Margo is finishing a Girl's Weekend in Melbourne, Jordan is off with friends, the dig is sleeping and it is too hot to go out of the house. Worst of all, I have had no turn since 8:00am!
I have decided to code up some Moderni Agone to keep sane.
I have created Axemen, Chariots and Improved Bowmen, coded up the Chariot map and set up The Delta scenario (ref Egypt vs Hyksos). I am working on Chariots picking up other units now.
The very least Paul can do is write a "Charts of Doom" blog!
The great project has resumed! My travels around Australia have stalled in Canberra for a few days, leaving me stranded with internet. At the same time, EDEE turns have completely stalled - mostly due to the Irish, paedophile priests and the Gay and Lesbian agenda. So, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.
Of course, a good hat, a good tee shirt, a cup of coffee and a bit of chocolate helps the process immensely.
The previous version is v0.4. (Now a climate change change skeptic would say that 0.5 is no different to 0.4 as they are unable to understand mathematics that involves decimals point. "If God meant us to use decimal points, we would have decimal points, we would have 4.4 fingers, they claim. Alas I cannot refute those who put on a blind fold and say that there are no galaxies. However, I can show that this version of Moderni Agone has new features and bug fixes over the last.)
The key new feature in v 0.5 is the facility to play solitaire games. Before, testing involved using two browsers, both in debug mode, which got fiddly. Now I can test twice as fast.
The game remembers your preferred orientation for each side, and rotates the map as the turn changes.
The other benefit I have found is that a PRESTAGS game always appears to favour the side with the higher stacking level, or better generals, but they are far more balanced than that. So playing them solitaire a few times quickly reveals the strengths and weaknesses of each side.
The other main enhancement is with the addition of the Chariot marker. I have not added the chariot phase into the game yet, but that will be soon now.
I intend to offer a few variations of the Chariot rules to let us determine what John Michael Young intended - archers only, Armageddon units or extra archers for each chariot.
Eventually I will need better graphics for the counters, but that can come.
Further, I did fix several defects with the game. Some rotations of the map bent some units and a couple of events could crash play.
Finally, I have begun documenting the code better, as per the suggestion from the Open Source Developers Conference.
A man has to do something when he gets no turns and has had to leave his wargame collection behind!
A new year is always a good time for a high level review. I have been thinking about where to go in 2015 with regard to wargaming. High points in 2014 for me were:
The low points for me were:
So my goals for 2015 are:
Yes, it will happen.
Yes, I will organise it.
Yes, it should be in New Zealand.
Yes, it will go ahead in Canberra anyway.
Yes, Junior Prestags are welcome.
Yes, we will play Space Empires.
The blog is dedicated to Prestags, and the games are simple to set up and play, so why not. As much as anything, it give me something to do when no turns are arriving.
I doubt I will be able to coax Paul away ffrom his computer, but a few solitaire scenarios should make this blog much more interesting and perhaps get us into some good debates. (Moves issue 2 has a fantastic debate on the range of ancient arrows. It reads like an email chain, but was done in old school posted letters. I am keen on posting that.)
I'll start with Chariot and see how we go. The lack of stacking in chariot should make it a very bloody game, where an E and a ½E have the same effect.
Feedback on good scenarios to set up are gratefully accepted
Combining Prestags with the internet has to be an all around winner. However, the first thing I need to fix is the name: Paul hates it and Peter ignores it.
I really enjoyed coding this game up. Even now, I keep getting good ideas for it. (My latest is an odds randomiser - just before the odds are calculated, I roll two dice. On a 2, I add two to the attacker strength, 3-4 I add 1, 10-11 I subtract 1 and 12 I subtract two. This stops the unrealistic behaviour of getting your odds exactly perfect.)
I also think I am only a few weeks from having a really playable game and we might even get Peter involved.
Interstingly, my new job is coding a phone user interface in a browser, so is very similar to this, so I expect I will be much cleverer and faster in coding enhancements
I agree with Victor Hugo's analysis that Napoleon was a military genius who was also the worst kind of tyrant. However, it is good to learn, even from your enemy. I have loads of good Napoleonic games that will make great photo opportunities. I am impressed with the Moves #2 issue that does a great report on a historical play of their 1812 game (Napoleon's invasion of Russia), although without photos as that was too tricky ffor a low cost puplication in the 70s.
I thought I would start with the Capitulation of Ulm in 1805.
This is a true classic where Napoleon destroyed an Austrian army of 72,000 without fighting a major battle, just a few skirmishes. Similar to the German march through the Ardennes in 1914 and 1939, Napoleon used indirect approach in 1805 to maneover around the Austrians and cut them off from their line of communications. They were forced to surrender (60,000 taken prisoner) and Vienna fell shortly after.
