Subject: Crisis review and after-action report From: arseno@phy.ulaval.ca (Henri H. Arsenault) I played Crisis73 (it means version 0.73 of Crisis) last night for six hours, and it was a blast. For those who don't know, Crisis is a free beta wargame that can be downloaded from the web at an address that was given in another Crisis thread here. The game has an 85-page manual and an 8-page tutorial, and it is a fairly complex game. The game might be called "Road to Moscow Light", because it has some of the HQ features of that game, but it is quite different. You can get a flavor of the game by the following report. I chose the modern scenario,intending only to look at it and then to try the simpler one first, but I got engrossed and couldn't stop. In this scenario, there is a large river that cuts across the map roughly from NE to SW; North of the river are the Blue forces (which I chose) and to the South are the Red forces. There are three bridges across the river, and it can be crossed by infantry in art least one other spot. The Blue forces are initially stronger, but the Red forces have a much higher production capability, so if the blue forces do not capture enough Red cities early enough, they will eventually lose as they become outproduced. The game is characterized by the importance of supplies, HQ units and of maneuver. Supplies and production of new units come from cities, but supply lines have a limited range (about 30 miles); supply lines can be extended by means of supply units, which have the same range, but which are extremely vulnerable (especially to air attacks), having a combat strength of zero. The first thing I did was to create three HQ units subordinate to Supreme HQ (if the latter is lost, the game is lost too), one for the forces near each of the bridges. HQ1, HQ2 and HQ3 controlled the forces near the bridges 1,2, and 3, counting from the top right (NE) down to the bottom left (SW). I attached the largest force to HQ2, and decided to use the other 2 for feinting purposes, planning to concentrate my main attack on Bridge #2, because there were 2 enemy cities near Bridge2, along with a lot of open space to maneuver, recon showed that the area was lightly defended, and a road heading S from Bridge2 pointed towards the enemy capital like a knife to the heart, whereas the two other possible Schwerpunkts would be rather constricted after I crossed the river, and I would have a long row to hoe through rough terrain if I started from one of the two ends. One turn is 12 hours, so every other turn is a night turn. I tried to move the units towards Bridge #2 without being spotted, stopping in forests whenever I could. In the meantime my air force did recon flights and supported the two feints on the wings. At bridge # 1 on the right, my forces were hardly enough to dent the enemy (forces of 3/1 are generally required for a successful attack), but my offensive there did draw some enemy units in that direction. Same thing at Bridge #3, where my force was somewhat stronger, but hardly enough to accompoish much. When I finally got my main force near bridge #2 in the center, I attached most of my air force to HQ2 and launched my offensive. A nice feature of this game is that you can give orders to a HQ, and the units under that HQ will carry them out; orders include move, attack, reserve, hold, screen, and a few others.I decided to play the whole game by giving orders only to the HQ units, in order to see how well this worked - and it worked pretty well. You can tell an attack order to attack the center or either flank, and the units will act in accordance (occasionally doing strange movements...). You can tell a HQ to hold a line, and rpoint out both ends of the line, and the HQ will distribute the available units as it deems appropriate, including reserve and intelligence units.It may warn you if it doesn't have enough forces to hold the line. At first, my attack on Bridge2 was repulsed, and the red Army sent more units there to support the defense, fatally weakening the defense of Bridge3. So I managed to cross the river there and to take a nearby city, which resulted in the AI in sending more troops there, weakening in turn the defense of bridge 2. Since I was obviously not going to make any headway near bridge1, I posted a single unit in a nearby fortress there and sent the rest of HQ3 and its units to the SW halfway to Bridge2, where there was a ford in the river. Most of my units were beyond the supply range of most of my cities, so I had to post supply units along the roads to bring in supplies. A bit later, some cities were supporting too many units and began to run short of supplies, so I had to transfer supplies from the Capital and other cities to avoid starving the population. Eventually Force2 (under HQ2) DID break through at bridge2, and deployed to battle against the battered Red forces protecting the nearby airport and cities. As that battle began, Force1 crossed the river behind them and began to harrass their rear area. I gave a right flank attack order to Force2, which resulted in practically surrounding the Red forces near Bridge 2, and destroying a few of their supply units. Units can fight for a while without supplies, but except for "Special" units (in practice guerilla units, who can get supplies from enemy-occupied friendly cities), their efficiency drops along with the supplies. Oh yes, I forgot to mention that a unit has a strength, which depends on composition, but also on "quality" (untried, green, elite and so on) and on efficiency, which goes down as the unit is "used" for combat or movement. Units can recoup efficiency faster if they are put on reserve near a city, but that leaves them more vulnerable. They can also recoup (but more slowly) if they do nothing. The Reds spotted one of my supply units in the open on a