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Rob Zacny

Episode 312: Historical Accuracy

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Bruce and Rob are joined by game designer Ananda Gupta to discuss the idea of historical accuracy in games. Bruce gets down to the point by looking for a definition of "historical accuracy" and whether it's a bonus, a detriment, or just another facet of wargaming.

 

Listen here.

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Sorry to disappoint those who share the hope with Rob in that tech in HoI4 will change... the last 2 installment of the series used this flat global tech as well.

 

The idea is that different nations get to different level of tech at different time.  Like, not everyone is meant to reach 1942 tech tank in 1942, and that's how tech leads are meant to be represented in previous two installments of this franchise.

 

Edit: Just finished it.  Totally agree with the thought on how historical accuracy is getting the player to feel like they are in the shoes of the appropriate decision makers.  It was bit hard to follow through board game examples because I play none so I have like zero reference point in trying to make sense of board game examples :x

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Edit: Just finished it.  Totally agree with the thought on how historical accuracy is getting the player to feel like they are in the shoes of the appropriate decision makers.  It was bit hard to follow through board game examples because I play none so I have like zero reference point in trying to make sense of board game examples :x

 

I agree and love how it's put. It reminds me of my classicist friend who uses "ethically true" to denote something that's not necessarily true but feels like it is or should be. Really, for me, since I'm so deeply immersed in history as my profession but none of my friends are, I'd almost reverse the panel's working definition to turn it into "not obliging the player to abandon the mentality of historical decision makers in order to succeed." That's really the point of failure for the Total War games, as I've been thinking about them lately, because success in those games almost always means using non-contemporary strategies in the campaign and tactics on the battlefield to make "history" break your way. An excellent example of a game that does not need to be played with a mind towards historicity but that rewards both historical and ahistorical play is Matt Calkins' Sekigahara. Played abstractly, it asks the fairly straightforward but extremely deep question of how to concentrate (or how to appear to be able to concentrate) an overwhelming but diverse force at a given point with enough resources left over to use it effectively, but played historically, it does just as amazing a job of driving home the volatility and friability of medieval armies, forcing me to confront the twin issues of command and control in an extremely authentic way. I can't recommend it enough.

 

Also, with all the talk of COIN games, especially non-modern ones, I'm feeling two months of dissertating about Frederick Barbarossa and the Lombard League morph into a potential COIN game in my head. Four factions: Barbarossa, Milan and the Lombard League, the reform papacy, and Manuel Comnenus. The German princes, the Burgundian marriage, the kingdom of Sicily, and the papal schism would make for a great set of event cards...

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Gah another board game, maybe one day I could muster up some friends locally to try those games out...

 

What are people's thought on Wargame franchise BTW?  I thought the actual combat was dealt with surprising amount of 'grit' and certain 'felt' very much like what I imagine modern conventional combat would look like (minus some range tweaks but still, this is best I've seen by far outside of DCS which needs tons of fiddling cause AI is non-existent)... but it also features this clearly gamey control points and reinforcement system and units are still relatively balanced around their role.  But still, most of game encouraged players to do this intel based fighting which also 'felt' very authentic.  This is all in context of me being a complete noob in real life war stuff, like I have never been conscripted or drafted or took courses in modern military tactics.  And the way the game represents aircraft was the best I have seen of how modern air power could be modeled in real time... since GDI ORCAs from original C&C.  Ones from Supreme Commander had lot of elements (like idea of refueling station was there) that could have made it great, but ultimately summed up to more fiddly then 'gritty', disregarding the super sci fi aesthetics of course.

 

Now that I have actually mentioned it, what are people's thought on DCS as well?  I mean that's foremost a simulation game above all, but does good simulation make something inherently historically accurate?  Or is simulation inherently missing out on any sort of 'perspective' to make them historical in any sense?  By that I mean, technical accuracy is important for historical accuracy, but history is more than just sum of technically accurate specs... history has a narrative, interpretation and judgement that's built on the specs of fact, so how do games like DCS fit into this?

