This months CGM has my review of Shrapnel’s naval strategy game Salvo! and my preview of Civilization IV. It should be on a newstand somewhere near you.

Salvo! is one of those games that gets a few things right, but then promptly loses them in an antiquated interface and a scenario set that relies on volume more than variety. For all the battles and settings and campaigns – and there are lots of them – there isn’t much to distinguish one from the next. Part of that is the nature of the subject matter. How much can you do to separate one battle between square rigged ships and another? I would have preferred a game with fewer identical battles and a much more information ready interface.

My Civ IV preview reveals the perils of the print medium. When the article was written, the game was still pegged for a November release, and I say so in the piece. Now we know that we will see Civ very soon.

The screenshots given us don’t do much to convey why you should be excited about yet another Civ. They show that the 3D view is much improved from earlier shots, but there’s not a whole lot else there. Turn based strategy games don’t photograph well in any case.

I walked into the hands-on session not particularly enthused about Civ IV. I was looking forward to it, of course. But like many fans of the Meier idea factory, I was concerned that they were going back to the same old ideas over and over again instead of breaking out and doing a game we hadn’t seen before.

By the end, I was a convert. Some of this might have been gaming journalist Stockholm Syndrome. When you are surrounded by developers and other writers, all excited about what they are seeing and doing, it is easy to get all wrapped up in the enthusiasm. This is one reason why I think reviewing games at corporate sites is unreliable and, probably, a bad idea. Previews are a different animal.

I don’t think it’s all groupthink, though. Civ IV is a major improvement over Civ III. There are new annoyances to distract you – barbarians have cities again, wild animals will eat your workers, etc. – but the old ones that made the game less interesting are gone. No more foreign settlers crossing your land unless you give them permission. Corruption replaced with empire management costs. MP no longer a pain in the ass.

Plus, it looks like it will ship with some historic scenarios – something we had to wait for Conquests to get in Civ III.

Ultimately, I think The Movies (previewed by Cindy Yans in this same issue) will be my number one must-see game of the season. I never got much of a chance to play Civ IV in single player since the whole reason for the visit was to show off what they had done to make it a multiplayer game. There have been stories that have alluded to much greater compression of the later time periods, and I wonder if the openness of the tech tree means that the gunpowder rush will become the only viable strategy. From what I saw and experienced, though, I don’t think I will wait till Xmas to send my legions into Tenochtitlan.

Sorry for the lack of more frequent updates recently. The last couple of weeks have been pretty hectic, as I worked my way through some new software, got ill, and now the worst news of all.

I have a day job.

I will soon return to the classroom to lead AP history and government classes. As I get back up to speed with the new curriculum, the update pace will slow down some. Any new thoughts will find their way here.

Gaming journalism’s wargaming guru, Bruce Geryk, has posted a new column on why wargames are letting him down. His point, in a nutshell, is that the computer has set a trap for wargame designers by allowing them to design more complex simulations of historical conflicts but not get around the basic design deficiencies that have plagued the hobby for some time. The result is a series of games that either play out as puzzles (with a single best solution) or have such a scattered design component that the player can find exploits after a few sessions.

The point that hit most home for me, though, was the tyranny of the message board.

“But the biggest obstacle to making simpler computer wargames is that a lot of people don’t like simple games, period. Almost the first thing you’ll read on any official forum where a new historical strategy game has been released is someone asking for a patch to simulate some minor detail, without which the poster asserts the game is worthless. When Crown of Glory was released, someone immediately complained that leaders, while they could be killed in combat, could not be wounded. Then someone suggested that leaders not only be wounded, but have variable convalescence periods in the hospital. Then the world exploded.”

Leaving aside the semantic debate over whether Crown of Glory is a wargame or not – it’s a strategy game in my book because you decide the units you will build and choose who your enemy will be – this kind of complaint has been made about every game that had a remotely historical theme. From the battleship sinking phalanxes in Civ to the absence of slavery in every Age of Discovery game, many strategy gamers are convinced that the closer a game approximates history, the more fun they will have. Love of history is converted to a love of games that are just like history.

(Ironically, many of these same people are in the RTS hating brigade and mourn the death of the TBS game. To my knowledge, Napoleon never moved in turns.)

