The first sign you should not review wargames is...

Wargames get next to no respect. Even when they do get reviewed, they are either given vague reviews and middling "play it safe" scores or they are completely mangled by people who show neither the time nor patience to figure out what the hell is going on.

But if you name your site Strategy Informer, you should have some credibility on wargames, right? Well, maybe. But then you write something like this:

"The game will not make itself obvious, instead you will be required to decipher cryptic symbols long before you even get close to engaging the enemy. Some of your units look like little tanks in boxes, others look like ovals inside boxes. I personally find it laughable that a unit is represented by an oval. This is the new millennium, we can scan electronic code into living cells, surely game developers can come up with something more intuitive for a unit than an oval."

They are called NATO symbols, dingus. Armor is traditionally represented by an oval in a box. People who understand wargames know that you don't always use a picture of a tank.

The wargame being reviewed here is ProSim's Star and Crescent. Which does use pictures of tanks when you zoom in very closely. But for the most part it relies on the old wargaming symbols that have always been in use in wargames.

There are many legitimate complaints that can be made about Star and Crescent. Some of them are in this review by Alex Jeffreys. But to criticize a wargame because it uses icons that have been in place in games and war maps for decades is beyond madness. It's a sign that you are really out of your depth.

Interesting news from Computer Gaming World

This thread on my favorite gaming discussion forum contains the announcement from CGW Editor Jeff Green that the April CGW will not have star ratings for the games being reviewed. And no, it doesn't appear to be an April Fool's joke. Though I wouldn't be surprised.

Assuming this isn't some elaborate joke, Green says that one of the motivating factors was the number of PR calls about the scores that a recently reviewed game had received, but this way out of those calls is not likely to be very popular with that audience.

I understand the appeal of the no-rating review. As a writer, I'd like to think that my words are more important than the numerical tag I append - usually at the very end of a writing session. For all the pretended accuracy of PCGamer's hundred point scale, I find it very hard to put a number to a feeling that a game gives me. Even a mostly good one will often have enough wrong with it to push it down to a three star ("good") score, though the negatives are what will stick with the reader longer. So why not just leave it all up to nuance and text? The few reviews I have on this site are not scored, and I have no intention of doing so. Is there anything positive to said about ratings?

For one thing, print reviews are often very brief. Brief is fine for very good games. Brief is perfect for very bad games. But brief does not do nuance well. A hundred words of "a little bit this and a little bit that" usually comes of sounding wishy-washy. But if you hit only the stuff you like about a game, the text will come off sounding more laudatory than you really feel about a game. Likewise with the negative. Just as the text gives the numbers context, so the numbers can give very brief text numbers.

Second, I don't read everything. I can't. (Well, I can in a magazine, I suppose. But I usually don't.) And if the game is in a genre that I don't have a lot of knowledge about or interest in, the five or four star scores are bright, neon lights saying "Look at me, stupid!" If the reviewed title is an obscure casual game, it's even more important to draw me in with an eye-catching score.

If this is a genuine experiment, I'm all in favor of it. On balance, I prefer text to scores, especially in an enthusiast press that has such a wide range of reviewing systems and ideas of what an average score is. Anything that encourages readers to actually read is a step forward. But it's not all positives. And I think that Green's readers will be a little shocked.

GalCiv 2 pre/post mortem

4x strategy megasite Apolyton is running a trilogy of articles from Stardock's Brad Wardell about Galactic Civilizations II. I'm going to reserve comment on the game itself until my review hits print, but the second essay by Wardell is a must read for anyone interested in how game designers think.

First, who would have thought that the graphics engine for Political Machine would be useful for GalCiv 2? The two games look nothing alike. In fact, I wasn't sure that Political Machine was 3D to begin with. It does go to show that a lot of stuff that happens under the hood is more important to how designers and developers produce their work than the surface appearance would have we code-phobic gamers would like to think. I mean, you can look at American Conquest and Alexander and see that they are related. But it's not easy to see how the new and improved Dregin are descended from a cartoon John Kerry. This sort of insight is what separates those who play from those who create.

The most interesting bit of part two is the opening section on how Master of Orion III forced Stardock to change the original GalCiv. Features were cut because they were confident that MOO3's bigger budget meant that Quicksilver would do a more thorough job with them. So, to avoid direct comparions, GalCiv was scaled back. And then MOO3 was released to a hungry world as one of the great letdowns in gaming history.

