New Rule

I’ve just finished reading an excellent history on one of my favorite subjects: tall ship history and combat. This particular work chronicles the ships, sailors, engagements, and politics of the War of 1812 — the last great naval war in the age of fighting sail (Bonaparte fell for good in 1815, steamships were on the rise, and the Civil War saw the invention of Ironclads and a new era of armored steam-powered warships). A particular quote from the work describes these ships of war, with their heavy weight of cannon and comparatively frail wooden hulls, as “eggshells armed with hammers.”

Coupled with a recent replaying of Gears of War with a friend of mine, it puts me in mind of the challenge of game balancing and creating an effective and proportional trade-off between offensive and defensive actions in game.

In Gears, there is no defense. Taking cover, while temporarily defensive, is merely a tactic applied in pursuit of an otherwise offensive strategy; players are always moving forward, pushing into new areas and triggering new waves of monsters to slaughter so they can push forward again. The shooter genre is defined by offense. Exceptions like Team Fortress or hybrids like Battlefield are just that: exceptions and hybrids. From Doom to Quake to UT, the twitch mechanic dominates: jump, dodge, and hurl as much firepower towards your enemy as possible. One almost never runs out of ammunition in these games, particularly in multiplayer play. One never worries about fortifying a position, about avoiding engagement based on environmental conditions or lines of supply. Options for “armoring up” or improving one’s resistance to attack are rare. And for all but the weakest weapons, every gun in the game fires ordnance that can obliterate a player in short seconds. Hence, the twitch mechanic: not “withstand enemy fire long enough to gain the advantage,” but “don’t get hit at all, not even once, or you’re done.”

But shooters are that way for a reason. In infantry combat, defense is not something that can readily effected by individual soldiers at a moment’s notice — at least not any defense beyond simply “taking cover.” But what about strategy games?

Even in this genre, defense tends to take a back seat. While it is always an option and often a valid one, the balance nevertheless remains in favor of offense. A defensive strategy cannot win the game in most RTSs, even with an attrition mechanic. Before you leap to the comment form to refute, understand I recognize many games with strong defensive components. I’m also excluding empire builders like Civ or Eurpoa Universalis that have many other layers and alternate victory conditions (economic, political, religious) beyond “last man standing.” But for classics like Star- and Warcraft, C&C, and AOE, every player or team must ultimately pursue an offensive strategy to win.

To make matters worse, those same defensive tactics tend to become impotent at higher levels of play. Every game has the “base-killer” unit or combo, something that can reduce the toughest fortifications to rubble in seconds, provided it is deployed correctly. Advanced players recognize this, abandon defensive play entirely… and the rush tactic is born. Now the RTS is operating like a shooter: “Don’t get hit at all, not even once. Ruin them before they can retaliate.” The only RTS I know where defense really could win the game was Total Annihilation… and it received significant criticism for that.

But in history, as for example in the War of 1812, well-prepared defenses, carefully guarded lines of supply, and opportune timing decided the war. More important than the individual “eggshells” at sea were the ports they sailed from the and the state of the nations that deployed them. Yet we don’t see that prevalent in games. It exists only in the exceptions. When you consider the minimum requirements for a valid simulation of a defensive war — terrain, weather, individual commanders, politics, and supply lines — it is small wonder that few games enjoy these features. Simulating these five aspects about doubles the development needs of a strategy game. But is there no good, cheap way to approximate them without paying for a full simulation? Perhaps.

Adding politics means the players have to consider more than just the position and quality of the enemy’s forces. There’s fallout for civilians, for the infrastructure and economic stability of the region in which the war is waged, and for the loss or gain of world opinion. And there must be the need for, or at least the possibility of, making peace — the most obvious reason for waging a defensive war is to drag it out long enough to force the aggressor to sue for peace out of weariness.

Adding terrain and weather has been done in some games (the Total War series and a bit in Dawn of War, for example) as has character commanders (Warcraft III), but the advantages conveyed are immediate and temporary. Some RTSs have implemented a Conquer the World metagame (I think Rise of Nations was the pioneer) that reads like Risk. This would be a natural place to inject a little opportunity for long-term planning, for long-term effects of terrain, weather, and supply… even a little politics. If players could gauge a territory’s benefits or challenges on levels deeper than just its borders, the game would be significantly improved. These things could be procedural, too, so that Conquer the World campaigns could be reliably different for each play-through, extending the life of the game.

In short, I feel as though there are glimmers of real offensive-defensive balancing in games here and there, but not enough inclusion in the mainstream. And I don’t feel the cost of entry is that high, either. We can make RTS games that really feel like playing history

Tags: Game Criticism, General //