I have written on this topic before in my c3i Clio’s corner, but the conjunction of an interesting thread I found on line and the release of the 2^nd Edition of Empire of the Sun moved me to want to write up some of my thoughts on ‘historical realism’ in my Empire of the Sun design. As a disclaimer I believe that it is a truism of the Internet that facts and data never change anyone’s opinion once publically stated. I write this for my own purposes as an archive of my thoughts and for the few people who read this blog. I also do not want to embarrass anyone or make these comments appear personal, so I will not state the source of various comments other than to say that I post them without edits exactly the way they were posted. They are there not to start an argument, but as a source for discussion.

First off for those who do not know me here are some of my bona fide’s as an historian. I have an undergraduate degree in History and a Masters in National Security Policy from Georgetown University that had a strong emphasis on Political-Military history. Beyond that I have taught Military Strategy and Policy for the Naval War College and Georgetown University. As an historical simulation designer with well over fifty published designs (see my Bibliography on this site), I have done decades of original historical research that I have published in books, in games, and on this website. As a gamer, historical verisimilitude is extremely important to me in any design that I play often and I play Empire of the Sun continuously. My point is if I did not think Empire of the Sun was an accurate simulation of the Pacific War I would have changed it before publication and certainly would have done something about it over the last 10 years. Truth be told, EotS meets all of my personal standards for historical accuracy that I contend are a high bar.

Empire of the Sun (hereafter EotS) is not a beginners game, so it automatically plays to a small segment of the wargame market. That said, the biggest hurtle to playing EotS is it is not a game that is easy to play well. What is the point of playing a game often if skill does not matter? As most gamers these days do not play a game more than a couple of times it can appear inaccessible unless some desire to play regularly is engendered by ones early experience with the design. This is an important point as some of the comments that follow fall into two buckets. Comments attributed to bad history but are really poor player skill with this design and those that directly challenge the game’s history based on incorrect statements of historical fact. The 2^nd edition of EotS comes with a new solitaire system that I believe will act as an interactive tutorial on how to play well. Hopefully this will lower the barrier for early enjoyment of this design.

To be fair some of the commenters while tough on the design said very flattering things about me, so I know that their views are not personal and I do not take them that way, so no acrimony should be implied from my commentary.

I have attempted to integrate comments from a long thread into a shorter coherent set of comments that capture the intent, although I did not edit any of the words to include various misspellings or sentence structure, I just co-located pieces of the same point from different commentators into one place.

Comments are in italics, my response is in non-italic type.

A Cylon who attempted to learn about the Pacific War, by watching game of EOTS would learn:

- The Japanese were very careful to avoid taking more Allied objectives than absolutely necessary. This would lead to a high chance of Allied war weariness.

This first point is not an historical one as much as it is a lack of experience with the playing the game. This comment came out soon after release and continues to be discussed as if it’s a fact. My reply is based on over a decade of public online gaming and tournament play at WBC where this has been tried. This strategy with even a modicum of skill always fails. In fact the Japanese lose the game quicker. So, this comment is not an historical comment as much as it’s a lack of game knowledge comment.

The interesting historical point is the conquest of the Solomon’s and New Guinea beyond Rabaul and Lae were based on a series of Army-Navy conferences that began on March 7^th and continued through June of 1942. This outer perimeter defense concept (invasion of New Hebrides, Fiji, and Samoa) was a compromise after the Army blocked the IJNs plans for the conquest of the Hawaiian Islands and occupation of Northern Australia. The main point is my research for a game has to go beyond what is written in a narrative history, but has to captured what are plausible ‘what ifs’. A ‘what if’ for me are those options that were historically discussed and not executed. The IJNs defeat at Midway caused the cancellation of the offensive into Fiji and Samoa. So, not extending the Japanese perimeter beyond Rabula was a path discussed but not chosen.

- The operational tempo of the Japanese fleet had little to do with their own fuel supplies or maintenance resources, but was instead determined by the Allied fuel and logistical capabilties.

EotS is not my first Pacific rodeo. Some may recall my earlier Pacific War game where I also did extensive fuel and operations tempo analysis. That experience gave me a rich body of data and experience upon which to draw from when I designed EotS. What may not be well known is the first thing I did when I began designing this game was to play my third Pacific War campaign game (the first two occurred when I did the original). Based on that play through I reviewed all of my original research and supplemented it with additional data based on new books and material that had been published over 15 years, not yet available in the early 1980’s.

The Japanese fought six major offensives with high operations tempo in the Bismarck barrier throughout 1942 and 1943. In 1944 the Japanese were prepared to throw the fleet at any USN attack on their inner perimeter. They had developed numerous options, but the key-planning feature was a shortage of carrier air not fuel. This resulted in two major sorties (Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf) that resulted in the destruction of the IJN. I also discovered through research (Prados) that there were several fleet sorties, to include the BB Yamato that did not lead to battle. In these situation the fleet put to sea but it was too far away from the invasion to intervene, hence the operation was cancelled, but not before lots of fuel was used. All of these factors went into a model.

