From: Ken Rutsky Subject: Re: The Operational Art of War Mike Mnich wrote: > How do you like Talonsoft's computer game, the Operational Art of War as > a > computer/boardgame cross? How effectively do you think it can portray > battles (as > compared to most board games)? A warning: I haven't played this in months and things may have changed a bit; please let me know! I'd like to see it succeed. The game plays smoothly, and has a great boardgame _feel_. The interface, while not intuitive, isn't really that complicated. If you've played other games by Norm Koger, you will understand the logic behind it all a little easier. Boardgamers should give his games a try; while not always to my taste, his roots are easy to trace. It's IGO-UGO, hex-based, with so-so graphics in the 3-d mode, but really nice 2-d graphics; you get really nice, multicolored counters, which you can set to NATO symbology...if only I had a three-foot square flat screen and was able to play the game face to face that way...! Suffice to say that graphically, the game has high marks. The units themselves are pretty complex. You get a pretty traditional strength-movement display, but these are only approximations; I guess the game tracks numbers out to zillions of decimal places, so two units of strength 1 may be vastly different. Their statistics are derived from their composition, tracked to individual squads, teams, and vehicles. Units are assigned stances, which can be Defend, Local Reserve, Tactical Reserve, Mobile, Attack and Limited Attack. Reserves are neatly handled in the game. Units in tactical reserve will move to support a friendly unit being attacked in an adjacent location. Local reserves will move to support a friendly unit being attacked anywhere in a location within their remaining movement point allowance. Units assigned reserve orders are "quick reaction" forces; it is a good idea to keep reserves with Defend orders which are under your control during your turn. Moving and attacking are as simple as point and click. As you drag the cursor, you get an arrow (which can, of course, be set to transparent or opaque, floating or not) indicating the movement path with a numeral indicating the movement point cost of your projected move. Pretty neat touch. Movement has a couple complications. Enemy air units assigned interdiction missions can make sudden attacks. Your units will tire and lose effectiveness. And, if you try to move out of (and even within) an enemy unit's ZOC, you have to successfully disengage that unit, which is extremely difficult if your unit is alone in its hex. The key, in situations like this, is to break down the unit into its component battalions, regiments or divisions, depending on the scale of the game you are playing, and withdraw them individually (smaller units have an easier time slipping away, I think). This was a pretty controversial feature, which I rather liked in its toned-down form in the early patches; the later patches toned it down even more, which I don't like as much. You face a number of decisions; if one of your breakdown units fail to disengage, it will be vaporized and you will be left with a couple of very weak subunits...on the other hand, you can roll the dice and hope that you can get that whole unit out of there without leaving a rearguard. A big downside is that units which have been split up and later recombine will take a proficiency loss regardless of casualties. The game factors interlocking ZOCs, unit facings, terrain and weather into it all, too. There are some problems with the movement routines; the add one truck and get 50 MP thing was fixed. I think it has to do with changing the time frame of a turn in a scenario and getting numbers that didn't jive, even when the time frame was shifted just a little. Nothing fatal. Combats are planned on a battle screen (really just an enlarged seven-hex cluster) during movement, where you can commit units in hexes adjacent to the one being attacked, as well as artillery and air units in range. The number of factors affecting combat odds calculations, we are told, are beyond mere human comprehension. There are some pretty lax unit cooperation rules; units of the same background color can freely cooperate with one another, which sounds fine, but it limits command and control effects in large scale scenarios because the color palette is limited. The catch with combat, is that when you click the "resolve battles" button, you advance the clock within your turn. Each turn is divided into a number of segments; the number of actions you have taken so far, along with the "complexity" of the battles you have planned (number of units involved), will determine how many segments you advance the clock. With time and acquired skill, you can achieve three, sometimes four, attacks in a single turn. You are never given an estimate of how much time you will be using, you only know after clicking that button, which can be frustrating at times. The major flaw in the game, and the major reason it only resides for short periods on the hard drive, is supply. The most important consideration in operational planning, and it received the extremely short end of the stick in the design and development arena. Admittedly, the latest patch improves supply; I think terrain affects radii and so on, but units suffer little when completely surrounded. The rules might as well have not been there. Other things: there's the event engine, which is great. Events outside your theater of operations, events triggered by your actions in your theater of operations, and even random stuff, can happen. In Korea '51, for example, the Soviet Union can become involved and launch nukes and then NATO would launch nukes...Some events which are triggered by your actions might trigger other events, prevent others from happening. It can get quite complex, and this is a nice feature of the game. Air units can be assigned Air Superiority, Interdiction, and Combat Support stances. Superiority and Interdiction are handled as generic strength point pools; the range and location of the units involved don't seem to have an effect; the effects are applied theaterwide, which doesn't seem right. Combat Support is handled adequately, assigned to battles when planning. Oh, yeah, there's also an expanded version of TOAW for those with massive amounts of memory which allows for a huge number of units on each side and something like 300x300 hex maps. And let's not forget the editor, very powerful but inelegant. Overall, the game is a mixed bag. Some absolutely great ideas mixed with half-baked and underdeveloped systems. I think boardgames do the supply thing better (even Russian Campaign!); the almost nonexistant penalty for being out of supply makes it impossible to depict North Africa and the Eastern Front. User-made scenarios exist for the game covering these theaters, but it is impossible to recreate the historical movements because of the lack of concern about supply. Few boardgames I have ever played (even Tactics II) suffered from a generic feel; there was always something about them. This happens when I play TOAW. Maybe it's the limitations of a generic construction set computer program when it comes to assigning victory objectives, but the scenarios lack personality, despite the event engine. Maybe it's a case of the designer trying to tackle too much. For computer games, it's the only one of its type, with regard to scope and the ability to create new scenarios from the ground up, and really not that bad, just not that great. Maybe with a supply system like that used in the superior titles in the World at War series (worth tracking down for cheap at stores...old AH games that have GREAT boardgame feel; look for Operation Crusader and Stalingrad especially), where you can allocate supply in different levels to different parts of the front, building for an attack, while stripping another sector bare, this would be a truly great game. And no saying that tracking supply is too tedious; the computer makes this all so easy! If you really want a computer game with a board game feel, also try tracking down Ardennes Offensive from SSI/SSG. Fantastic, the best operational computer game, hands-down. And it accomplishes this with a lot of abstraction (three-step units, six-sided die rolls for combat), but so much more depth. Before this wanders off, I'll wrap up. From a practical point of view, for the price of half of a really great boardgame, you'll have the ability to play a limitless number of okay ones. Is the trade-off really worth that much? Ken Rutsky -- "The opinion of most of the musicians I have met is that the music business sucks. This is because the music business sucks." -Robert Fripp