Turn

[murat]

Dear Developers,
why do the turns last Two Weeks?
If the scenario has political and regional options, it is better the turns last one week, as in Napoleon Campaign.
Thank you.

[Kev_uk]

Just a question, but does it play out as a whole campaign, not like Napoleons Campaigns whereby that was just a bunch of scenarios? Is it like AACW in that regards? Hope so...

[Clovis]

Just a question, but does it play out as a whole campaign, not like Napoleons Campaigns whereby that was just a bunch of scenarios? Is it like AACW in that regards? Hope so...

Yes there are both short scenarios and a campaign.

[Cat Lord]

Dear Developers,
why do the turns last Two Weeks?
If the scenario has political and regional options, it is better the turns last one week, as in Napoleon Campaign.
Thank you.

The Great Campaign is already 86 turns, which is reasonably long. 172 turns would have been a monster game, I think, especially in PBEM with up to 3 people to coordinate, players would have rarely finish a game.

Cat

[OneArmedMexican]

Only one long campaign. That is a shame, I had hoped for more.
But what is most important is that there is a long campaign. The lack thereof was one of the things that bothered me about Napoleon's Campaigns (never understood why there wasn't a 1813-14 campaign :confused .

Thank you Cat Lord for the stream of information. I am looking forward to the finished game.

[Cat Lord]

Only one long campaign. That is a shame, I had hoped for more.
But what is most important is that there is a long campaign. The lack thereof was one of the things that bothered me about Napoleon's Campaigns (never understood why there wasn't a 1813-14 campaign :confused .

Thank you Cat Lord for the stream of information. I am looking forward to the finished game.

Actually there is 3, with 3 different starting dates, but the longest is 86 turns. The others are 64 and 76 turns.

Cat

[OneArmedMexican]

Actually there is 3, with 3 different starting dates, but the longest is 86 turns. The others are 64 and 76 turns. Cat

Great news! It looks like AGEOD is making its fans an early Christmas present.

[barbu]

Lemme guess...

The 86-turn campaign is the Russian Civil War.

The 64-turn campaign is the industrialization drive and the purges of the 1920s and 1930s. Interesting options include "Send assassins after Trotsky (-1 International Prestige, -5% chance of having Stalin himself assassinated)" or event-based questions such as "Shall we build a gigantic or a ***super-gigantic*** statue of Lenin in Kiev?"

The 76-turn campaign is WW2. However, to simulate the lack of reaction from the political leadership, it starts on the 15th of July 1941, with Minsk having fallen and Ukraine half-conquered.

See, "Revolution under Siege" has so many meanings if you're the Bolshevik leader of Communist Russia in the first half of the 20th century...

[Kev_uk]

Lemme guess...


See, "Revolution under Siege" has so many meanings if you're the Bolshevik leader of Communist Russia in the first half of the 20th century...

I see it as the initial Revolution of 1917 under siege. Remember also that most of the 1917 Bolshevik cadre, the first ones who caused the Revolution to happen, were wiped out in the civil war. It allowed Stalin in by the back door, or so I have read about this period. Many oppositionists, Trotsky et al, in their books produced afterwards argue this point.

I think this will be an interesting game. So many arguments about right and wrong of those early years...

Kudos to AGEOD to be brave.

[OneArmedMexican]

Lemme guess...

The 86-turn campaign is the Russian Civil War.

The 64-turn campaign is the industrialization drive and the purges of the 1920s and 1930s. Interesting options include "Send assassins after Trotsky (-1 International Prestige, -5% chance of having Stalin himself assassinated)" or event-based questions such as "Shall we build a gigantic or a ***super-gigantic*** statue of Lenin in Kiev?"

The 76-turn campaign is WW2. However, to simulate the lack of reaction from the political leadership, it starts on the 15th of July 1941, with Minsk having fallen and Ukraine half-conquered.

See, "Revolution under Siege" has so many meanings if you're the Bolshevik leader of Communist Russia in the first half of the 20th century...

Please don't take this the wrong way: Reading your post I first had a grin on my face, however, thinking about it a little longer, that smile quickly faded.