Of course, this emphasis on kitchen sink accuracy is most renowned among the rivet counting flight sim set. So it’s not just the wargamers who mistake detail for fun.

The curious thing in all this is that no historian of any merit really dwells on the details of a situation unless it affects their overall understanding of an event. The fact that the rectangular shield of the legionaries wasn’t around in the mid-Republic or that the acceleration rate of the Zero fighter couldn’t compete with later American planes are insignificant compared with the generally superior training of Roman soldiers and the crippling lack of oil facing Japan.

I guess that fantasy gamers have a bit of an advantage on us grognards. All the complaints about class nerfing in MMOGs are based on either personal class choices or on theories about how changes to class powers will affect the game in general. Will there be too many druids? How do you persuade someone to play a healer? How do you allocate experience for a party kill? Even when wargamers and strategy gamers discuss how changes would affect game balance or design they pay lip service to history. (Check the Paradox forums for discussions on Muslim sea transport in Crusader Kings.)

I’m not immune to this, of course. My annoyance at elephants that behave like tanks is a theme here. I do love wargames and wargamers. The games are actually pretty relaxing, and my PBEM experiences rank as some of my favorite games. You can trash talk in the emails, debrief after a difficult encounter, get pro-tips from generous superior players as you work your way down the Misssissippi. Wargamers are among those most open to house rules – gentleman’s agreements on what tactics are off limits.

My love of the games is the root of my general frustration at times with those who just don’t get the whole “game design” thing, those who want to see things happen as they happened. They may be a minority of wargamers, but they flock to message boards and forums like Goths to the bathhouse. I’ve always held that the most strategy gamers don’t frequent message boards, but game companies take these boards seriously. And sometimes good can come of it – for all its occasionaly fanboy exuberance, the Paradox boards sometimes come up with game enhancing suggestions.

And Bruce, if you read this, dibs on what you want to sell on Ebay.

Black and White 2 is out now. As usual, IGN has the first online review and, as usual, the high score doesn’t seem to match the number of misgivings that Steve Butts mentions in the text. Of course, if you are going to have a review that long, it’s not going to be easy to keep a consistently enthusiastic tone.

Two things stand out in the review. First, there is a claim that three-quarters of the original B&W‘s sales were to people who “weren’t really gamers”. I have no idea what that means or where that data came from. But, if remotely true, it makes me pause as I think about how the news of games gets to the “non-gamer”.

Second, Black and White 2 seems a step back from the first game. More RTS elements, less emphasis on being a god that indirectly affects humans and a lot of attention to traditional military conflict.

Say what you will about Black and White – it was different. As a rough fusion of Populous and SimCity, it put the God in god-game. Interface issues and the difficulty in keeping the game fresh meant that the player would quickly understand why the Greek gods were always making mischief for their worshippers. B&W was a great idea that was made into an OK game.

So part of me is very disappointed to hear that the developers of B&W 2 weakened that part of the game to focus on more conventional game mechanics. It’s a perfectly understandable decision. Despite the good sales and raving early reviews, it didn’t take long for consumers and the gaming press in general to decide that a lot of the positive buzz was evidence that many reviewers were either asleep at the switch or didn’t play very far. Likely stung by many of the post mortem criticisms, it probably made sense to tip the game towards the tried and true and away from the “What the hell is this?”

It’s probably too strong to say that B&W 2 sold out. After all, the initial game sold millions of copies. Those who felt ripped off by the first one are going to take a “wait-and-see” approach no matter what happens – a new game focus won’t be enough to make me buy it in the next two weeks. But instead of finding other ways to make the god-playing compelling, moving to road building and army shuffling seems a slight betrayal of those people who had hope that there was a great and original game in there

Great Invasions is the pseudo-sequel to Pax Romana, an overambitious, poorly executed, rushed out the door mess of a game with a few brilliant innovations. Great Invasions is not as bad as all that.

It’s not brilliant either.

