Video Games

“Fortune favors the brave, but victory favors the prepared.” – Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus

by Patrick S. Baker

After two hits with Shogun: Total War and Medieval: Total War, the Creative Assembly (CA) Company determined to continue the Total War Series with Rome: Total War (Rome). The team at CA selected the Roman Era for many reasons. It is one of the most popular and well-documented periods in history and offered depth of events, characters, and battles that could be translated into an appealing game.

There was strong interest among gamers for a strategy game set in Roman times. Also, CA’s development team was deeply interested in the time period and thought it would provide a great setting for innovative game-play and a strong strategic narrative.

During the development of both Shogun and Medieval the CA team consulted with notable historians to maintain historical accuracy. While working on Rome, the CA team did a similar level of consultation.

“The decline and fall of Rome was a slow and agonizing process, marked by internal strife, foreign invasions, and the erosion of moral values.” – Edward Gibbon

By Patrick S. Baker 

Rome: Total War – Barbarian Invasion (Barbarian) is the first expansion pack for the critically acclaimed strategy game, Rome: Total War. Released just a year and five days after the release of the Rome: Total War, critics and players have a split opinion about expansion pack.

Some critics felt there was barely enough new material to justify an expansion pack. Others felt that Barbarian could have been released as an entirely new game.

The Imperial Campaign in Rome: Total War starts in 270 BC, when the Roman Republic completed the conquest of Italy and ends in 14 AD, with the death of Augustus. The campaign in Barbarian starts in 363 AD, with the death of the Emperor Julian, concluding the efforts to restore paganism in the Empire and ends in 476 AD with the fall of the Western Roman Empire.

‘There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.” – Michel de Montaigne

By Patrick S. Baker

The second installment of the Total War series started out as Crusader: Total War but was quickly renamed to Medieval: Total War (Medieval) to better describe the actual scope of the game. Development of Medieval started shortly after the successful launch of Shogun: Total War (Shogun). The game was developed by The Creative Assembly (CA) and published by Activision. It was released in August 2002, just two years and one month after the release of Shogun.

Throughout the development of the game, the team at CA sought to build on the foundation laid by Shogun, while also aiming to create a more expansive and historically rich experience. The selection of a medieval setting allowed for a diverse range of factions, units, and technologies. The new setting also provided a vast arena for the developers and the players.

The CA team placed a strong emphasis on historical accuracy and authenticity in Medieval.  To achieve this, they recruited the help of several distinguished Medieval and Military historians. Most notably Dr. David Nicolle and Dr. Richard Holmes. Drs. Nicolle and Holmes expertise in medieval politics and warfare ensured that the game’s units, factions, and events were historically accurate.

“Dominate the world through diplomatic finesse, cultural domination, and military prowess.” -Giant Bomb

By Patrick S. Baker

Introduction

After, shall we say, the mixed critical and commercial reception of 1999’s Civilization II: Test of Time, which has an aggregate of only 66% on Metacritic, famed game developer Sid Meier and his company, Firaxis, immediately set to work on another Civilization game. Originally, the development of the game that would become Civilization III (Civ III) was given to Brian Renyolds, the man behind the highly successful base Civilization II game. However, Renyolds left Firaxis before development really got rolling to start his own company, so the assignment was handed to game designer Jeff Briggs and game programmer Soren Johnson.

Briggs was an experienced game designer, and one of the three founders of Firaxis, along with Reynolds and Meier. Briggs had previously helped design such games as Colonization and Civilization II. He also held a PhD of Music Theory and had written the original music for many of Microprose games.

Johnson had gone to work at Firaxis after an internship at Electronic Arts (EA). He was assigned as the primary game programmer for Civ III under Briggs direction. Johnson joined the development team with just 16 months left to finish the game. Still, he rewrote much of the game’s code, with his main focus was on the its Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“SolForce’s official motto was “Per Ardua Ad Astra” (Latin: “Through Hardship, The Stars”), but its real motto was “Repensum Est Canicula” (Latin: “Payback is a Bitch”).”

by Patrick S. Baker

Sword of the Stars (Sword) was developed by Kerberos Productions and released in 2006. Kerberos was formed by a group of developers that had worked on Homeworld: Cataclysm, an expansion of the hit game, Homeworld. Homeworld clearly inspired some aspects of Sword.

A 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) space game, Sword bore some resemblance to Homeworld, Galactic Civilization, and Reach for the Stars. In the original version of the game, the player selected one of four races to play: The saurian Tarka, the dolphin-like Liir, the insectoid Hive and of course, a united humanity defended by SolForce. Other races were added in later expansion packs and sequels. Each of the races had their own advantages and disadvantages as well as their own technology tree.