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Very insightful episode, much appreciated. Interesting to hear Bruce favour Andean Abyss, the only coin game i've played.

 

I had two thoughts whilst listening both which were covered to some extent in the episode;

 

First, to what extent is history a fluke and how do you make a decision on that as a designer? For example Wellington beats napoleon at Waterloo, did he roll a 6 or did he only need to roll a 3 or 4 to get that result? Is history the mean result, or is it actually largely comprises of outside cases, is there an alternative history that should have happened if the die rolls were closer to the median result.

 

Second, and I think i've bemoaned this before, why are there so few middle weight war games on pc.In the world of more milsim war games most either seem to be very simple approaches (Unity of Command, Ultimate General Gettysburg) or overly complex (War in The Pacific etc), there are relatively few games that seem to fall between these bounds. In the boardwargame realm I like games that do have a sophisticated supply system and unit activation system beyond Igougo or trace supply but don't require me to track every bullet or bog down in minutia. On pc games appear to be skewed at either end of the scale.

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It's not the first time Rob raises this Company of Heroes 2 controversy issue. Yet every time it feels he doesn't end up saying what he wants to say there. As I see it main problem with CoH2 portrayal of Soviet armies was that it was the second installment of the series. It just looked weird that after CoH1, a tale about noble brave men fighting each other in honourable and manly fasion we got that horrible Soviets who spoiled a good story with their gritty tragic war pessimism. It was like Remarque appearing in a middle of Captain America Beats Nazis comics. Especially noticable cause Germans were portrayed in the same neutral way with no mentioning of H-word and stuff.

 

Slightly disappointed about discussion sliding down to battle historicity. Every show without Troy should be about Paradox games and this time you had perferct wasted opportunity to talk more about Victoria or how EU4 expansions enforce White Man Burden worldview without being offensive about it.

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Gah another board game, maybe one day I could muster up some friends locally to try those games out...

 

What are people's thought on Wargame franchise BTW?  I thought the actual combat was dealt with surprising amount of 'grit' and certain 'felt' very much like what I imagine modern conventional combat would look like (minus some range tweaks but still, this is best I've seen by far outside of DCS which needs tons of fiddling cause AI is non-existent)... but it also features this clearly gamey control points and reinforcement system and units are still relatively balanced around their role. 

 

Wargame is good enough to be immersive, and thats what i look for, do i feel convinced rather than is it complete realistic.

 

There is the range issue as you mention. The BUK missile system is accused of shooting down a passanger jet over Ukrain travelng at 9000m+ up but in game has a range of 4000-5000m.

 

The main issues from a strict realism pov are; 1 death rates are very high, this is in part due to the victory conditions and the fact that casualties don't matter politically in this game, you can afford to  suicide your Eurofighters if the payoff is there, something few real commanders would do i suspect. 2. there are no long range strike missiles or ordinance, no cruise missiles. 3. the infantry modelling is rubbish. Its really a game about vehicles but outside of towns infantry get spotted from long distance far too easily and taken out by tanks amazingly fast. Also infantry are basically rated by their guns more than their training which is rather questionable. 4 Command and control is completely perfect, apart from the occasional tank choosing dumb way points units basically do what you want when you want with out error. 5 whilst the double blind system (Fog of war) is great its probably not thick enough, you can spot some units far to easily imo. 5 Aircraft return to base, reload and refuel amazingly fast, and 6 armies don't function like real forces operating as formations, rather you spend points to bring them on to the field.

 

But wargame isn't trying to be a milsim, its an rts that uses some milsim tech and ideas to create variety.

 

Also i do recommend board war games, game design has advanced a lot more on the table top than it has at matrix games over the past few decades.

