Episode 353: Twilight Struggle

[Rob Zacny]

Three Moves Ahead 353:

Twilight Struggle

It's an uncommonly ebullient episode of Three Moves Ahead as Rob, Julian, and Troy "Please Speak Louder Into My Bowtie, Comrade" Goodfellow talk about Twilight Struggle on the PC. This Cold War era board game has been translated to a shiny new computerized version which, despite some minor technical drawbacks, has the entire panel (and Bruce) happy with the results.

Twilight Struggle, A Few Acres of Snow, 1960: The Making of a President, Lords of Waterdeep, Advanced Squad Leader, Tigers on the Hunt, 1989: Dawn of Freedom

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[cornchip]

Enjoying the episode, but man, those are some basic rules for two of you to misunderstand after all these years! What in the world.

 

I haven't gotten the digital edition yet, but I've recommended twice so far to people interested in the game and inexperienced playing it. I don't think I'd even try to pitch it to people who hadn't heard of it. Agree there is a vocabulary deficiency in digital games. I suppose Twilight Struggle is a "turn-based strategy game," but that term does not describe it.

[billt721]

Re: How friendly the digital version is to someone new to the game -- I think it's good but not great. As a listener to 3ma from the beginning, I'd heard of game but had never actually seen it. I started by reading the rule book and playing the tutorial. That gave me a good idea of the mechanics of the game, but no clue as to why I'd choose one action or another. After badly losing a couple of games I went looking for some general information on the game and found out about Twilight Strategy. After reading that and playing a few more games, I feel that I've got a pretty decent handle on the game now and have managed to beat the AI a few times.

 

The biggest frustration after the initial 'I have no idea what to do' phase has been the accidental DEFCON suicide. That's mostly on me for not thinking through all the possible ways that an event could be used by the other side, but it'd be nice if the game would throw up some kind of warning in such a case. Example: played Lone Gunman as my last action of the current round, figuring that letting USSR see my cards at that point would do the least possible damage. USSR used his 1 op point operation from the card to perform a meaningless coup of a battleground country in Central America, thus lowering DEFCON and costing me the game.

[spacerumsfeld]

Re: How friendly the digital version is to someone new to the game -- I think it's good but not great. As a listener to 3ma from the beginning, I'd heard of game but had never actually seen it. I started by reading the rule book and playing the tutorial. That gave me a good idea of the mechanics of the game, but no clue as to why I'd choose one action or another. After badly losing a couple of games I went looking for some general information on the game and found out about Twilight Strategy. After reading that and playing a few more games, I feel that I've got a pretty decent handle on the game now and have managed to beat the AI a few times.

 

Although I have to ask why you expect a game to teach you strategy in addition to the rules.  Good on ya, as they say, for reading the rulebook.  That's the best way to learn the game, in my opinion, since then you can tell if the game isn't applying the rules correctly.  But back to the question of how friendly the game is to new players, I think the playing field is tilted here for people used to digital games, who have no problem with the intricacies of Europa Universalis but aren't necessarily open to playing a game like Twilight Struggle over and over until they figure the strategies out themselves.  Or has the expectation of strategy guides/hints become the norm for all games?

 

The biggest frustration after the initial 'I have no idea what to do' phase has been the accidental DEFCON suicide. That's mostly on me for not thinking through all the possible ways that an event could be used by the other side, but it'd be nice if the game would throw up some kind of warning in such a case. Example: played Lone Gunman as my last action of the current round, figuring that letting USSR see my cards at that point would do the least possible damage. USSR used his 1 op point operation from the card to perform a meaningless coup of a battleground country in Central America, thus lowering DEFCON and costing me the game.

 

But no better way to learn than to have those permutations happen to you, no?  Or no?

 

 

Enjoying the episode, but man, those are some basic rules for two of you to misunderstand after all these years! What in the world.

 

+1.  I think this is a result of people not reading the rules and just learning from someone who taught them, or reading the rules wrong once and never being corrected.  When our group learns a new game, usually multiple people read the rules and correct each other when we do things wrong.  It helps to enjoy reading rules!

