Sounds like a really interesting and delightfully frustrating game. Bit busy to join at the moment but it’s going on my list for the future.
The comments about the loyalty of the sub-commanders being very strong due to the extremely restrictive information environment reminded me of opposite within the history book Nemesis by Max Hastings.
He covers the end of the Second World War in the pacific. One veteran commented that it seemed that the different commanders and services within the US armed forces were more at conflict with each other than with the Japanese, all trying to get the resources and credit for the successes. (Especially MacArthur in the Philippines).
The radio and news reels of the days could both provide fast information about what is/was happening and also ensure fame and fortune in the domestic environment if your narrative could prevail
> there are a lot of games about strategy [..] and innumerable games about tactics [..], but very few about operations. Almost no games, as far as I’m aware, are interested in, say, the logistics of feeding an army, or communication structures between commanders in the field.
Allow me to whine about Ubisoft buying out Settlers, which was initially about (peace time) logistics, and somehow thinking they bought a RTS.
> there are a lot of games about strategy [..] and innumerable games about tactics [..], but very few about operations
Operational wargames are a thing (at least on boardgames)
https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/181039/favorite-operation...
As a recovered EVE Online addict, there is at least one game out there that requires significant time on logistics and operations to win wars.
Way back in the day I downloaded this game called "The CRISIS Strategic Wargaming System". It was mostly a tactical thing, but it included a much more prominent role for supply lines and logistics than any other game I can recall. Unfortunately it was a "beta" version and apparently was never completed. I had looked for it a few times but seeing this spurred me to look again and I was able to find the old site on Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20060923152338/http://museum.sys... . I can still download the EXE so maybe I'll give it a try and see if it's similar to what I remember.
This sounds a lot like the game played by the International Kriegsspiel Society (https://kriegsspiel.org/), which I think is worth noting in terms of other implementations of the same idea.
(Why do I not just say "This sounds a lot like Kriegsspiel?" Because there's so many different varieties of Kriegsspiel, not all of which work like this, so I'm pointing to a particular one that does.)
Not sure how to do it, but a history of the campaign from the different viewpoints would be an interesting read.
Perhaps a journalist piecing together the information, 6 months to a year after the events. Once the ripples have settled, more or less.
I might be biased as I have been reading 3 part history of the American Civil War, which also suffered from the fog of war and very slow information propagation.
Of course, history is always written by the victors after their glorious triumph has been consolidated and the losers comprehensively defeated.
The article alludes to the fact of few games covering strategic, operational and tactical play. I recently got into (and heartily recommend) a grand strategy game called Terra Invicta, where you play as a global Illuminati-style faction trying to influence the result of an alien invasion of the solar system.
It involves strategic decision-making (control and priorities of Earth nations), operational decisions (spaceships and armies take weeks or months to reach their destinations), and a very deep tactical element of 3D space battles (consisting of spaceships having extremely asynchronous capabilities). Logistics and extended-term planning are absolutely key to success in this game
It's been an extremely fun, satisfying experience so far, albeit with a high learning curve.
Was totally interested until I read its play-by-post and he keeps track of all the troop movements and results. Not exactly what I had pictured in my head before I clicked the link. I don’t understand how people have the time to play things by mail in realtime. I want an evening escape, not a lifetime achievement.
Directly reminds me of Subterfuge which is a fog of war and realtime submarine war game of conquering outposts. It has absolutely 0% loyalty though which makes it hard to play.
Sounds very cool. I wish I had the patience for this kind of real-time game. I did a real time Kerbal mission to Mun once and that was about at my limit. It sounds like this wargame requires much more.
There was this simple game where you were supposed to conquer all planets on the 2d map. You started with one planet that gradually built up ships over time. Then you could send some to any other planets but travel took time. Neutral planets had some fixed number of ships on them. If your fleet had more you captured the planet and it started building ships for you.
To make the game fair maps were symmetrical and your opponent started with the same planet on the opposite side.
There was a Google game ai competition in 2010 where you could submit your program and it was ran against programs submitted by other players. At every time step your program was deciding how many ships to send from where to where and the opponent was doing the same.
Was that operations game?
It was called Planet Wars.
Dude who won did it in Haskell and wrote a nice post mortem. The winner of the second place wrote one too. Links here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/ef40x/google_a...
Apparently there are some modern incarnations: https://cog2025.inesc-id.pt/planet-wars-ai-challenge/
It will go well with fantasy ambience for RPGs: https://tabletopy.com
The A Collection of Unusual Pedantry blog which the author references is an amazing introduction to this work of thinking (the challenges of military operations, and the forces that shape warfare and civilization). [1] If you're already familiar with ACoUP, or find Cataphracts fascinating, you might also enjoy Edward N. Luttwak's The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire of which one review says (and which I find a quality summary):
1. https://acoup.blog/