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Second, and I think i've bemoaned this before, why are there so few middle weight war games on pc.In the world of more milsim war games most either seem to be very simple approaches (Unity of Command, Ultimate General Gettysburg) or overly complex (War in The Pacific etc), there are relatively few games that seem to fall between these bounds. In the boardwargame realm I like games that do have a sophisticated supply system and unit activation system beyond Igougo or trace supply but don't require me to track every bullet or bog down in minutia. On pc games appear to be skewed at either end of the scale.

 

 

I think the reason for that is there's not a proven market for "middle ground" options. If you hang out around seriously grognardy websites, there's a massive amount of enthusiasm for games that let you weigh every possible factor. Like the people who wanted Crown of Glory to model different recovery times for injured generals. There's a real wariness of anything that's streamlined because of how quickly people start worrying about a game being "dumbed down". So as you begin to streamline-away some of the historical detail, you start losing that hardcore audience. But that doesn't necessarily come with an attendant gain of new players who want something more approachable, because the odds are good you're still making a game that's too complex. So the middle ground seems like a tough place to make a successful game, just because it doesn't have a natural constituency.

 

I do think this problem goes back to something Bruce said earlier this year. I can't remember which game we were talking about, but he didn't like the way games like UoC or Ultimate General Gettysburg always have to be labeled "entry level" or "beginner level" wargames, while games like War in the East or John Tiller's Squad Battle series get to enjoy a kind of default status. The way we frame wargame discussion also ends up ceding the field to rivet-counters, which probably skews things away from what most people would actually want.

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I can sympathise with Bruce's pov, with board wargames i often use terms such as 'light' to try and entice people to play but grognard elitism is an issue.

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3. the infantry modelling is rubbish. Its really a game about vehicles but outside of towns infantry get spotted from long distance far too easily and taken out by tanks amazingly fast. Also infantry are basically rated by their guns more than their training which is rather questionable.

 

Yeah, infantries are really simplified but having played lot of CoH2 Ardennes Assault recently, I am actually really glad that Eugene took this route over Relic's most frustrating implementation for a infantry behavior.

 

I really want to just say some nasty things about whoever thought it was good idea to implement cover hopping (like hopping over fences) but not make it automatic.  Or how squad sometimes just split and dash across the screen into no cover cause vehicle was moving nearby.  OMG vehicle and infantry movement coordination is baffling how bad it can get and ruin what could otherwise have been superb series for me.

 

Also glitched invincible Ostwind can go straight to garbage chute.  Earrggghhh

 

Also i do recommend board war games, game design has advanced a lot more on the table top than it has at matrix games over the past few decades.

 

I do want to try but it's really hard when I can't even get my fellow Korean friends to try Starcraft board game during height of SC2's popularity.

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I do want to try but it's really hard when I can't even get my fellow Korean friends to try Starcraft board game during height of SC2's popularity.

 

Well, not that you probably need the encouragement, but I would heavily recommend Sekigahara as an intro-level wargame for two people with a strong interest in strategic decisions but not necessarily much historical grounding. It's a simple block wargame, not terribly different from Hammer of the Scots, that plays out the two months leading up to the battle of Sekigahara on October 21, 1600. Players sit opposite each other and move stacked blocks that only have unit information on one side, so each can see a vague outline of the other's forces but not its exact effectiveness. The two sides start fairly scattered out, but each player has a limited number of moves and can only move along each road once per turn, so the real difficulty is getting all of one's forces in a single place where an attack can be made. Additionally, armies move slower the more blocks there are in them, and while this can be alleviated somewhat by discarding cards, those cards are primarily played to make blocks participate in combat, without which they'll just sit there and get wiped out. This combination of mechanics leads to at least three really interesting and historically authentic situations: an army too big to move from its defensive position, an army that has to split up along different roads to be able to reach the enemy, and an army that won't attack or won't defend itself when attacked because of exhaustion or bad politicking.

