Rob Zacny

Episode 287: General Mayhem

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The most regular of panels is together to talk about generals: how are they portrayed in games, and do they accurately represent the effect of true leadership on the battlefield? Rob, Julian, Fraser, and Troy "That's not my lieutenant, that's my horse" Goodfellow debate the finder points of leadersihp. Most importantly: Fraser has the itch to write some fan fiction. 

 

Listen here.

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First, thank you for your always interesting podcast. At the beginning of this episode the assertion is made that at Omaha Beach the men didn't hang around waiting for the leaders to get them to move. But as it happens I am just reading "the dead and those about to die" by John McManus and he is asserts that that is exactly what did happen. Namely, men were generally pinned down by fire in difficult positions on the beach and it was up to the NCOs, lieutenants, and Higher officers to get them to move, often by leading by example. To eve, in fact, give speeches sometimes that convinced the men that they must move. E.g., ...there are "only two types of men on this beach: those dead and those about to die." .. (So get moving). So sometimes the caricatures of leadership are not so far off :)

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I just remembered that Centurion: The Defender of Rome, had a system where generals had three main attributes: voice (how far they could be heard), charisma (bonus to morale) and sphere of influence (affect the number of units under his direct command). Which mean that units that where to far, only follow the order given at the start of the battle, while the other units, under direct command could follow new orders. It was amazing system I did play a lot this game (by the way, that game had everything, and somehow it worked, I mean, it had land battles, gladiator games, chariot races, naval battles, promotions, diplomacy, even, something which I only discovered much later reading the tv troopes, it even had a " special encounter with cleopatra" which I guess was cut off on the genesis version, because I don´t remember that at all) in the end the game even tell you how much people you killed (or slaved, can´t remember).

I do have a "it´s complicated" relationship with Rome II, so I am part team Fraser (it got much better with Emperor edition and I admit have a bit hype and hope for Attila) and part team Rob (there things which still drive me crazy, such start a campaign and have no idea where my armies are), the general system in Total War worked best with Shogun II with the way they implemented skills and how dangerous generals could become, and I wonder how they will pull off with Attila, some late developer diaries show some promise, its worth checking.

 

I got to agree that generals should have a bit more that just bonus, which often due the way strategy games often work, make them invisible, specially in space 4x games where you put someone at a fleet and forget them there, it would be cool if they had more personality or even some dialogues/reactions.

 

 

 



 

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I think 4Xs are too large in scope to pull off good leadership model without it becoming a distraction.

 

Core issue with generals/leadership is that about half of commanding is dealing with other human beings, while even the best RPGs have difficult time simulating good social interaction.  So much of wargaming has been about dealing away with all that 'messy' social elements of real authoritative structure, so to see a good depiction of that, the genre should probably look at RPGs to avoid retreading lot of game mechanical evolution that took place in regards to social interaction.

 

Then on top of that, the actual strategy aspect would have to become relatively hands-off to ensure that all that RPG-like management actually carries meaning beyond being stat-sticks for armies that you control.

 

Just an idea, but if anyone here remembers the "general camera" in older TW games... a cool approach of older leadership modeling would be to take control of battles at such view, assign 'officers' with certain behaviors to armies (that also have their own behaviors) and instead of controlling the army directly, you would send out signals that your army then would react to.  Signals would be things like drum beat, flag motions, smokes, messengers, etc. and yes those would suck so most of actual work would be done pre-battle phase via management and during battle at best you would make tiny adjustments.

 

Apologies for my rambling.

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First, thank you for your always interesting podcast. At the beginning of this episode the assertion is made that at Omaha Beach the men didn't hang around waiting for the leaders to get them to move. But as it happens I am just reading "the dead and those about to die" by John McManus and he is asserts that that is exactly what did happen. Namely, men were generally pinned down by fire in difficult positions on the beach and it was up to the NCOs, lieutenants, and Higher officers to get them to move, often by leading by example. To eve, in fact, give speeches sometimes that convinced the men that they must move. E.g., ...there are "only two types of men on this beach: those dead and those about to die." .. (So get moving). So sometimes the caricatures of leadership are not so far off :)

I support the assertion posted by LHughes41!

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I do have a "it´s complicated" relationship with Rome II, so I am part team Fraser (it got much better with Emperor edition and I admit have a bit hype and hope for Attila) and part team Rob (there things which still drive me crazy, such start a campaign and have no idea where my armies are), the general system in Total War worked best with Shogun II with the way they implemented skills and how dangerous generals could become, and I wonder how they will pull off with Attila, some late developer diaries show some promise, its worth checking.

