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Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

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Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#31

Post by hermitcrab »

stoneman24 wrote: post #7

Sounds like a really interesting and delightfully frustrating game. Bit busy to join at the moment but it’s going on my list for the future. The comments about the loyalty of the sub-commanders being very strong due to the extremely restrictive information environment reminded me of opposite within the history book Nemesis by Max Hastings. He covers the end of the Second World War in the pacific. One veteran commente…

>One veteran commented that it seemed that the different commanders and services within the US armed forces were more at conflict with each other than with the Japanese

MacArthur and Patton were both massive egomaniacs, weren't they? I guess well-adjusted people don't end up as wartime generals.

But the Japanese army and navy hated each other so much that some Admirals and Generals were walking around with bullets in them from unsuccessful assassination attempts from the other service. Not a great way to run a war.

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#32

Post by 0cf8612b2e1e »

bee_rider wrote: post #21
GolfPopper wrote: post #4

The A Collection of Unusual Pedantry blog which the author references is an amazing introduction to this work of thinking (the challenges of military operations, and the forces that shape warfare and civilization). [1] If you're already familiar with ACoUP, or find Cataphracts fascinating, you might also enjoy Edward N. Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire of which one review says (and which I find a…

He writes about games from time to time. You can sense the friendly frustration. I wish he’d take a sabbatical from Professor-ing and, like, Creative Assembly could hire him to consult on a total war game.

There is only so much realism you can inject before it detracts from the fun. The author occasionally even references this during his analysis on how some mechanic would be required for simplicity or balancing a rock-paper-scissors troop counters.

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#33

Post by ropable »

The article alludes to the fact of few games covering strategic, operational and tactical play. I recently got into (and heartily recommend) a grand strategy game called Terra Invicta, where you play as a global Illuminati-style faction trying to influence the result of an alien invasion of the solar system.

It involves strategic decision-making (control and priorities of Earth nations), operational decisions (spaceships and armies take weeks or months to reach their destinations), and a very deep tactical element of 3D space battles (consisting of spaceships having extremely asynchronous capabilities). Logistics and extended-term planning are absolutely key to success in this game

It's been an extremely fun, satisfying experience so far, albeit with a high learning curve.

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#34

Post by bee_rider »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #32
bee_rider wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He writes about games from time to time. You can sense the friendly frustration. I wish he’d take a sabbatical from Professor-ing and, like, Creative Assembly could hire him to consult on a total war game.

There is only so much realism you can inject before it detracts from the fun. The author occasionally even references this during his analysis on how some mechanic would be required for simplicity or balancing a rock-paper-scissors troop counters.

The inability to pull off really flashy and intricate tactics would be a bit of a downer. But, some realism additions, like more sensible mixed-units formations seem like they’d be a great and fun upgrade for a total-war type game. And who doesn’t want to see a caracole?

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#35

Post by para_parolu »

oezi wrote: post #29

Directly reminds me of Subterfuge which is a fog of war and realtime submarine war game of conquering outposts. It has absolutely 0% loyalty though which makes it hard to play.

I remember when I introduced Subterfuge to my teammates. Eventually people started to trade jira tickets for submarines…

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#36

Post by scotty79 »

There was this simple game where you were supposed to conquer all planets on the 2d map. You started with one planet that gradually built up ships over time. Then you could send some to any other planets but travel took time. Neutral planets had some fixed number of ships on them. If your fleet had more you captured the planet and it started building ships for you.

To make the game fair maps were symmetrical and your opponent started with the same planet on the opposite side.

There was a Google game ai competition in 2010 where you could submit your program and it was ran against programs submitted by other players. At every time step your program was deciding how many ships to send from where to where and the opponent was doing the same.

Was that operations game?

It was called Planet Wars.

Dude who won did it in Haskell and wrote a nice post mortem. The winner of the second place wrote one too. Links here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ef40x/google_a...

Apparently there are some modern incarnations: https://cog2025.inesc-id.pt/planet-wars-ai-challenge/

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#37

Post by lmm »

Kinrany wrote: post #19
yomismoaqui wrote: post #11

> there are a lot of games about strategy [..] and innumerable games about tactics [..], but very few about operations Operational wargames are a thing (at least on boardgames) https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/181039/favorite-operation...

Are there games in this genre that aren't historical?

A couple of the ones on that list are what might be called "alternate history" e.g. one is a "cold war goes hot" WW3 scenario.

There are plenty of abstract or futuristic war games, so I'm sure someone has done an operational one, but generally this kind of game appeals to someone who wants to play through a detailed simulation, and that's a lot less interesting (and harder to get right!) if you're trying to simulate an original fictional war environment. (I guess simulating the likes of Star Wars might appeal, but then you get into the issue of whether what's seen in the movies can be made to correspond to any kind of logistically grounded simulation at all)

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#38

Post by marc_abonce »

GolfPopper wrote: post #4

The A Collection of Unusual Pedantry blog which the author references is an amazing introduction to this work of thinking (the challenges of military operations, and the forces that shape warfare and civilization). [1] If you're already familiar with ACoUP, or find Cataphracts fascinating, you might also enjoy Edward N. Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire of which one review says (and which I find a…

> A Collection of Unusual Pedantry [...] ACoUP

Tangential comment but only after reading your post I realised that acoup is an acronym for the blog's full name. All this time I thought it was "a coup" (like a coup d'état) and that "A Collection of Unusual Pedantry" was the blog's tagline.

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#39

Post by 3eb7988a1663 »

lupusreal wrote: post #25
reactordev wrote: post #2

Was totally interested until I read its play-by-post and he keeps track of all the troop movements and results. Not exactly what I had pictured in my head before I clicked the link. I don’t understand how people have the time to play things by mail in realtime. I want an evening escape, not a lifetime achievement.

Back in the day my buddies and I used to play Civilization 2 by swapping a floppy with the save file back and forth every day we met in school.

Ignoring outright save-file manipulation, this style does tweak the strategy of the game.

You have to assume the fog of war does not exist. The enemy knows exactly what you are constructing, no secretly rushing a wonder. It also means you could have a much better feel for the probabilities of winning a military engagement. You could locally run through several turns, pitting their army against yours to see the most likely outcome. The moment the odds tilt in your favor, you would be incentivized to seize the victory, knowing the enemy is running the same calculus.

Re: Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300

#40

Post by mrec »

GolfPopper wrote: post #4

The A Collection of Unusual Pedantry blog which the author references is an amazing introduction to this work of thinking (the challenges of military operations, and the forces that shape warfare and civilization). [1] If you're already familiar with ACoUP, or find Cataphracts fascinating, you might also enjoy Edward N. Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire of which one review says (and which I find a…

Nitpick - it's Unmitigated Pedantry, not Unusual.
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