Friday, April 25, 2025

Excalibur: Not won!

Viewing enemy allegiances with Merlin's spy magic

Sun Tzu urges the wise ruler to pursue knowledge of the enemy's disposition and means before striking, and outlines the requirements for an effective spy network as the only real way, but Arthur has divination on his side. Before doing anything else, I cast Merlin's "see" magic on all fifteen of my rivals - this momentarily teleports you into their own castles, where you can view their treasuries, their war rooms, and even their round tables, to see their economies, their allegiances, and military muster.

As with most things in Excalibur, this is a bit cumbersome to use to the full extent, especially viewing allegiances which are idiosyncratically presented as an array of fifteen crowns, each representing the king's disposition toward each other one based on how far left or right on the screen they appear. Thankfully, I don't really need to know the full web of allegiances as much as I need to know who hates me and who has the means to hurt me.

You're also on the clock. While you gather intelligence, your rivals plan and eventually act!

 

Ally
Idres: 51 crops, 7 army
Pellinore: 53 crops, 15 army


Neutral 
Augusel: 42 crops, 4 army 
Balduf: 54 crops, 16 army
Sater: 55 crops, 21 army
Cheldric: 54 crops, 19 army
Hoel: 48 crops, 14 army


Enemy
Uryens: 52 crops, 8 army
Lot: 46 crops, 10 army
Colgrin: 39 crops, 13 army
Garwin: 49 crops, 12 army
Penda: 43 crops, 19 army
Horsa: 51 crops, 22 army 
Royns: 47 crops, 21 army

 

Arch-Enemy
Hengist: 54 crops, 28 army

For comparison - I have at this point 52 crops, and my army has 18 men-at-arms - not nearly enough to fight off any invaders.

I'm going to spend a lot of time looking at this screen.

I increase my conscription rate and check the news.

This is one of my least favorite things about Excalibur.

I must revise an earlier claim about how wealth accumulates - each second, the kingdom accumulates a "wealth second" for each point of allocated kingdom wealth (i.e. what remains of crops after taxes). After accumulating 3600 wealth seconds (a "wealth hour" if you will), you gain 1-3 crops randomly, which is reflected by an immediate wealth increase. At 1 wealth, it will take an hour to gain anything. At 60 wealth, it will take one minute.

For now I maintain 30 wealth, dumping growth into taxes and conscription to ward off invasion, until I hit 45 men-at-arms, at which point I favor compound wealth accumulation. Tributes start to come in - when they do, I lower taxes to accelerate growth further, but raise them back as the tributes end (which of course the game does not bother to notify you when they do). I regularly check the news, occasionally check on my enemies with Merlin, and also check on my own knights at the round table.

Sir Lucas seems unhappy.

Knights act as units in Excalibur. Each will have a company of men-at-arms proportional to their personal prestige, which can be replaced, but if a knight himself dies in battle, he is gone forever. More will come to Camelot at preset intervals, but there are only fourteen in total.

A knight's loyalty is measured by their distance to the round table, and you risk rebellion if unhappy knights are left to their own devices. In theory you can buy more loyalty with gifts or honors, but in practice I've never seen this make a difference, and handing out prestige could alter the allocated ratio of men-at-arms in ways that you don't want.

The novella describes the knights' personalities and skills, and I reckon their battle competence hierarchy goes something like this:

  • Galahad - An unmatched strong fighter who doesn't care for gifts. Other knights distrust him.
  • Lancelot - A strong fighter who likes honor, and dislikes gold.
  • Lucas - A strong fighter who likes honor. Unsociable.
  • Percivale - A peasant by birth. Strong and likes money, but dislikes honor.
  • Gawain - A good fighter. Likes money.
  • Tristran - Moderately good.
  • Sremmus - Competent, likes gold. Amiable but uncharismatic.
  • Drofwarc - Average fighting skills, huge appetite.
  • Kay - Arthur's brother. Loyal, unremarkable.
  • Nosnikta - Adequate fighting skills. Likes honor.
  • Lamerok - A poor fighter with a big horse that intimidates enemies.
  • Bedivere - Not very good.
  • Bors - A lover, not a fighter. Dislikes honor.
  • Mordred - A charismatic scoundrel, but an incompetent fighter. Likes gold.


As my kingdom grows, I try to keep the knights happy with their preferred boons, but as I mentioned, I can't even tell if this does anything. Mordred, I ban almost immediately upon his arrival - why even waste men-at-arms under his useless herald?

Gawain, Nosnikta, and Lamerok are drifting.

I eventually banned Nosnikta as well, preferring to throw him out than let him squander a promotion with his mediocrity, and tried in vain to bring back Gawain and Lamerok by plying them with gold. Bedivere got the boot later.

