Prehistory X: Civil War

You know, I'm starting to think my little disclaimer at the beginning of these Prehistory articles is becoming a bit superfluous. When starting the project, I assumed everything was going to be either unplayable, or unranked due to multiplayer / oversimplicity reasons, hence the disclaimer. Turns out I was wrong on that front, which is hardly surprising, since I didn't put much effort digging into this time period initially. From now on I'm not going to bother with the disclaimer note.

Before getting into Civil War, some business needs to be attended to. There are a couple of games on my list that come before it, Reflect and The New Clea Casino. Both are oddball educational games programmed for the PDP-10, but I can't find anything on them, despite MobyGames assigning them more precise dates in 1968. Searching for them or their authors just comes up with a load of bizarre, unrelated nonsense, so I'm declaring them missing and won't be covering them. They seem like interesting games, though, so I hope they appear in the future. 

Now, time to get back into playing something after the previous little history lesson... oh, wait. Never mind. We're getting another history lesson anyway (plus, it is kind of the point of this whole blog...)

Release Date: 1968; included in 101 BASIC Computer Games in 1973

Platform: HP 2000; later a BASIC type-in program and ported to various home computer systems

Genre: Strategy / Simulation

Developer(s): Larry Cram, Luther Goodie, Doug Hibbard

Publisher(s): Creative Computing Software

Moving on to 1968 now. More than twice the games I had for 1967, but I suspect most of them will turn up missing. What's strange is that 1968 in my list has more games than 1969 and 1971. 1968 has nine, while 1969 only has five, and 1971 has eight at the current count. Should be able to breeze through the rest of the decade, then. Just you wait until we get to 1970, though... 22 games! 

In case it wasn't obvious from the game's title, Civil War is... well, about the civil war. The American Civil War, to be exact. My history-minded brain needs to specify, as there have been many civil wars over the centuries. Could've been the English or Spanish Civil War, for all you know. Anyway, the game simulates 14 battles from the war, attempting to do so in precise detail with regards to facts, figures and strategic outcomes.

Most of my information comes from the outline given in the 1973 version of 101 BASIC Computer Games. Apparently, if you know your Civil War history, you can make the same choices as the generals did in the real battles and produce the same outcomes. I won't be looking into their decisions unless I get hopelessly stuck. You can also "outperform" them, if they made sub-optimal decisions due to lack of enemy intel. My knowledge of the American Civil War extends no more beyond the Oversimplified video on it, so this should be interesting...

Civil War was written by a group of high school students: Larry Cram, Luther Goodie and Doug Hibbard, from Lexington High School in Massachusetts. That school has cropped up a few times in my list research, so I assume they must've had a computer or two there for students to learn programming and whatnot. These three students are credited as program writers in Dave Kaufman's 1975 book, What to do After You Hit Return, but I'm not sure if they wrote programs other than Civil War, as its their only credited game according to MobyGames.

Upon opening the game, it asks if you'd like to read the instructions. I usually like to read the instructions before playing a new game, so I happily take up the game's offer.

The future of America is in my hands, now. This will not end well.

This is far more complicated than anything I've played up to this point in time, which I thought might bode well for the actual gameplay. I don't see myself ever using the surrender command, even if I face Unconditional Surrender himself. Who thought that was a good nickname, by the way?

Interestingly, Civil War has a two-player option. It appears to have been a later modification to the game, being added by G. Paul and R. Hess of TIES. Not much info on TIES out there, but I found a site that told me that it's a computer programming company founded in 1967. Checks out. A link was provided to their website, but it appears to redirect to another company's site, likely suggesting that TIES is no longer around. Yet another mystery, to go alongside what the actual first names of G. Paul and R. Hess are...

After saying no to the two-player mode, the game takes me to its proper introduction, where it tells me I'm playing as... the Confederacy?!? You're telling me that I'm controlling the losing side? Great. That fills me with great hope and confidence for my chances of winning this game...

