Cataphract: Medieval-fantasy roleplaying wargame, in the Black-Sea C. 1300 | Hacker News Reader

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

samsorensen.blot.im

188 pointsvidro349 comments

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 quality summary):

    "The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire is written with a profound knowledge of the field, a thorough mastery of the sources and secondary literature, and a lively and engaging style that both specialists and general readers will appreciate."     —Peter B. Golden, Rutgers University

1. https://acoup.blog/

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.

He himself seems more interested in Paradox games. I wonder what he will think about EUV.

He also has a great collection of his posts that are particularly useful for aspiring authors and rpg game masters:

https://acoup.blog/resources-for-world-builders/

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?

> 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.

“acoup” is also old french and middle english word along the lines of blow, strike, hit, overcome. Id always assumed it was the historic word myself.

Nitpick - it's Unmitigated Pedantry, not Unusual.

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 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, all trying to get the resources and credit for the successes. (Especially MacArthur in the Philippines).

The radio and news reels of the days could both provide fast information about what is/was happening and also ensure fame and fortune in the domestic environment if your narrative could prevail

I loved this theme in Patton! I wonder if the gov't fostered this or simply allowed it to manifest because, for the most part, it gave extra motivation to the generals to succeed and succeed well.

Every war needs Heroes. Gotta sell those war bonds! Boost favourable public opinion and control the positive narrative.

I believe that Stalin set 2 field marshals (Georgy Zhukov and Ivan Konev) on a race to Berlin in the last weeks of WW2 in Europe. Don’t think Stalin cared who won.

>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.

> there are a lot of games about strategy [..] and innumerable games about tactics [..], but very few about operations. Almost no games, as far as I’m aware, are interested in, say, the logistics of feeding an army, or communication structures between commanders in the field.

Allow me to whine about Ubisoft buying out Settlers, which was initially about (peace time) logistics, and somehow thinking they bought a RTS.

Same with Knights & Merchants, which was a city builder but you had to feed your peasants and army every day (I forgot how time worked in that game though), which involved a peasant going to the inn to eat for X amount of time, then going to the storehouse to pick up a bread or sausage and bringing it to a soldier. Times every peasant, times every soldier. I don't know if I remember that accurately though.

At a quick check the lead developer and artist on Knights & Merchants had previously worked on Settlers II at BlueByte. Looks like they liked their job a lot and quit before the series drifted more towards being a RTS.

> 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?

Don't know... maybe you can pick one of them in BGG and drill-down by mechanics?

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)

Arguably games like StarCraft include operational elements - managing and defending the peon line is as important as the front line.

It's still merely tactics though.

I'd say that managing your rally points and reinforcements (for terran, mostly) is the only thing that is related to operations, and it's a pretty limited part of both the game and what operations is about.

A lot is about predicting when you will need which size of army and preemptively build the right size of production to be able to produce that, just in time.

Lots of games that are billed as “strategy” are really more operations (or even tactics!) than strategy, right? I mean it is often the case in a strategy game that you just start out at war with everybody else, taking away the most important strategic decision.

Or, there are games like Civilization or Total war where, really, c’mon, you know it is just a matter of when, not if, you go to war.

I've played Polis a couple of times. It is brutally difficult (as in easy to lose, rather than difficult rules).

As a recovered EVE Online addict, there is at least one game out there that requires significant time on logistics and operations to win wars.

And while that one doesn't shy away from the material and financial cost of war, it greatly simplified traveling, allowing for shortcuts like jump drives allowing for instant teleportation of armies.

Not sure how to do it, but a history of the campaign from the different viewpoints would be an interesting read.

Perhaps a journalist piecing together the information, 6 months to a year after the events. Once the ripples have settled, more or less.

I might be biased as I have been reading 3 part history of the American Civil War, which also suffered from the fog of war and very slow information propagation.

Of course, history is always written by the victors after their glorious triumph has been consolidated and the losers comprehensively defeated.

This sounds a lot like the game played by the International Kriegsspiel Society (https://kriegsspiel.org/), which I think is worth noting in terms of other implementations of the same idea.