Set in the decline of the Roman Empire, GI charges the player with managing kingdoms, empires and religions as they rise and fall under internal and external pressure. There will be barbarian hordes, ambitious generals, saints, martyrs, heresies, and the rise of a new monotheism in the Middle East to challenge the dominance of Christianity. It is an exciting time frame for a game, and, unlike the better known and certainly bigger hit Total War: Barbarian Invasions, it takes its history very seriously.

In the History Fixed campaigns, this fidelity to history can be a little constraining. Revolts not only appear as they did historically, but vanish historically too. This means that you don’t have to put too much effort into managing the historical troubles. You can focus on the ones caused by your own incompetence. There are Open and Fantasia campaigns available, but they lack a lot of the fascinating color that makes the game as illuminating as it can be.

The most interesting innovation of the game is that the player can control more than one power at once. In the Grand Campaign for example, the player can control both halves of the Roman Empire, the barbarian Franks and the Catholic Church. Each power has different goals, meaning that there is little risk that every game will play out the same even within the historical constraints. There is your standard economic/military game where you build and conquer, but if you control a faith, it is your job to convert heathens and kill heretics.

Like Pax Romana, the biggest failing of GI is the interface and documentation. When you give the player so much to do, he/she better be clear on what the priorities are. The 25 page manual is skimpy (though further documentation is available on the game’s web site) and has too few images to make it obvious what the text is talking about. The tutorials are nearly useless, especially when the player moves from a four province babarian kingdom to a twenty province empire.

It’s like staring at a menu in a restaurant where you can only afford the soup. You see all these choices in front of you, but there’s no way to get at them. In this case, it’s because you are afraid that you will set off a chain reaction of disasters that will undo whatever progress you have made.

Stability is enough of an issue that there have already been three and a half patches since the game was released in July. It is much better now, but far from perfect.

With dedicated study and hours of play, Great Invasions becomes a decent historical strategy game, but never more than that. The AI is listless in diplomacy and doesn’t make many aggressive military maneuvers unless programmed to do so. The shorter campaigns are more enjoyable than the Grand Campaign, but don’t have the epic feel that one of these games should have. The religious game would have been interesting all on its own, but sticking a military and economic game onto it just makes it feel like you are trying to do everything.

By allowing the player to control more than one nation/power, there is never any real down time to figure out what your priorities are. Just when you are getting a grip on the Saxons, you get an alert that something bad is happening to the Frisians. So you switch to them and manage that crisis while the Pope’s missionaries are still stuck in Rome because you’ve been too busy to move them. Real time grand strategy in the Europa Universalis vein requires that the player always feel the pressure of time, but there should always be enough time to do what needs to be done. Slowing down the time compression or pausing helps some, but you never really escape the feeling that you are herding cats.

The “governor” mechanic is never adequately explained, much of the art and the stratagem game device are holdovers from Pax Romana and for a game with so many historical figures it has a shocking lack of personality.

Lead designer Philippe Thibault designed the Europa Universalis board game and had a role in the first computer translation – the game that made Paradox Studios one of the most prominent developers of historical strategy games ever. Thibault’s games show immense design ambition and his titles’ obvious resemblance to the Paradox games overshadows some real conceptual originality, be it the political minigame in Pax Romana or the multi-nation management of Great Invasions.

Not yet available in America, Great Invasions is developed by Indie Games and published by Nobilis. If you don’t mind reading the manual in French, you can order it directly from the Nobilis website.

Slitherine’s next ancient strategy game, Legion: Arena has gone gold. It can be pre-ordered now from their website and will be released October 21.

My enthusiasm for this game was tempered a bit by the underwhelming IGN previews and the news that there would be no battle generator. But, with over 100 scenarios and their best engine yet, I am excited again.

I’ll confess to being a sucker for the material. I’ll read, watch and play almost anything with an ancient vibe. I even watched the execrable ABC miniseries Empire. The only more enjoyable than a good sword & sandal movie is a bad one, after all. This doesn’t work for games; a bad game is a bad game and you can’t take much zeal in the ludicrous when it’s taking up time you can spend on a good game.

With a 39.99 asking price, it’s ten dollars cheaper than Age of Empires 3 and appeals more to my sensibilities. Though Slitherine’s games to date have been pretty average, I keep following them because I have a feeling that someday they will surprise me.

Here’s hoping that October 21 brings a surprise.