 

Nearly 75 minutes in, nobody had attacked yet. My kingdom was approaching its size limit with 109/128 crops, and then something happened.

 

My first tithes! I checked the news - King Pellinore had taken beating after beating over the past few months and finally abdicated to me for protection.

I left Camelot for the first time to visit my new vassal, whose domain lies just to the northwest. And then,


The crown started flashing. This means you're being attacked, but Excalibur can't be bothered to tell you WHO is attacking you, and if you have vassals, then you won't know if they are attacking you, or if they are attacking one of them. The only way to know is to return to Camelot, and, sigh, check the news. Hope the news queue didn't get too big while you were out, or you'll be reading a lot of it.


It's Cheldric - who I should note was neutral and whose disposition toward me hadn't worsened - and he's attacking me.

I have Merlin cast a plague on his army.

Plague is expensive. He won't be back for awhile.

Then I wait.

After almost three ingame minutes, he arrives.


12 against 57. Pathetic! I challenge. He runs.

 

Post-victory, I learn that King Royns is moving on my vassal Pellinore.

So once again I leave Camelot and take all of my knights with me to Pellinore, where I lower taxes and increase tithes.

 

 And I wait.

Hold on, you're not Royns!
 

We fight for real.

Holding in a "smile" formation

Unlike Eastern Front, combat is realtime, and not fixed to a grid. The one-button interface works pretty well here despite its primitiveness; select a knight and drag the cursor to where you want him to go, and he'll march there in a straight line. Pathing is impossible, so you need to do a lot of babysitting.

Each knight serves as a single unit stack, with a number of men-at-arms allocated to each knight based on prestige. In theory, more knights are better, as each knight (plus Arthur) contributes to your soldier count, but there are drawbacks to going all-out. The more knights you have, the smaller each one's accompaniment will be, and they'll break (or die!) sooner for it. Having to constantly query every knight's muster strength is exhausting, too, and you risk getting your knights killed if you don't know which ones are depleted and need to be disengaged, and because knights can't cross each other's bounding boxes, it is very difficult to coordinate and commit 100% of your muster strength when it's spread out among so many of them.


The AI also loves sending its king - typically the strongest unit - out ahead of the pack to fight Arthur in a duel. That's great news for you if you want to win the fight quickly, but not so great news if you're hoping to cripple them. A defeated king will retreat relatively unscathed. Not Arthur, of course - a defeated Arthur means checkmate.

Victory, but I only killed three of their men-at-arms.

We leave Pellinore's domain, and the crown icon is still flashing. That means trouble, so we rush back to Camelot to check on the news. Apart from some campaigning that I don't really care about, we learn:

  • Horsa raided Camelot eight weeks ago.
  • Lot abdicated to me seven weeks ago.
  • Garwin is weakening.
  • Royns ended his attack on Pellinore six weeks ago.
  • Garwin attacked Pellinore five weeks ago, and was repelled one week ago (I know, I was there!).
  • Idres is about to abdicate.

 

Some weeks later, I'm under attack again.

  • Royns returned with pillage from Pellinore seven weeks ago.
  • Royns pays me tribute.
  • Horsa returned with pillage from Camelot five weeks ago.
  • Horsa offers me my own stolen wealth as tribute. Cheeky.
  • Royns campaigned on Pellinore again three weeks ago.


So, I gather the knights and go back to Pellinore's domain, and am almost immediately attacked.

Unhorsing a knight with the smile formation

Defending a vassal is almost ideal, because you defend not only with your own muster, but you also receive a bonus knight with all of the vassal's men-at-arms assigned to him in one megastack of death. The vassal stack does tend to deplete its combat strength quickly, but not before dealing some major damage, and I want to take out some of Royns' knights.

However, I am forced to withdraw, as Arthur himself soon fights to the last man - himself - and if he dies, that's it.

We regroup and fight again.

3x speedup

Victory is Arthur's, though I lost far more men-at-arms than Royns did. We began 78 to 25, we end 33 to 11, and among our dead is Lamerok but won't miss him too much.

 

The cursor is still flashing after this victory, so we return to Camelot and check the news. Now Balduf campaigns on me! Meanwhile, Idres, under repeated siege by Colgrin, has become my vassal, but I cannot protect him now.

I crank up the conscription rate, but not the taxes. Tithes and tributes will make up the difference.

 

Soon Balduf arrives.


More events unfold during the wait:

  • Horsa attacks vassal Pellinore.
  • Colgrin returns from Idres.
  • Augusel weakens.
  • Balduf offers tribute.

 

I return to Pellinore with all of my knights and increase the conscription rate there, but Horsa never shows. And I return to an 18-week backlog of news.