I enjoy black humour and like my cynicism, but there is a point where a computer game would become distasteful. And this one would if one were to take you seriously.
Sure one might include options like "purge the party/army" (although that happened after the period of this game), "create labour camps" or "starve the population of province X by forced contributions in order to supply the armies". And sure one might rename the button replace an army commander with "show trial followed by execution". All that might be very historical, but after all a game remains a game. Strategy games are a tool to sharpen your mind, not a in detail recreation of a series of atrocities and tradgedies that piled up to millions of deaths.
With a topic like the Russian revolution the line between historical realism and distaste gets thin.

[Василеостровск]

Please don't take this the wrong way: Reading your post I first had a grin on my face, however, thinking about it a little longer, that smile quickly faded.

I enjoy black humour and like my cynicism, but there is a point where a computer game would become distasteful. And this one would if one were to take you seriously.
Sure one might include options like "purge the party/army" (although that happened after the period of this game), "create labour camps" or "starve the population of province X by forced contributions in order to supply the armies". And sure one might rename the button replace an army commander with "show trial followed by execution". All that might be very historical, but after all a game remains a game. Strategy games are a tool to sharpen your mind, not a in detail recreation of a series of atrocities and tradgedies that piled up to millions of deaths.
With a topic like the Russian revolution the line between historical realism and distaste gets thin.

While I read his post as a normal post by a poster on western forum on the subject, the type of atrocities you speak of were large parts of the strategy in this war. You can subtract horrors like holocaust, rape of Naking, Katyn, etc. from 2nd World War games and it takes nothing from strategy of how war was fought, but the Russian civil war atrocities were what influenced much of the outcome. This is probably why this subject is rarely visited in strategy games. I applaud AGEOD for doing it.

Cat Lord has recently posted:

You can suppress them by sending military units, particularly regiment of Checkha soldiers, which have a hig "Police" value.

Or you can apply a "Chekha" regional decision to increase loyalty towards you in an area

What to you think the realities of these decisions are? It isn't Chekha going to villages with propaganda posters and singing songs. He goes on to say it increases loyalty but decreases man power in the region. Why do you think that happens? This seems like a good balance between the grim realities that repressions and atrocity were big parts of the strategy of the war, all the while not glorifying or going in to great detail about them.

[Cat Lord]

With a topic like the Russian revolution the line between historical realism and distaste gets thin.

Like OneArmedMexican said, we are trying to stay into historical realisme, without having the game distastful.

And we offer alternative to players: There is the possibility to promise reforms to the peasants, for example, but then you balance that with another cost from repression.

It's like the Czar family massacre: It doesn't bring anything to the game, it's a grim event in history, but we thought it would be silly not to mention it at all.

Cat

[Василеостровск]

Like OneArmedMexican said, we are trying to stay into historical realisme, without having the game distastful.

And we offer alternative to players: There is the possibility to promise reforms to the peasants, for example, but then you balance that with another cost from repression.

It's like the Czar family massacre: It doesn't bring anything to the game, it's a grim event in history, but we thought it would be silly not to mention it at all.

Cat

Maybe my english didn't come out how i mean it, i was agreeing with this way of doing things and i welcome and applaud it. I was trying to say subjects like Russian civil war atrocities must be addressed in some manner because they were major part of the war effecting outcome. I think this is great way to represent it. It shows the effects without being unnecessarily morbid.

[barbu]

Please notice that my post said nothing about the Holodomor, forced Russification, Gulag, etc. The only "bloody" subject I mentioned are the inner-party purges + Trotsky.

Edit: apologies if I said the wrong thing. I didn't mean to offend anybody.

Now let's get back on topic

[Kev_uk]

The way I see it, as I mentioned in a post above, is that this was a very bloody war and we could argue that it was in effect caused by Western intervention to stop a Socialist takeover of Russia, because in all effect it became a threat to Democratic nations. The Revolution was caused I believe from the losses on the Eastern Front during WW1 and also the deprivations of the Russian population at the time caused from the war. Misguided? Was it a coup by a few revolutionaries? Did the mass of the Russian population support the Bolsheviks, or was it just a few hundred people in St.Petersburg that caused it?

Endless debate.

[OneArmedMexican]

Oh boy, it seems I started something here. Sorry about that.

1) Barbu, you certainly didn't offend. And yes your examples were a lot less dark than mine.

