Are there any tactics in the P club game?

P club, or all video games with strategic content, can be divided into five sources: board game school, textual research school, numerical school, romantic school and simulation school. This article is to talk about the most classic design ideas of the board game school.

The influence of board games on modern electronic strategy games is enormous. It can be said that board games are the source of all things in electronic strategy games. Many electronic strategy games were only electronic board games at the beginning, such as Civilization in Sidmel and Europa.

1. The influence of board game party on P club

The influence of board games on P club is also very obvious. For example, Steel Ambition 3 seems to be a World War II chess game with various pawn card designs. For example, the dice of the two armies at war; For example, the work effect of many cabinet ministers in King of Crusaders 2 happens randomly according to the monthly benchmark probability, which is exactly the same as the model that "the sum of dice points exceeds the threshold to be successful"; For example, the plot design of P club games and so on. Look at the total war series, it is not the origin of board games, but the origin of real-time strategy video games, so it has no "plot" design. After the total war in the Middle Ages 1, most troops could move freely on the strategic map.

These design details show us the origin of a video game board game. However, the design details are not the design ideas, and the games of P Club are very different from ordinary board games.

Although "Iron Ambition 3" is also a variety of military cards, the two armies lined up to advance each other, but it is completely different from the ordinary game of chess deduction in World War II. Some World War II board games rigidly stipulate that the attack power of German tanks is 4 and that of Britain is 3. If you want to ask why this design can only be explained as the author's roughest setting of tank performance, the author thinks that it may be difficult for players to master if the setting is too fine, but in fact, those game manufacturers are too rough. In addition, the authors of war chess games may be more concerned about the distribution of war cards, battlefield terrain, the number of troops and so on. At the beginning of the game campaign, but they don't care much about whether the design is scientific or not.

We feel that the design of Steel Ambition 3 may be more scientific. Each unit is not as rough as war chess, but also has indicators such as hardness, armor thickness and organization. Moreover, the battle of "Iron Ambition 3" is not micromanipulation like the deduction of war chess, and it pays attention to whether it is full of blood or residual blood, attacking first and then attacking, stacking or encircling, and so on. Playing "Iron Ambition 3" basically learned to attack, break through and cover up, which is enough. Some people will say that this is because "Iron Ambition 3" is a grand strategic game, which pursues macro operation. Although micro-operation can also be done, micro-operation is not the key content of P club. I don't think this view is correct. The fundamental difference between Iron and Steel Ambition 3 and 4 and the ordinary World War II chess game, even Iron and Steel Ambition 2, is that the proportion of design ideas of "board game" is getting less and less, while the proportion of design ideas of other schools is gradually increasing.

2. The characteristics of board game school design ideas

Although up to now, P-club games have added a lot of game contents with other design ideas, board games are still one of the important sources of P-club game design ideas. Board games have the following characteristics:

A. the event system. In order to increase the sense of bringing in and randomness, modern board games have added event cards, such as the increase or decrease of data caused by internal affairs, the monarch having an heir, and the sudden increase of immigrants from a certain place. This kind of small event generally has a low sense of existence, and it is difficult for players to influence the game process through choice. Big events will have a high sense of existence, such as launching some events, players can annex small city-states without fighting, and some two players directly declare war. This system may have originated from the storybook events of Dungeons and Dragons.

B. resolution system. Decision-making is similar to events, but both are active skills. In board games, it often happens to consume an activity point, add two teams of soldiers in a certain area, or play a card, and the country changes its religion. The existence of resolution is very high, and players can also choose the opportunity to use resolution and set some game goals for a game.

C. factional characteristic system. Like Europa and civilization, some civilizations are born with strong fighting capacity, and some civilizations are born with trade to make more money, and so on. There are also additional changes to a certain gameplay, such as the French aborigines don't rebel, Russia can colonize Siberia directly, and some civilizations in civilization add culture, etc. This system may have originated from the role selection of Dungeons and Dragons, such as the initial choice of orc characters, strength+1, life+1.

D. simplified values. Board games generally simplify resources, population, combat effectiveness and so on. For example, in Europe, there are three-dimensional 222 remote areas in Europe, three-dimensional 222 wasteland in Africa and three-dimensional 222 somewhere in North Korea. But we can clearly feel that the taxation, trade and soldiers in these three places are completely different, but Europe prefers to describe the value of a piece of land with this simple three-dimensional. There are also the influence of the cold war, the stable system, the plot of civilization series, the output of architecture and so on.

E. Turn-based system is just like civilization and total war, and turn-based system is also a major feature of board games. After one player finishes the operation, hand it over to the next player to continue.

F. land map. A big map is divided into many plots, generally named after the most famous city in this plot. Soldiers stand in plots and spend part of their time moving from one plot to another. In the plot, when the enemy and I meet, there is bound to be war. This model seems natural, but it is actually very problematic, because in many battles in history, after the two armies met, they used all kinds of reconnaissance and exploration to take the initiative and seek favorable positions, even including taking the initiative to occupy unfavorable positions for tactical operations such as quick victory. In other words, the reality is that commanders are required to comprehensively consider map strategy+confrontation strategy+battlefield tactics. P-club games are directly map grand strategy+plot dice, and total war series can at least achieve map grand strategy+confrontation probability+battlefield tactics. Recently, however, P club also found this setting very rigid, so it added detection probability, aircraft search range, fleet formation and other contents to Steel Ambition 4. In fact, this setting is also very suitable for the army in the cold weapon era.