 

I've played this game five times, which isn't that much considering that playtime is usually under two hours, and I really can't get enough of it. There's nothing like setting up an eight-block army (large, but not huge) fifty miles east of Kyoto and hoping that my opponent doesn't know or remember that it's mostly composed of units from the Date clan and that I've been using all my Date cards for move orders the past three turns... or maybe hoping that he'll think all of that and try to wipe me out with a four-block strike force, only to discovered that I have cards for every block there. There's also a minor betrayal mechanic that punishes overly aggressive mix-maxing of cards in one's hand, but that's probably the most complicated thing that the game has to offer. It's a really brilliant design and probably the best light- to mid-level wargame that I've ever played.

 

There's actually not many videos of it being played, despite it being a tactile and visually interesting game, but here's a decent video review:

 

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When the discussion veered towards the tendency of games to model history in a way that "seems" correct to its intended audience, rather than following the most modern scholarship on the subject, it really seemed like the entire panel took an enormous step back, consciously, from the obvious elephant in the room - Nazi fetishism in WW2 gaming.  A large chunk of the audience wants to play the invincible warrior-elite Nazis, and don't want to have their serious flaws and failures pointed out.  When German tech and German units aren't ineffebly better in some way, a chunk of the audience is unhappy. 

 

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Sekigahara is probably my favourite board war game. It is an abstraction but, without having read a detailed account of the campaign (I have read a brief one) it seems historically reasonable to me.

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When the discussion veered towards the tendency of games to model history in a way that "seems" correct to its intended audience, rather than following the most modern scholarship on the subject, it really seemed like the entire panel took an enormous step back, consciously, from the obvious elephant in the room - Nazi fetishism in WW2 gaming.  A large chunk of the audience wants to play the invincible warrior-elite Nazis, and don't want to have their serious flaws and failures pointed out.  When German tech and German units aren't ineffebly better in some way, a chunk of the audience is unhappy. 

 

It's partly for gameplay reasons too. You need different sides so you enforce tropes. Nazi are all about quality, Soviets are about quantity. It's also good for games like Panzer General: AI can be rather passive just standing there and your elite Panzer divisions obliterate Soviets even though they have numerical advantage. You've got power fantasy (your units are better), challenge (there are more of them), no microcontrol (your army is small) and passive reactive AI (the one that your average programmer can actually write). And now even though developer may not think 1 German is as strong as 3 Soviets he tempted to reinforce the trope. He can't just say that both sides on the Eastern Front were rather ineffective, had idiots in command, horrible supply problems and treated their own soldiers poorly. You need famous Germans without winter gear while Soviets attack with 1 rifle for 3 men.

 

Still Nazi fetishism is rather disturbing thing. Especially with many famous Nazi inventions not being effective at all like V2 rocket.

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When the discussion veered towards the tendency of games to model history in a way that "seems" correct to its intended audience, rather than following the most modern scholarship on the subject, it really seemed like the entire panel took an enormous step back, consciously, from the obvious elephant in the room - Nazi fetishism in WW2 gaming.  A large chunk of the audience wants to play the invincible warrior-elite Nazis, and don't want to have their serious flaws and failures pointed out.  When German tech and German units aren't ineffebly better in some way, a chunk of the audience is unhappy. 

 

While this statement feels true, I can't think of a single WWII themed game I played (CoD, CoH, HoI, RO, DoD, MoH... granted most of these are FPS where Nazis are more cannon fodder-y)  where Nazi Germany just had better stuff... I mean there is always the ace Tiger tank fetish going on but that's very specific.

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The main difficult with historical accuracy in games is that, you can´t create every system which is related to what you are trying to reproduce without just make a confusing mess of mechanics. Therefore, you risk end with something that might be "half broken". Think like the fact no matter how much "swordmasters" you add to a game you can´t reproduce all that could affect how as sword is begin wield, I mean things like from foot work to movement of your waist/wrist/arms without ending with a confusing game that is just gazillions of quicktime events (and I am nothing even taking in account the actual and reliable historical sources). In a large scale exemple, like Duke of Chutney said - Wargame can´t (or don´t want) reproduce the political effect of your actions and to be fair even if they did I think that would simple ruin the game (more of this below).

