Comments on: Designing an insurgency wargame – Part 2: The Environment

By: brtrain

brtrain — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 20:49:52 +0000

In reply to DomS. Excel spreadsheets are a very good way to test out these kinds of linkages, and whether your algorithms are any good. You can assign and tweak all kinds of variables.

By: Robert Hossal

Robert Hossal — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:59:46 +0000

In reply to Aidan. Sounds like a very interesting and ambitious project! I look forward to checking it out once it's in a playable state. Let me know if you need a playtester at some point.

By: Aidan

Aidan — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 22:20:34 +0000

I started work on a web-based counter insurgency strategy game a couple of weeks ago (although I’ve been thinking about it for a lot longer). I found your site while looking for ideas and source material and I think your game ideas sound very interesting. I started off trying to do a very high level abstract game based around policies (nationstates.net style), and wondered whether I could get away without any kind of map at all – partly to get away from most computer games where it’s all about blobs on a map battering each other to total annihilation. Since then I’ve concluded that a map is necessary, partly to make it more engaging for players, and partly because regions and the differences between them are frequently a key part of COIN campaigns (inkspot strategies etc). I’m currently basing it on early Vietnam, specifically III corps as that’s a period I’m currently most knowledgable about, although I’m planning to make it fairly generic and bring in strategies that weren’t actually used much there to allow a bit more “what if” flexibility. Anyway, best of luck with yours, and I hope I can get mine to a state where it’s worth gathering some feedback (it’s a hobby not the day job, so progress will be pretty slow).

By: DomS

DomS — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 16:42:04 +0000

This looks interesting. I agree with Brian that paper-based is best to start with, for reasons of flexibility. I wonder if some kind of Excel spreadsheet would work as a halfway house? You could capture a number of variables for each zone (human terrain, various influence factors, troop density &c.) and model their interactions when one is changed. Then you could tweak the algorithm as required without any in-depth coding.

Look forward to seeing more.

By: brian train

brian train — Wed, 20 Feb 2013 21:48:20 +0000

Good start Robert. If I were you I would just try to get the game done NOW, in paper form, and worry about digital ports and programming languages later. Expend your brain cycles on this first.

Correct that there are different types of control of an area, and different degrees of control too:

– non-material control of the human terrain: “hearts and minds”, where you get the allegiance, hatred or withdrawal of parts of the population of a given area. Note that this can change quite independently of whatever the government or insurgent might do, and can be quite complex in its combinations and flux. I think I have mentioned the work of Stathis Kalyvas on this to you before.

– material control of the human terrain: concentration camps and “strategic hamlets”, both inventions of the British Empire, though restricting where the civilian population may live and travel and do its work has a long history (“they made a desert and called it peace”). Very difficult to arrange and may not make a great deal of difference in the end; all berms and walls are permeable.

– human control of the material terrain: taking and dominating the “high ground”, controlling the lines of communication and transit into and through an area.

– non-human control of the material terrain: think of this as “area denial”, and something that’s not often done, or done for long. Extensive minefields, the Morice Line, the McNamara Line (well, the idea behind it anyway), and the crazy plan to scatter radioactive material along the border with Manchuria in 1951 to keep the Chinese out.

And so on…