One of the interesting facts is while the Japanese suffered extreme fuel shortages; the major impact was felt in the civilian economy. The military always had first call on fuel resources and while they were always a consideration in their planning I can find no instance where operations, especially counteroffensives, were curtailed or cancelled due to fuel shortages. The reality is there was a fuel shortage in Japan due to the loss of oilers to US submarines, but not in the amount of fuel available at its source. This is why the Japanese fleet eventually moves closer to the source of fuel in the Dutch East Indies, something that occurs naturally in the game as augmented by an event card. While using unrefined crude oil levies a maintenance penalty on the ships, the Allied air-naval die roll modifiers for the late war in some part account for this performance penalty.

The result of this analysis was a model of historical operations tempo as a collective metric for sortie rate, historical fuel consumption and maintenance capability. I ran this model through a Monte Carlo set of simulation runs and the result was that the Japanese consistently ran out of forces before they could exceed the bounds of their fuel constraints or historical sortie rate. This was confirmed by game testing and a decade of matches that demonstrated if the Japanese player attempted a higher than historical tempo of operation they ran out of navy faster than occurred historically naturally capping the number of sorties and fuel required. If the Japanese player played more of a guerre de course strategy they were using fuel at a lower than historical rate across a larger number of small sorties. If they husbanded their assets for a late war showdown, again they were using less fuel than they did historically. My point is the EotS model in the aggregate captures the Japanese sortie rate bounded by combat attrition and historical operations tempo.  

These points aside, some folks like to micro manage fuel points and the like. My design goal was to create a strategic model of the Pacific War that integrated most of the key operational factors in a more streamlined manner. For some this is too abstract and for them I designed Pacific War where you keep track of this stuff.

- Japanese military capabilities included seizure of the Hawaiian Islands, Northern Australian, and Ceylon as well as creating enough political unrest in India to cause them to successfully revolt against the British

One area of WWII history that continues to fascinate me are the minutes and commentary on the big strategy meetings such as the one held in Japan on March 7^th, 1942. The Japanese navy wanted to invade the Hawaiian Islands and Northern Australia. Plans had been drawn up that were logistically challenging, but at least on paper were considered feasible. The Army would not support either of these operations, but that was a matter of inter-service politics not capability. For an extensive history of Japan’s plans for invading the Hawaiian Islands a recent book not available to me when I did this game confirms my earlier conclusions (John J. Stephens, Hawaii Under the Rising Sun). So to make the point that this was beyond Japanese capabilities stands in opposition to the view of elements of the Navy staff. Hayashi’s ‘Kogun’ makes the case that an Australian campaign required more logistics than the Navy thought was required and the Army could provide. The fact was those logistics were available to the Army, but they would not release them from what they considered higher priorities. This makes my point that this was more an issue of military politics than logistic potential.

As far as India is concerned there are a host of books that I read that go into great detail on how the Army viewed the value of Bose and Indian unrest in achieving their goal of closing the last supply route supporting Chungking. So, not much to say on this point other than there is a significant body of literature that I read in the Georgetown library that is the source of how this is treated in the game.

- Japanese ability to strategically deploy hundreds of thousands of troops and their equipment was not hindered by the fact that virtually their entire merchant marine was destroyed by Allied airpower and submarines.

I have a table taken from the US Strategic Bomber survey that shows with some precision the amount of merchant shipping possessed by the Japanese for every month of the war. Broadly the Japanese started the war with 6 million tons of merchant shipping which was augmented by 1.2 million tons of captured Allied shipping. The Japanese had sufficient merchant shipping to move their ground forces around until 1945 and even then they were able to reinforce Okinawa, Luzon, and Formosa. In one month a merchant ship can generally get from anywhere on the map to another location. In a four month turn, even accounting for attrition there is sufficient shipping to administratively move forces around. This does not say that the civilian economy was unaffected, but the Army controlled their own shipping and they set the priorities. The short pole in the Japanese tent was less merchant shipping but oil tankers covered in my earlier remarks. 

-       The pre-war Japanese military was able to establish very large, high capacity, navel and air bases throughout the Pacific from which to combat Allied efforts to seize the islands upon which those bases were to be built by the Allies once the Allies seized them.

One thing I avoided in this design was extensive engineering rules. Even the Japanese could build an airfield within a four month game turn and the Seebees do not even break a sweat to accomplish the same thing. Another consideration is I integrated the US mobile fleet train into my infrastructure model. So, while the capture of Ulithi gives the US a base it is more a function of the anchorage in combination with the large number of auxiliary ships that make this possible. As far as the Japanese side goes, a large amount of the Japanese bases existed before the war or were captured fairly intact (Rabaul). In the end I chose to simplify this dimension of the game. The key is how I treat the auxiliary ships and US underway replenishment groups, floating dry docks, etc.

-       Really? It is exactly my issue with the game. In all the games I've seen, the US routinely suffers failed amphibious invasions, and the Japanese fleet retains operational and strategic mobility until the end of the war.