Also on the debate of what is "historical accuracy" you have the issue of people thinking that "historical accuracy" is often trivia/factual perception disjointed from the large compreension (sometimes the debate of this or that weapon or this armor is better can turn in this, the very understand of their actual role and usage or lack of it is made difficult, because the "pratical" aspect view of object  is often detached from cultural/economic/social aspects, that could explain its usage or the lack of it) or what people might believe is realistic might not meet what would be historical accurate (per exemple, for some people everything in middle ages is colorless, detailess, pratical and is all about violence over the top, but if you show the other elements they might simple refuse to accept).

 

What most games could do is a "selective realism/historical accuracy" where they select some key elements to reproduce that work with their game theme and design. And there is the trick, figure what could work for each game.


That said, I think that "historical accuracy" often can became in different flavours:

Setting/visual/flavour - This is the most noticiable one, it is all about the visual design, uniforms/arms/armor, effects and some simple mechanics (like in Cossacks you had to have units with the drummer and banner), but without gameplay that support or reflect (at least a perception of what is based on) at least a simple level it might felt strange (I had this issue with Ages of Empires III, where I felt that despite the setting the gameplay was just the same as the previous games, this might be noticiable in other older historical RTS).

Immersion: I might not be using the correct word, but I want to say, is when a game "feel" historical accuracte even when it´s visuals/gameplay aren´t, think in games like The Witcher 3 which is a fantasy game that lot of people might say that feel historical accurate, even when isn´t and it´s a fantasy. Or even think in a game like Mount & Blade, the game combat system maybe isn´t the most accurate one, but the actual flow and pace and lack of interruptions, make easier to get immerse in the combat.

Sometimes however, by trying to add more "historical accurate" or "realistic" mechanics, this can break immersion - While M&B combat was rather fluid with very few commands, War of the Roses often felt to me more strange to me, because, despite trying something more realistic, they add lots of extra inputs, making things like mount on a horse, using a bow or even swing the sword (which often pop up a pizza graphic in your face) more complicated. This was made worst due the multiplayer nature of efficience over everything, which meant that the most optimal thing to do, if you aren´t much skilled was just running around swinging a poleaxe. I can imagine, upon hearing Bruce exemples of that "Crown of Glory" games where mechanics are piled upon mechanics because it would be "realistic" but this cost the whole the pace/flow of the game itself or just turn the whole thing to busywork.

Addition: Something that is realistic or appear that "add" something to the game without "removing" or "restrict" (in direct ways) something else, that still visible on it: In XIII Century Cavalry units didn´t stand still in melee, they clash and pass through to clash again. The way sight, supply, and other elements works on Wargame series.

Forced Restriction: Something that is realistic or appear so, but came at expanse of limiting and restricing, that often is crucial to what you are trying to reproduce, but it need careful explained context and execution otherwise it be felt as something arbitrarial. Once many years ago I did played a old mod for EUII that suffered a lot of this. I start a game as England and managed to grab a few provinces in France, but suddenly, because that wouldn´t be "historical" the mod start to punish me : first it raised my revolt risk (fine), reduce my taxes (fine), them it start to DELETE my armies! and I think suddenly didn´t allow me to raise armies in France too. In the end quit the game, because it felt so weird despite historical context, tried another one playing with a minor and found that I could do absolute nothing because it won´t be historical... Now if you take the open form of EU in mind you can see the problem, because it´s give the player two doors but if he dares to take the left one you punish him in such way (or simple don´t allow him) that make you wonder why the mod/game bother to add the actual door...

Another exemple, while some mods for Rome 1 had really good logistics/supply mechanics, once I played mod for Medieval 2 where they add this too, but there it felt that execution was bad, because logistic/supply was so harsh that you could bearly move your armies at all, making crusader the most boring stuff ever (or even impossible given the distance) as your armies just crawl at snail pace.