The summary itself makes for one great designer's note of the sort that I eulogized here not so long ago. Wardell has always been one of the more accessible and outspoken indie developers - a shameless self-promoter, too, and I mean that in a good way, believe me. His success has allowed him to go out on more limbs, of course, but I think many game developers could be a lot more open about the process of designing and releasing a game. It's all part of the PR exercise that all indies need to do to get word out about their games. Introversion and Stardock are two of the best at building enthusiasm for their games through accessibility, self-promotion and word of mouth. Which is part of why GalCiv2 is going to get major coverage and other indie games are not. Yeah, Wardell has a bigger budget now, but he didn't have a ton of development and marketing money when his small team released the original GalCiv and you'll find that his media strategy hasn't changed that much.

Back to GalCiv 2 for now. The Korx are being a bit of a nuisance.

Europa Universalis III

I know that the dismal Diplomacy means that I shouldn't get too excited about Europa Universalis III. The fact that they plan to use some of the stuff from the ambitious kluge Victoria should give me even more pause.

Add that they are cutting the number of years by at least thirty - now starting in 1453 instead of 1419 - and all of us who like to have more, more, more should go over to the Paradox forums and rant for a while.

And many will.

Not me though. This is great news. Europa Universalis II is as close as you can get to a perfect strategy game not designed by Sid Meier or one of his disciples. It has a lot going on at any one time, but it only takes a little practice to realize that not everything needs to be done immediately. Fighting, diplomacy, exploration...it's got the works.

So a sequel is always welcome news. EU is Paradox's marquee title, the one that made their name synonymous with deep historical strategy game. I can't resist the urge to buy another one.

The decision to start the game after the fall of Constantinople is a sensible one. Though I love the Grand Campaign of EU2, the weak starting positions of France, the Ottomans and the future Mughal Empire (the Timurids) meant that much of the world we know never took shape. 1453 gives people a familiar starting point without plopping you immediately in the rush for colonies that a 1492 start would (at least from a European perspective).

No release date yet, though serious beta testing begins this summer, and there is nothing but concept art to work from so far.

The joys of ceding power

Some of my favorite games are those that don't let me control everything.

This may sound a little odd coming from as devoted a devotee of the god-game as I am. The whole god game idea suggests that some benign (or malicious) intervention from the player can set things aright. The player sets the agenda, builds the empire, raises the cash and kills the foe. Most games, in fact, leave all important decisions to the player. Leveling up a character, choosing a weapon, opening a door, picking a starting pitcher...not a lot of stuff is put out of your reach.

There is a risk in not giving the player complete control. What if those factors out of his/her reach seem arbitrary or unfair? What if even truly random events make the player feel he/she is being punished for trying something creative?

Soren Johnson's Civ IV afterword mentions that the early religion mechanic was designed to have the various faiths travel along the trade routes from city to city - much as they did historically. Christianity travelled the Mediterranean and Silk Roads, Muslim traders exported their beliefs across the Indian Ocean, Buddhism and Hinduism led to a number of syncretic faiths wherever they met. The problem with this design decision was that unless you let players control the trade routes - a micromanaging nuisance in Civ II - they couldn't control the spread of their faiths. So, missionary units were introduced. Player control won out.

Even when games go through the trouble of developing complicated AI preferences, they often default to player control. Supreme Ruler 2010 gave the player a cabinet to help make decisions. They would even override some of your decisions if they didn't match the AI's ideological profile. If you raised taxes but had a conservative finance minister, you might find that he has fiddled with the sliders. Great idea. The problem, of course, is that there were so many menus that you might not even notice. Add that domestic policy is a pretty important component of your larger strategy and you can see why most players clicked a box that said "do not override my desires, people". The mere inclusion of such a choice made the painstaking work in programming this code superfluous.

Now take a look at Take Command : Bull Run 1861. This is a civil war battle game that sort of looks like Manassas: Total War. You control the troops and tell them what to do. But the beauty of the design is that the game is much more fun when you don't control the entire army, but only a brigade or a division. It is much more satisfying to be a smaller fish, command your men and then see the entire battle develop around you. Once again, the option to control everything is there, but the design pushes you down to ground level.

Probably the best example of the tension between tight and loose reins is The Sims. Sure, the entire game is based on your bossing around a cartoon game who speaks gibberish, but the game limits you to controlling one Sim at a time. So while you tell Mama Bear to get the porridge ready, Papa Bear is out in the yard seducing Goldilocks Goth. If you turn "free will" off altogether, the game loses much of what makes it a magical title. Juggling a family, keeping them mindful of their priorities, raising the kids...all are too easy if they just do what they are told all the time. The Sims is all about recognizing the limits of player power.

