Four sim-Rome games coming out in the near future, and, based on the screenshots, not a hell of a lot to distinguish them.

Here are shots of Firaxis/Firefly’s CivCity:Rome.

Here’s Caesar IV from Tilted Mill.

Haemimont’s Glory of the Roman Empire is here.

And finally, Deep Red’s Heart of Empire: Rome.

Now, it is completely natural that the screens will be almost interchangeable. Ancient Rome is ancient Rome and it will always be marble temples, aqueducts, theaters and some wood huts.

But I wager that however similar these games look, there will be some noticeable differences between them. And that is the problem with screenshots.

In an understandable effort to cram as much visual splendor as possible into a single picture, important things like game interface and how the building relates to a larger game mission are left out. Screenshots are almost always taken divorced from any context.

I’m not talking about screenshots that may intentionally mislead (“bullshots“), though that also happens. I’m talking about screenshots as stills completely isolated from how the player will actually interact with them. None of these Roman city-builder shots give you an idea how the buildings are constructed, how the economy will work or whether there is any significant military component to the game.

Game videos are often not much better. As I type, I’m downloading the demo for Rise and Fall: Civilizations at War, Midway’s action/rts that marked the end of the line for Stainless Steel Studios. Almost all of the gameplay videos released to this point have emphasized the “hero mode”, wherein you as the player take part in the battle on your screen. Game descriptions, however, have mentioned that this is only a single part of the game. Screenshots show traditional RTS action, but nothing besides men on ships to set it apart from the rest. Video shows a half-naked Cleopatra cutting heads off.

Screenshots, in my opinion, need to show the interface at some point in development – at least if they want to be informative. Discussion of the new Europa Universalis III screenshots in the developers’ diaries have focused on the revelation of a court screen and a new economic/tech investment screen – not as much on how the trees still look stupid. Discussion on real information.

But screenshots are really about marketing, and marketing means showing as much of the artwork as possible; these are “video” games after all. But based on these Roman city shots, I so far have no real reason to pick one over the others.

Brad Wardell, the big brain behind Galactic Civilizations II (one of the best strategy games of a young 2006) thinks I am wrong. Or at least focused on the wrong things. And not just me.

In my recent Round Table post on gaming friendships, I noted that GC2’s lack of multiplayer handicapped it when compared to other strategy games available to us. I wrote how good MP experiences encourage me to look for this feature in the games I play. Wardell replies:

I think if we sat down and did an inventory of strategy games that have come out in the past 5 years that the multiplayer fanbase has gotten served quite well. By contrast, people like me who want to sit down and play against computer players have gotten, in my opinion, the shaft.

This is an intriguing interpretation of how gaming has developed. Have single player gamers gotten the shaft?

If you look around at gaming coverage, the 800 pound gorilla of World of Warcraft can make it appear that everyone is playing multiplayer games all the time. I know that my multiplayer gaming has increased a thousandfold in the last year or so.

But multiplayer is still very much an afterthought in strategy game design. Real time strategy game developers seem to spend more time on crafting lame single player campaigns instead of doing proper faction balancing – something that can only become really apparent after hours of multiplayer experience.

Computer wargames are almost exclusively single player oriented – it often takes some kind of masochist to want to play the larger SSG games by email. Even a game that seems ready made for MP action like Second Manassas has no way to lose to a friend.

None of the Paradox games have really worked all that well in multiplayer – especially the no-brainer Diplomacy – sometimes because of the huge time commitment involved, but as often because of poor networking.

Civ IV has a great multiplayer interface and loads of options, but the Pit Boss wasn’t made available until fairly recently – about six months after release. No doubt what their priorities are.

Wardell admits that the next GalCiv will likely have multiplayer, and I am very much looking forward to Society, Stardock’s upcoming MMRTS. So even he realizes that MP has become very important to people like me.

But it’s not like I deducted points from GC2 because of the lack of multiplayer; I didn’t. My review was almost entirely enthusiastic, with my biggest complaints reserved for documentation. I still play most of my games alone, after all. As my gaming relationship post noted, I prefer to play with friends and friends are not always available. Single player is all of our first entrees into a new game.

But the multiplayer experience is becoming more and more important to me. And games that provide it will probably have a longer life on my computer.

By the way, I still highly recommend Galactic Civilizations II.

My recent review of Birth of America has been linked over at the unfortunately named Tacticular Cancer, a sister site to the better known RPGCodex. Since they frequently link to my rants and raves, I’ve added them to my site list on the side bar. It’s a fairly decent linking site at this point, though I hope they can soon add some original content. Some of the people there seem to know what they are talking about.

The forum post on my review has raised an interesting question about getting people interested in wargaming. I made a throwaway comment in my BoA review in which I doubted its efficacy as a starter wargame. A guy named Naked Lunch argued against that and has asked the very reasonable question “What would I recommend?”

