Imperialism: Concert of Europe

This Dev Diary has been slow in the making, as I found it difficult to “divide” the topic into somewhat self-sufficient bite-sized pieces. It is hard to discuss some relevant matters without discussing everything.

There are two different kinds of battles: land battles and sea battles. Sea battles in ICE are quite minimalistic and do not really involve any player interaction beyond sending sea units into sea battacles, so this Dev Diary will only discuss land battles.

Battles that either do not involve the Human player or in which that Human player’s units represent a minority of the units on its side, are Auto Resolved. Such battles simulate the steps that would have been taken in a displayed battle.
Displayed land battles take place on a battle-board. The battle board is divided into two halves. The bottom half is the Human player side while the top half is the AI player side. Each side has three rows. The innermost rows, where the two sides meet, are the front line rows. Each front line row is divided into three regions, Center, Left Flank, and Right Flank. Each region has four positions, where individual units are placed. Units in the same region are equivalent as far as their position is concerned.

In order to win a battle, you must have control over the Center region of the other side as well as at least one of the two Flanks at the end of an Engagement phase (to be discussed below). 

Behind the front lines is the Rear position. There is only one such region on each side, but it has six positions. 

The outermost row on each side is the “retreat” row. This is where units go when they have been defeated (i.e. are fleeing the battle) but not destroyed.

Basic Unit and Combat Concepts

There are several attributes that a military unit may have. 

1. Attack Modifier is added to a d6 roll (might change to 2d6). This number is the sum of a base value for the unit type, weapon tech bonus, and doctrine bonus (recall that Officers provide points toward purchasing military doctrines). There are some additional possible modifiers as discussed below.
2. Survivability determines how difficult it is to destroy a unit. When a unit is defeated, it may retreat or it may be destroyed. If it is defeated by more than the survivability value, it will be destroyed, otherwise it will only retreat from the battle. Each unit type has a base evasion value, which can be improved with Doctrines.
3. Initiative Modifier is added to an initiative role that each participating unit makes at the start of the Bombardment and Engagement phases. Initiative is important because units that can make their move first can remove units from the board or at least be softened or lose their turn (see below).
4. Evasion is a number that an artillery modified attack roll must exceed in order to defeat the target unit. If the modified attack is greater than the sum of the targets Evasion and Survivability, the target will be destroyed. 

Land Battle Phases

Land battles are divided into four phases: Unit Placement, Dog Fight, Bombardment, and Engagement. The first two phases only occur once, at the start of the first round. The second two phases repeat until the battle is concluded. 

1. Unit Placement: The player decides where to place the units they are bringing into the battle. Fighters must be placed in the player’s Rear region and is generally advised to place Artillery there as well. Most or all remaining land units will be placed in the three front regions. Placement is important, as it affects your overall strategy (i.e., which enemy regions are you going to try to capture?). 

2. Dog Fight: This phase will only occur if both sides have at least one Fighter unit. Since Fighters do not appear until the late game, most battles will not include this phase. When this phase occurs, the Fighter units of each side will automatically face off against each other one at a time. During a face-off each side makes a modified attack roll, the side with the higher roll wins. In the case of a tie, neither side is removed from battle. The side with the most fighters at the end of this phase will enjoy Air Superiority during the Bombardment phase. If both sides have the same number of Fighters remaining, the Defender gets Air Superiority. Fighters cannot be targeted in the Dog Fight or Bombardment phase.

3. Bombardment: Only artillery units participate in this phase. First, each unit rolls initiative to determine turn order. Artillery have an attack range of 2. This means that an Artillery placed in your Rear region will be able to target any of the enemy’s front Regions. If an Artillery is in a front region, it can also target units in the opponent’s Rear, but exposes it to being easily attacked. The attacking artillery targets an enemy unit rolls d6 adding its attack modifier and an additional bonus if its side has Air Superiority. Furthermore, even if the target is not defeated it is considered softened. A softened Unit suffers -1 to Evasion, Attack Rolls, and Initiative. 

4. Engagement is the most sophisticated phase and involves the moves made by Infantry, Conscripts, Cavalry, and Tanks. Initiative is rolled to determine turn order. Infantry and Conscripts can take one action per turn while Cavalry and Tanks can take two actions per turn (they are also better at initiative). Moving from one region to an adjacent region counts as an action. Attacking an enemy unit in an adjacent region also counts as an action. If a Cavalry or Tank attacks before moving, it forgoes its second action, but gets a Charge bonus. Infantry have a special action to Dig-In, which grants it a bonus to evasion and attack rolls if it is attacked. Infantry on the Defending side will be automatically dug-in at the start of the battle.