  • Sater attacked Camelot while I was away.
  • Sater weakens.
  • Hoel weakens.
  • Hengist offers tribute.
  • Horsa offers tribute.
  • Augusel becomes Uryen's vassal.
  • Hoel, Penda, and Colgrin become my vassals.


Soon the alarm flashes again. Horsa is attacking Penda, and Sater, who backstabbed me weeks ago, has become my vassal.

So I visit Penda, and barely have time to up his tithes before Horsa attacks.

They break and run very soon.

This loop continues for some time. My battles generally go well for me, but I often return to find Camelot has been raided in my absence. Or I find a vassal has been attacked while I was out defending another vassal. Prestige is starting to slip, multiple vassals get attacked at once, and some of them defect to Uryens costing me even more prestige.

A chaotic battle to defend my newest vassal Sater

I attempt to raid my weaker neighbor Horsa, going alone without any knights in the hopes of luring out his liege Uryens so that I might be able to pick off a few of his knights. This is the strategy that won me the game before - I goaded him into a series of brief fights, and eventually I returned to Camelot to find Uryens had switched allegiance to me making me king of all Britain. No such luck this time - Horsa just isn't weak enough to be beaten so easily.

 

Oh well - I bumped off a several of Horsa's men-at-arms and only lost three of my own. I can just replace them at Camelot and come back to finish the job, right?

Oh. Oh crap.

So I ran, I returned to Camelot, found my prestige was in the toilet, and then discovered something even worse!


All but one vassal had left me, but that's not the bad part. The bad part is that because I had been funding my army with vassal tithes that aren't coming in any more, the treasure chest is now empty and my army's experience got reset to zero! The army can tolerate downsizing, but apparently if even one man-at-arms misses a payday, then the entire reserve disbands and are quickly replaced with non-union scabs.


And with that final injury, I ragequit.

"Take it back, you watery bint."


GAB rating: Bad

Excalibur is an ambitious game with a lot of unrealized potential. Crawford himself recognized this - even in the manual of the released commercial product, after boasting of the program's complexity and design, almost apologetically acknowledges its shortcomings. There are far too many jury-rigged sections of this design, places where two structures intersected clumsily, and I was forced to mate them by brute force, he laments. Moreover, this game is not as well playtested as it should be. Indeed, for each well-realized feature, there is another one in search of a purpose. The 15 kings all have unique personality traits, including aggression, nastiness, cowardice, and avarice, but without any meaningful diplomacy options it hardly matters. The round table display is a cool visual device that concisely tracks your knight's loyalties and friendships, but all it ever did was show me who I need to banish or at least not leave unattended, and could have been cut without any impact.

But the real issues of Excalibur aren't in the things left undone, but in its friction points.

I mentioned already that the one-button interface often feels obtuse and obtrusive, and I compared it to Eastern Front's streamlined UI, but the real triumph of the one-button Atari joystick interface must be Dan/Danielle Bunten's M.U.L.E.

 

Here, the joystick interface is a necessity to make four-player simultaneous action work, and absolutely everything is idiosyncratically built around it. At no point does one feel there would be an improvement by typing numbers on the keyboard or using it to select options. Even better, all of the information you need to make your decisions is right there on the screen when you need it! No need to bother Merlin fifteen times to find out who your enemies are, and especially no need to read 50+ weeks of old news to piece together the current geopolitical landscape after a year of campaigning.

Seven Cities of Gold also put the one-button joystick interface to better use. It isn't 100% idiosyncratic, and the game isn't flawless, but Bunten uses a joystick-driven UI when it's appropriate to rather than an uncomfortable compromise and it works all the better for it.

This has more data than Excalibur's treasure room and less confusion.
 

Some of the bigger problems have solutions that were right there and wouldn't have required any abandonment of Crawford's vision of a fully immersive interface. Instead of making the player read news in the war room, news that might be obsolete by the time you see it, why not just color-code all of the kingdoms on the map itself to indicate status? This is already partially implemented, but requires you to cycle through each kingdom with the joystick and query them individually, and still doesn't show you important information like who each a vassal's liege is, or which enemies are attacking you and where.

Or then there's the massive issue that although the game is kind enough to give you a flashing warning when you are under attack, this won't tell you where you are under attack. Consequently it seems pointless to try to actively defend any of your vassals unless it's the endgame, you have only one sovereign enemy, and therefore can't be sneak-attacked on your home base while you're out in the field. This could have been solved by simply giving you an on-screen message with that information - surely Camelot has a page relay system for this very reason, right? There's even a space at the bottom of the screen where such messages could have been placed.