And that’s kind of the kicker, isn’t it? There was a time when there were lots of beer and pretzel wargames that served as training grounds for would-be Rommels and wannabe Lees; games that were easy to understand and provided some immediate satisfaction. Stuff like Panzer General. That war-ish niche has been filled by the RTS in many respects. It looks like war, and even feels like war, but for people who prefer Korsun Pocket they don’t quite scratch that itch.

It’s not news to anybody that wargaming is less than it once was, percentage wise. There are niche developers like HPS and the occasional publisher like Matrix Games or Shrapnel that are willing to put some money behind things like Flashpoint Germany or the Armored Task Force series.

And it’s not like there aren’t some great wargames out there. Birth of America is almost great. The SSG wargames are gems that don’t get enough publicity. If Second Manassas holds up to the high standard set by its predecessor, we could have an excellent introductory serious wargame company not to far from me.

So how does a genre move beyond its base? I point RTS people to Battle for Middle Earth II. I point wannabe strategy gamers to the Total War series. But wargamers? Could I be wrong about Birth of America?

Please enlighten me.

It looks like a grand strategy game, but Birth of America is a pure wargame. No building of units, no construction of buildings (beyond the odd fort), no resouce gathering. This alone will turn a lot of people away from the game, despite the novelty of the 18th century setting. More’s the pity.

AGEOD‘s first game puts you in control of one of the sides in the French and Indian War or the American Revolution through two long campaigns or a number of shorter scenarios. It plays out in simultaneous turns and gives you all of North America east of the Mississippi (plus some Caribbean fortresses) for your battlefield.

The first thing that strikes you about BoA is the artwork. The map itself is a mess of greens and browns, splotched with white in the winter. But the counters are great, with leaders having very convincing portraits and the armies having clear colors. Planned movement is indicated with with lines and little numbers marking how many days it will take the army to get to a location along the way.

The simplicity of the game hides how well it mirrors 18th century combat. Sieges can take a long time, but assaults can be effective. Supply trains are essential to long distance treks, but can slow you down immensely. Nothing breaks a campaign like winter does, and breaking fortress towns like Louisbourg will take many winters or a lucky assault.

Fog of war is connected to control of regions, terrain and the abilities of your generals. Some of your little men will be able to hide better than others, making ambushes an effective strategy. It is a little counterintuitive that Cornwallis can set an ambush in the wilds of the Ohio Valley, but the game doesn’t discriminate against any one side.

(I have been very unfortunate in my efforts to get a PBEM game going. There is an error on one end that prevents us from even getting the game going. Once I can get a game running, I’ll comment on its suitability for multiplayer.)

Any technical issues with scrolling and load times have been ironed out from the preview, making BoA a mostly pleasant experience.

So much for the description. The conclusion? Birth of America is a very good game. The design is wholly original, and is not an attempt to ape or mimic the design of any other title on the market (a charge that could be fairly leveled at Philippe Thibaut’s other strategy games, both of which had more than a passing resemblance to Europa Universalis.) As turns move on, a greater sense of the turning points of the conflicts evolves and the strategic situation facing each of the nations involved becomes clearer.

Take the issue of reinforcements. Each side is reinforced based on historical exigencies. This poses a problem for the British in the French and Indian War. They have too few troops in place to be strong everywhere they need to be and are faced with a colonial levy system that means some forces get disbanded once their service is up. They will eventually be reconstituted, but back at colonial capitals. So, the British player has to plan his/her early movements with this in mind. A stream of Redcoats will soon arrive, though, meaning that the French player has the opposite problem – he/she has to move quickly.

The inclusion of river movement adds another twist left out of many theater level wargames. The rivers of Eastern North America give the side with the craft power to move a lot of troops quickly. So, control of port towns not only means controlling the high seas but also controlling the interior waterways.

No game in recent memory so effectively enforces the concept of “Winter Quarters”, meaning that moving troops like little firefighters eliminating threats here and there won’t work. You need to decide what your one or two priority targets are for a campaign season and hope to hold ground in those places your opponent targets. This makes for some serious strategic thinking.

Birth of America is not perfect. Turn results could be displayed more prominently and the rollover tooltips are often in too small a font. The entire game could be written with larger print, in fact. The music is forgettable and there are enough bugs and glitches to mean that we are now on a sixth patch – with still more to come.

Plus, if you don’t like wargames this one won’t win you over. It doesn’t have enough of the political flavor to draw in afficianadoes of the Revolutionary Period and not enough chrome to bring in newcomers. This is too bad, since the game itself is accessible enough to newcomers to recommend to people want to give this sort of game a try.

(Full disclosure: Though uncredited, I edited the English language PDF manual.)

I am a very nice guy. I make friends very easily, can engage with strangers comfortably and am a devastatingly charming dinner companion. Modest, too.

But even someone as patient and self-effacing as I am has his limits. And my limit is anonymous online gaming. I hate it. I can’t go into a multiplayer lobby and just play a random guy. (If you saw a bunch of twits spamming a Battle for Middle Earth II chat screen, you wouldn’t either.) Even on many serious wargaming forums I am a little antsy about starting up a PBEM game with WarDude113.