From this point of view, Europa Prius 4, Ruler Rome and Civilization series are the dominant board games, while Total War series, Iron Ambition 3 and 4, Crusader King 2 and Victoria 2 have less obvious influence on board games.

3. Comment on the design concept of board game school

Then what do I think of the design idea of this school? I think the design idea of this school is like a respectable old stubborn, pioneer in the era of video games. When he was young, he won the success and honor in the industry. Now he is still the only tutor in some fields, such as puzzle games, physical board games, card games and online games among friends.

But now this design idea is really out of date, full of conservatism, paranoia and arrogance. Many games produced by board game factions are thankless, such as factional characteristic system based on simple numerical values. Different factions have distinct bonuses in the whole game process, and there are important and unimportant differences in various aspects. Then all the forces will be divided up by the players. For example, civilized players will sum up the strength of each civilization. For example, some forces with a high sense of existence in the history of Euro IV, such as Scotland, Denmark and Bohemia, rarely appear. So is the event system. Many people only care about what resources the event gives, and few people carefully look at what stories the event itself tells. Because the complexity of the event itself and the simplicity of resources are separated from each other, "the people support the royal family" corresponds to+1 stability for general events, and "the British Parliament formulates conservative tax policies" and special events are also+1 stability. Naturally, no one cares about what the activity itself is, they only care about what the income is.

Moreover, in the design of board games, there is really nothing to innovate, only some events can be done (and these events often need textual research), but rich events can not be combined with simple values; Do more factions, but most people will only play a few stronger factions; Design simpler resources and types, but only care about a few key resources. For example, Heroes Invincible Series, a board game, has seven or eight kinds of resources, but most people only care about the amount of money (gold). In Europa universalis 4, players only care about manpower, points and reduction. By the end of the game, manpower and financial resources have overflowed, which is a flat push game. Prestige, fleet tradition, ability to defend the city, etc. Including the support rate at all levels, autonomy and training professionalism that dlc joined later, it can only be regarded as a debuff. If it is low, it will cause trouble to the players. As long as it's not too low, players don't care about these values at all.

So why does the design idea of board game school come to a dead end in the development process? Because of the complexity of reality and the simple design of board games. It is impossible for a board game to make double-precision floating-point numbers, so it cannot support a complex system based on population, output and strength, which limits the bottom design of the game and further limits the top design of the game simulation history. "Ruler Rome" is a work produced by a board game school, but it is a complete failure. Maybe the producer's idea is that we should simulate Europe and Asia in the classical era, so we should have a population system. As a board game design idea, we don't want to make it a complicated population system like Victoria 2, so we make it a "population point", and each population point is described by culture, religion and happiness. Then add the "manpower slot" in the board game, plus "building system" and "arms chess pieces" and so on. Finally, I squeezed out a very general and comprehensive thing, but it was not historical. A farmer in Syria and a civilian craftsman in Rome may have exactly the same value to players, but in fact, their values are different. As the saying goes, the kings in the East are not as protected by law as the civilians in Rome, and citizenship is something that contains both rights and obligations.

What's it like in real life? For example, a "civilian" POP has 65,438+0,000 people. They have the attributes of "Roman citizens". On weekdays, they will elect representatives to participate in the consul election of the assembly. This representative probably has his own likes and dislikes, three views and goals; They will also send representatives to attend folk meetings to express their demands. During the war, because their demands are met or their privileges are increased, they will promise to send 50 middle-aged heavy infantry and 100 young infantry into the legion, and this proportion will increase with the increase of war enthusiasm. Then the enemy country may not have such a system, and it can only force farmers or promise trophies. Therefore, the morale of the arms is not so high, and the number of reserve soldiers is not large. In the end, it can't beat Rome. It is much more interesting to explain the expansion of Rome with this than the simple board game system now, but designers must carve such details.

4. Ideal point

In my opinion, a desirable part of the design idea of the board game school is the turn-based system, including the pseudo-continuous turn-based system of P club and the classic turn-based system of civilized total war, because this turn-based system is very suitable for the running style of computer programs, even the parallel turn-based system;

The second is the temporary resolution system. As a formal game content, the resolution system is not perfect, because it is abrupt and random, but some game content cannot be made at one time, which requires some special things to be replaced by temporary resolution, such as building buildings with the resolution without miracle building system, replacing them with holiday resolution without holiday system, and so on. For example, Euro Zone 4 did not build a system to build wonders, so it was replaced by a resolution to build the Forbidden City; If steel ambition 4 has no economic system, it will be replaced by a time-limited rice coupon resolution, and so on;

Third, the representation of board games, that is to say, the setting of chess pieces and chessboards is very suitable for the presentation of the scene. Various numerical values need not be realistic in the form of floating-point decimals, but are presented in the form of integers and points, which is helpful for players to grasp the size of numerical values.