Recognizing these limits is something that gamers used to accept more readily. The business cycles in the original SimCity were very basic and mostly immune to player influence - especially at the early stages of the game. SimEarth, SimAnt and a host of other Maxis games were more about making an environment for things to work in than giving those things orders to fill. Similarly, Populous was about building a setting for your Holy War - but you never controlled the soldiers.

In his epic alternate analysis of what went wrong with Master of Orion III, Bruce Geryk suggests a government management system where the virtual viceroys that run your planets would have good and compelling reasons to ignore your orders. A planet that makes a lot of money on interstellar tourism might balk at being told to shift into war economy mode. I think Geryk envisions some sort of pop-up that would tell you that Zarquon 5 has refused to fulfill your orders because of some reason and then you would have to decide whether it was worth your trouble to fire Zarquon's governor.

I think this would have been an interesting, if ultimately disastrous, design decision; not because it is a bad idea, but because I don't think most gamers would have appreciated Chancellor Spiff carving out his own agenda.

Computers today allow the player to control more. Interfaces have steadily gotten better and more intuitive (AoE 3's monster UI excepted), processing power has increased exponentially, and better graphics resolution means you can fit more words, numbers and flashing icons on the screen. Because the player is able to control more, most players and designers think that they should. So, soldiers in Rome: Total War will instantly fall back in line if you think they are going after the wrong target. Superpower 2 lets you set every social policy for your government no matter how negligible the effect is. There are never communications failures in wargames. Troops that show initiative are inevitably told to stand down. The player is the game.

Note that I am not adovcating for a game that plays itself. That would be pointless. Like MOO3. I do think that strategy games work well when the player is constrained in his/her possibilities. You can do this in a boardgame way by simply allowing a certain number of "moves" or "actions", but this can only work in a turn-based environment. But what good is telling me that my Gauls are "impetuous warriors!" if I can restrain that bloodlust with a mouse click? Maybe "impetuous" is now a fancy word for "takes orders well."

In many ways, the game philosophy of limited power is an analog to the fact that governments and generals don't control everything. Even the term god game is a little silly, since I have doubts that God himself is controlling everything down here - and if he is, I may have some complaints to register. As great as games are at making you feel like a deity, they can also remind us of the everyday constraints that even the greatest minds and powers in the world have had to confront. Interesting decisions aren't just about outcomes; interesting decisions are often about how you deal with stuff beyond your immediate control.

Hands On Preview - Birth of America

(Full disclosure: After conducting this interview with game developer Philippe Thibaut, I was approached to proofread and edit the English language manual for Birth of America. There was no financial compensation for this, nor was any expected.)

At first glance, Birth of America is nothing at all like either of Thibaut's other PC games. Where both Pax Romana and Great Invasions were overwhelming in the amount of things you can do, BoA isn't. Here you only have a war to fight. You raise armies, you kill armies, you win (or squelch) independence.

So this is more of a war game than a strategy game. You don't build armies, they arrive as reinforcements. You build forts, but not cities. You don't worry about your economy since you don't have one. So, this is as pure a war game as you can imagine.

The preview build enclosed four brief scenarios and a tutorial with quite short time limits. No full campaign mode was available. The tutorial seemed to move along whether I followed instructions correctly or not - something that I hope got cleaned up in the gold release. The scenario objectives are noted on the map with stars, which is good because there are a lot of cities to look for.

Fortunately, the game is pretty intuitive. It uses a grab and drop interface to make moving your armies a piece of cake. The various map modes allow you to quickly get the larger strategic sense of things.

The map itself is huge. The American colonies are divided into a number of quite small bits with even tiny states being made up of multiple territories. The terrain is very clearly marked out - probably the most efficient use of scraggly trees and bumps on a game in some time.

So how does it play? Quickly. The scenarios available are pretty short - one starts in 1759 with Wolfe's army already on ship and on its way to Quebec - but give a sense of game that will require careful movement of your troops. You need to know the quickest routes to your own vulnerable cities as well as the roads to your targets. Supply issues can become very serious in the winter and it appears that commander skill matters, though it is unclear to what extent.

The game is very stable - much more than either of Thibaut's ancient themed games. I experienced zero crashes, and the only technical problem was some slow scrolling over the map in some modes.