Invisible: Something that is realistic (or could felt as it is) but there is no way to know it exist ingame - Because all of the talk about Medieval I, I decided to check some videos since I am thinking in buy it again (can´t find my original cd), but it so hard to tell that the engine had physics back there, I mean, I knew it was there, but looking I couldn´t notice. XIII Century I think tried have a different engine and simulation but given its limitations it was hard to notice (this made worst by weird design and simulations problems).


Impratical: I did found this a lot in M&B mods, where they would balance weapons to more "realistic", the result was often you got lots of weapons in the game became impratical to use, because reach/damage/speed values while more "realistic" where so low that simple you had no reason to use them as given the game mechanics. In strategy games this might mean units which simple are too weak, too difficult to recruit or use, ect... this often happen in trivial perception  is throw in without taking in mind of how and if it would work (is the "would not be realistic if we..."). As I said above, maybe Wargame could "try" to reproduce political effect, but done wrong the result would be a extra set of mechanics upon the gameplay that mostly like result in frustration.

 

When the discussion veered towards the tendency of games to model history in a way that "seems" correct to its intended audience, rather than following the most modern scholarship on the subject, it really seemed like the entire panel took an enormous step back, consciously, from the obvious elephant in the room - Nazi fetishism in WW2 gaming.  A large chunk of the audience wants to play the invincible warrior-elite Nazis, and don't want to have their serious flaws and failures pointed out.  When German tech and German units aren't ineffebly better in some way, a chunk of the audience is unhappy. 

 

If I am not wrong, there is a old 3MA episode where Bruce talks a lot about that - I think is the Fire no Guns shed no Tears episode or is the Ethic, Morale and Motivation.

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While this statement feels true, I can't think of a single WWII themed game I played (CoD, CoH, HoI, RO, DoD, MoH... granted most of these are FPS where Nazis are more cannon fodder-y)  where Nazi Germany just had better stuff... I mean there is always the ace Tiger tank fetish going on but that's very specific.

 

They didn't have better stuff in a gameplay sense (even though I remember CoD2 was in fact a commercial for MG42) but the story was often about some sort of wunderwaffle. Less serious games like Wolfenstein had occult themes but even Medal of Honor had missions where you had to destroy V2 rockets or something like that.

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While this statement feels true, I can't think of a single WWII themed game I played (CoD, CoH, HoI, RO, DoD, MoH... granted most of these are FPS where Nazis are more cannon fodder-y)  where Nazi Germany just had better stuff... I mean there is always the ace Tiger tank fetish going on but that's very specific.

 

I remember that in Day of Defeat the German weapons, even the bolt-action rifle, were all better than American weapons. The automatic weapons (MP42 and StG44) had better magazine side and accuracy, the rifle (K98k) did much more damage, and the machine gun (MG42) had a faster rate of fire... which, for each class of weapon, was the most important thing about them. In maybe nine months of heavy play, I joined maybe three servers with too many people on the Americans' team, as opposed to countless overstuffed German teams.

 

I've also definitely noticed a low-key tendency among game designers to rhapsodize the hidden potential of the Third Reich, because it's expected and because it's easy asymmetry. Germans need to be made elite in as many was as possible in order to make them an interesting and worthy challenge to the Allies, with their numbers and their economic superiority. Expensive failures like the Elefant and the Maus are typically depicted like superweapons, partly because a disappointing and overpriced unit is bad design but still. The Russian T-34 and IS-2 never seem to be depicted as equals to the Panzer IV and the Panther, let alone the Tiger, and this is actually a defining element in the tactics of Company of Heroes 2. In Axis & Allies, two of the technologies are explicitly German inventions during the war (rockets and jet power), two are debatable (super subs and industrial tech), and two are inventions shared by the entire Allied side (heavy bombers and long-range aircraft). The Waffen SS get a starring role in any game about Germany, but when was the last time that the British Commandos or SAS took a similar place in the spotlight?