This issue has two dimensions, game play and scale. It is more or less mathematically impossible to fail an amphibious ground combat in EotS. If it occurs it is poor play and has nothing to do with the design. The simple rule of thumb is one Marine division will defeat a brigade, two Marine divisions will defeat a division, and three corps plus any size unit will defeat 2 divisions (full strength army). The only issue is not success or failure but how bloody the battle will be. So, the notion that this is a regular feature of the game is just not true if you have any idea how to play the game. So when somebody says that the majority of invasions succeeded in the Pacific this is true once you establish forces ashore and is fully supported by the design.

However, EotS is a strategic simulation. At the strategic level and the way EotS models offensives there were several failed invasions during the war to include Coral Sea and Midway. In both cases the intent of the attack was to culminate in an invasion, but in these two cases the transports were turned back when the naval battle was lost. These were major strategic failures and the rule whereby losing the air-naval battle precludes a landing captures the strategic nature of these failed invasion offensives.

-       If the major Allied operations cards come out wrong, the Allied player may have to run more risk, because simple math will not allow sufficient operational intensity. It is this part that I find worst about EOTS, because it simply makes no sense. What does it mean that "the major Allied operations cards come out wrong"? Those major operations were planned because they were seen as the key stepping stones on the path to victory, and therefore they were given the resources needed to succeed. The cards we find in the game were the things that were built to fit the order in which the cards were needed historically, not the other way round. (I'm aware that the official explanation is that "the cards you get represent the constraints that someone like Nimitz worked under" but having read extensively on the strategic planning in the Pacific, the constraints imposed by the cards do not seem to reflect that style of planning at all.)

One thing that I wrestled with was whether or not to name the cards for historical operations instead of labeling them large offensive, medium offensive, and small offensive. In the end leaving off the historical source of the card is like cooking without spices. As I have said innumerable times the cards are logistics and you can ignore the names if it bothers you, although that is like telling a jury to ignore the inadmissible evidence they just accidently heard. This is one of those if you do not want to see past the titles there is nothing I can say or do at this point that can change it other than to say I like it.

On the other hand the card decks are mathematically constructed. The order of the cards has no impact on strategy except in a fun way. There are times you may have to solve a military puzzle, but the Allies can have the cards come out in just about any order and they will have sufficient logistic resources to do anything they could do historically. The same goes for the Japanese in the opening. This has been demonstrated in numerous public online games under what are considered the worse conditions imagined by novices, such as over half a game with the Allies under ISR and the A-bomb still got dropped.

There are over 5 billion seven card hands possible in the 84 card Allied deck, so no amount of play testing could ever confirm this so I had to calculate all of this mathematically. The acid test that I got it right is I have played this game for over a decade online with a large crowd of participants, collected data on 11 years of WBC tournaments, ran one two-year online tournament and at no time has an experienced Allied player had insufficient resources over the course of any game turn to accomplish what needed to be accomplish. If you have not played this game more than once or twice you likely ran into a problem, but that is inexperience not a design issue. This comment is made often despite its inaccuracy, so it is what it is.

-       An EotS abstraction that threw me for a loop is the possibility of the Japanese shipping an entire army by sea to reinforce an invasion target during the invasion operation. IIRC, Mark explained it as US intelligence underestimating the size of the garrison. Well, um... I don't count that as an abstraction, but a distortion, in particular since the Japanese ship that army when they know the operation is already happening. Mark explained it as US intelligence underestimating the size of the garrison. Which, not to belabor a point, but as far as I know never happened during the actual War..... I mean, really, missing a Corps+ (!) on a island <10 mi^2?

There are two pieces to this comment. First, you can only react with one division (~15,000 soldiers), never a Corps or Army.  This is an important factual error for what follows.

One of the important features of the EotS design and my earlier Pacific War is I treat intelligence as a central feature in both games. While most games usually only look at the Midway phenomena that is seen as an Allied advantage there was a flip side of notable failures. I researched how many Japanese defenders were believed to be present for all of the major invasions during the war, such as Bougainville, Peleliu, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Okinawa, and the Philippines. In all of these cases the intelligence estimate was off by at least 15,000 soldiers, one division. In the case of the Philippines the estimate was off by 250,000 soldiers. This data is not hard to find, so it is easy to validate.

The Japanese were very competent and it was not hard for them to anticipate the likely locations for the next US offensive. In most cases the reason that the intelligence estimate was off is the Japanese reinforced the island proximate to the invasion. The Allies for the most part relied on photographic intelligence to estimate troop strengths based on a formula of visual clues. The problem was the Japanese got very good at overhead cover discipline and they were excellent tunnel engineers. This made estimating the size of the garrison an art more than a science. There is a reason that Peleliu and Saipan were estimated to be 3 day operations and instead took almost a month.

The one fly in this ointment is the method by which I chose to incorporate this intelligence feature. The reaction move of a division while the invasion force is already at that location is a mechanistic abstraction that can be visually tough to reconcile. I did not want to have people writing stuff down on paper, etc. and the method chosen works quite smoothly with the other elements of the design. This is one of those that you either buy the abstraction or play another game.