This did not come up in my final playthrough, but war seems... almost pointless? You can never defeat an enemy king, only destroy his knights and men-at-arms, and if your army clearly outclasses his, then he'll cower in the safety of his keep while you run around burning his crops. Scribe says this is key to victory, but that wasn't my own experience; I found that eventually the pillaging stops and your target may have become your rival's vassal. In the event that the enemy counter-attacks, victory simply makes them retreat into the castle as the pillaging begins anew, but his crops will come back, and any knights you lost in combat won't. Crawford wanted to underemphasize war, but he didn't give us much else in the way of paths to victory!

And then there's the simple fact that you can spend a lot of time waiting. Pillaging brings the game to a pause for fourteen seconds every single time you do it, and a complete raid can involve up to sixteen pillagings. And if you're playing passively, which the game seems to really want to encourage, then you spend a lot of time in the castle waiting. Waiting for your economy to grow. Waiting for your rivals to go on campaign. Waiting for an inbound enemy to arrive so you can fight. Waiting for him to get distracted and leave. Waiting on the field of battle for his knights to approach yours. I waited an hour and fifteen minutes in this session before anything interesting even happened - and that's partly on me for not taking the opportunity to do interesting feats myself, but the game doesn't do much to encourage adventurousness.

I'm not sorry for trying. We can see links to our next game, Balance of Power, and even see how ideas that originated in the underdeveloped Gossip metamorphosed into it. Kingly personality traits like "nastiness" and "aggression" come back again as traits of the modern day nuclear powers. We see might beget prestige, which enhances your sway among minor powers, but aggressive warring can earn you an evil reputation. We see relations between kings, and relations between knights, which has a direct analog to Crawford's unrealized intent to have relations between Balance of Power's non-superpower nations. We see a nearly unprecedented scope of design; few games of 1983 can boast of having a large and dynamic world like Excalibur's, though we'd already start seeing comparable ones in 1984 and 1985, like Lords of Midnight and the aforementioned Seven Cities of Gold. We see authorial intent and vision behind every facet of this design; it looks, feels, and plays like a Crawford game of the era even when it might have been advisable to compromise on the vision for the sake of playability. Of particular note is Microprose's Sword of the Samurai, which would follow Excalibur's macro-design very closely, even implementing arcade minigames that Crawford had wished to include but couldn't find the time or space for.

In isolation, though, Excalibur is among my most disliked games out of all that I've ever retrospected, and I found it confusing, boring, and frustrating, from the opening moments of wondering what's going on, to the final moments of wondering why I lost everything.

 

In 1984, Chris Crawford would be laid off from Atari in the wake of their industrial collapse, and would work with Mindscape as a freelance developer and become one of the first for both the nascent Macintosh computer system and Microsoft's competing graphical operating system dubbed Windows. Needless to say, the Crawfordian one-button joystick interface was soon to be history.

Monday, April 21, 2025

Game 448: Excalibur

Disclaimer: This article series has one Monty Python joke.

I spent a few days playing Excalibur, not being sure if I'd complete it or cover it.

First, I read the manual portion of the included book, but it didn't make a ton of sense; it goes over the things you can do in the game, but purposefully avoids explaining why you would want to do any of it. E.g. "If you move to the bottom, you go to the Round Table Room. If you move your joystick sideways, you change the king whose name appears in the bottom window. If you press the button when the crown is next to an option, that option is executed. If you go to the top, you move to he Treasury."

Then I tried playing and was confronted with an obtuse set of screens clumsily linked to each other, almost entirely controlled by a Crawford-style context-sensitive one-button joystick interface. I was able to somewhat link what I saw to the things I read earlier, but couldn't really understand it or remember the specifics.

Then I read the novella portion of the book, essentially a novelization of a hypothetical Excalibur campaign, in which gameplay mechanics' cause-and-effects are demonstrated in prose, and when that isn't possible, explained through Merlin's pedagogy.


Then I re-read the manual portion, and things made a little more sense now that I'd seen the things it was talking about. The explanation that the left-hand WEALTH number represented kingdom wealth and the right-hand one represented treasury wealth stuck with me this time, though the precise relation between all the numbers was still not totally clear. Then I played some more and things made a bit more sense, but I was still unclear on how things like tithes and tributes worked.

And after a few failures, each of which taught me a thing or two from the attempt, I won! Arthur unified Britain once and for all. Only I'm still not really sure how I did it.

I made one last go at the game, this time using Altirra's built-in video recorder, with the subgoal of showing as much gameplay as I can, but also with the rule that I don't save or load. If I lose or feel the war is hopeless, then that's that. There will undoubtedly be much overlap with Wargaming Scribe's four-part AAR and definitive Crawford-endorsed review, but I'll try to avoid redundant coverage where I can.