Fighting in an engagement counts as an action for both the attacker and the defender, so if a unit is attacked before its turn, it will have already lost an action, which often results in missing its turn. Note, however, that this unit may still have defeated or even destroyed the unit that attacked it, so its turn is not exactly lost, but it has lost the “initiative” – it was forced to respond to the army with the better initiative result. 

An unit attacking during the Engagement phase will enjoy a Flanking bonus to its attack roll if the enemy region being attacked borders more than one region that includes units from the side of the attacker. For example, if the player has taken the AI’s left flank and has units in its own Center region, any attack on the AI’s Center region will enjoy the flanking bonus. This bonus is increased if you surround the enemy’s Center on three sides.

Control over a region is gained by moving a unit into it. You can only move a unit into a region if there are no remaining enemy units in it and it is not already full. Once you gain control over a region, you can only lose control over it if the enemy moves a unit back into it (i.e,. you do not need to keep units in it to retain control). 

Once an Engagement phase concludes the battle will conclude if one side has gained control of the other side’s Center region and at least one of its Flanks. Either side can also choose to retreat at this point before returning to Bombardment. 

Note that all Artillery units on the losing side will be destroyed, because the guns are too heavy to run with. The underlying POP however, will return home and can later be used to create another Unit. 

While the focus of Imperialism: Concert of Europe (ICE) is on economics, many wars were fought during  the 19th century. In ICE, wars are classified based on their objective type. 

    Add Colony – Make a traditional minor power into a colony of your nation.

    Annex Province – annex a province from another nation.

    Annex Nation – annex an entire nation.

    Release Nation – force a nation to release a nation that it has subjugated.

    Humiliation – take Prestige from another nation.

    Exploit Markets – force a major traditional nation to accept Free Trade.

If the aggressor nation wins a war, the war objective will automatically be realized.

In order to declare a war, a nation must already have a casus belli. In Dev Diary 4 we discussed the ways in which Influence tokens are used to obtain casus belli. A casus belli, in turn, is often based on possessing a claim. In Dev Diary 5, we discussed obtaining colonial claims through the Concert of Europe.

When you have a casus belli on another nation, you can declare war through the Diplomacy Panel. All of your colonies and spheres will automatically join the war on your side and all of  your opponent’s colonies and spheres will join the war on their side. Your nation will be the leader of your side and the nation you declare war on will be the leader of the other side.

Depending on the nature of the war, each side will have certain provincial objectives. Objectives include the Capital provinces of all belligerents and, if the objective is to annex a province, that province is also an objective. The core objectives are the capitals of the two leader nations (and the province to be annexed, if applicable). To win a war, the aggressor must possess all core objectives and there cannot be any enemy units within its territory. The defender does not necessarily need to occupy enemy territory. It is sufficient to have one’s own territory free of enemy units after three war rounds. The war will automatically conclude once one side has satisfied its victory conditions. If the aggressor wins, the war objective will immediately be awarded.
As soon as war is declared, Fronts will be formed along the borders of nations on opposed sides of the war. Each side on a Front will have an objective. This will depend on the war objective and whether the side is the aggressor or defender in the war.

Each war round will loop through each war currently in progress. For each war, there are several phases:

1. Conscript Armies. Assuming you have some worker pops that have not already been conscripted, you may conscript one or more worker pops into your military. Conscript units are like Infantry units, but are somewhat weaker, as they are not professional soldiers.
2. Fleet Movement. During such a round you can Undock a docked fleet, dock an undocked fleet if it is adjacent to a friendly Port, or move a fleet to a sea region adjacent to the docks of any nation with which you are at war. Moving a fleet to a sea zone adjacent to an enemy Port province opens up a new Front. 
3. Sea Battles. Sea zones are grouped into sea regions. For example, all sea zones neighboring European provinces belong to the European Sea region. If there are Fleets belonging to opposing sides of the war in the region, a battle will break out. Battles will be discussed in the next Dev Diary.
4. Move Armies. During this phase you can board armies onto fleets in adjacent sea zones, assign units to Fronts that can be reached by land, or retreat armies from fronts back to your Capital. When clicking on an Army present at a front, you can choose to be on the Offense or on the Defense. If you choose to go on the offense, the front will move toward your objective each time you win a Battle. if you choose to go on the Defense, the front will not move when you win a battle.
5. Land Battles. Whenever a front contains armies from both sides of the war, a land battle will be played out. Battles will be discussed in the next Dev Diary.
6. Offer Peace. If the Aggressor side is no longer stronger than the Defender side, the Aggressor will be given the opportunity to call off the war, resulting in an ante-bellum.

In addition to the war types mentioned above, a Great War system may be added for the late game. I have not yet decided on the specifics and it might be added post launch.

Today’s dev diary is about ICE’s main scenario. Timewise, the game takes place between 1815 and 1915, but the world in the game differs from our world in at least two very important ways.