 

I haven't gotten the digital edition yet, but I've recommended twice so far to people interested in the game and inexperienced playing it. I don't think I'd even try to pitch it to people who hadn't heard of it. Agree there is a vocabulary deficiency in digital games. I suppose Twilight Struggle is a "turn-based strategy game," but that term does not describe it.

 

I think this demonstrates how narrow the digital strategy spectrum is.  I mean, this isn't a new problem - boardgame ports have been available for a long time.  What would you call digital Puerto Rico? There is an aversion to too much abstraction in digital games that I think prevents abstract mechanics from entering the vocabulary.  It's back to the old question: why abstract something on the computer when you don't have to?

[sclpls]

I'll just chime in and say I too share Rob's wish for a digital version of the COIN games.

 

I haven't played much Twilight Struggle because my friend that has a copy has played the game many more times than me, and so I always get stomped. I suppose I should get this PC copy just so I can finally learn how to play the game properly.

[Roke]

I didn't get to the halfway point of this episode before breaking down and buying the game, so well done. Twilight Struggle is a game I've wanted to play after reading Troy and Bruce's AAR years ago but I haven't gotten into board gaming.

 

I haven't read the rulebook yet (I should, I don't understand how realignments are calculated) but I read a few things from twilight strategy and was on my way. The AI doesn't seem to do a good job of protecting Europe from control but maybe it's just getting bad hands or that's just really difficult for the American player early on.

[cornchip]

Does the digital game come with an equivalent to the board game's cheat sheets? I think you can nearly play the entire game correctly just by putting one in front of each player. They cover setup, coups, realignments, influence, victory conditions, etc.

[ExitDose]

Is anyone else getting destroyed by the AI? Even with the optional cards and a handicap, the furthest that I get is Mid War.

[jakemix]

Re: the dream digital port of a board game: I've been dreaming forever of a Combat Commander: Europe port for iPad. It wouldn't be trivial but it would be amazing. That system just seems to go infinitely deep.

[jalefkowit]

Count me as another person who has found Twilight Struggle inaccessible. In fact I've now found it inaccessible twice! A few years back, I picked up a copy of the tabletop version after hearing so many raves about it; tried to play it a few times with a gaming buddy who was also new to it, and we repeatedly bounced off it pretty hard. Now the PC version comes out, I pick that up on a whim thinking maybe I'll finally learn how to play, but even after playing through the tutorial several times and trying a few games against the AI I still find myself at sea.

 

It's frustrating, because I know there must be a good game in there -- so many smart gamers can't be wrong! But I've never been able to get far enough past all the rules and mechanisms to find it. I get the sense from the podcast that this is one of those games that works best if you have an experienced player on hand to show you the ropes.

 

Although I have to ask why you expect a game to teach you strategy in addition to the rules.

 

I don't expect it to teach me every nuance of the strategic model -- half the fun of a strategy game is figuring out those on your own. What would be nice, though, was if I had some sense after playing the tutorial of what sorts of things would make for a good move on the first round. I have to start by placing alignment points, for instance -- what are the pros and cons of dumping them all into a couple of countries versus spreading them around? What are some good early cards I should be keeping an eye out for, and why are they significant? What are some "tells" I can use to spot when my opponent is building towards a big move in one region?

After finishing the tutorial I tried a game, and immediately ran into the fact that I had no idea what to do first because all I'd picked up were questions like these. I know you can learn this stuff the hard way by losing a lot, and for some people that may even be fun (the popularity of Dwarf Fortress is testament enough to that). But for me, feeling dumb is not fun. Constantly losing games because I don't know what I'm doing is not fun.

(It could be I'm just stupid, though. I am completely open to that possibility.)

[cornchip]

I find new players aren't thinking about scoring cards as a real possibility. If you imagine Europe scoring is going to hit in the first headline phase, you'll easily place your starting influence. And if you imagine your opponent will place whatever scoring cards you don't have wherever you're weakest, it helps to take actions. The game's like poker in that opponents respond to each other, so you do need a little trust that you'll develop your reading ability beyond a tutorial's ability to teach you.