We begin in the Round Table room where Arthur, his queen, and his knights gather. Each knight is represented by a shield bearing his distinct coat of arms, and his proximity to the table represents loyalty to Arthur. Proximity to other knights represent their interpersonal camaraderie - unhappy knights can drag their pals away from the table with them, so this matters! Maybe. Truth be told I could never figure out the true dynamics here; you can cause a revolt and instantly lose by leaving a rebellious knight behind and alone, but I never saw a reason to do that, nor did I ever manage to sway anyone with gifts or honors.

One time, though, the game started with Sir Nosnikta literally on Queen Guinevere on top of the table, so I banished him immediately.

The scene illustrates one of the recurring problems I have with Excalibur. Crawford wanted to make an Atari game, not a computer game, and is dedicated to making the interface as diegetic as possible, where you directly control an avatar, using nothing but a single-button joystick, and everything you do is in a discrete location. You don't have status screens; you have an assortment of rooms and locations where you physically move your avatar to interact with options and query for information.

Frankly, this is a bad fit for a game of Excalibur's complexity and scope. The single-button interface worked pretty well in Eastern Front, but was single-modal and non-diegetic, and it still had some control awkwardness and shortcomings that could have been improved had Crawford allowed for more keyboard use, and even then he couldn't completely avoid using some keyboard input for basic actions. Here in Excalibur, where keyboard input is almost completely absent, it can feel like you're walking around a low-res Excel spreadsheet where you adjust numbers by bumping into the cell borders and performing actions by bumping into garishly-colored words in a font that is somehow both obnoxiously huge and semi-illegible.

The round table is pretty neat visual, if a bit cluttered, but in the end it barely matters. It could have been cut from the game entirely without much impact if any, and the functions that matter would have been better served by a textual menu. We'll get to those later - we need gold and men-at-arms to use them, and right now we have neither.

 

The "throne room" as the manual calls it - it seems more like a war room to me - is one of the most important in the game.

Britain consists of sixteen kingdoms, each ruled by a sovereign monarch, including Arthur. Throughout, they will fight and raid each other, eventually forcing the losing side to abdicate to a stronger neighbor - not necessarily their attacker - for protection, changing their status from king to vassal and forfeiting their autonomy.

You can check the status of each kingdom here, but this is clumsy, performed by cycling through the list of them, and the status is relayed by highlighting one region at a time in a color which is pretty useless to me. A region can be neutral to you, declaring war on you, declared war on by you, a tributary paying you to leave them alone, or a vassal to you.

You can offer tribute yourself to one kingdom at a time, but this is something I never felt the need to do in any of my playthroughs. I don't pay tribute; I receive it.

You can declare war here. You must declare war before engaging in hostilities on enemy territory. You can only declare war on one kingdom at a time, you can't declare war on your own vassals, you can't declare war on a kingdom that is already under attack from someone else, and declaring war on a tributary hurts your reputation.

What you can't do, however, is get any kind of high-level overview on the game state. Oh, no. You have to piece that together yourself by checking the news, and you have to do that pretty much constantly. Every declaration of war, every armistice, and every change in allegiance makes its way to the news pile, where you'll remain ignorant until you sift through the queue yourself, which you'll either be doing constantly, or perhaps not at all. There is no war secretary to keep track of things you might want to know like "who is attacking me and where are they now" and "who are my vassals." And if you go too long without checking, important news could be buried under dozens of old messages that you don't really care about. Or perhaps important news is the old news and then you're left wondering if it's still relevant or not! This is frankly one of the single worst aspects of the game.


The treasury is next, and this room, where a Hamurabi-like minigame plays out in realtime, is just as important as the war room. More than any other room, this one looks like a spreadsheet, and the Crawfordian control scheme is an awkward fit. Overall it's more well designed than the rooms south of it, but still has its share of obtuseness.

One important stat is not shown here at all - the kingdom's crops. Strictly speaking you don't really need it on screen - it is always equal to [Wealth + Taxes], but this is important enough to deserve its own line-item. Crops represent the size of your kingdom - your taxes can never exceed your crop unit count, and this increases on its own up to a maximum of 128.

Wealth represents the weekly income of the people post-tax, and is always equal to [Crops - Taxes]. Simple enough. The higher their wealth, the more quickly your crop count increases. Specifically, crops are purchased at an average rate of 0.0005 units per Weath per second, though I believe there is a random element. If your wealth is set to 40, it would take about 50 seconds to increase to 41, though this varies and can sometimes "skip" numbers and go directly to 42 after ~100 seconds.

The Wealth number to the right is your treasure chest. The contents of this can never be pillaged or stolen. When income exceeds expenses, the difference is put here. When expenses exceed income, the difference is taken. When this runs out, bad things happen.

