Europa is a living, growing game system. As with living things, growth means change. Is change necessary? It depends upon the change, but in general the answer is yes. We could try to lock the existing parts of Europa into stasis, but this wouldn't help the system. It wouldn't speed the completion of Europa, which is paced mostly by the ongoing historical research, the designing of rules to cover new material, and the testing of new games. It also wouldn't improve Europa. Instead, it would result in a game system that when "finished" would already have a list of improvements waiting in the wings. This makes little sense to me - let's add the improvements to Europa as we come up with them.

Given change, should it be evolutionary or revolutionary? If you have followed the series for any length of time, you'll know the answer to that onel Europa supports evolutionary change. Revolutionary changes would be made if something was seriously wrong with the core system. That hasn't happened yet, as Europa is built on a solid foundation, and I hope it never will. Evolutionary change means working within the existing rules and components, changing or enhancing them only when definite, worthwhile improvements are developed.

Administrative movement is a case in point. Up until Western Desert (WD), admin. movement (faster movement for units that don't engage in combat operations or enter enemy territory) wasn't covered in Europa, mostly because it wasn't especially needed. In earlier games if you needed faster movement, you could take the train. There were rail lines everywhere, with no rail capacity or regauging bottlenecks to slow you down. In WD, admin. movement was necessary due to the lack of rail lines in many areas. The admin. movement rule in WD was very conservative: it got the job done in a form I was certain wouldn't upset the play of the other games.

As I worked on subsequent games, I gradually relaxed and expanded the admin. movement rule, based on my and other Europa players cumulative experience with the rule. Each time the rule became more powerful, and the process continues (and, I hope, ends) with Second Front. (More on this later.) This evolutionary process has ensured that the rule works throughout Europa. Had I tried to get the full rule into WD in one shot, it might have taken a form that caused problems in the other games.

The latest evolutionary change is happening with the maps. Over the years, a variety of geographical information not displayed on the maps has crept into the rules, such as ports, port sizes, special crossable sea hexsides, and so on. Rather than require players to remember it all, I've long wished that it could be displayed directly on the maps, together with the names of various features. When GR/D undertook the commitment to reprint all of the Europa games, this made it possible to consider upgrading the maps. The upgrade will make the maps easier and more interesting to use, but will only slightly change their look. We won't be changing the colors or dimensions of the maps, or anything else that would disturb their "look and feel".

Instead, the upgrade mainly involves the following areas:

• 1) In a few places, the coastline will be redrawn to eliminate movement problems.
• 2) Ports will be designated with specific symbols, showing their location and size.
• 3) Fortified hexsides will be printed on the maps, in place of the "wandering" fortified hexside counters.
• 4) Crossing points for sea and lake hexsides will be shown on the maps. These will display the crossable hexsides such as the Kerch Straits, the Bosporus, the Straits of Messina, and so on, replacing the special rules on them.
• 5) Reference points and names will be added to the maps, in small type. These will locate and name small but important cities, rivers, major mountains, and so forth - Bastogne, the Volga River, and Sherwood Forest will be named on the maps. (I'm just kidding about Sherwood Forest.)
• 6) Currently, "roads" on the maps are more often low-capacity railroads (hence Scorched Earth's upgrading rule) than just roads. We'll distinguish between the two cases on the new maps.

And, now for the big point. The new style maps don't make your current ones obsolete! You'll be able to mix and match both types, using whatever combination of them you have on hand. While there'll be a very limited number of overlap discrepancies, there'll be no more than the overlap problems among the existing maps - which doesn't cause any real trouble - and these will be listed in a guide. Not only will the two map styles work together functionally, they will also be esthetically compatible. Mate them up, step back, take a look, and the enhanced new style maps will be virtually indistinguishable from the current ones. You'll notice the difference only through the ease of play the new ones allow.

More Inside Europa

Evolution, Revolution, or Stasis
Marching Rates Rebuttal
Europa Q&A