It's winter 2007. I am rudely awoken from a pleasant dream about enjoying a delicious PF Changs Chang's Crispy Chicken by the percussive clunk of my then-roommate playing Starcraft on an ancient Microsoft computer. Though the game is contained by his headphones, the loud clatter of his fingers typing out commands to squads of Space Marines, Goliath mechs, and Wraith space air fighters keeps me awake for the remainder of the night. This was unfortunately far from unique during those months, as he would either be playing Starcraft or watching YouTube videos of Korean grandmasters playing championship matches.
I'm reminded of that time by the release of Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty, the first update to the tactical strategy game since the Brood War expansion pack ten years ago. In the late 19th century, Hajo Halborn notes that the German General Staff created the kriegspiel (wargame). Through a combination of table-top exercises and staff rides to evaluate old campaigns and plot out new sources of tactical advantage, the Germans pioneered the use of wargames for sound military decision. Commercial wargames are the offspring of the krigspiel system developed by the 19th century German warfighting system.
Would Moltke or Schlieffen be impressed by my roommate's Starcraft tactics? Probably not. Why? The type of command and battle that it depicts was already outdated by Napoleon's 1806 campaign at Jena. As Claus Telp notes in his monograph on Napoleonic warfare, structural political-economic conditions meant that campaigning in the time of Frederick the Great required a heavy degree of troop control. Battlefield commanders found themselves micromanaging even the smallest of units. Subordinate officers were not trusted to exercise independent thought or action and probably wouldn't be able to perform effectively even if they wanted to.
Antoine Bousqet likens the army in the Frederician era to the political concept of the state in the 18th century--of a giant mechanical device that is animated by the spirit or will of the sovereign. This "ghost in the machine" animates the clockwork machine, which like a rigid antiquarian device springs into action with clockwork precision. Elaborate drills practiced obsessively governed Frederician tactics.
In the Starcraft that I played, you must literally control and command every single unit. Unless they are attacked (in which they either fight back or flee), there is no independent action without the player. Thus, it is difficult to focus on the genuinely strategic aspects of the game (i.e choice of a base area, technological development of forces) because the player-commander is forced to micromanage even the smallest and most mundane of tactical operations and administrative difficulties. Most tactical strategy games share the flaw of player-as-godhead. That being said, I haven't really played much since Starcraft ten years ago, so maybe non-player AI has advanced sufficiently to allow more delegation of responsibility.
By the era of Napoleon, the distributed corps system allowed Napoleon---though still a micromanager and centralizer--to delegate responsibility to corps commanders who could fight independently. In the time between the end of the Napoleonic years and World War I the size and complexity of warfare exploded, necessitating a more advanced system of control. it was physically impossible for a commander to exercise cognitive dominion by sheer force of will over massive armies distributed across large theaters of operation. Those who grew preoccupied with techno-tactical details (like French commanders in 1870) were soundly beaten.
The purpose of the krigspiel was to game out alternate possibilities within this reality, allowing participation by many different actors within the General Staff. Today, a wide range of wargames--some involving human participants, others completely simulated, are used to test weapons, invasion plans, and other crucial factors. But whenever I hear about a tactical strategy commercial game, I think of those nights in winter 2007 and the clunking of my roommate's keyboard.
One of the best series of games out today is the "Total War" series. Napoleon: Total War is one of the newest installments of this series, and to which I was rather addicted to over the last two months.
The AI sucks--Playing as England, I took Paris with a single army in the Winter of 1806. When I was able to do that, on the hardest setting, I basically stopped playing. But, the units are historically based, with ship designs guided by the National Maritime Museum, London.
Even the best warfare/statecraft based games are nothing like krigspiel. To make the game harder or easier, generally a greater strategic depth is not given to the AI, rather the ability to raise armies or keep moral up in the armies are affected--but the game never gets any smarter.
The biggest loosing factor in my mind regarding Napoleon: Total War is that naval combat is precise. Move a fleet from the Chatham Docks to Trafalgar and it will be done in three turns, no matter what.
If this damned technological singularity would happen already, I think games might actually get interesting.
