
Korea: Fire and Ice. It is full of errata.
Nice one again, you are truly a master at finding them.
Again, I wasn’t arguing for any method to be superior, yet different in qualitative and quantitative ways. So I wasn’t whipping any dead animals, at least consciously! :)
This, I think, is often a point made about games that assume a player is situated in a concrete role in the game, be that supreme commander, army commander, corps commander et seq. In wargames one isn’t really any echelon of commander, but the controller of forces at all levels. In WitE, the standard unit is the division, which remained since WWI the basic brick of all theater strategy. It was uniform enough across different nationalities, and had consistent meaning while larger formations could vary a lot individually thus reducing comparability.
So in WitE the numbers are available on a division basis – yes too low for Hitler to consider, but not for the corps or army commander. If you’re wedded to a certain command formula then maybe you will be hung up over all this. But long time wargamers are used to playing battles and campaigns at all levels and using divisions makes a lot of sense for the scale and the detail desired. In point of fact, I have never attempted a full East Front scenario in the game, having worked my way up to the AGC scenario and then setting the game aside for an unrelated reason. (I’m actually now awaiting WitE2 which greatly enhances the fidelity of the sim from what I can tell – Instabuy.)
I can’t provide the answer to that Juan - only my best guess from years of interacting with these guys directly and indirectly. In my opinion, the design philosphy is the following:
Here you have all this data (i.e. the rather massive databases compiled by Jim Wirth and many others after him), this map (which even if imperfect, it was quite detailed for its day), and this simulation of weather, air and ground combat. Both the data and the models are sincere efforts at representing the state of the art in historical research and our understanding of war and the factors that influence combat operations.
Go and play (tweaking the data to your hearts content) to find the answers to the following questions:
- Would it have made a difference if Germany was strategically fixated on the Soviet Union rather than dispersing effort all over the place?
- Was possible for the German Army to reach Moscow and survive the first winter?
- How important was the disaster at Kiev? To what degree the defence of the Soviet Union was imbalanced by that?
- Was possible for the Wehrmacht to destroy the Red Army? How does one exactly destroy an enemy army in the industrial era?
- What are the chances of the Soviet Union stopping the Wehrmacht well before their reach their historical frontlines?
- What are the chances of Germany stalemating the Red Army in 1944?
- etc.
So I would say that the “thesis” - epsitemic commitments - in WITE lie in the accuracy of the models and the consistency of the data. Both things can be proved wrong, and 2by3 have shown with WITW (and soon with WITE2) that you can evolve the systems to correct aberrations, or improve fidelity of the weather system (which is a huge thing that almost nobody pays attention to). Hypothesis can and need to be revised, as one uncovers hidden inconsistencies applying the human intellect onto the simulation.
Also, as the games evolve, more liberty is granted to players to explore more counterfactuals at the strategic level (like deploying thin on the West for a time and mimicking the waltzing that the German high command conducted during WW1 to great effect), simulating to some degree ideological and political aspects of the conflict (with flexible, reactive VP scoring and other stuff I can’t talk about), etc. I would certainly like that WITE2 allowed us to shut off Lend & Lease or have a Red Army organised a la Tukhachevsky (or at least as it was in early 1940) too.
I vigorously argue that the design philosophy above, which is mostly agnostic on the ultimate outcomes of the game is a valuable and interesting thing. Incidentally, providing a “one shop stop” for all of the above is not easy to do with other mediums. Is that a sign of “superiority”? Define “superiority” :)