 

It was funny to hear Fraser describe the Total War system of generals as a Rome II thing specifically, because Rome II is definitely Creative's least effective effort since the system of generals was codified in the first Rome game. Retainers and items can be swapped freely between generals to increase stats that have a largely invisible effect on the battlefield. Like many innovations from Creative Assembly, generals were best when first they were fully developed. The hope for a worthy son from a great general, the ability of generals to fail to live up to their potential, and the mechanics that made generals both modifiers and characters was the best there. It's never been a perfect system, because Total War games prize player agency and control a bit more than they should, maybe, but it was certainly vivid. Maybe Rome II could have approximated it a bit more if the restrictions on the number of armies wasn't so incredibly generous...

 

Honestly, whatever else is implemented in a system of generals, if there's not a good reason coming from the gameplay for players to put a bad general in command of their units, I consider it underbaked. It can even be just that you want to give your failure of a nephew a chance to show the command potential that you're hoping and praying exists within him.

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Spot on Gormongous, Rome 2 definitely had notably weak general system out of the series (although I think it was weaker in Empire where you just buy a general for 1k and be done with it).

 

I really enjoyed Medieval 2's system where generals had this cool mix of both random traits and player decisions made naturally over course of the game... like maybe you really want to loot this newly captured city but are you willing to dent the good honor of this perfect icon of chivalry?  Really cool how well that dread-chivalry scale tied in with actual meat of the game (fighting over cities) without feeling like it was hamfisted in there.

 

Come to think of it, Medieval 2 was just a really really good Total War game.  Too bad I hear that lot of guys behind it are fired or left CA.

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I really enjoyed Medieval 2's system where generals had this cool mix of both random traits and player decisions made naturally over course of the game... like maybe you really want to loot this newly captured city but are you willing to dent the good honor of this perfect icon of chivalry? Really cool how well that dread-chivalry scale tied in with actual meat of the game (fighting over cities) without feeling like it was hamfisted in there.

 

I forgot about the dread/chivalry dichotomy in Medieval 2! Yeah, it was really good. I distinctly remember playing the Holy Roman Empire and shifting all my dread-based generals to my front with France once I decided to exterminate them. Chivalric generals were for defensive wars.

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I just remembered, Koei had (with the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, which at least one is avaliable on gamersgate, I often plan to buy it but I keep forgetting about it) and other companies maybe (Kessen is one title I remember), at lot of historical games, many of them where very detailed, as commanders had several different atributtes, traits, loyalty and skills, choosing the right ones appeared to be very imporant. Also I believe some of the games of the franchise you could either spare or try to recruit enemy officers to your side.

 



 

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It's part 11 that's on Gamersgate.  The sad part is that it's the version without a major patch called 'Power Up Kit', which adds new features and fixes lategame AI.  Otherwise really superb game and is currently a major source of reference for myself with how it handles city/military management all in single screen (something that other RotTK games don't do and hence in my view ends up being worse games for it).

 

However, how that game handles 'debates' is largely debatable at best.

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After the discussion on officers and generals, it would be interesting to see a war game that focuses on, or even considers, the master sergeants and other NCOs that train enlisted troops.

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I found the episode fascinating, but I have to say that in my opinion, Rob seemed a little too hard on games that gave generals benefits to those around them.

 

As alluded to in the podcast, the problem is that games take away the one ability that separated good generals from bad, the ability to make good or bad strategic decisions (because you're making them all).  So if the design doesn't allow generals to actually be generals, what is left except "super-powers"?

 

Another point brought up was always using one's "good" generals and sacking the bad ones.   Some games try to simulate this difficulty, but I think the more realistic problem is that generals don't come with a "strategic capability rating" pinned to their chest.  Instead, you try to glean a general's abilities by how well they do in battles.  The only problem is that there are also a dozen other factors that come into play, obscuring the role of the general.

 

Personally, I think you could make a fascinating mechanic where you don't know general's ratings, only the outcomes from battles.  Combine this with some limited ability to bounce generals up and down the hierarchy, and you have a game where you might very well be promoting an initially lucky but actually incompetent general, etc.

 

Of course against that, you have the fact that players want generals to follow historic models, meaning they want far more information than was available to the Commander in Chief, and players also like to have exact factors rather than being forced to estimate, so maybe this isn't such a great mechanic after all.

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