Posted by: YNSN | August 12, 2010 at 12:46 PM
I always hated the Starcraft AI, especially when it was controlling your own units. How many times did I shout, "No you idiots, stay in formation!" when a stray Zerg unit would draw a posse of advancing marines and tanks after it while I was commanding units on some other part of the field. When you're AI's default move is a mindless and disorganized frontal charge into hostile fire, you're screwed.
Posted by: Joseph Fouche | August 12, 2010 at 01:39 PM
The stimpacks were also the only way to make the marines really useful.
Posted by: A.E. | August 12, 2010 at 02:17 PM
Also Lucien, the whole singularity thing is lulz in and of itself.
Posted by: A.E. | August 12, 2010 at 02:18 PM
I ran across some space-based strategy game that would log the moves you made in the game and add them to a server. The server would then compare that to what other players were doing, and adapt the games AI to your strategy. It would also find the most successful strategies other players used against it and in turn, use those against you.
I didn't have the computer or the money for the game at that time. But, I am rather surprised not to have seen more games go in this direction. The adaptive algorithms are there, they can be licensed. The Steam network exists and could easily compile the information. But, it has not been implemented. A shame.
Posted by: YNSN | August 13, 2010 at 01:07 AM
That's interesting. Most of my favorite videogames tend to be RPGs like the Final Fantasy series or survival horror like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. I do play a few turn-based strategy games (some Civil War sims) though.
Posted by: A.E. | August 13, 2010 at 05:24 AM
The Air Force actually developed an airpower strategy game based on the StarCraft engine that I was 'trained' on for one of my courses. Basically, they had gotten their hands on a developmental version of the game and reskinned all the vehicles to look like actually platforms (F-15, B-2, etc) and tailored all the functions (endurance, HP, weapons range, damage, etc).
All of that would have just been superficial, but they also tailored the system where multiple players could be on the same side, basically replicating a COCOM air staff (Defensive Air, Offensive Air, Logistics, Base Defense, etc). Each of these functions would have 2-3 people. On top of that, they placed a 'Commander' function. The interesting thing about this role was that he couldn't actually control forces. He had to work through subordinates (just like real combat). Overall, the 'teams would be ~10-12 people working toward a common goal.
They did a pretty good job of creating dependencies in the system. Bombers couldn't make multiple runs without coming back for munition resupply and couldn't loiter for too long without refueling, so if your logistics guy sucked you could run out of fuel.
Overall, it was an interesting concept and fairly well executed. It definitely increased the chaos of the system and went beyond the all-powerful General model that is normal for these kinds of games.
Posted by: JimmySky | August 14, 2010 at 04:43 AM
Really? That's pretty awesome.
Posted by: A.E. | August 14, 2010 at 05:24 AM
Your roommate sounds like a pistol. I'm glad you moved out. Excellent post.
Posted by: Laura Donovan | August 17, 2010 at 01:47 PM
It's a good point that SC2 doesn't really simulate a pure struggle for strategic and tactical advantage. But it's also not a surprise, because it's not really supposed to. It's not that kind of game.
The reliance on micromanagement in Starcraft (and Starcraft 2) is a design decision, not a flaw-- or rather, only a flaw as far as you disagree with it as a stylistic choice.
In the 10 years since Brood War, the genre has done a lot of innovating, including some great variants that did indeed get rid of a lot of the micromanagement in favor of squad-based command, point control, and terrain features.
SC2 decided to ignore it all and go back to micro, which means they definitely did it on purpose. The reason is that SC isn't chess. It's not speed chess. It's speed chess while log rolling in an archery range during a fireworks show under a strobe light. The entirety of the challenge is making anything resembling a decent strategic decision in the face of all the distractions.
There are some elements (for those familiar, the Protoss Chronoboost, the Terran MULE, and the Zerg Inject Larva) that make no sense except as a deliberate test of one's multitasking-- a small-scale strategic decision for the player to remember and execute periodically.
So, you're absolutely right that SC and SC2 aren't good war simulators. If you don't like the dynamic, they also might not be enjoyable games. But the focus on micromanagement isn't a failure of imagination or a failure to accurately simulate being a battlefield commander. It's a success at trying to overload the gamer's capacity to execute his strategy.