Taxes and Army are adjustable numbers. The left numbers are your demands, the right numbers are what you actually get. The army economy is simple; spend 50 gold per week and you maintain 50 men-at-arms per week.

Tithes are income from your vassals, but you can't set them here; you must visit them yourself (once you have any!). Once again, left shows your demands, right shows what you get.

Experience represents the average combat effectiveness of each man-at-arms, and goes up automatically to a maximum of 255, so long as your army is maintained. Increasing your army size will proportionally lower it as fresh new recruits join, but they will eventually improve and bring it back up.

One thing that isn't shown here is tributes, neither what you pay nor what you receive, which seems like a glaring omission given that this can be a major source of income.

Again, much of the weirdness here is due to the square-peg-round-hole interface where everything needs to be as diegetic as possible, but this is just a room with a bunch of huge, poorly explained numbers in it. At least the overall simplicity means it's not so bad once you understand how they all fit together.

Anyway, as Merlin noted in the novella, you will grow faster if you don't tax at all, but you'll also get invaded and conquered faster if you don't have an army at all, so I raised the taxes and army to 18 gold/week. 

 

Lastly, there is Merlin's room, showcasing a pretty cool pixelizing effect that even my wife who has no patience for these kinds of games thought was, in her words, "neat." Merlin's spells get you an edge on your rival kings, but they deplete his power - the more pixelated he gets, the more you've exhausted him! Push him too hard and he'll fade away completely, and won't be back for a long time.

"Change" increases a rival king's disposition toward you, but I hadn't tried using it. Perhaps I should have.

"Pestilence" attacks a rival's crops, which I also never tried using. A vassal's no good to me if he can't produce enough wealth to sustain his own kingdom, after all.

"Plague" kills half of a rival's men-at-arms. It is very expensive but incredibly useful when you're about to get invaded.

"See" spies on a rival and shows you valuable intel - their economic situation, their army, and their disposition toward you and every other king. And it's cheap.


I had initially planned to cover my final Excalibur game in one post but this one is long enough and we've barely even covered a minute of gameplay. Only 179 to go!

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Game 447: Gossip

The POKEY chip squeaks out a surprisingly passable "Hello?"

Between the releases of Eastern Front, an industry-changing hit, and Balance of Power, arguably Chris Crawford's most famous game, his most ambitious was no doubt Excalibur; a multi-modal colossus doomed by a perfect storm of development hell, poor release timing, and Atari's own business misfortunes.

I don't know if I'm going to cover it. Wargaming Scribe suggested it, but his own coverage took him five times longer to complete than an Eastern Front campaign, prompted Crawford himself to declare "I don’t see any reason for anybody to ever carry out another review," and Scribe didn't even like the game that much. So I'm a bit torn between skipping an important game and covering one that I am not likely to enjoy or have much to say about that hasn't been said already. I might even play it but not cover it - we'll see.

But there's a weird little game that came to be as a byproduct of Excalibur's development, which I will cover.

Gossip arose from a diplomacy module and may or may not have been distributed through APX. The intrigue of medieval court politics translates nicely to the battleground of 1980's clique culture; your goal is to make the boys like you more than they like the other girls, and your weapons are shade, calculated flattery, lies, and if all else fails, a little bit of magic. Call Val to compliment her best friend, or talk shit about her rival, and she'll like you more. Tell your friend Dan that Val stinks, and he'll like her less. But what comes around goes around - people will call each other to keep up on the pecking order, and nobody enjoys finding out that you've been dissing them behind their back. Or worse, learning that you are two-faced!

 

I won my first ever game on the easiest difficulty, in which there are four other people - Dan, Val, Jim, and Joe, with a simple strategy. Days one and two - I was minimally kind to everyone while I assessed the social network.


The takeaways - Dan is not popular, but not a total creep either. Jim doesn't like me. All of the boys like Val, but she only returns Joe's affection.

So for the rest of the week, I crushed on Dan and Joe, and was kind but not too kind to Val and Jim, lest it improve their social standing too much. Then on the last day, I used my magic ESP to find out where I stood, and magic arrows to ensure everyone liked me more than Val.

And it worked! Three for three picked me over Val.


So then I thought, why not try the hardest? The maximum difficulty expands the roster from five to eight; you, three other girls, and four boys to compete over.


This mode goes on a long time and has a ton of information to keep track of - you now have 49 relations to keep track of instead of just 16 and phone conversations can go on forever as you listen to Val fill you in on who likes Jim and who hates him now.

The expert mode took me 45 minutes to get through, but once again I brought all the boys to the yard.