Conclusion

I think that covers the main points I wanted to cover. I want to reiterate I appreciate the commentary and the fact that the individuals played the game to form an opinion and stated it so I could continue to refine my thinking on this topic. I hope that I have protected the anonymity of the commentators for it is not my intention to start a feud. They are only saying what others have said before, but I had the time and the inclination to write my thoughts down. As I stated in the opening this is being posted in my blog so I can archive my own thoughts and what I have written will not change any opinions that already exist either for or against this design of mine. All I can say is I am really looking forward to continuing to play this design with the new 2^nd edition.

Enjoy,

Mark Herman

NYC

Posted by markherman at 9:46 PM EDT

Updated: Thursday, 9 April 2015 10:15 PM EDT

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A question that I get asked more than most is how to successfully start a game ('42 campaign) with a weak Japanese hand. I have written about this here before (easiest to sort on strategy posts), but the variant on this question is how to do this while also suffering from ISR. So, here is a short set of guidelines that I use that will hopefully get a new player over the worst of this issue if you do not have the time to work it out over the board.

These guidelines assume that you are trying to capture the DEI on the opening turn. As seen from our extensive collection of CSW games over the last 5 years there are other ways to open the game, but for purposes of answering this question I will focus on a core set of moves to capture the DEI and see what remains in the JP opening fuel tank for other conquests.

An important point to note is the Japanese is always assured on offensive event in their opening hand and the first Japanese card play is always under Central Agreement sans ISR. We have been playing a continuous series of 'staff' games over on CSW for the last 5+ years and what follows has been successfully accomplished in team and individual play, so this is not theory but battle tested tactics. 

The key to the weak Japanese opening hand and being under ISR after the opening JP attack is the South Seas Brigade with the CA Aoba out of Rabaul. First a quick review, when ISR is imposed on the JP in the opening they have their ASPs (Amphibious Shipping Points) reduced in half to 4 from the original 7. The South Seas Brigade (hereafter SS Bde) using the CA Aoba as organic transport does not require any ASPs. The SS Bde is capable of defeating any Dutch Regiment garrisoning a resource hex, so aggressive use of the SS Bde is the main element in an opening that is hobbled by a halving of your ASPs.

My preferred opening card always focuses on gaining air superiority over Manila and Singapore and if I only have one offensive event I usually use it on my opening play. I try if possible to use a CA in my opening attack so it can PBM to Miri and link up with the SNLF Bde at that location. 

Once that is accomplished I then use the six strength SS brigade with CA Aoba organic transport to capture several of the Dutch resource hexes to conserve ASPs. The basic idea is you use a 3OC card to send the SS Bde to Tarakan with air support giving a 90% of success and then use it later on to take Balikpapan. I use the SNLF Bde out of Miri to take Soerbaja. I use an ASP to capture Batavia (adjacent to the strongly held Tjilatjap) then ship into the captured port larger Army units for an overland attack on Tjilatjap. Landing a division in Bangka, Sumatra (1 ASP) allows a later overland attack to capture Palembang. This leaves the capture of Medan, Sumatra to a 2OC move from Balikpapan with the SS Bde. 

So summarizing, the SS Bde captures Tarkan (3OC), Balikpapan (1OC), Medan (2OC) leaving the capture of Soerbaja for the Miri SNLF on a 2OC. Capturing these four hexes in this manner costs zero ASPs. The capture of Batavia, and Banka requires 2 ASP. This would leave the JP with 2 ASP (under ISR) for other adventures. The difficulty with a weak hand under ISR for me is not ASPs, but battle hex limitations. 

Now no plan survives the first shot, so view this as a template, not a formula, but hopefully this gives you a more tactical explanation on how to take the DEI and still have logistic energy to take a couple of other locations. Also, remember that spending a few activations in Burma in the opening turn can have long range benefits and does not require any ASPs. It is how you use the remainder of your remaining resources not used in the first turn capture of the DEI that shapes your strategy going forward. 

Lastly, this is not the only way to successfully open the game as the Japanese, just a demonstration on some key themes to consider when laboring under the twin obstacles of a weak hand and early ISR.

Happy Holidays all,

Mark

Posted by markherman at 10:04 AM EST

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One of the healthy debates that continues in the wargaming community is what does or does not make a particular game an historical simulation. A challenge that a designer faces is the uneven knowledge across the community on what is factual information or myth based on earlier game designs. A case in point is a key Empire of the Sun sub-system whereby intelligence about enemy dispositions is determined.

It should be obvious that if two players are sitting at the same map and moving their pieces that both sides have an extraordinarily clear picture of where the enemy forces are located. Many designs try to handle the 'fog of war' in many ways, but in the end the visual clues of counters, whether real or 'dummy' counters, does indicate where enemy forces are located, but even more importantly where they are not located.

As I have predominantly worked in manual games you need to work within your medium. It is an inescapable fact that the pieces on the board have to be somewhere that is visible to both players without creating some elaborate double blind system that tends to bog down play with its resultant feeling of tedium. I look at this issue not as a problem but a feature of manual games and I work with it as a strength if properly incorporated into a design. 