BTW Paul, may I have a "Napoleonic War" category, or something similar?
What are your thoughts on this piece and what are your plans for 2015?
A huge thank you to the Python and Thygo, and all the other contributors. May this mad blog prosper for another year.
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I always intended to report upon the OSDC in Auckland. Thygocanberra has requested that I report upon: “how did NZ trip go? victories? triumphs? feasts? spoils?”. There were indeed all of these things, and more.
AWESOMENESS
I have already posted as to the awesomeness of travelling to New Zealand on the Air NZ "Hobbit" plane. We saw some unusual aircraft on our journey, but nothing came close to the Hobbit plane which boldly proclaimed itself "The Airline of Middle Earth".
TRIUMPHS
The conference itself was well organized and a success. For a lawyer attending a hard core geeks convention I found it surprisingly enjoyable and genuinely interesting.
The triumph was PythonMagus, who strode through the conference as a giant among geeks. The Python's talk "Creating Masterpieces with Raphael" was the highlight of the whole conference, and I got a massive buzz seeing PRESTAGS Moderni Agone on the big screen. We met an intense young developer who told us after the talk that he has been working on a computer game for three and a half years. The Python completed MA in three months. Even in the small photograph on the below left one can recognise PRESTAGS Moderni Agone.
After his talk the Python was able to relax a bit, however he still maintained 'the stance'. That is the stance of triumph, which has not been seen since the cover picture for PRESTAGS Viking in 1975. The Python was also able to enter 'The Great Room', where only the great dare to venture.
FEASTS
Were there feasts? Yes, too many feasts! The formal dinner for the OSDC was held at Eden Park on the first evening of the conference. Eden Park is the most sacred place in New Zealand, and Aussies usually leave Eden Park on a stretcher, so it was a privilege to enter and survive this place. Dinner at Eden Park was great (it is hard to go wrong with a self-serve all-you-can-eat top restaurant quality smorgasbord) and the real treat was Yorkshire Pudding which I have not had in ages. I remember this pudding at the Python's wedding: is this correct?
The conference was held at the Langham Hotel in Auckland. I have stayed in quite a lot of 5 star hotels around the world and I can honestly say the Langham beat them all. I normally travel for business, and without family or friends, so perhaps I was particularly well disposed to the Langham because the circumstances were more fun. All of the food at the Langham was top notch. The morning and afternoon teas came with a huge variety of cakes and wraps. The lunches included numerous hot options, with no stinginess on the meat as is usually the case. The cheese platter was particularly memorable.
The view from my hotel window included an old red brick house among taller modern buildings. The house was now a posh French restaurant on top called "Number 5" and an earthy Italian restaurant below called "Da Vinci's". Python and I had an excellent two course Italian meal at Da Vinci's to celebrate his talk.
Feasts come in all shapes and sizes. I was well behaved on the first two mornings and had my own cereal breakfast, but on the last morning I went for the traditional hotel cooked breakfast of eggs and sausages.
The breakfast was first class. It was delivered precisely (to the second) at my nominated time of 7.15am and the poached eggs were still runny. A surprise was the toaster so that I could toast my own bread in order to achieve maximum freshness of toast. I have never encountered this before. The pot of strong freshly brewed coffee for one was enormous and I drank it all. I haven't slept since.
VICTORIES
There was a victory, and it was mine. Throughout the conference the Python and I continued our two player game of EDEE. How cool was this and how different to all the boring legal conferences I have been to over the years. Every couple of hours we would exchange turns, and even the uber geek talks with topics like "Clustering Web Apps with MariaDB & Galera" and "MySQL Roadmap, more flexibility with NoSQL API" could not hold the Python as he rushed to a quiet corner to do his move.
It was a particularly close and exciting game, and I had been rewarded with a radical opening strategy which the Python still refuses to concede is better than his opening strategy. In any event, after a particularly crushing counter move by me, the Python officially resigned in a game that he has dominated for years. It was a very satisfying victory indeed.
No PRESTAGS was played, although MI 22 and his friends did travel to New Zealand and they were remarkably well behaved.
SPOILS
The true spoils of the conference are knowledge. I learnt a lot, especially about cyber security and privacy which have always interested me. I really enjoyed a panel discussion on the second morning "Government surveillance of online communications" and the keynote address on the third day by Vikram Kumar, the CEO of Mega, which is a NZ based private cloud platform. There are so many threats to our privacy and even the geeks are struggling to hold back the ever increasing online Orwellian nightmare.
