One of the main components of wargame design involves the quantification of qualitative factors. Intangible values or physical features are assigned numerical values which are used to determine the outcome of any uncertain event in a game. The playability of a game can often be adversely affected by calculations that are either too numerous or too complex, while the historical accuracy of the game can suffer if the factors used are too few or not relevant.
The normal practice is to create a priority list of conditions that might affect a given situation. The designer decides the relative importance of each to the others and assigns every condition a numerical value accordingly. After that, he must choose which of those conditions, for either historical or playability reasons, are worth keeping in the game and which will be discarded. (This applies to any period, but I will confine my examples to the Napoleonic era.)
For example let us suppose the situation under consideration is cavalry attacking other cavalry. A typical designer might decided that the following conditions are important to include:
- a. number of men
b. combat value
c. attacking a flank
d. formation
e. British
f. Cuirassier, Dragoon, Light Cavalry
Other factors will be ignored since they are not, in the designer's opinion, worth including. Let us further suppose that he thinks "combat value" is the most important element in determining a winner and loser; five times as important as "formation". His list of modifiers might now look like this:
- a. combat value =+5
b. attacking a flank =+4
c. superior number of men = +1
d. better formation =+4
e. British =+1
f. Heavier cavalry =+1
Six hundred 8th Chasseurs a Cheval now attack 650 King's Dragoons in the flank. The Chasseurs are veterans and have been assigned the same combat value as the British. However the British are in line and the French are in column; this designer deems "line" to be a "better" formation for cavalry than a "column". Therefore, in this combat we find:
| French | Condition | British |
|---|---|---|
| +5 | value | +5 |
| +4 | flanking | +0 |
| +0 | men | +1 |
| +0 | formation | +1 |
| +0 | British | +1 |
| +0 | heavier | +1 |
| +9 | total | +9 |
An even combat; both sides will have the same chance of success - but should they? if we eliminate the combat value, which had no bearing on this fight, we find the French have one advantage, apparently, a very important one since it is rated as +4, four times more valuable than any other relevant modifier.
The British, on the other hand, have a collection of minor advantages worth only +1 each. Are these four "minor" advantages really the same as one "major"? Is it more important here to add all possible values that exist, or is it better to look at it as a case where one body of cavalry succeeded in surprising another and slammed into the defenders defenseless flank?
In the case above, I think it may have been misleading to merely add up numbers. In the evolution of the old "Kriegspiel" games of the last century, we find umpires looking over a given situation, then using their military judgement and experience to help them rule on a combat resolution. There were some charts and numerical values included, to be sure, but it was up to the umpire to try to keep the situation "realistic". He was less likely to merely add up numbers, without reference to the situation, and more likely to examine the unique aspects of the situation first. Once he formed a judgement about what was happening, he would then decide which conditions were of relevance to the events taking place on the table.
Theoretically, the designer also does this. By dividing a set of rules into different sections, such as "Morale", "Artillery Fire", "Melee", "Musketry", etc., he has isolated the different situations that can occur on the tabletop. Within each of these areas he can then use his priority lists to establish reasonable modifiers.
In practice, however, this doesn't always workout. Once reason is that traditional rules layout doesn't lend itself to solving the problem. It is very difficult to determine how many sub-headings of "Melee" are needed to cover all situations that can arise, without reaching an impossible number. For a set of rules to work, the identifiable "situations" for which rules are to be written must be finite. If they aren't, one must resort to an umpire and skip the written set altogether.
Also, many designers don't really consider "situations" at all. Instead, they use one basic value throughout the entire game as the highest-rated factor. If, for example, "number of men" is the designer's idea of the most important factor, he is likely to make that the dominant "modifier" in all or most of his calculations. Yet there may be situations that occur that should hinge on other factors, in which the size of the unit would be totally irrelevant. For example, if something unforeseen occurred, it might be enough to panic anyone who saw it, whether they numbered 10, 100 or 1000. If "combat value" were the prime consideration in a set of rules, there might be situations where a Landwehr unit and Imperial Guard unit might behave similarly, given the right conditions.
There can also be confusion in a list of modifiers between "situations" and "events". Take the example of the Chasseurs attacking the flank of the Dragoons. Rather than use a modifier to represent "attacking a flank", it might have been better to make "flank attacks" a separate category, complete with its own modifiers.
Perhaps one way to approach this problem would be to identify as many of the different situations that occur in a game as possible. Within each of these one could have a list of "major" and "minor" modifiers. If either side had an advantage in major modifiers, the calculation could proceed quickly, ignoring the minor modifiers as not being important enough to consider, even if the aggregate of their values equalled or surpassed a major value. If the major values didn't come into play, the calculation would devolve to the secondary list of minor values for comparison purposes.
Of course, the challenge here is in identifying and categorizing "all of the possible situations that might occur". Such a task may ultimately prove to be impossible, and force any game to use umpires if it hopes to be at all realistic... after all, no one has done it yet. On the other hand, there may be a way that a written set can come up with a new group of categories of situations, within which we could place any situation that might arise in our miniature battles. It might be that someone could think of a way if he realized that it needed to be done! Before we can search for a new method of classification, though, we must decide if the need for such an effort exists. If your answer is "yes", I hope you'll turn your talents in that direction.
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