I'm gonna need a whole lot more than good luck...

As a side, I typed the 0 command to replay the game once, and it replayed the scenario in two-player mode. It's a redundant command anyway, since you can simply replay the scenario by typing in its number. Interesting little side note it provides there regarding negative food entry... must've found that little glitch during playtesting. I don't know why you'd ever type a negative number for food, but thanks for the heads up, I guess?

I figured that the easiest and most logical way to proceed with the game is to do the 14 battles in the order they're given. So, after saying yes to the battle descriptions, I start with Battle 1: The Battle of Bull Run. The battle descriptions give you a very brief overview of how the real battle went, and I suspect they also act as clues for the solution to winning.

Civil War doesn't just have you select different battle strategies, but also presents a rudimentary form of resource management that influences the results of your chosen battle strategy. Each battle scenario first presents you with the description of the battle (if you opt to have them), and then the army size, funds available and an "inflation" rating. I have no idea what effect "inflation" is supposed to have, if it even has one at all. It has no bearing on the amount of money you can spend out of your total pool. You are then asked to divide your available funds between food for your army, salaries for paying your men, and ammunition. Food and salary effect troop morale - underspending results in poor morale. I generally found that spending around $10k more than the army size for both was a good guideline for getting high morale. I assume ammunition also effects how effective your army is in the battle, but I'm not entirely sure how it works.

Making sure the troops are well paid and well fed is a good start.

You can see from the screenshot how I opted to divide my resources in this first attempt at the first battle. I figured roughly even spending on each category was a sensible decision. This resulted in my troops having high morale for the battle. The game told me I was on the defensive for this battle, and asked for my strategy. I decided an artillery strike was a good idea. Turns out it was a good idea, and I won the battle comfortably.

Well, that was easy enough. This might turn out okay, after all.

One down, 13 more to go. They can't all be this easy, right? Battle 2 is The Battle of Shiloh, which the game describes the Confederates losing on account of a poorly organised surprise attack. Already fighting an uphill battle to win this one, I see. The number of troops and funds are significantly higher for this battle, with my army consisting of over 40,000 men, with $186,300 at my disposal. The Union has similar, if slightly higher numbers. I delegate $60k to food, $75k to salaries and $50k to ammo. Morale is high. Things are looking good. I choose flanking as my strategy, and we lose. Badly.

At least we had fewer deserters.

Thus, history repeats. I decide to try again, this time selecting a frontal attack as my strategy. We lose again, but not as badly as last time. Upon reflection, I think I wasn't reading the battle descriptions properly. If it was a surprise attack, wouldn't it make sense to fire an artillery barrage first, sending the enemy into a panic? That's what I tried on my third attempt, and I was successful at winning the battle.

Then it was on to Battle 3: The Battle of Seven Days, and oh boy, do I have a lot to say about this one. I could not for the life of me figure out how to win this battle (and this is one that the Confederacy won, according to the battle description.) I tried absolutely everything, but nothing worked, and I lost badly every single time. I maybe tried the battle 10 - 15 times over. 

Eventually, I noticed something as I was replaying this battle. Every time I replayed it, I had less and less money to work with. Inflation went up for me, too, and down for the Union. The numbers got pretty ridiculous, with the Union enjoying something like -40% inflation. It appears that winning and losing battles affects the inflation figures and how much money you get in each successive battle. Eventually I had less men, too, but this seems to take longer to decrease. In my first attempt at this battle, I had over $400k to work with. In my last, I had less than half that.

What kind of nightmare economy is this???

I don't know why the game does this, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. It seems, to me, to treat each battle as its own isolated scenario, as there is no tally at the end of how many battles you won or lost, and if you overall won the war or not. [I found out later that it does if you type in any number above 14] So why then is there this mechanic that treats each battle as connected? It appears to be a conflicting gameplay mechanic.