When I designed Empire of the Sun I wanted to simulate the 'fog of war' in a very different manner. I went for what I will call the 'empty' map where you see forces, but their location is intended to be imprecise. I see the piece locations as an abstract electron cloud where the precise location of the electrons is only known when you closely observe them at a particular instance.

What this means in practical play is once the location of the offensive forces move to an objective fixing their relative location to an objective, the opposing or reaction player then determines where his forces are located for that series of battles initiated by the offensive player. Within this concept resides the ability to have ground forces at the objective despite the fact that the offensive player thought it was undefended or less defended than it appeared when the offensive began.

The reason that this is important to a Pacific War design, although it would reasonably apply to any campaign in history, is the historical accounts are replete with examples that the Allies were usually incorrect as to the size and composition of Island defenses. This inability to understand the true nature of the Japanese defenses was an important historical feature of the conflict and one that is simulated in Empire of the Sun. Here is a link to a primary source document that demonstrates my point.

http://www.history.navy.mil/special%20highlights/WWIIpacific/Battle%20Experience%20-%20Marianas.pdf

If you get a chance to look this document over note this little gem buried in the text. 

Pg 74-4: "The enemy ground strength was considerably in excess of what was expected, sizeable reenforcements having arrived in the Marianas just prior to our attack." 

This is EXACTLY what is being simulated when you make a reaction amphibious move with the Japanese in response to an Allied offensive. The reality being simulated is the Japanese ground unit was already on the Allied objective before it began.

However, mechanically this is hard to do with physical pieces on a board if you execute the historical actions in a time linear manner. What I did in Empire of the Sun is the Allied player in this example is forced to launch his offensive with uncertain knowledge. The Allies are aware of what the potential Japanese dispositions may be at the time of the offensive, but needs to apply a risk profile for the attack and plan accordingly. This is what the real commanders faced during the war. Depending on player style you tend to either accept a great deal of risk or send more than you will need, which is exactly the debate that repeated itself throughout the war.

The mechanic in the game reverses the actual sequence of events to hide the Japanese intentions until the Allies are committed to their attack. It is at this time that through the reaction mechanic the Allied player finds out what was really at the objective all of the time, but without the Japanese player having to go through an elaborate paper driven planning process. Let's face it, lots of paperwork is not fun in real life or in a wargame. The net effect of the mechanic is player behavior and thinking begins to approximate what occurred during the war. 

<sarcastic mode on> Although as many of the 'experts' on the various boards tell me Empire of the Sun is not a very good historical simulation because of subsystems like this as it is too 'gamey'. So, please note, this historical primary source quote, not their opinion, must be wrong.</sarcastic mode off> 

Excuse my sarcasm, but this goes directly to my earlier comment that while we have a solid tradition of debate in the wargaming community many voices in the debate know far less than they really know. But that is the nature of a democracy, so you take the good with the bad.

Mark

Posted by markherman at 8:26 AM EDT

Updated: Sunday, 11 April 2010 8:43 AM EDT

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Design thoughts on what is represented by how losses are distributed to full and reduced strength units. 

Sorry for the delay, but this business year has started at a sprint. This can be an article in c3i and might be at some point, but right now here are the basics.

I cannot emphasize this enough and I know that it causes cognitive dissonance for many wargamers, but geographic position of forces  during an offensive has no, let me say that again, no tactical significance. As Nimitz, you are resourcing an offensive based on JCS guidance (card) and available logistics (activations and range). What you care about is the timing of the offensive (how you sequence the cards), the objectives, and the kinds of forces sent (e.g. mix of carriers, air, surface, and ground forces). Where those forces are on the map to include what they are doing (smothering or involved in the main action) has no game cause and effect relationship. Basically the pieces have to be somewhere and since range via force movement is calculated the location of pieces is mostly a mnemonic to ensure that range calculations are conducted properly.

Just about every 'strategic' Pacific War game on the market or about to be on the market, embeds a mechanism for tactical timing (e.g., first wave air strikes, torpedoes, etc.) and a distinct surface action. I did all of those things in my earlier operational design Pacific War where it was the core of the design. This is based on the emphasis that the available literature places on the big naval battles, which were all carrier battles. But, there were only 6 carrier battles of this scale during the war. The importance of carriers goes way beyond big naval battles handled in EoTS via the air Zone of Influence mechanic. Don't get me wrong, it is loads of fun to re-fight carrier battles, but EoTS as a strategic simulation purposely divorces itself from this misguided hobby tradition.

What the combat model is trying to do, is produce a spectrum of historical losses relative to  your opponents action during an offensive. So for example losing a CVE to a smothering element of an offensive and then hearing that CVEs were not used in that manner, just totally misses the design point. Here I am leveraging player psychology to achieve an historical distribution of losses ala Leyte, without any special rules. In this design, the CVEs are part of the broader offensive and where they are on the map and the dice roll that they are associated with is a mathematical construct to achieve an historical outcome. It is not a statement about historical operational doctrine other than the historical role of smothering operations. I have analyzed every Pacific offensive and the combat system will reproduce all of the historical outcomes in a reasonably painless manner.