The art of coalition command … in Afghanistan … is to take the resources you are provided with, understand what the strengths and weaknesses are and to employ them to the best overall effect. – David Petraeus

By Patrick S. Baker

In 2015 Vietnam ’65, developed by Johan Nagel and his company, Every Single Soldier, was published by Matrix/Slitherine on the Steam platform and Apple’s App Store. Vietnam’ 65 was an operational-level game that focused on the American and South Vietnamese counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign in the jungles of Southeast Asia. The game received critical praise and sold well.

In March, 2017, Afghanistan ’11 (A’11), published by Matrix/Slitherine, was released on Steam and the App Store. A’11 was developed by Every Single Soldier and Retro Epic and is an operational level game focused on the counter-insurgency in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.

A’11 is not a simple re-skinning of Vietnam ‘65, replacing jungles with mountains, the Viet Cong with the Taliban, and Hueys with Blackhawks, instead the game had been markedly improved, and expanded, with much deeper game play. This new depth included multiple historical scenarios as well as the familiar skirmish mode.

“We are fighting a war with no front lines, since the enemy hides among the people, in the jungles and mountains, and uses covertly border areas of neutral countries. One cannot measure [our] progress by lines on a map.”—General William C. Westmoreland

By Patrick S. Baker

1965 was the year that, as one source puts it, “Vietnam Becomes an American War”. The massive bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, started. The first American ground combat units arrived “in country”. The Battle of the Ia Drang, the first major set-piece battle of the war (so well detailed in We Were Soldiers Once… and Young by Lieutenant General (Ret.) Hal Moore and Joseph L. Galloway) was fought in November that year.

It was also in 1965 that the bifurcated nature of the Vietnam War became clear. Part of the war was a conventional ground war with regular American military and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) units fighting conventional battles against the communists’ guerrillas, called the Viet Cong, (VC or Charlie) Main Force units and the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) units.

The other part was a counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign with America and her South Vietnamese allies trying to win the  “hearts and minds” of the largely rural population with generous foreign aid, civic construction projects, and Special Forces (SF) deployed to train the local defense forces to battle the VC guerrillas.

“In May of 1941 the war had just begun, The Germans had the biggest ship that had the biggest guns

The Bismarck was the fastest ship that ever sailed the sea, On her decks were guns as big as steers and shells as big as trees”

Sink the Bismarck by Johnny Horton and Tillman Franks

By Patrick S. Baker

Computer Bismarck was developed and published by Strategic Simulations, Inc. (SSI) and is considered the first serious war game published for what was then called micro-computers and are now called personal computers, or PCs. Prior to Bismarck’s release computer video games had largely been arcade-style games; in home versions of Space Invaders or Pac-man, etc.

Released in February 1980 for the TRS-80 and the Apple II. The game was developed by Joel Billings and John Lyons and written in BASIC computer language.  Rather than come up with a design from scratch, the two developers liberally “borrowed” (some would say lifted directly) from Avalon Hill’s (AH) board game, Bismarck.  Noting the similarities of SSI’s Computer Bismarck, as well as other SSI titles, to their various board games, Avalon Hill took SSI to court in 1983. In 1984 the companies settled out of court, with SSI reportedly paying AH $30,000 dollars.

“Before Guadalcanal, the enemy advanced at his pleasure—after Guadalcanal, he retreated at ours.” – Adm. William F. (Bull) Halsey, USN

By Patrick S. Baker

In 1982, Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI) released Guadalcanal Campaign (GC). The game is the first game developed by famed game designer, Gary Grigsby. GC is also considered the first commercially released “monster wargame” for personal computers.

In 1982, Grigsby was a civil servant working for the Department of Defense (DoD). He had long had an interest in strategy and wargame, buying and playing board games from companies like Avalon Hill, Victory Games, and Simulations Publications, Inc. (SPI).

In 1979, Grisby bought a TRS-80 to “take the combat systems off of these really complicated … wargames and put them on the computer.” Eventually, Grigsby was trying to develop and program full games using BASIC.  But he had no idea how to contact the two main PC game developers of the time, SSI and Avalon Hill, to get his games produced and marketed.

“I used to say of Napoleon that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.”  – Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington

By Patrick S. Baker

Battles of Napoleon: A Construction Set (BoN) was developed by Chuck Kroegel and David Landrey of Tactical Design Group (TDG) and released by Strategic Simulations, Inc (SSI) in 1988. BoN was the last of twelve serious war games developed by TDG and marketed by SSI. On a note, SSI arguably produced the first “serious war game” for the microcomputer (read personal computer), Computer Bismarck, in 1980.

BoN was a turn-based strategy game, where players would take control of either French or Allied armies during the Napoleonic Wars and make decisions on movement, formations, and tactics. The game incorporated various factors such as weather, terrain types, and troop morale and training to simulate the complexities of real battles.