Subject: Re: Peloponnesian War
From: lindert@zombie.sara.nl (Rick te Lindert)

|> >In the Campaign scenario I played Athens in the first two turns, doing fairly
|> >well, and therefore had to switch sides. Sparta's bellicosity had meanwhile
|> >become very low. All I had to do was play *badly* as Sparta, reducing its
|> >bellicosity to zero, resulting in Sparta's submission by the end of turn 3.
|> >Having managed to avoid a long lasting struggle and having gathered sufficient
|> >victory points in the three turns, I could call myself a winner.
|> >
|> >All in all, IMHO, I cannot recommend the game. I can see that a great lot
|> >of effort has gone into designing and developing the game (my compliments!),
|> >but must assume that playtesting was reduced to a minimum.
|> 
|> Perhaps you are not supposed to play badly?  I should think that's the whole
|> point... (I don't know the game, but what you did strikes me as very much
|> a "cop-out".  What are the victory conditions?  How can you win overall by
|> committing suicide with Sparta?)
|> 
|> What about the two-player variant?  I would like to hear more about this,
|> because the positive postings so far have made me contemplate buying the
|> game...
|> -- 
|> Chris Camfield (ccamfiel@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca)
|> "There's silence and there's blindness in a raging world,
|>  But the healer in your heart is only a moment away."
|>   (Runrig, "Healer In Your Heart")

The object of PW is to gather many victory points, but the longer the game
(i.e., the war) lasts, the more difficult it is to succeed.
After "and I could call myself a winner" I should have added "And did I feel
pleased? No." In fact I did not have to play very badly to win :-), because
in PW much is governed by the die and by tables, esp. in the solitaire
variant. Far too much, in my opinion. And then there are these special rules
and exceptions: it is not that these make the game complex, but they hamper
playability, or are not much to the point.
The two-player version is an improvement, but not substantially.
With high hopes I bought The General special on PW, which contains, among
other articles, a game replay and a listing of errata and questions. The
game replay contains quite a number of mistakes, and the errata listing is
not very helpful. The weirdest thing is that "Q: Can Naupactus be used for
Shortest Legal Route calculation? A: No." is listed under 'Questions' whereas
this essential piece of information clearly should have been listed under
'Errata'.
But let me comment on the game from a different point of view. As a
simulation of history, PW is great! Thus, it would be unwise for Athens to
sail to Sicily (in the game they probably won't be annihilated, but the
Athenians will have a hard time without hope of much success). So the Sicily
map area stays unused. The best, but not very attractive, strategy for both
Athenians and Spartans is to deal out pinpricks: loot a city here, occupy a
town there, and hope that the opponent will not be able to retaliate
efficiently. Both sides are very well balanced out, despite the differences.
All of which, ultimately, results in the game being far from dynamic (I don't
imply it is boring, just that it is lacking something).

Again I have to stress that I have to remain vague as I haven't played PW
for a time, but I hope I have been able to clarify my objections about the
game (oops, I've probably never referred so often to the first person singular
in one sentence, sorry :-)
-- 
Rick te Lindert (lindert@sara.nl)
"Our world was once green" (Runrig)