I learnt about Tor, which has a suite of applications to assist online privacy. I learnt about BeagleBone which is a credit card sized linux computer: absolutely brilliant and I want one. I don't need one but I just want one. I learnt that I cannot challenge the geeks when it comes to 'most nerdy' t-shirts or 'most nerdy' laptop stickers. I collected a lot of stickers at OSDC. But I still think my own sticker design of the linux penguin with the V for Vendetta mask was the most original at the conference.
HOME
No matter where you go or whatever you do it is always marvellous to get home. As the return flight descended over Sydney I was able to take a photograph through the window with a rather crappy camera. I am quite proud of this photograph. It captures the CBD and harbour bridge, and the bushfire haze that was still sitting over the city. Welcome back to Sydney.
I have completed my first game of Moderni Agone and I have to say what a super effort by PythonMagus. Apart from a few minor bugs which are expected at this stage it worked from start to finish.
I like the little graphics for movement and combat, and it felt like I was playing PRESTAGS. In the end, the Spartans were outflanked and their superiority with Professional Pikemen and greater stacking could not save them.
I have a galactic treat for PythonMagus and Thygocanberra.
Almost a year ago I supported a crowd funding project on kickstarter, which was some Polish computer nerds building a science fiction computer strategy game in the tradition of Master of Orion. The kickstater link is:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1447560584/more-oldschool-turn-based-4x-space-strategy-game
The games's website is http://www.morethegame.com/ While this game has taken longer to complete than the backers would like, it is a huge undertaking and I believe they will finish the project.
One of the rewards I get as a backer is to name three star systems that will be used in the game. I have chosen our three surnames, which thankfully are all rather rare and will make excellent star systems. This will be a first I think, to have our names immortalised in a game. And playing the game and invading Thygocanberra's system will be marvellous.
The game is called M.O.R.E which stands for Military Organization Research Economy. Python will appreciate that it is also being built for Linux from the start. Python will not appreciate my support for M.O.R.E and neglect of MA, so I will definitely do some Beta testing today.
... the story of PythonMagus' life:
Version 0.2 was the first playable game, but you did have to pop back to the main menu every now and then when it got lost. Version 0.3 is almost defect free. There is no more cheating with missile fire, but sometimes disruption does not clear. I'll get that in version 0.4. The nice feature in 0.3 is the menu control which shows future functionality.
I'm desperate for some testing guys!
This is better than eating icecream!
In the second game, it started much as before. Note how the armies have to cluster around their leaders to be able to move.
While the other side is moving, you watch a status bar. You get brief messages showing you what is happening. The bar is supposed to turn red.
The Confederate general thinks he is Ghengis Khan adopting a horns formation. The idea is that before contact you form a line, but the guys on the end will be out of range of the leader, so need a head start.
The Spartan king responds with an echelon to start the killing quickly:
The attacks are set, crashing into the Confederate left flank at 5:1 (see on the right).
Somehow the rebels hold and battle is joined:
Off to walk the dog now. More to come.
I have just played through the first full game of Moderni Agone. (Peter, if you value Paul's friendship, you will come up with a new name for this game fast!)
Both sides cheated like crazy. No disruption markers were ever removed, archers and slingers kept firing each phase (illegal) even if they attaked (illegal) or were disrupted (illegal).
The Spartans fought valiantly in the centre and wiped out a Confederate stack each turn. (Paul has to love this scenario: Prestags + the Confederacy in one game!!) However, the confederates managed to race around the rear and rout the Spartan Allies. Although panicked, the Spartan general rallied the boys and kept killing in the centre. Then the confederate slingers turned their attention on the Spartiates. Once disrupted, it was game over (as disruption recovery was broken). The Spartan king was the last to fall, and was satisfied that both of the leaders of the confederacy had be reduced, so he would see them in Hades!
Strategy tip, the Spartans need to stretch their line by reducing their stacking. I think this is hard game for them to win as each Confederate stack killed is only 3 VP towards a Confederate panic level of 26. The Confederates need to get their cavalry around the wings and its bye-bye allies. (I only stacked the cavalry 1 as they were useless against a phalanx but awesome at getting a flanking attack bonus.)
Now its back to the code to fix all that cheating!
Mark this day as a big day for PRESTAGS.
First, PythonMagus has taken Moderni Agone (code for computer PRESTAGS) to the beta testing stage. An amazing achievement in such a short period of time. I look forward to driving him crazy as I reveal all the bugs. To celebrate I have created the Moderni Agone category and gone back and added this to relevant posts.
Second, the first wave of PRESTAGS.com rewards have arrived. Yes, PRESTAGS mugs and PRESTAGS playing cards.