Unless the intended way of playing the game was to do each battle one after the other in succession. The battles are sequenced in chronological order, so it makes sense. Start from Battle 1, finish with 14, and see if you can win all of them in a row. I decided that would be my end goal for Civil War. But first, I wanted to see how the rest of the battles went. So I restarted the program to reset the inflation and money, but I opted to start at Battle 3, as I had already won the first two. Still couldn't win Seven Days. I gave it a few more attempts before deciding to move on to the rest of the battles. 

I'll briefly list how they all went, along with the strategy I chose:

• Battle 4 (Second Bull Run): Lost. Chose offensive option 3.
• Battle 5 (Antietam): Won. Offensive option 1.
• Battle 6 (Fredericksburg): Won. Defensive option 1.
• Battle 7 (Murfreesboro): Won. Defensive option 1.
• Battle 8 (Chancellorsville): Won. Offensive option 1.
• Battle 9 (Vicksburg): Won. Defensive option 4.
• Battle 10 (Gettysburg): Won. Offensive option 1.
• Battle 11 (Chickamauga): Lost. Offensive option 4.
• Battle 12 (Chattanooga): Lost. Offensive option 1.
• Battle 13 (Spotsylvania): Lost. Offensive option 2.
• Battle 14 (Atlanta): Lost. Offensive option 3.

As you can see, I managed to win most of the middle battles, but lost the last four. Some were rather close losses, others were complete disasters. That ended my first full playthrough of Civil War, and, as it was getting late, I decided to shelf it for the night and come back the next day to try for winning all 14. My policy with this game - as is generally the case with all games - is not to look at any sort of guide unless I get seriously stuck. If I continue to get stuck on a battle, I'll go look up the actual battle and use that as a guide.

What I also noticed is that, more often than not, strategy 1 (artillery strike) is generally the best option for winning most battles. I wonder how consistent that is with how the real battles went? 

So, as the next day came, I started up another session. My plan was to start at Battle 1, and keep going until I lost, starting again from the beginning. All I can say is that Battle 3 continued to be a thorn in my side. I lost it every single time again. Strategy 1 got me the closest, but it was futile. As far as I'm concerned, it's impossible to win this fight this way. I tried all sorts of spending combinations, but nothing came close. So I decided to just ignore this battle and come back later.

I managed to win Battle 4, which I didn't last time, but then things took a rather bad turn, and I lost every battle after Battle 9 (losing 8), including Battle 3 again, which I thought would go better if my stats were better. The computer simply chose a different option for itself and destroyed me. I found out that choosing a number after 14 brings up a stats page that tells you how many battles each side won, and declares a winner, also providing a comparison chart for casualties between the real war and your performance, and telling you how often you used each strategy. I mostly just used artillery since it worked well last time. It was a 7 - 7 draw on battles, and the computer decided that I'd lost the war.

History repeats.

I was rather discouraged at this point. I felt stuck. Maybe it's not possible to win? Maybe history is simply destined to repeat itself, over and over again? I decided to look for some help. 

I found a scan from at 1975 edition of Creative Computing Magazine that explains the mechanics of Civil War in greater detail. Turns out that some things I had suspected were right, some were wrong. Some things I hadn't thought of.

• The success of your previous battles is indeed intended to affect your resources and inflation for the next battle.
• Inflation does in fact do something - Apparently it "determines the present value of your money and is used in calculating the effectiveness of your money." A rather vague statement, but at least I know it does something.
• Morale is also affected by your success in battle. It basically snowballs if you keep doing well.
• The computer apparently tries to guess your strategy and counter it. I still don't know what counters what, exactly, other than the corresponding 2 and 3 strategies countering each other.

Aaannnnd that's about it as far as any talk about this game goes online. I'd have to go research these battles, and frankly, I can't be bothered doing so. It's not worth the effort for such a basic text game that is honestly not that good. With that in mind, I'm going to do the scores now, and if I get the motivation to try the game again and beat it, that'll be covered in its own post, since this one is long enough already. Sound and Story are N/A, as is standard for simulation-style text games. Yes, it's based on history, so it technically does have a story, but it's not told as a story. It's just "here's the battle, go fight."