The strategy - after day one, and with a bit of ESP magic, I got the impression that Val is the popular one, and Sue is a bit of a nerd.


It is decided. Sue's reputation is expendable! That doesn't mean I need to slam her at every possible opportunity - I don't want to alienate Joe - but consistency counts and nothing positive will be said about her, and the more I think someone dislikes her, the more negative I will be.

From here on, I call the local queen bee Val often to tell her how much I like all the boys. I don't care if she thinks I'm a tramp; as long as she tolerates me enough to listen, she'll spread it around and earn me that scarlet letter. And in turn I'll find out from her what they think of everyone else!

I also determine that Tom doesn't like me very much. Occasionally I call him to try to change this by agreeing with him on everything within reason - the only hard rule is I don't bad mouth anyone but Sue. As for everyone else, I either agree with them, or I dunk on Sue / praise not-Sue, or meet them halfway if I want to improve my reputation with both the caller and the subject of the gossip.

I'm not sure how much this strategy actually helped my standing, but it barely mattered. Expert gives you a whopping 14 magic arrows to use, which is more than enough to turn three frowns upside down.

The game state on the final day - I've already landed Jim and Joe, but Tom and Dan need some magic encouragement.

Yeahhh! Taste defeat, Val.
 

GAB rating: Bad. This is a neat system idea, but it is not nearly enough to build an entire game around. Gossip just isn't entertaining to play, and has zero lasting appeal. I can't tell if strategy even matters, because you'd have to be wildly unpopular for the magic arrows not to be able to pull you ahead in the end. And I really don't care to try again.

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Eastern Front 1942: Not won!


Talk about a winter of discontent. The only real battlefront has 17 of my units, including four Fliegerkorps which are borderline useless in the winter. The combined muster strength of the 13 ground units is 623, with 451 points of combat strength which will increase and decrease as supply lines randomly fail and recover.

Orel, Voronezh, and Kharkov are lost, and Rostov will be soon. Taking any territory by force is absolutely out of the question. I may yet be able to conquer a few cities by stealth, and I intend to try. The line from Kiev to Dnepropetrovsk is fairly stable for now, but who can say how long it will hold if/when the full might of the Red Army comes crashing down on it?

I basically see three strategies moving forward, none of them winning. I can hold the line for as long as possible, gradually moving it back west to minimize casualties and delaying the Soviet advance. Or I can try to encircle and destroy whatever Soviets on the front expose themselves, but even if this works this will cost me and probably become impossible to sustain for very long. Or I can just make a mad rush east and try to slip through the cracks in the red wall and score points by taking the fight close to Stalingrad, casualties be damned.

 

Leningrad:

Axis Current
strength
Current
strength
USSR
2 Finnish Infantry 81

4 Finnish Infantry 76 108 8 Militia Army


36 19 Infantry Army


? 2 Militia Army
5 Infantry Corps 13 110 4 Militia Army


235 9 Militia Army


? 11 Infantry Army
 

There isn't a thing I can do here except keep 5 Infantry entrenched until they die or the game ends.


North group:

Axis Current
strength
Current
strength
USSR
26 Infantry Corps 22

7 Infantry Corps 18

 

These two infantry are on the run from tanks but far away enough that the tanks may stop their pursuit. There's a straight shot across the river to two unguarded cities; Gorky and Kazan.

 

Voronezh:

Axis Current
strength
Current
strength
USSR
56 Panzer Corps 23

 

One Panzer unit waits all alone in the desolate plains of Western Russia, his only company the Soviet infantry in every direction. But lack of supplies doesn't affect his speed, and may be able to evade them while moving east for who knows what purpose.

 

Kiev to Dnepropetrovsk:

Axis Current
strength
Current
strength
USSR
34 Infantry Corps 55 122 6 Infantry Army
1 Hungarian Panzer 19

3 Panzer Corps 59

5 Flieger Corps 28

2 Flieger Corps 58

11 Infantry Corps 43

13 Infantry Corps 63 129 16 Tank Army
41 Panzer Corps 14

4 Flieger Corps 60

30 Infantry Corps 29

54 Infantry Corps 20

40 Panzer Corps 28 77 1 Guards Infantry Army
5 Rumanian Infantry 12 164 9 Tank Army
2 Rumanian Infantry 50

4 Italian Infantry 13

3 Flieger Corps 63

35 Infantry Corps 46


On the last week of fall I allowed a few Soviet units to get close so that I might have the opportunity to ensnare them, but if I choose to follow through, it will take time to finish them off with these weak units, which is effectively all I've got at this point. And during this time, many, many more Soviets will undoubtedly get close as well.