road near HQ3 - I tried to keep supply units in forests whenever possible to keep them hidden), and pounded it with attack after attack from the air. Unfortunately for the Reds, an AA unit was stacked with the supply unit (I had not planned it that way, but it was a good idea), and the Reds lost one or two planes on each turn until they had exhausted their supply of airplanes. This practically gave me control of the air, which I used to my advantage (well, actually HQ2 used it, since HQ2 had most of the planes assigned to it, and I was giving general orders to HQ2 most of the time, which it was executing as it saw fit with the units under his command, including the use of air power). My offensive kept rolling, and I kept moving down the road from Bridge2 towards the enemy capital to the S, but there were a couple of cities to capture on the way. By the time I captured one of them, I was getting messages from the HQ that some units were worn out, and I had to put some of them, particularly the armor, into reserve so that they could recoup. In the meantime, I fought some indecisive battles to the SE of the bridge among the mountains. When I crossed the bridge I had inflicted casualties of about 2/1, but by now the ratio was approachjing 1/1, probably due to my attacking fresh Red units with exhausted units. Occasionally a new unit would appear in a city (I had set Supreme HQ to decide what to produce in each city, but the AI likes Air Recon units a bit much for my taste...); new units are untried, so I set them on reserve so that they could train a bit before going into action. At two turns per day, needless to say that training takes a long time. I played with the idea of giving HQ3 a couple more units and sending him to take Bridge1 from the Red side, with the strong infantry unit on the N side attacking from his side. But my tired HQ2 units were spread out along the N-S road below Bridge2, and I feared that a counterattack by the Reds might cut them off from the cities near the bridge. By now I had captured 5 of the 10 enemy cities (including one at the SW end left undefended and captured by an intelligence unit), which probably meant that I was now outproducing the Red Army and that time was on my side. While my exhausted units rested, the otherForce2 and Force1 units sparred with the Red units in the mountains, and the HQ3 units grabbed another city at the bottom of the map and sparred with a special unit that threatened to cut them off. I set some engineers to repair the broken bridges. Finally, after a few days, my units were somewhat fresh, so I launched a major offensive towards the enemy capital to the S. A REd special unit managed to get behind my Force2, so I had to call off the attack in order to neutralize him, thus wearing down my force2 some more. Since my intelligence and recon units had determined that there was no major enemy threat to the SW, I transferred some force3 fresh units to HQ2 and renewed my offensive towards the REd capital city. The Capital eventually fell, and again I had to withdraw some of my stronger units into the reserve in order to refit them. I was getting urgent messages from a couple of my cities to the effect that they were rapidly running out of supplies, and measures were taken to transfer food there. Cities have a maximum proportion of citizens that can be conscripted into the army, and I may be getting close to that limit. At this point, I have the enemy capital, but the Reds still have 4 cities, and a humongus 32-point armored division is sitting on one of them (most of my units are 1-10 points)! Now I have to decide whether to go after more cities, or to try to destroy the enemy Supreme HQ, which wins the game instantly. I hope that he is not sitting on that 32-point armored division. In sum, this is a very interesting game; units are very simple, but there are a variety of them: infantry, armored, armored infantry, intelligence, supply, fighters, air recon, bombers, air transports, ground transport, AA and radar. Each unit has combat points that depend not only onstrength (composition), but also on quality and on efficience, which in turn depends on supply and condition. And there is a map and scenario editor too! Maneuver and deception play a more important role than in most games, because of the vulnerability of supply and HQ units and because combined attacks on different flanks are much more effective than along a single direction.The map can be zoomed out for an overall view. What is lacking is a visual cue as to the status of a unit: the only way to see if it is tired (besides being warned) is to click on the unit and callup the "get info" screen. A little colored square a la TOAW to indicate efficiency levels will be necessary for large scenarios where it is not feasible to click on every unit in order to see its status. Because production refitting take a long time and training takes even longer, the player does not feel that he has to hurry, but can take the time to pause to lick his wounds and to regroup, when there is not much opportunity for exploitation. I would love to see a Barbarossa scenario for this game... The AI has a wekness that is almost universal (TOAW also had it until garrison units were added to cities in a patch): the AI tends to leave cities unprotected, and in a few cases, I could just march into the city without opposition. For enemy cities, maybe a proportion of the population could rise up to protect the city, like the Russians did in Moscow. But everything considered this has the makings of a great game; no fancy graphics, but a game that plays well, has great features of command and control never seen before, that plays well for battles ranging from the Civil War or before to modern times, and that is free! What more do you want? Download the game and see for yourself! Henri.