Germany and Italy are already unified in 1815

In the main scenario, Germany and Italy already are united in 1815 in this world. Gameplay wise, this is done to make the game more balanced than real life. In our world, the United Kingdom turned out  to be the top colonizer by a very wide margin, with France and the Netherlands as distant second and third place. By the time Italy and Germany are unified, the colonial game is already more than half over. Having Germany and Italy unified from the start allows more competition for colonies. 

Narratively, we might say that in the world of ICE, Napoleon was more keen to support German and Italian nationalism, and formed a state for each nation. After the defeat of Napoleon, most Germany and Italians desired to remain united. The United Kingdom was supportive of this, as it would help ensure that France could not rise up and one again dominate the European continent. The new United Netherlands was also supportive of German and Italian unity. The Austrians, however, are displeased on both fronts. They would not be able to regain their territories in Northern Italy and lost influence over the Catholic German states. Russia did not care about Italy, but was concerned about a unified Germany. Austria and Russia, however, did not care to go to war with the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy.

The Western Hemisphere (and possibly Australia) are absent

This one might not be popular with many people, the Western Hemisphere (and possibly Australia) do not exist in this world! Why would I do this? For two reasons. First, the game is supposed to be about the struggle of European imperialist powers and the United States, being without serious competition in the Western Hemisphere, is pretty much bound to be the dominant economic power by 1915. This makes the balance of power in Europe ultimately a bit pointless. Moreover, America will resist European imperial activity in the whole Western Hemisphere, so that whole region is off limits for the European powers. Second, as I mentioned in the previous dev diary, I have endeavored to keep the number small in ICE, this includes keeping the number of nations and provinces small. Excluding the Western Hemisphere makes this much easier.
I do intend to create two additional scenarios, one that includes the Western Hemisphere and one that also does not begin with Germany and Italy unified. Probably only the former will be included when the game is released. These scenarios, however, will not be recommended, and the Western Hemisphere will be less detailed and have very few events (the Civil War will be included though).

This Dev Diary will not focus on a particular game-system or aspect of the game but on the game design principles that I have been trying to follow when making game design decisions. The most basic idea here is that I am trying to make a game rather than a simulation. This  is perhaps the biggest difference between Victoria 3 and Imperialism: Concert of Europe (ICE). 

Victoria 3 involves a quite complicated simulation of the entire world in real time. Because of this, the game simulates the world in great detail, and most of what goes on in your nation is automated, as it would simply be too tedious to manage the production of each and every unit of factory production, each and every trade, and the creation of each and every POP. In a simulation, one is more focussed on macro decisions that have an effect on how the automation plays out. 

ICE, on the other hand, is designed a bit more like a board game, which has resulted in the following seven principles.

1. Simplicity

ICE certainly be would be too big and complex to play as a physical board game and including the actions of all the NPC nations would be incredibly cumbersome. Nevertheless, ICE does represent things in a more board-game like manner. A board game has fairly strict limits when it comes to overall complexity, as the entire game-state must be represented on the table without overwhelming the players. When this happens, everything that is there is included for a reason and anything that is not necessarily will likely be cut. The key is to not add features just because it “sounds cool” to have that feature or because similar games have that feature. Does the feature really make the game more interesting to play, or is it just some kind of gimmick or convention? 

2. Small Integers

The number of provinces is kept fairly small (something like 220). The number of population units is fairly small, and will usually not grow to more than a few dozen by the end of the game. In general, the numbers are kept small and integer values are preferred. This allows the player to retain a basic awareness of the overall game state, which is impossible in a simulation like Victoria. 

3. Active Engagement

Keeping the numbers small allows the player to be actively engaged in the administration of their nation, allowing micro-management without tedium (or so I hope!). Again, this is similar to a board game. In a board game, your fraction generally does not do anything unless you do it. For example, the player decides how many goods they want to manufacture or trade each turn. 

4. Payment Over Maintenance 

In a simulation, most resources are likely to be used to maintain things rather  than to build or create things. This is, of course, realistic, especially in a game like Victoria. In Victoria, you POPs have various needs that they will try to satisfy each day (or some unit of time). Resources such as food, coal, and oil especially lend themselves to maintenance or people and machines. One thing we have learned from board games, however, is that maintenance is not that much fun. Spending resources just to keep what you have is not much fun. Spending resources to immediately get something you want, however, is fun. For example, in ICE, you pay for the POPs entire needs for its life-span all at once, and do not need to worry about providing it with anything thereafter. Likewise, coal is part of the upfront cost of factories and railroads.  

5. Transparency

Furthermore, when the player is more active, the rules must be transparent. In a macro-simulation, many players will probably not care to even know the mathematical formulas that determine combat results, so long as they are provided with numbers that give them a fairly good idea of the probability of success. ICE attempts to present the underlying mechanics as transparently as possible. For example, when two units engage in combat, the player is shown the modifiers that are added to the die rolls (as well as the die rolls). 