 

These are just off the top of my head, but I've always thought that the myths of technological prowess particular to Nazi Germany are an offshoot of the Lost Cause, adapted a bit for the modern era. The South will rise again because its cause is just and true, the Fourth Reich will come again because its science was strong and pure. I don't mean that people consciously think that, but there's a romance that surrounds a mighty foe once defeated, and mistaken impressions of advanced Nazi technology, maybe lost in the postwar diaspora of knowledge, are a little bit like Barbarossa asleep under the Kyffhäuser, you know?

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StG44 and MG42 being strong is like... kinda faithful though?  Didn't realize their rifle did more damage.  CoD oddly enough didn't fall into that trap cause I recall M1 Grand being pretty rad because you could fire 5 shots semi auto, which was actually a rad feature IRL I think.  Also PPSH freaking owned so hard.

 

Gah forgot about imbalances in CoH2.  Tells you how much multiplayer I played in that game.  Yeah those are pretty awful and CoH2 just had really bad representation of the Soviets too to further cement this elite german feel.  Perhaps I played too much RO2 where there was like zero glorification of German hardware.

 

Any game that remotely glorify SS division stuff is probably most damning because they were downright criminal in their very origin.  Which game are you thinking of when you say they get a 'starring' role?

 

HoI series I am bit hesitant about how to evaluate that one because that game has this weird issue because it is difficult to model France's military failings properly so they ended up buffing Germany and nerfing France to ensure historical outcome for the onset of the war... and game just plays better as Germany than say, USA cause it's just more active (for all the politically wrong reasons but for wargame fight is what we are looking for).

 

I can definitely relate to some sense of "nazi tech fetish" thing going on (personally big fan of MG3, which is just modernized version of MG42) in games but it always felt very gear centric cause eventually you end up just slaughtering the Nazis in so many games so thankfully their soldiers don't quite get that same rep in gameplay language.  So yeah I can see how that is coming dangerously close to bleeding off into more dangerous romanticism about Nazi Germany, just had trouble thinking of specifics.  Thankfully my ethnicity kinda makes it blatantly illogical to give it any sort of political romanticism but yeah, I do feel there is this weird reverence about the third reich.  I do think that facist had a cool group fashion going that they obviously ruined it by being so evil and associating themselves with it.

 

Kinda related but interesting tangent is how this actually plays out even stronger in Gundam... where Zeons are basically Axis and the franchise ended up giving lot of ammunition to appreciate Zeon as a faction despite them being really closely analogous to Axis... like they get the cool experimental weapons, most of cool named aces are Zeon, etc.

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Regarding Red Orchestra, the developers really seemed interested in historical fidelity, and did a good job with it.  Yeah, the German MG's were just better than that crap Russian MG, but it's totally cool beause those were faithful simulations of those guns.

 

The Nazi fetishism came up from the fact that it seemed like every other clan was the "Waffen SS somethingorotherdivision."  That was just creept.

 

And, as mentioned, Company of Heroes 2.  That crap really drove me up the wall.  Okay, in CoH 1, it was entirely appropriate that every German tank was, generally speaking, better than same-tier American and Brit tanks, because shermans were awful.  However, the T34 was a pretty damn solid piece of engineering, and at various points in the war it totally outclassed the standard German counterpart.  In 1941, the T34 absolutely terrified P3 and the under-gunned P4 crews it encountered.  Given that the P3 was the standard German tank until Kursk, this was pretty damn significant, yet somehow games never engineered showdowns between P3 and T34's, while they were happy to engineer similar showdowns between upgunned and up-armored late-war P4's and stock T34's, or Panthers and T34's.