Time Played: 1 hour; a full playthrough of all battles takes no more than 10 minutes.

Difficulty: 4/10

It's actually quite hard to judge the difficulty of this one. On the one hand, half of the battles are really easy to figure out, so much so that I won half of them on my first or second attempt. Some of the battles seem utterly impossible to win, however, without knowledge of the historical battles. Overall, though, it's not difficult to figure out the pattern for success.

Game Design: 4

Civil War represents quite a significant leap in the complexity of game design in comparison to PDP Basketball, which was designed only a year prior. It seems to add on to and modify the base that PDP Basketball started with, as Civil War includes the same 4 offensive and defensive options the former game had, but adds more in between deciding what play to choose. We have a basic form of resource management, which I appreciate as it gives some freedom in decision making, with choices actually having a difference in the battle's results. The game then builds on top of this by having the results of each subsequent battle affecting the next. Great stuff in theory, and it encourages repeat playthroughs.

In practice, however, these resource decisions seem to make little material impact on the outcome of a battle. It mostly comes down to the strategy you choose vs. the computer's choice. Inflation appears to do nothing, other than a lower number than the base number indicating that you'll have more starting cash and men. There's also a formula that can be easily figured out to ensure that funds distribution always results in high morale, cutting out the guesswork.  Even in spite of all this, a few battles are completely unwinnable. The game suggests that this would be because of the game trying to follow the historic results, but this results in inconsistencies, with battles you can win as the Confederacy that they didn't actually win, and having unwinnable battles that they actually won (Seven Days, I'm looking at you). This kind of inconsistency really annoys me when a game is claiming to be "historical". It also seems to expect you to have some prior knowledge of the American Civil War, which may seem short sighted, but this game was written in an American high school, so the presumption may have been valid in context, but I find it a bit irritating regardless.

Controls: 9

It's very easy to manage for a text-based game. Just type in the numbers and press enter. An issue can crop up due to the large numbers needing to be inputted, where I often accidentally type in a number a digit short of what I intended - usually one ending with several 0s.

Visual: 7

Civil War is formatted really well - the instructions are clear and formatted exactly how I wish PDP Basketball formatted them. The battle information is also presented very clearly, with enough blank space for information to be processed easily. Bonus points for the optional battle descriptions and the way the instructions are written - gives the game some extra personality and immersion. I didn't detect any typos either. For what it is, I really appreciate it.

Functionality: 5

Free points. UI design is great, nice and clear. In-game instructions were easy to read and understand, and there were no glitches during my time playing.

Accessibility: 2

I've already criticised it for expecting the player to have knowledge of the American Civil War, and it's also a text game - one with a lot of big numbers - so accessibility is automatically bad. It at least doesn't require you to have knowledge of the Civil War to have any success, but it still assumes it.

Fun Factor: 4

I probably enjoyed it a little more than PDP Basketball, but not by much. I'm a sucker for resource management and strategy games, so that helped draw me in a little it, but the overall simplicity and repetitiveness of the game, combined with the aforementioned frustrations made it overall not that enjoyable to play.

Overall: Civil War gets a slightly below average score of 31/70. The percentage conversion, 38.75%, gets it into the top of the E tier, just missing out on the D tier, unfortunately.

This might be my longest post to date. Lots to talk about, even with such a simple game. Plus, there's probably a second post coming once I win. Makes me wonder how things are going to be when I get to far longer and more complex games. Breaking them up over several posts will probably be the way to go.

[Add.] Upon completing the rescore, I saw yet again that I made another scoring mistake. Civil War's score was listed as out of 80, when it should have been 70. This means that it should have been up in the D-tier after all. In spite of this, its score has actually increased to 32/70, or 45.71%