2) Василеостровск, I was aware of Cat Lord post concerning the Cheka. And I do not associate the Cheka with nice photos of happy peasants embracing red soldiers. I actually agree that it is realistic to include these facettes into a game that tries to achieve a high degree of historic realism. However, and that was my original point, I think there are a lot of things about war that games cannot replicate in an adequate way simply because they are games. A game has the inherent danger of treating atrocities too lightly, it is its nature. Does that mean one should spare those parts of the war out?

One last thing (which will hopefully help to get us back talking about the game itself): Has the AI learned to cope better with the winter months (IMO the biggest weakness of the great AGE AI)? Not to get cliché, but I expect the weather to play an even bigger role than in earlier AGE games. It would rob a lot of the fun if the AI still occasionally self-destructed in the winter months.

[barbu]

I was closer than I thought, one of the scenarios will be a fictional 1921 war between an Imperial Germany that has just won WW1 and a Soviet regime that has just won the Russian Civil war...

Source: http://www.cyberstratege.com/magazine/blog/2010/11/09/revolution-under-siege-les-rouges-et-les-blancs-debarquent-sur-vos-ecrans/

[Kev_uk]

For those of us linguistically challenged ;-) :-

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cyberstratege.com%2fmagazine%2fblog%2f2010%2f11%2f09%2frevolution-under-siege-les-rouges-et-les-blancs-debarquent-sur-vos-ecrans%2f

[Василеостровск]

OneArmedMexican I was agreeing with you and try to add to it, I think my English use did create barrier to my point. I apologize for that.

[Cat Lord]

For those of us linguistically challenged ;-) :-

http://www.microsofttranslator.com/bv.aspx?from=&to=en&a=http%3a%2f%2fwww.cyberstratege.com%2fmagazine%2fblog%2f2010%2f11%2f09%2frevolution-under-siege-les-rouges-et-les-blancs-debarquent-sur-vos-ecrans%2f

Good idea, I will post that in the English thread as well.

Cat

[Clovis]

One last thing (which will hopefully help to get us back talking about the game itself): Has the AI learned to cope better with the winter months (IMO the biggest weakness of the great AGE AI)? Not to get cliché, but I expect the weather to play an even bigger role than in earlier AGE games. It would rob a lot of the fun if the AI still occasionally self-destructed in the winter months.

Complex question. One of the scenarios covers Kolchak's rise to the head of Siberian forces in November 18. It begins in November 18 and willl cover the White offensive during Winter.

So Winter can't be a period without any military activity. It would both be unhistorical and damaging for the AI, as a player would know AI will be in full passivity and take advantage of that.

We have tried to solve the problem by reducing the chance AI will be stuck on the capture of an objective. Reducing isn't the same as eliminating. We hope such outcomes will be very rare.

In any case, AI will not be able to play under hardened attrition rules for itself as rightly than without such a rule. It's why harder attrition rule may be limited to human side since the introduction of this.

Rest assured we are trying to solve the problem. RUS shouldn't have this problem.

[OneArmedMexican]

I was closer than I thought, one of the scenarios will be a fictional 1921 war between an Imperial Germany that has just won WW1 and a Soviet regime that has just won the Russian Civil war...

Source: http://www.cyberstratege.com/magazine/blog/2010/11/09/revolution-under-siege-les-rouges-et-les-blancs-debarquent-sur-vos-ecrans/

By far the most informative article about RUS I have come across so far. This link should be made more visible (at least for those who understand French). Perhaps put someone could put it into a new thread and sticky it?

Thanks barbu.

[barbu]

Here is the translation of the article:

Q: Because of the theme, RUS is a nice surprise. Why the Russian Revolution?

A: Russian company Akella wanted an equivalent of AACW. But Philippe Thibaut and Philippe Malacher are already busy with other things, so they had to decline. I was interested in the war. It's a hybrid conflict: one foot in the 19th century, with armies of infantry and cavalry, and another foot in the 20th century, with the use of planes, tanks and the very strong ideological dimension. It was a titanic war which spread from the Pacific to Poland and which had an impact not only on the Russians, but also on the Poles, the Baltic states and on French, English, American or Japanese contingents.

Q: Why this title?

