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John Hutton -> (10/27/2001 8:23:00 AM)
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Hi Marshall (and everyone else),
congratulations on some great posts. This is a big topic, and one that needs consideration from obsessive compulsives likes ourselves.
Two odd things of personal similarity: I too have an overly large collection of Napoleonic texts (with a naval slant - and a full collection of Patrick O’Brian novels), and I too would list EU and Shogun as my two favourite games at present (although I must admit that I love Steel Panthers, and have just had a phase of playing it).
Anyway, down to business.
BASIC CONCEPTIONS:
The fundamental starting block with the design of a Napoleonic game such as that mooted by Matrix is the focus of HOW it is to be played:
1) an individual with PC “at home” kind of game, with a good AI, and the additional potential to be played over the internet with others;
2) a game that is less satisfying as an individual player, but which has very good multi-player functions and is built around these functions.
If the former (which is where I assume most of the money would currently come from, given the state of game play at present), then there is no problem having a multi-levelled strategic and tactical game (aka., Shogun, with maps and an interface like EU, and with kick-ass design to make it all work). The individual can simply save games, come back to them when he wants, and enjoy a Grand Campaign of, say, 1796 to 1815, that takes 20-40 hours or so to get through.
[I would not like to guess how much time a full campaign of EU or STW actually takes to play (to work that out would simply commit me to the gym for the rest of my natural life as compensation).]
If the latter, though, a whole range of considerations come into play. For instance, is it really practical to have a tactical level game like STW within the strategic? Or is something more simplistic (an example of which I can’t think of - Colonization? perhaps) more practical? If the game is designed to be played on line, what mechanisms would exist for the players to leave a game at a certain point, and come back to it? Saving? Turn based perhaps, rather than semi real time. Could you have players take over each other for a bit (if allied), could you have the AI take over if necessary?
I don’t think we have ever seen a good strategic game designed with web-play environments principally in mind, so I would guess that this is not what Matrix would be planning.
The thing with the Napoleonic period in particular is that you are talking about at leave 3 to 5 players - GB, France, Austria, Russia, Prussia, then also Spain, Turkey, and Sweden perhaps. This is more difficult to cater to as well.
DESIGN RANTS:
These are some brief ideas on some of the matters raised so far:
1. Economy. Keep it simple, but take note of historical reality because the history provides really cool stuff to build into game mechanisms. EU is by far the best economic modelling of a computer game so far, so the designers should certainly take note.
Examples (although I might have to check some of these as my memory can be a bit shaky): the governments of the C18th to C19th got their revenue principally from land taxes, governmental monopolies (e.g., making soap!) and customs. England introduced the first ever income tax in the late 1790s, to raise money to fight the French. No other countries were brave enough (or had the internal infrastructure to do so) in the entire period. This made trade very important, and it was the growth in trade that provided GB with such a high revenue stream.
However, some countries (Austria for instance) maintained a mercantilist economic policy, and only traded internally. They believed that trade principally assisted enemy states and sapped the strength of the nation. They raised additional money by printing it - and suffered massive inflation. They also received massive loans from GB. However, it actually worked reasonably well for them because their recruitment system was more feudal.
France had a total aversion to borrowing money at all - but remained solvent through most of the wars. Napoleon, and the French economy in general, was assisted by a series of very good harvests between 1805 and 1808.
These could provide models that players, as the government, could chose to introduce - e.g. ‘free trade’ policy, ‘mercantilist’, new monopolies, new trading ventures, state-sponsored industrialisation.
2. Military. The historians mostly agree right now that France kicked ass principally because she had developed a corp and division structure that was much more flexible that her opposition. Warfare became a war of manoeuvre - Napoleon was able to delegate ‘corps’ to key marshals, who were then able to do creative things on the battlefield, etc., etc. Napoleon was, admittedly, very good at using the tools at hand.
It took until 1809 - 1812 for military reforms in Austria and Prussia to catch up, and it is only then that the allies were able to reply to the French military machine. Armies also got bigger, and somewhat more sluggish. The British never adopted corps, but their armies were small enough as to not really matter, and they had a much better system of supply which meant that a single body of troops could stay together along the same line of march (French armies spread out in central Europe because of the foraging problems, and the fact that the roads were crap).
This creates the potential for game mechanisms based on manoeuvre - and particular characteristics that nations can adopt, or reforms that can be developed, a kind of technology tree, but historically accurate. There were also innovations on the battlefield that helped: e.g., good light infantry, ‘order mixed’, getting rid of battalion guns, mixing cavalry supports into infantry divisions (e.g., divisional cavalry, rather than massed cavalry reserves), grand batteries, … the list is endless. Each ‘technology’ could be given various advantages, or disadvantages.
Actually, I better stop ranting now, and make better use of my Saturday - playing games, that is.
Things I don’t want to see:
a) A Napoleonic re-hash of Age of Empires, which is all Cossacks is (yuck);
b) A silly tactical level game that ruins a good strategic, that might be real time, but which is not true to the battlefield structures of the day;
c) A game without a good economic system, even if the rest of the world is a set of trading zones, sea-lanes, and colonies, without the same kind of strategic map as Europe;
d) A crappy AI!
Yours,
John.
ps. I really should think about getting myself a clever nick-name, like Warpup or something.
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Huh - quite a long post - hope anyone will reach this point at all ![]("wink.gif")
[ October 08, 2001: Message edited by: hal ]
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