The combat system is based on a firepower model that uses effectiveness (total strength) and efficiency (modified die roll outcome) to generate potential damage.  The combat system then uses a hit allocation mechanic to turn potential damage into real damage, but does it to create non-linear outcomes (e.g., inability to score every last hit). The non-linear effects broadly introduce the aggregate effects of air superiority (e.g., carrier and air damage restrictions), doctrine (e.g., JP CVLs), and light naval force losses (e.g., DD losses). It is this last point that bears on the original question that initiated this post.

Every simulation has some level of molecular granularity that you cannot go below. In Pacific War I have individual DD losses, but in EoTS except for a few special small force units (e.g., JP APD Tokyo Express) all of the CLs and DDs are embedded in the larger Capital ship aggregations. One can look at a reduced naval unit as either the loss of one of the Capital ships (e.g,, Yamato/ Mushashi) represented by the piece or the stripping out of the light forces in the piece making the remaining Capital ships both less effective and more vulnerable due to the loss of the screening forces. It really doesn't matter because the full strength/ reduced strength is both representing some loss of capability for a damaged force aggregation and creating a non-linearity for the losses that are realized from any number of applied hits. From a CinC perspective it is a resourcing and force composition issue that is represented by the full and half strength units where the details are below your pay grade to worry about.  

I hope that answers the question...

Mark

Posted by markherman at 9:59 AM EST

Updated: Wednesday, 14 January 2009 5:19 PM EST

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A parochial view...

What is strange about the above is that EotS is still in it's FIRST print run; I can't see why it never sold out! 

I appreciate the sentiment and Gene's kind remark, but I have been very disappointed in the sales of this title. The good news is the game has found its audience and unlike many games I believe it has a much better reputation now than when it was originally released. 

I ascribe this to a couple of things, some of it my fault. I think I was too eager to update the rules, which gave the uninformed the impression that the game was less than it could be. A second point revolved around some perceived and real balance issues. The real issues have long ago been dealt with; my upcoming article in C3i 21 should handle the perceived ones. 

Another factor centers on my personal view that as much as gamers want innovation, they do not want it at the expense of what is familiar. Last, some of the 'big' name bloggers who have followings were very aggressive at panning this title. The collection of which led to lackluster sales. 

However, once the pack moved onto the latest and greatest product, those of us who actually play games more than once have been having deep strategy discussions about this title. If CSW topic traffic is an indicator, few titles move much beyond rules questions and then obscurity, many of which have much higher BGG ratings than EoTS. David Dockter and another fellow whose name escapes me did some very interesting analysis on what is actually getting played. 

On the other hand all of the publications that formally reviewed the game were all very positive, plus the game did win a Charlie in Design (thank you Stephen) and Graphics (another GMT graphic team success). 

What I was going for is a game that I want to play repeatedly while still feeling that there was more to learn. As I am slower than the pack, this is easy for me, but nevertheless I continue to enjoy playing this title continuously. I look forward to our next challenge match that will begin in January. 

Happy Holidays, 

Mark

Why I do not like EotS that much

Maybe it's time for a different point of view here. I played the game now several times and I have concerns with the game which others shared and still share despite the rules updates. 

First of all: Movement in this game is innovative, but historically unsound. Why? Take our beloved Yamato (or as I call here: The Resurrection Ship with a nod to Battlestar Galactica)...it is usually hovering around the whole pacific, always there, were you do not like it. And the beast takes 18 points to inflict damage, so you better be careful with it. There are other issues with movement of the IJN, but the main beef I have is: lack of oil and/or resource rules in EotS. If the IJN player wants, he can move the forces around like he wants it. 

The only thing he should not do is the historical way: Bunch them up in range of the US Player, which brings me to the second problem: The easy pinning of forces (or as Markus Stumptner called it: the Wonderglue effect) Air fleets can pin down any number of forces in a single hex. So, spreading out is the heart of the game for the IJN player. Mind you, it does not save him from utter destruction in the end, as this almost always is ensured, but it makes for some quite ahistorical gameplay in the years before. 

Third problem: The POW mechanism. Like so many things that sound cool in theory, in practice this leads to the IJN never committing to New Guinea, at least the discussion after the last game showed, why committing to it is often a recipe for desaster. Firstly, all these nice NG hexes are POW hexes if occupied. Secondly, it prolongs the IJN front to a point, where the Allies have easy access. 

Fourth problem: The War in Europe. True, one can recover even from the worst depths of the WiE track as shown during the last game. But with a less than average hand, you are doomed as the Allied player or if you are unlucky with any comebacks. If it happens too early, you are screwed. 

These are just my personal problems I have. Mind you, I had great fun playing EotS as a game and it poses interesting challenges for the players. It even resembles the Pacific War rather closely if you look at it from a high level. The smaller operational subgame, however, lacks due to problem no. 1 and the other (albei smaller) issues I have, make EotS only my second choice compared to Fire in the Sky or Pacific Fleet.

