|
Anthropoid -> RE: What a Fantastic Game (12/15/2007 5:23:23 PM)
|
I'm not a big CW buff really, just more of a general strategy gamer grognard I guess. So I don't know all the battlefields, generals, etc, and never been to a single battlefield that I can recall. Nonetheless, playing with CWGII, one of the interesting things that I learned was how important the SPECIFIC lay of the land for most CW battles was in real life. This is a more specific example of the general principle that: for tactics, proper deployment relative to terrain can be a huge force multiplier. I'm not particularly critical of the random tactical map generation approach, because in general it does still embody the basic principle that terrain is a critical element in tactics. Moreover, I recognize the pragmatic design, and production issues underlying it, and overall I think it is a brilliant approach for making the game work.
But I do think it is worth considering how, if at all, pre-made maps might be interwoven into FOF to augment it even further.
This raises some interesting issues about which I do not exactly know the answers. Specifically, why did battles tend to occur where they did?
My guess is that it tended to vary from battle to battle, and perhaps from 'province' to province. I'd hazard the guess that, battles in the West tended to be more opportunistic and had more to do with timing in general. Battles in the East may well have had more to do with taking and holding specific chunks of land where semi-permanent strategic deployments had more long-term value.
There are probably other reasons but this makes me think there are at least two reasons why battles happened where they did: (a) one combatant was afforded an opportunity to 'force' a contest in a particular location, which did not in and of itself offer any particularly important strategic benefits for taking and holding; (b) a particular piece of ground was worth fighting over because having it had more ongoing strategic potential.
Not knowing CW history in detail, I'm in no position to think about how some battlefields might be more reflective of (a) vs. (b), but just as an example to get the mental juices flowing for others: would Shiloh be more of an example of (a), and Chancellorsville more of an example of (b).
In an ideal world (which is probably totally untenable), it would be VERY cool to have something akin to the googleEarth data for the eastern-half of North America (or at least that tiny[?] fraction of it where battles can/could happen: meaning, obviously large fractions of the appalachians, lakes, wetlands, rivers, etc., are simply not tenable for significant CW style battles to occur) digitized into hex maps. Then maybe somehow the 19th century infrastructure network could be overlain on that, and the engine could actually keep track of where on the strategic map forces were sitting/moving (though the player would not be able to specify this, and how it occurred would be determined by the algorithms as a function of leader and container characteristics). Then where battles COULD occur in the case of both (a) and (b) would refelct these ongoing strategic situations.
I realize that that is probably not tenable, but thinking in those terms might help to sort of define the spatial bottlenecks and such where it is perhaps worthwhile thinking of creating the detailed maps.
|
|
|
|