 

But yes, one nice advantage of teaching in-person is you can play a sample round or two face-up. That's a good teaching tool for people who aren't willing to just jump in. And I find that doing these three things really help new players:

1. Walking them through scoring a region and reminding them that Europe, Asia and MidEast will be scored 1-2 times in Early War.
2. Reminding them that losing influence can lock them out of a region/make spreading influence expensive.
3. Suggesting they play more of their side's cards for influence than for events.

[panzeh]

I also think new players tend to use coups too little and to late- the Soviet player should abuse the fact that in a low-defcon situation he can immediately use his coup to eliminate coups for the US player.

 

Also, one of the people playing mentioned that he kept getting hands full of opponent-events.  This game self-balances in a way because if you've got all of his events, he's much more likely to have yours, and if he doesn't, next turn, it will almost always be the opposite situation.  You can always, always play your way through.  Having opponent events in any case allows you to mitigate them and there are definitely some that give you enough ops to usually have one left over for something else.

 

One of the more important things as an intermediate player is to understand when the cards that let you springboard into new areas come out.  Decolonization, De-stalinization,  You have to be careful though because these low-stability areas are fertile coup grounds and attempts to get in too early will get stamped out.

[fledermaus]

What a great game.  I had been thinking about buying the tabletop version, but this one is good substitute.  I still haven't beaten it yet but after 5 games I think I found my footing.  The last game was so frustrating.  I took total control of Europe as the US on turn 6.  "Great" I thought, "Now just to maintain control until the Europe scoring card comes back around on the reshuffle next turn."  On turn 9 (still no Europe card yet) USSR plays the wargames card and wins by 2 points.  

 

I love the atmosphere of this game, the ambient noise and speeches between turns.  It really feels like the cold war.  

[panzeh]

What a great game.  I had been thinking about buying the tabletop version, but this one is good substitute.  I still haven't beaten it yet but after 5 games I think I found my footing.  The last game was so frustrating.  I took total control of Europe as the US on turn 6.  "Great" I thought, "Now just to maintain control until the Europe scoring card comes back around on the reshuffle next turn."  On turn 9 (still no Europe card yet) USSR plays the wargames card and wins by 2 points.  

 

I love the atmosphere of this game, the ambient noise and speeches between turns.  It really feels like the cold war.  

 

Wargames is a card that pretty much every new player should be told about even if they say they don't want to be spoiled by the cards.  It's the most important card in the Late War by far.

[cornchip]

I like to tell a new player that there's a card in the late war deck that can end the game early and then describe it while shuffling the Late War deck. I never badger them about the score getting past 6, though (or near 20.) That said, sounds like fledermaus knew about Wargames from his previous games. That's a tough sequence of cards!

[spacerumsfeld]

I don't expect it to teach me every nuance of the strategic model -- half the fun of a strategy game is figuring out those on your own. What would be nice, though, was if I had some sense after playing the tutorial of what sorts of things would make for a good move on the first round. I have to start by placing alignment points, for instance -- what are the pros and cons of dumping them all into a couple of countries versus spreading them around? What are some good early cards I should be keeping an eye out for, and why are they significant? What are some "tells" I can use to spot when my opponent is building towards a big move in one region?

After finishing the tutorial I tried a game, and immediately ran into the fact that I had no idea what to do first because all I'd picked up were questions like these. I know you can learn this stuff the hard way by losing a lot, and for some people that may even be fun (the popularity of Dwarf Fortress is testament enough to that). But for me, feeling dumb is not fun. Constantly losing games because I don't know what I'm doing is not fun.

(It could be I'm just stupid, though. I am completely open to that possibility.)

 

I certainly doubt that you're in any way stupid, but I think this simply speaks to the difference between people who grew up with digital games in a certain space, and those who grew up with boardgames.  For me, learning a boardgame is just learning all the ways to lose, until you eventually don't.  I find it much more satisfying to figure out why something isn't working than to have someone tell me.  And against the AI, I can lose over and over and not worry about it.  Although I've played the game enough in the boardgame iteration that I'm not coming at it from a newbie perspective.

 

You should definitely check out Twilightstrategy.com, which was mentioned upthread.  That has all the hints and tips you could ever want.