Phil 

Perceptions of what is historical...

Philip, I appreciate your candor and I intend to address your points in sequence. I also want to state that my comments are not intended to be defensive or aggressive, but it is hard to disagree in writing and not make it appear so. I am sure that your comments were directed in a like manner. 

One of the weaker parts of gamer culture is to base ones arguments on something in a wargame as being ahistorical based on ascertain and what other games have done. I am well read and teach these subjects at the graduate school level (adjunct professor at the Naval War College and Georgetown University). So, I do not put things in my games unless I have the facts. They are my interpretation of the data, but it would be strange if I had not thought through all of these issues. 

Movement: I am not sure how to respond to the Yamato concern as that is a player choice and many of the Japanese plans revolved around it use. It spend much of the war outside of Japan, so its use or non-use is a player decision. The comment on its attack-defense strength is context driven and its evocation as the resurrection ship I'll pick up later. The way the combat system works you would end up in two situations with the Yamato (Mushashi). It is full strength with other full strength units, in which case the weaker units will take the hits. It is the only full strength unit in the battle, in which case it has to take 18 hits before any other units take any hits, which is more or less what happened when the USN found it before Leyte as it was the biggest thing in their sights. I would also offer that once it takes one hit (Mushahi lost ala Leyte), the piece is more or less impotent to perform the above roles. 

The resurrection ship comment is a bit of historical drama. It was my view that the Yamato had to be one of the last ships in the Japanese fleet at the end of the game. Given the tough nature of the ship based on how many bombs/ torpedoes it took to sink, I viewed most losses to the unit as severe damage. Also, my knowledge of the design says that at the end of the game CVLs are more useful than the Yamato, so not all of the 6 naval replacements that the JP receive would be used on this unit. The combination of these factors gave me confidence that the Yamato would be around through most of the game as it was historically, but overuse would have its own consequences. 

Within the movement comments is one around ahistorical movement of Japanese fleet elements. Some facts are required here. The Japanese were not short of oil, they were short of refining capacity and the transport oilers to move it to Japan. The Strategic Bombing study covers the oil issue in excruciating detail as you would suspect given the strategic nature of oil. I have examined all of the numbers on barrels per day pumped, refined, transported and the like, so within the Japanse empire there was a surplus of oil, unfortunately not in the right form nor in the right location (Japan). Remember, prior to the war, Indonesia alone would have supplied Japan with more oil than it could use, so once it was captured and the infrastructure damaged by the retreating Dutch units repaired that oil was available. 

However, lack of refining capacity due to damage and the devastation of the always insufficient Japanese oiler units created a shortage of fuel. This is why the fleet was moved to Singapore and Tawi-Tawi to bring the fleet elements closer to the unrefined oil that can be used if one is willing to deal with the maintenance issues, which historically the Japanese did. EoTS uses card activations to handle how much logistics are available (to include ammunition not just oil) to move and fight with. Other games use other viable simplifications to handle this situation, such as oil points or command points (e.g., PacWar). But this raises the second issue around 'ahistorical' movement. 

Although it is true that the Japanese had refined oil issues throughout the war there is a very big difference between cruising from location to location and going to battle. In fact if you do a ship by ship examination of movement, the Japanese navy moved frequently (over any 4 month period of time), just not into battle. In fact if you track the movements of all of the Japanese cruisers and light ships, which is the bulk of their fleet they moved at least several times per turn on various missions to include refits to Japan. 

All of the big fleet elements fought hard in 1942 and then were fairly quiet from a fighting point of view during 1943 that had more to do with the strategic situation and the decimation of the Japanese air units than fuel. However, if you track the big units movements they moved about once per turn to train, refit, and the like even over this period. Based on the historical record, the Japanese shifting their naval forces around in the game is just the historical browning motion that occurred. The fragility and the permanence of loss for most Japanese naval units was the natural governor on how many battles you get to fight in. 

Fleet basing: It is interesting that this point is raised and as I stated in my earlier post about the "big" bloggers views gets brought up here. I wrote an entire monograph on this point that is downloadable from my website on this exact topic. To hear the same ahistorical comment applied once again without any data or historical facts is just a continuance of another urban legend about this game that hurt its initial sales. 

However, there is one additional comment that I would like to make. The idea that the Japanese grouped their fleet into big fleet bases is not entirely accurate. The JP naval order of battle is grouped around naval divisions. So most of the Japanese pieces are grouped in their command organization. Each CA piece is one of the cruiser divisions, BBs etc. The Japanese deployed their major fleet units by division and they were distributed across a number of bases. Even when Truk was the major fleet base, it contained at its height Two Carrier divisions, two BB divisions, and 2 to 3 Cruiser divisions. There were not many locations that had as much except back in Japan where the other BB divisions were located (BB Nagato piece). So, the bottomline is any stack of 3 Japanese naval units, which is normal when I play EoTS constitutes, historically, a major fleet base. Even one naval unit in a hex is a significant fleet concentration. One needs to remember the scale and size of these pieces. 