Birth of America has gone gold and should be available from AgeOD by the end of the month.

Rise of Legends

Lots of new stuff on Rise of Legends is coming out. Gamespot has revealed that the third race is a stranded alien group called the Cuotl. (Their name is vaguely Meso-American, so it's kind of appropriate that they will have a Mayan theme.) March's CGM has a great preview written by Ben Sones that goes into a lot of detail about the game with quite a few nifty screenshots as well.

Usually, aliens turn me off. But I sort of like what Big Huge Games is doing with the Cuotl. Asimov said that really advanced technology is nearly indistinguishable from magic and that's the theme they are going with. A few aliens with advanced tech crash land on a planet and help provoke a war between the forces of magic (the Arabian Nights themed Alin) and the forces of science (the Renaissance steampunk themed Vinci). The Cutol themselves are few, so they rely on human soldiers to support their own very expensive but very powerful weapons of war.

I have to say that I am getting more excited about Rise of Legends with every story. BHG took a risk by deciding not to just do Rise of Nations II - yet another historical RTS with pikes and horsies and tanks at the end. The whole "Rise of..." name is enough to twig people to the fact that this is a sequel of a sort, or at least is from the same people. But by trying to give gamers a completely new setting, they set themselves up for a sort of failure.

Face it. People like staying in their comfort zones. And most strategy gamers have little time for a new backstory. Magic needs elves and wizards, right? And flying machines should be airplanes, or at least orc built zeppelins. A Mid East motif coupled with lumbering mechanical doo-hickeys is a recipe for cognitive dissonance. Some people might reject Rise of Legends based on the look alone. Don't laugh - I know of people who refused to buy Civ 4 because it went 3D.

I'm ready though. After Galactic Civilizations II, Rise of Legends will be the second must-have strategy game of 2006.

Legion Arena

My print magazine of choice (and sometime publisher) Computer Games Magazine is now available on Zinio. You can get a free peek at this month's issue here.

The print version of March's CGM also has my review of Slitherine's Legion Arena.

As the reviews of Legion Arena trickled in, I began to wonder if I was missing something. Aside from the mostly unreadable review over at Digital Entertainment News ("desari"? What the hell is that?) a great preponderance of the reviews were very positive about the game. Even the 6.9 that Gamespot's Jason Ocampo gave it was couched in pretty affectionate terms even if the score wasn't at that magic seven point - it still ended up being "fair".

Fair is about right. I deemed it average. As does PCGamer's Matt Peckham who rode to my reputational rescue with a nice 55/100 score.

Still, the critical mass of opinion seems to like Legion Arena more than I do and for the life of me I can't see why. If you are going to give me only two armies, give me a skirmish mode. Maybe this is just a matter of taste though.

Then I found a reason to dislike Legion Arena even more.

The manual lied to me.

Twice.

First, the manual promises an editor that doesn't exist. In the description of the "Options" it says:

Design: Lets you design a scenario for another player to challenge.

Nope. Not there. No design button. Not that it would matter, because there are only two armies.

Which brings me to the introduction by Simon Scarrow. I wrote earlier about afterwords and designers' notes. I should write something else about celebrity introductions. Scarrow is an author of historical fiction on ancient Rome, and so is good candidate for this sort of thing. But it is immediately clear that he hasn't spent much time with Legion Arena. He writes:

Better still, we can play out some of the most intriguing 'what-if?' scenarios by pitching Hannibal's veterans against the warriors of Britain. Or could a more adept handling of the Greek phalanxes have reversed the course of history by defeating the Roman legion? It's a fascinating prospect, and one you can experiment with thanks to Legion: Arena

No. You can't. You only encounter Hannibal's armies in the Roman campaign and you never get to control them. The Greek phalanxes you see are just generic spearmen, and, once again, beyond your control. There is no alternate history to explore since the campaigns for both sides force you along an historical path.

You can, however, do all of this stuff in Rome: Total War. You could do it Great Battles of History. Even Encyclopedia of War: Ancient Battles. But most certainly not in Legion: Arena.

The true shame is that the game itself shows quite a bit of skill on the part of artists and designers, but it's almost as if they stopped halfway through. Originally intended to be the debut of the engine for Slitherine's next grand strategy game, those plans were put aside when the English wargaming company realized how expensive that would ultimately be.

Though they've yet to design a game that really thrills me, I always hold out hope for Slitherine. Maybe I should stop.