It’s not that I have had a lot of negative experiences with this sort of thing. I haven’t. I’ve heard all the stories about hackers, cheaters, sore losers…the gamut of online crimes against fun. And just like I don’t have to be mugged to know that I shouldn’t walk back from the Metro at 1 am, I don’t have to be beaten by a cheater to know that I can avoid that situation.

One big reason to avoid anonymous online people is that I have a reservoir of people I know I can game with. People I trust to be good opponents and who will provide a stress free experience.

The first sign of a good gaming relationship is the acceptance that people are of different levels. As much as I love gaming, I know that I will not be the best at much of it. I have one friend who will always beat me in RTS – though I can make it close. I have another who I play wargames with (everything from Sid Meier’s Gettysburg to Birth of America, assuming we can get it to work right) who I expect a thrashing from almost every time out. Despite the predictability of many of the outcomes, there is never a sign of impatience or frustration.

The second sign of a good gaming relationship is the teaching phase. Often a friend or colleague will get a game a week or two before I will. Being an idiot, I often jump right into multiplayer. Good gaming friends will often give a word or two of advice before, during and after the match. I’ve done the same with friends new to one game or another.

The third sign is nagging. “You have to buy this!” Why? “So we can play it together.” Is there any finer compliment in the world than “We should play this”? (I’m starting to get a lot of this nagging about World of Warcraft.)

As I think through my gaming friendships, most of them exist purely online – not in any real world context. I’ve met my wargaming pal only once. My other gaming friends are either Europeans, colleagues scattered through America or random names from a good gaming forum or chat room whom I think I can trust.

Good multiplayer experiences can sure spoil you, though. Galactic Civilization II doesn’t have MP, Civilization IV does. Both are great games, but guess which one will have a longer life on my hard drive? (And not just mine.) I’ve been a single player gamer for almost my entire life, but I have finally come to the point where a lot of gamers were a couple of years ago, seeking out multiplayer in every game. Good MP experiences have also made me hungry for real world human contact in gaming. Board gaming, DnD…anything to keep the rush of shared competition going between computer game cycles.

Friends and books two things you can never have too many of. I have Xfire. Look for me. If I can trust you.

Please visit the Round Table’s Main Hall for links to all entries.

While finishing up my review of the non-violent conflict sim A Force More Powerful (hopefully coming to a magazine near you in a month or so) it occurred to me that it shows a side of politics that is completely missing from strategy games – the question of legitimate and illegitimate actions.

In a site that I am not always sure is parody, Right on Games notes with complete accuracy that most Civilization players would not have put up with Iran’s flouting of their desires without a prompt attack. In Civ III, I’ve started wars over horses, iron and dye. In Civ IV, I’ve attacked the Aztecs because, well, they’re the Aztecs. (I’ve also started wars over oil, but somehow that doesn’t seem as far-fetched.)

There is also no domestic penalty for any of this. Sure, war exhaustion will kick in if you’ve been at it for too long, but the reasons you go to war are never made explicit to anyone in game. You may annoy some mutual friends (like France) and nuclear weapons really get rival nations upset. But there is no price to be paid at home for an adventurous foreign policy.

This is the analog of the “casualties/schmasulaties” problem I wrote about last year. In that post, I observed that wargames give no sense of the loss involved or sacrifice required in a battle. Battles are isolated from campaigns, losses don’t necessarily carry over from one fight to the next…many modern wargames are more about equipment losses than manpower losses.

In short, as much as strategy gamers like to say that they appreciate tough decisions, they are never faced with the really tough ones. War becomes a cost-benefit analysis (in a “realist” model) and not a decision that has important consequences for anyone but yourself. In Europa Universalis II, I’ve started wars even though it meant that an ally would get overrun – sometimes even because they would get overrun. Nuclear weapons are always beautiful when they explode.

Much of this is because of the god-like perspective that strategy games give to the player. You are the big picture guy/gal who can’t be bothered with the problems of citizens except insofar as they might revolt. There is no impression that your rule is a charge or a trust or dependent on the legitimacy of your actions.

Oddly enough, Crusader Kings – with all the divine right that the term “king” connotes – comes closest. Here, almost all of your concerns are domestic. Do your vassals respect you as a leader? Do you have a reputation for piety? If I assassinate my eldest idiot son so he can’t rise to the throne, I might lose all legitimacy (through acquiring the “kinslayer” trait.) Upset the Pope and you could get excommunicated – say farewell to your kingdom as everyone around you grabs claims on it.

I’ve written before about how the realist notion of a state of nature permeates the strategy genre. It even approaches neo-realism in how states are billiard balls in a game centered on a balance of power. And I love me my wars – virtually, of course.

Still, I am convinced that there is something to be gained by giving the cyber commander-in-chief more to be concerned about than what he/she can get by conquering their peaceful neighbor to the north. Because if life was Civilization, Canada would be gone by now.