6. Shorter Duration

Board games are often of limited duration, they tend to be comparatively short when compared with computer games. This is for two reasons, first turns go by more slowly when actions must be processed by humans rather than by computers, second, people have busy schedules, and it is difficult to schedule a group of people for an event that lasts more than a few hours. Being a single player computer game ICE does not suffer from these two limitations, but when comparing the gameplay experience of a game like Brass: Birmingham with a game like Civilization VI with its 500 turns, the former certainly has some advantages over the latter. In a 500 turn game, most turns do not matter very much. I believe that one can reduce the number of turns significantly without reducing the number of interesting decisions. ICE is currently set to have about 50 turns.

7. Watching AI Moves

When playing a board game, you take your turn and then see what the other players do, which may affect the decisions you make when it is your turn again. In Civilization VI, on the other hand, you make your moves and then the AI will make its moves very quickly without the player’s notice, the exception being the military movements they make when they are attacking you. In ICE, the player will be shown all AI military movements each round (there is no fog of war) and will be notified of diplomatic actions such as sphering a minor power. There is also the option of being notified of their administrative moves, building factories, researching technologies, etc. of the Modern Nations. 

I hope this Diary will give the reader a sense of what kind of game ICE is intended to be. I admit in advance that I do not perfectly follow these principles, but they have served as guidelines during the design process. 

Why am I discussing government types and technology in the same Dev Diary? Government type is a pretty simple feature in Imperialism: Concert of Europe, but it has a significant impact on some other systems, and on technology research in particular. 

There are several government types in Imperialism: Concert of Europe: 

• Tribalism
• Feudalism
• Absolute Monarchy
• Constitutional Monarchy 
• Republic

Communism might later be introduced as a possibility, but for the moment it is not. Game mechanically, Constitutional Monarchy and Republic are the same, the difference being only cosmetic. 

Government types do not really affect the player’s decision space, because you do not have control over what government type you have. Each nation begins with a government type, and the government type of some nations will change during the game in response to scripted historical events (most notably the Revolutions of 1848). The main purpose of having government types is to prevent nations like China and Persia from becoming as technologically advanced as nations like France and Germany. Historically there were, of course, many reasons why the great divide in technological advancement occurred between the West and the rest of the world, and scholars disagree on which factors are most important. Since this game is not intended to be a simulation, much less a PhD thesis, I have chosen to err on the side of simplicity. A nation’s government type and any events that might change that type, effectively  make some nations more difficult to play as than others.

Most playable nations will begin the game as an Absolute Monarchy. The United Kingdom and Netherlands, however, have the advantage of having Constitutional Monarchy from the beginning.

The government type of a nation affects the efficiency of most of its middle class pop units. Recall, in the last Dev diary we mentioned that each Engineer pop generates a number of research points each turn, and that number depends on the government type of its nation. Likewise, Bureaucrats and Officers are more effective in, for example, a Constitutional Monarch than in a Feudal nation.  

So much for government types, what about technology and research? The technology tree Imperialism: Concert of Europe is pretty standard in most respects. As usual, the tree itself is structured based on prerequisite dependencies. Each turn you collect research points from your Engineers and once you have enough points to get a new technology, you spend those points to get said technology. 

There is one respect in which technology research in Imperialism: Concert of Europe from other games I have played, and that concerns patents. The first nation to research a technology gets a patent on that technology. This comes with two benefits and one drawback. The first benefit is that the first nation to research a new technology gains one Prestige (i.e. a victory point). The second benefit is that all other nations will have to pay that nation a gold fee when they research it. The drawback of being the first to discover a technology is that you must pay the full Research Point cost, while all other nations will pay only half that cost (but must pay the gold fee as well). This makes the race for technological supremacy lucrative for both Prestige and wealth and also makes it less likely that there will be a large gap in the technological advancement of advanced nations.

There is also a tech-spread mechanism, whereby a technology will be known by all Modern nations some number of years after it is first discovered.  

What do technologies do? Well, mostly the sort of things you might expect. Technologies can have the following effects:

• Unlocking factory types and upgrades to those factories.
• Allow construction of railroads (first iron, then steel).
• Allow upgrading provinces so they can produce more resources (three levels).
• Improve military units.
• Unlock unit types: Ironclads, Dreadnoughts, Fighters, and Tanks. 
• Discover new resources: rubber and oil.
• Lengthen the lifespans of your population units.  

There are a few technologies that are really just prerequisites for others, but they reward some Prestige to compensate for this.

Below are some pictures of the tech tree. Nete that this is one aspect of the UI that is likely to be significantly revised between now and the final release.