 

November 1 - November 28



Leningrad:


 

Axis Old
strength
Current
strength
Current
strength
Old
strength
USSR
2 Finnish Infantry 81 111


4 Finnish Infantry 76 51 108 108 8 Militia Army



33 36 19 Infantry Army



? ? 2 Militia Army



?
18 Tank Army
5 Infantry Corps 13 13 110 110 4 Militia Army



235 235 9 Militia Army



? ? 11 Infantry Army

Yep, everyone here is still helpless. Doubt that's going to change.

 

North group:


 

Axis Old
strength
Current
strength
Current
strength
Old
strength
USSR
26 Infantry Corps 22 50


7 Infantry Corps 18 36 175 ? 1 Guards Tank Army

7 Infantry managed to take a minor city - Kazan, but now we have a choice - hunker down and be overrun by tanks in a matter of weeks, or abandon it, lose it immediately, and be chased down by tanks.

27 Infantry has a clear shot to Voronezh which is once again undefended.

 

Kubishev: 

Axis Old
strength
Current
strength
Current
strength
Old
strength
USSR
56 Panzer Corps 23 23 ?
33 Tank Army

That we're even alive here feels like an exploit. Dare I push my luck further?

 

Ukraine border:


 

Axis Old
strength
Current
strength
Current
strength
Old
strength
USSR



?
48 Infantry Army



82
6 Cavalry Army
34 Infantry Corps 55 23
122 6 Infantry Army



126
15 Tank Army
1 Hungarian Panzer 19 19


3 Panzer Corps 59 63 96
13 Infantry Army
5 Flieger Corps 28 71


2 Flieger Corps 58 137


11 Infantry Corps 43 18 ?
37 Infantry Army
13 Infantry Corps 63 24
129 16 Tank Army
41 Panzer Corps 14 14


4 Flieger Corps 60 123


30 Infantry Corps 29 38 141
14 Tank Army
54 Infantry Corps 20



40 Panzer Corps 28 62
77 1 Guards Infantry Army
5 Rumanian Infantry 12 10
164 9 Tank Army
2 Rumanian Infantry 50 53 171
79 Infantry Army
4 Italian Infantry 13 21 ?
19 Tank Army
3 Flieger Corps 63 88


35 Infantry Corps 46 60



Even in winter, air support really makes a difference, and we killed all four of the units that we had ensnared in the mud, but I doubt there are many opportunities for this left. We lost one, and a second is stuck and lost for certain (unless the Soviets do something dumb).

Remaining units: 22
Remaining muster: 1437
Combat efficiency: 77%


Starting in December, we completely abandon the fight and switch to the "mad rush east" strategy, using the now-unguarded Kerch Straits to cross back into the Caucasus region while the Soviets stack up along the sea, unable to find their way around it. Three units are lost very quickly, and others go north.

November 29 - December 26


After this, I just didn't feel like taking and stitching together 16 screenshots for all of the remaining 13 turns, so here's some highlights.

Moscow is isolated and I have air support. Dare I risk it?
 
It's tempting!
Crossing the strait - one straggling unit is left behind.

Moscow looks really vulnerable, but I keep moving.

Crossing the straits, continued

The north group reached the end zone but are about to get sacked hard.

3 Panzers sneaks west to grab some unguarded cities

11 Infantry single-handedly blocks all of those Soviets.

Stacked up on the east border and about to lose another one.

The end state:


The south group certainly fared better than the north, several of which got splatted against the east border in the end, but the north group did manage to conquer many unguarded cities during their east rush, and the Soviets were only interested in taking some of them back. I might have even been able to take Moscow in mid-January, which had been guarded only by a single militia unit that I could have easily encircled and possibly worn down with air support, but decided not to risk it in the end.

Final stats:

Remaining units: 15
Remaining muster: 1058
Combat efficiency: 50%
Score: -65 

This end state is clearly impossible to sustain. My armies are all surrounded or isolated, and the bulk of what's left are gathered in the southeast of the map where they are relatively safe but unable to really do anything, and I have to concur with one of the insights of Arcade Idea in that I cannot see any analogous real-world value to victory points in a losing state such as this. Hypothetically we are 66 points better than we were at the start of the scenario, but realistically we'd have been better off staying put all year.

Were I to replay this scenario, I'd try being more defensive up north, but be aggressive in the middle and south until a hole opens up in the Soviet lines, and then try to push through, and from then on only attack units which can be supply-deprived first, preferably with air support. It would take longer, but the muster strength would last longer, and with 1942's extended summer season this is a reasonable trade. I suspect that any winning strategy needs some luck in order to work, but I'm not testing this theory, and I'm not going to try William T. Farmer's expansion disk scenarios. I've had enough.

 
Crawford playtesting Eastern Front, c1981

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