South Africa was either the first or second S&T game that had a full color map (came out summer '77), as opposed to the two color maps (blue and black on a slightly tinted white background). Interesting features are, 1- Black African "front-line state" units can either be out in the open - they "control" the hex - but they are easy to find and engage (and kill) too. Most of the time they go to ground, and are hard to detect and don't control their own hex for South African army movement purposes, but if you find them they can be attacked. All front-line state units had concealment factors, and the smaller the unit the harder to find, and all SA units had detection factors for finding them, and of course they all had combat and movement factors. I thought and still think this was a really interesting game mechanic that you don't often see, but in future US wars will likely become more and more important. We have enemies that are very hard to find, but easy to kill or capture if and when we do. 2- South African military was wayyy too expensive to maintain, so the first turn of the game the SA player has to demobilize much of his military. This makes his job harder. Of course, you can choose not demobilize, keep the military, if you are willing to put tax rates on the SA economy fairly high, which erodes your tax base as the white SAs vote with their feet (leave the country) and shrink the tax base to the point where the military truly becomes unaffordable. I really like this game and played it quite a few times in college, but it is really only a matter of time before SA collapses. ==== Gordon Clay Air Force Studies and Analysis/SAIC ==== -----Original Message----- From: David A. Vandenbroucke [mailto:davanden@Capaccess.org] Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2002 11:56 AM To: consim-l@halisp.net Subject: Re: [consim-l] South Africa? MHoyt@affiliatedhealth.org writes: >Just out of curiosity, can anybody tell us about this game? My memory is pretty hazy. It was an operational game that covered all of South Africa plus bits of neighboring countries. There was a mix of guerrilla and conventional warfare units. The SA side had to balance force structure against economic dislocation. The more taxes you raised to maintain your troops, the more likely bad things happened to the economy. The most unusual (I hesitate to say "unique") aspect of the game is that the rules explicitly stated that the South African side couldn't win. You just played until the insurgents succeeded. There were some scenarios (such as World War III) where that restriction didn't apply. --Dav davanden@capaccess.org