Posted by: Transcriptase | August 22, 2010 at 07:54 PM
I don't see where I say that it was a failure of imagination or a massive flaw. My point was that 19th century kriegspiel users would not be impressed by it as a war simulator.
Posted by: A.E. | August 22, 2010 at 08:08 PM
The game that comes to my mind in this is Gratuitous Space Battles. You design your ships with whatever various weapons, armor, and engineering functions you want, arrange the fleet, give each ship orders, in terms of what types of enemy ships to engage first, at what range, holding formation or not, etc. And then you hit fight and your job is done. All you get to do during the battle itself is watch the pretty alpha-blended laser beams and explosions.
It's definitely a different experience. And, IMHO, a fun one. Especially for the price. I recommend it to anybody (Google it).
Posted by: NBarnes | August 22, 2010 at 08:13 PM
As mentioned above, the extreme micromanagement in SC2 is a feature, not a bug. There are, however, many tactical strategy games that do incorporate delegation, to greater or lesser degrees and with varying levels of success.
Staying within the conventional RTS genre, Men Of War (great title, eh?) gives its units considerable autonomy, while still allowing lots of micromanagement (down to the inventory of individual soldiers). Left to their own devices, units will seek cover, attack the enemy and so on. This means it can present battles on a scale rarely seen in RTS, as the player can focus on a small part of the battlefield and more or less rely on the AI to be sensible with the rest of the units. They're not going to launch a coordinated offensive on their own or anything like that, but neither are they going to stand there uselessly.
Moving more into wargame territory, the Take Command series (discussed at length in this podcast: http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/showthread.php?t=60797) models delegation quite comprehensively. You have to rely on your junior officers to carry out your commands, and they may not follow your orders.
In the grand strategy world, WWII sim Hearts of Iron 3 allows you to delegate entire theatres to the AI. I haven't played it though, so I can't really say how it works out.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | August 23, 2010 at 06:38 AM
I've played Hearts of Iron 3, very good stuff!
Posted by: A.E. | August 23, 2010 at 06:49 AM
My Starcraft is pretty rusty, but I think that if you watch those Korean grandmasters and listen to the commentary, there's a subtle battle between "micro" and "macro" management between two Starcraft players. "Micro" players control their units obsessively, and use huge numbers of commands to finesse their marines around incoming missiles or tentacles, increasing their effectiveness. "macro" players certainly still issue commands to their units, but spend their time maximizing resource extraction, base expansion and unit production. Their units tend to be less effective in combat because their "micro" isn't as good, but they bring more troops because their "macro" is better.
In good matches between a "micro" and a "macro" player, the "micro" master has a certain number of minutes to win the match with superior unit tactics before the "macro" player overwhelms the map with units and structures, and wins by weight of numbers.
Maybe, watching that, those Germans might be more impressed.
Posted by: Mike HEss | August 23, 2010 at 09:01 AM
Nice post & interesting thread. My wargaming these days is limited to occasional bouts of The Operational Art of War, which I enjoy but generally wind up on the losing side to the AI (e.g., in the Crusader or Kasserine scenarios I've never beaten computer-Rommel). I would greatly welcome a similar game where delegation was built-in, & perhaps one could vary the competence/initiative levels of various commanders in the hierarchy & issue general orders & objectives.
JimmySky, back at USAF Squadron Officers' School in the mid-70s I participated in a game like the one you described, with our section of a dozen officers simulating a battle staff in a humanitarian intervention/limited war scenario. By virtue of having spent a couple of months in "Blue Chip," the 7th AF command post at MACV, I was designated the CO. The only key combat decision I recall making was to cancel an intercept of an unknown aircraft (proved to be the correct correct decision). A very realistic exercise for all concerned, IMO.
Posted by: Ralph H. | August 23, 2010 at 11:58 AM
Ralph, that's a fun game too. The Kasserine scenario is rather rough.
Mike, that's still primarily a battle command perspective--and the friendly AI are still automatons. Other war games, like the ones mentioned in this thread, have a larger view.
Posted by: A.E. | August 23, 2010 at 02:26 PM
why are you always so much blame new technology, I do not understand ochem you here so many have written, you'd better tell you about a new discovery or something like
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