A: It's original. But most importantly it expresses the spirit of the game. It's a formulation first used by Lenin to describe the situation of the bolsheviks in May 1919: attacked by White armies from the north, the south and the east, and also expeditionary corps from the west... they literally felt under siege! We have re-created that in the game: the Red Army has a solid base, but it is surrounded by enemies. If you play as the communists you will have to hold your front lines and use your central position to brush aside enemies one by one. On the other hand, the anti-communists must reduce soviet positions in central Russia and coordinate their limited means.

Q: What are the differences between Rise of Prussia and RUS, other than the new units?

A: More of a political dimension. Each side will have a series of political, financial and diplomatic options. The Communists, for instance, can use the Tcheka to repress rebel provinces, whereas the Whites try to woo ( ) foreign countries into intervening on their side.
Economy-wise, RUS is close to AACW, with its options of management and recruitment.

Q: How long did it take to make RUS?

A: Two years.

Q: How did you do the research? It must have been difficult.

A: We met David Beaudlet, himself a game-maker on the subject. He has lived in Russia for several years, he speaks the language and he has a copy of the Soviet Encyclopedia. This book helped us with many things, such as the order of battle for the protagonists. David translated to us the information we could have never gotten by ourselves.

Q: You mentioned diplomacy. So RUS will simulate the international dimension of the revolution?

A: Yes. Mainly, the Whites can get Finland, the Baltic states or the Caucasians into the war and on their side. They can also ask the franco-british to reinforce their expeditionary corps, and thus [these corps] becoming more important than they did historically.
These things cannot be done all the time. They have a big political cost, and must be part of a well-thought out strategy.
This "what-if" side seemed important to us, so that you can play as the same faction several times in very varied ways. If you play as the Whites, getting Finland into the war is a decision that changes the course of the war and provokes other sides into changing their perspective [on you] radically.

Q: Replacements by railroad - how will that work?

A: Just like in AACW, with two important nuances. First, there are armored trains, they can provide often decisive fire. Thus, armies are encouraged to progress along railroads. But the immensity of Russia and the roughness of the climate are other factors which make controlling railroad hubs more important in RUS than in AACW.

Q: How much "historical fiction" is it? How much can we deviate from history?

A: The basis is very well documented. From there on, you can get as far from history as possible, for instance when it comes to diplomatic options. However, no matter what, you will remain within "the world of the believable" - nothing too fantasy.

We have integrated a totally fictional scenario: in 1921, Imperial Germany - which has won WW1 - wishes to crush a Russia which is under Soviet rule. It's like an early Barbarossa, a scenario of huge proportions, a real game within a game!

Q: What are the challenges for playing one side or another? How many factions are there?

A: There are 3, then 4 in the Great Campaign: the Reds, the Whites of Siberia (under admiral Kolchak) and the Whites of the South (general Denikin). The Whites are of course allied and have the same objective,
but we wanted to make the two factions distinct so that the defeat of one does not provoke the defeat of the other. Historically, when Kolchak was defeated, Denikin and Wrangel kept on fighting the Reds dozens of thousands of kilometers away.
Starting in 1920, a new playable faction appears: the Polish. They aren't allied with anybody and they follow specific objectives. In a game, they can be led by a human or by the AI.

Q: Other than the main campaign, you have 2 scenarios: the civil war in Finland and the Russo-Polish war. Can you describe them?

A: These are short scenarios: the Finland civil war (January - May 1918) and the Russo-Polish war (May - December 1920). These are little-known conflicts but very interesting ones, and it was easy to reproduce them in the game. It's worthy to note that the French intervened in the Russo-Polish war with a military mission led by general Weygand. Of course, this will be presented in the game.

Q: How long will the campaign and scenarios last?

Q: The Big campaign takes place from June 1918 to December 1921 = 86 turns. The other scenarios are shorter, with the exception of the "German" fictional scenario which lasts until 1923.

Q: How does the AI adapt to player decisions? Is it all scripted?

A: Our AI programmer, Laurent Favre, has put in place a code so that the AI reacts better to each scenario's problems. Different reactions are created in advance depending on player strategy, historical context and even climate. We are very happy of the results and we think the AI will satisfy solo players.

Q: Will there be a demo?

A: Yes, we're preparing a demo and it will be on our site as soon as possible.

[ERISS]

A: Russian company Akella wanted an equivalent of AGEOD.

Not "AGEOD", but "AACW".

[barbu]

Corrected, thank you.