I will send these to the Python and Thygomoonshine as soon as I can. Suggestions for the second wave of PRESTAGS rewards are most welcome.
PythonMagus logs on to Moderni Agone. He sees on the menu that he has a game going with David Bowman.It is Corinth 394 BC.
He clicks resume playing. He sees the map. Units have got lost. Bummer he says:
However, he glances at his Spartan map. It looks the same. No lake, but the special rules say no lake. Awesome!
I am beginning to feel really comfortable with this graphical software now. I am able to guess how things should be now, rather than having to engage in empirical experiments.
I want a nice interface for initial deployment. I hate the deployment tool with Empire as you never know if your click worked until you run out of transports and they are all in the wrong city. So with this one, I am working on a little tray with all the goodies laid out. You can just drag your unit to where you want it (see the unit half off the tray in the picture), then adjust the facing (not shown). When the number underneath the units drops to zero, no more banana. You can drag the tray to where-ever you like.
Your target is the green dot with a number inside (showing the range from the deployment point). Not my best idea, but I'm sure I can improve.
Onwards!
I have melee working and I have made missile attacks much more intuitive - I think those who play CIV5 will recognise it. I have held off putting in the special rules as they will just be finicky to code. We now need a turn engine and a good choice for a first scenario. I suggest Corinth (394 BC) from Spartan [4.3] as there are no special rules and not too many units. However, I welcome all suggestions. And of course, I need play testers, so I am counting on you, dear YodaYellow, flower of Islam, to volunteer.
In the picture above, the two Persian archers disrupted a Greek Archer during Offensive Fire. Then the Persian cavalry charged up to the Greeks and attacked this archer. He got a die roll of 7 (6 + 1 for disruption) and eliminated the archers. This caused the Greek panic level to be reached (see the red writing) and the turn ended well for the Persians. The impossible to read blue on grey on the right shows that the Persians are now waiting for the Greeks to do some shooting.
After Paul's relentless complaints on the lack of unit id numbers (All MIs look the same to me!), I have relented and put units types on the top left. Hopefully that will let me off!
I was quite fearful of needing a super complex form for split stacks, but I got a clever idea this afternoon and it works really well. It's totally graphical, and I think will work brilliantly on the tablet version. You can only split at the start of the move. (This makes it simpler to work out the implications of splitting different speed units.) At the end of the turn, any stacks validly in the same hex are combined into one stack.
The only two things I do not currently support in stacks are:
However, I think it is important that I complete combat and then set up a simple two player game so we can start some real testing. Then I'll come back and add the important stuff like units numbers.
Unfortunately, I have to go back to work tomorrow and for the next three days. Perhaps I can get this to a playable level on the weekend, but probably next week is realistic.
Really, the humour in this blog is getting a bit facile. I can go a few star wars characters on toilets, but climate change denialism - com'on, "Possumus facere melius" to quote Pliny the Elder when the tillerman pointed bireme away from Vesuvius.
I wish to announce that Moderni Agone 2013 now manages stacking violations. You cannot move onto an enemy unit [5.23], you cannot over stack your own units [5.4], and you cannot mix certain unit types [5.3]. You also have to stop when you move into a fire zone [6.41] and [16.32].
Time to face facts. Sgatsrep was never going to fly. With a great game, you need a great name. I am proposing "Moderni Agone". Petrus, can you improve? I will award you 10 of my posts if you can (towards the Empire score).
I have been sitting in a Mac Cafe debugging the moving and it is almost complete. No longer can you pass through enemy stacks (like a wraith rider), nor can you move without a leader. Only thing remaining is stopping when next to a missile unit. (Oh, and stack splitting, but I am tempted not to support that.)
The URL is now http://www.redwaratah.com/moderniagone/
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J.R.R. Tolkien: The Fall of Arthur
This book is recommended by Thygocanberra. I have a copy and will read with interest.
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Lord of the Rings
What can I say. My favourite book. I think I have at least four different editions.
R. G. Grant: Battle: A Visual Journey Through 5,000 Years of Combat
This is the dream book for wargamers. Literally hundreds of battles. Over 350 pages of full colour illustrations. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
John Gibson Warry: Warfare in the Classical World: An Illustrated Encyclopedia of Weapons, Warriors, and Warfare in the Ancient Civilizations of Greece and Rome
We all have a wonderful book with fantastic illustrations, that amazed us in childhood, and followed us to our grown up bookshelf. This is one of those books. (*****)
Antony Beevor: Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943
In school we were taught such an English view of World War II. Now I have discovered the epic battles on the Eastern Front, truly gargantuan conflicts. This book is a great introduction to the Eastern Front and a brilliant history book. (*****)
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