I would also offer that there are good reasons in EoTS to mass the fleet as when it is dispersed it just gets picked off unit by unit. Which brings up another point about many folks not liking aspects of innovation that are unfamiliar. Location of forces in an empty map design are not absolute. Look at the dispersal of the fleet as a snapshot of where units were reported as they moved (see earlier comment) around. In either case the whole notion of smothering fleet bases has been covered and academically documented by me. If this element bothers you, it is just going to bother you but I disagree that it is ahistorical. 

PoW mechanism: I will make two points here. I am not sure what the comment is here. On one hand the New Guinea strategy from the last game is cited as ahistorical, because it did not work, yet the historical one did not work, so it is ahistorical. Anyway, what I stated earlier about the fact that we are having deep strategy discussions about this title is born out here. I am not convinced that our New Guinea strategy lost us the game, but that is another discussion. My second point is my article in the upcoming C3i 21 has a detailed discussion on why I totally disagree with this comment, so I will just leave it there for now, except to say that I spend several paragraphs showing why this point of view doesn't work in actual game play and why the historical path as supported by the PoW mechanic is a superior strategy in the game. 

WiE: The major factor that effected how the War in the Pacific progressed (e.g., logistics) was the War in Europe. I chose to include it as a factor that the historical commanders had to deal with. It is one of those things that is a matter of taste not history. Everyone has their likes and dislikes and is entitled to them. Which is a good place to end this reply. As you note, you like other Pacific games better and they are fine games, so I am glad that the global marketplace continues to offer choices to satisfy everyones needs. My comments are not directed at saying one design is better than another, but a counter view to the mistaken notion of what is or is not historical in the EoTS wargame design. 

Mark 

Jay in response to Phil

Third problem: The POW mechanism. Like so many things that sound cool in theory, in practice this leads to the IJN never committing to New Guinea, at least the discussion after the last game showed, why committing to it is often a recipe for desaster. 

I've played this game as much as anyone and I don't agree with this view. When the game was first published, the PoW mechanism was much more challenging for the US and it was a vehicle Japan could pursue to win. But with the V2.0 of the rules, the PoW mechanism functions more to make the US spend ASPs each turn and capture bases instead of focusing exclusively on raiding. 

In the several games I've played, whether Japan takes NG or not does not determine if the US makes PoW. All it does is dictate where the US will make PoW. If not in NG, then in the Marshalls or DEI or central Pacific. When Japan concedes the Solomons and NG, then the US "jump-off" point for the counter-offensive starts closer to Japan and since the invasion of Japan is a matter of "when" not "if", this gives the US a big advantage. 

Fourth problem: The War in Europe. True, one can recover even from the worst depths of the WiE track as shown during the last game. But with a less than average hand, you are doomed as the Allied player or if you are unlucky with any comebacks. If it happens too early, you are screwed. 

I think Japan getting a poor hand on turns 2 and 3 impact the game much more than the WiE mechanism. The WiE is only a viable path to victory if Japan draws 2 or more WiE cards in a turn in turns 2 to 4. Outside of that, the WiE is a bit of fool's gold for Japan. It looks like it will win you the game but if you pursue it without thought, you will lose more than you will win. To me the WiE mechanism is really a "random scenario generator" (with some player interaction since Japan doesn't have to play WiE as events) that make each game unique. 

Your first two points are more on the "tactical" aspects of the game and in strategic games, there has to be some level of tactics (forces have to move and fight)--how you rationalize those is often a matter of intepretation and there will be some games that have mechanics that you can't rationalize. At that point, I agree that it is hard to play a game if what is going on doesn't make sense to you. 

What I like most about EoTS compared to other strategic level Pacific games is how the cards dictate operations. In turn based games, each side takes turns sending out all their offensive operations at once and this means that units can only participate in one offensive per turn. It also tends to mean that you focus on massing your fleets for big offensives so the other guy can't react in such a way to get a big local advantage. In EoTS though, there are several offensives over the course of the turn--some big, some small and some in between. And some turns there are hardly any at all. You don't get this variation in other games. 

I think why EoTS is not as popular as FTP, Wilderness War, WtP, TS, etc. is 1) that it is really a combination of a hex game and a card game and 2) that it takes 12+ hours or 6 months (PBEM) to play the campaign. 

I think FTP and the others are popular because they are not hex games--they are not as complicated (this is seens as benefit), players can focus on a few high level decisions (that are often hard) and they, frankly, these types of games were new to the hobby when they came out 10-15 years ago. So the hardcore CDG are not as apt to take on EoTS. Likewise, the hardcore hex-based gamers are not as apt to take on a CDG so in effect, EoTS by spanning both types of games, limits its audience to gamers who go for both types. 

The other big reason is play time. If you want a popular game, it has to play quick given people's lifestyles today. Longer games will appeal to a niche audience but to get the level of sales of say TS, the game has to play quickly.

Phillip 

Thanks Mark for your very deep answer. I will have to read it more carefully (no time right now)...thanks again!

Posted by markherman at 10:53 AM EST

Updated: Sunday, 21 December 2008 10:55 AM EST

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