(Why do I not just say "This sounds a lot like Kriegsspiel?" Because there's so many different varieties of Kriegsspiel, not all of which work like this, so I'm pointing to a particular one that does.)

Way back in the day I downloaded this game called "The CRISIS Strategic Wargaming System". It was mostly a tactical thing, but it included a much more prominent role for supply lines and logistics than any other game I can recall. Unfortunately it was a "beta" version and apparently was never completed. I had looked for it a few times but seeing this spurred me to look again and I was able to find the old site on Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20060923152338/http://museum.sys... . I can still download the EXE so maybe I'll give it a try and see if it's similar to what I remember.

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.

you're unable to comprehend why people have a long-term hobbies?

> I don’t understand how people have the time to play things by mail in realtime

It's not via mail, it's via discord; there are more details in the submission:

"I set up a channel on a reasonably-popular RPG discord server I’m on, then each commander gets their own thread, using discord’s thread feature. Each commander then gets a little doc with their character writeup and a sheet with their army numbers. They write messages to me, I reply and notify them as events occur, and I keep track of everything on a big spreadsheet and a running Photoshop map file. (...)"

---

Also note that in early wargames writing down orders was part of the game, e.g.:

"Players do not speak to each other. Instead, they communicate with their teammates and the umpire through written messages. This is so that the enemy team cannot hear their plans. This is also so that the umpire can delay or block messages if he feels the circumstances on the battlefield warrant it. In the early 19th century, officers in the field communicated over long distances through messengers. There was no radio in those days. Messengers needed time to reach the recipient, and could be delayed or intercepted by the enemy. The umpire can simulate this problem by holding on to a player's message for a round or two before giving it to the recipient, never giving it, or even give it to the enemy."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kriegsspiel

> I want an evening escape

That would be giving orders for one turn. Why the rush?

> not a lifetime achievement.

That would be those free to play clickers.

Just get 20 hobbies like that to fill up each evening.

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.

I actually got excited thinking it was play by mail but it was not. I was picturing weathered wax sealed letters arriving to your mailbox, written in an old school font, detailing outcomes of your decisions and how you wanted to proceed.

I think it would be really cool to run a game like that

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.

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…

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/

I also thought about this type of game!

I have more experience with the discrete version - e.g., Konquest[0].

I think it's not very operational, as getting your ships to battle is as simple as saying go from A to B. Your operational choices boil down to whether you want to pass through planet C, to trade time for flexibility.

While it has perfect information over your own ships, I think the core idea can be easily adapted to have separate players controlling separate planets, with delayed communication, both for people playing this game and for an AI competition.

[0] https://apps.kde.org/en-gb/konquest/

> Your operational choices boil down to whether you want to pass through planet C, to trade time for flexibility.

I don't think that's true, at least when programs play it. Key to victory was making sure that you have enough of forces to capture the planet you are sending your forces to. It was always about having the right sized fleet ready and sending right sized fleet sometimes from multiple sources to capture the planet and increase your production as a result.

It's true that the game had perfect information, instant communication and no randomness in battle outcome. Are those necessary elements for something to be operations game or are those just elements that particularly interest you?

That's a good point, the matter of timing different fleets from different sources to arrive at the same time is definitely an operational challenge.

I think it's a bit difficult to describe a game as purely strategic/operational/tactical.

Games can contain strategic/operational/tactical elements or choices, and I would say that a game where the vast majority of choices are operational can be called an "operations game".

When I played Konquest/Galcon, I felt that the biggest challenge was figuring the correct timing and order of expansion, which to me feels like strategy. It's very possible that AIs would disagree with me.

Sounds very cool. I wish I had the patience for this kind of real-time game. I did a real time Kerbal mission to Mun once and that was about at my limit. It sounds like this wargame requires much more.

used to play http://wiki.utopia-game.com/index.php?title=Welcome_to_the_U...

i dont imagine most people can wait 2 weeks for a command to execute...haha

It will go well with fantasy ambience for RPGs: https://tabletopy.com

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