 

Yes, there were situations where German super-weapons outclassed Western and Soviet tech - but they were pretty sporadic.  it's not nearly as interesting, but it mattered a whole heck of a lot, that just about every Amercan unit had a radio, and this radio network was tied into their artillery system to give the Americans a brutal fire superiority in most engagements.  American engines were more reliable, and jeeps and trucks were vastly more numerous, giving Western forces an incredible advantage in supply mobility and repair.  These are not sexy, but they mattered a whole heck of a lot more than the superior armor of the Tiger, a tank which had to be pulled around half the time because its engine and drive train was so unrelaible.

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 I've always thought that the myths of technological prowess particular to Nazi Germany are an offshoot of the Lost Cause, adapted a bit for the modern era. The South will rise again because its cause is just and true, the Fourth Reich will come again because its science was strong and pure. I don't mean that people consciously think that, but there's a romance that surrounds a mighty foe once defeated, and mistaken impressions of advanced Nazi technology, maybe lost in the postwar diaspora of knowledge, are a little bit like Barbarossa asleep under the Kyffhäuser, you know?

 

This is related to the "myth of the Eastern Front" and you're right, I think it does have a lot in common with the Lost Cause.  http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/myth-eastern-front-nazi-soviet-war-american-popular-culture?format=PB

 

We did an episode on this I think, but can't find it right now.

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if we are discussing who's kit was better is there a consensus opinion? Most of my knowledge of ww2 weapons does actually come from video games, with the older Combat Missions games holding the place of the definitive truth for me. For the most part on CM2 T34 > Pz 3&4.

 

I have read history books, but they are usually more concerned with operational scale issues, so the exact match up of a crusader vs a panzer 3 isn't really that important against the numbers and supply situation.

 

Interestingly there is an argument that factors not typically modelled in games could be more significant. My grandad generally viewed the German gear as superior, when i asked him why the example he gave was the gerry can. The Brits carted around petrol in tins that had to be opened with a tin opener and then use a funnel to put it in the fuel tank. The Germans opened the top of the gerry can and poured. This sort of better engineering makes a huge difference at the depot but is irrelevant in most games.

 

In north Africa the main quality difference between the allies and German tanks in the earlier months was that the Germans had 1 radio per tank, the allies didn't. Again this isn't always modelled but is far more important than the exact size of the tank gun or front armour. Aside from the radios, training and overall tank strategy doctrine however, there is little evidence that Panzer 3s and 4s were any better than Crusaders or Matilda tanks, at least according to a book on Wavell i read.

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nterestingly there is an argument that factors not typically modelled in games could be more significant. My grandad generally viewed the German gear as superior, when i asked him why the example he gave was the gerry can. The Brits carted around petrol in tins that had to be opened with a tin opener and then use a funnel to put it in the fuel tank. The Germans opened the top of the gerry can and poured. This sort of better engineering makes a huge difference at the depot but is irrelevant in most games.

 

Interesting example. Supply was indeed extremely important. Germans may have better cans but still they "forgot" to pack winter gear on the Eastern Front and they didn't have special tank engines for quite some time and used airplane engines.

 

And German uberscience is horrible myth. It grows from thinking that it's easier to do science when you have no moral limits. This may be true but those German scientists who had no problem with freezing people to death as an experiment turned out to be bad scientists - basically experimenting on starving depressed death camp prisoners is not that useful. And German engineers, mathematicians and other guys would not benefit from no morals that much. V2 guy murdered 12000 people while making those rockets (meanwhile rockets themselves killed less than 9000 peoplle) but in a normal state he'd have qualified well fed workers with the same results.

 

In 1939 - even before the war - number of German college students was just 40% of the same number in 1933. Whole disciplines (most noticable - Math) were destroyed because Jews were banished from universities. Nazis were irrational and anti-science, but we remember them as high-tech because of propaganda and being the most experienced army in the beginning of WW2. Plus Hitler could be easily persuaded to dump money into some impractical projects like that V2 one. As soon as allies got their shit together they've achieved much more significant technological feats.

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i always assumed they did well at the start of the war simply because they were the only faction to start preparing for it ahead of schedule, rather than an experience boon.

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