Matrix Games Forums

Another realism issue ...

In PacWar the best strategy I think for the Allies is to bypass Philipines, Dutch East Indies etc and go straight for a close blockade of Japan, followed by invasion if necessary. To me this is almost inconceivable as a realistic possibility - the political pressure to end occupation of colonies & de facto colonies would have been overwhelming.

These considerations need to be modelled in the game somehow (at least as an optional rule). Maybe something which constrains Macarthur to a Philipines strategy & automatically assigns assets to him, until Manila etc retaken? (Similarly for other areas).

Originally posted by Szilard:
Another realism issue ...

In PacWar the best strategy I think for the Allies is to bypass Philipines, Dutch East Indies etc and go straight for a close blockade of Japan, followed by invasion if necessary. To me this is almost inconceivable as a realistic possibility - the political pressure to end occupation of colonies & de facto colonies would have been overwhelming.

These considerations need to be modelled in the game somehow (at least as an optional rule). Maybe something which constrains Macarthur to a Philipines strategy & automatically assigns assets to him, until Manila etc retaken? (Similarly for other areas).

Your example of MacArthur is just the opposite. MacArthur was the one who wanted to retake the Phillipines, the others wanted to skip it and go for (what is now) Taiwan. So had MacArthur not needed to fullfill his "I shall return" promise, we might have very well have done the strategy you suggest.

As for trying to force players to simulate what actually happened because of "politics", that's an argument ongoing elsewhere, or was recently, and I'm afraid to restart it, otherwise Seth might lose his composure and take my arm off.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Your example of MacArthur is just the opposite. MacArthur was the one who wanted to retake the Phillipines, the others wanted to skip it and go for (what is now) Taiwan. So had MacArthur not needed to fullfill his "I shall return" promise, we might have very well have done the strategy you suggest.

So why did MacArthur win the argument? Politics! By "constrain MacArthur" I mean "constrain MacArthur's representation in the game to act like the real MacArtuhr" - whaetver. I'd still like to have optional rules or settable scenario options to bring in these kinds of constraints, if the player/s want them.

The foregoing suggestion is a genuinely bad idea for game development. It's more than enough of a job to get the OOB and various unit performance and experience characteristics modeled accurately... a right mediocre job was done there for aircraft and ships in GGPW (where a/c durability, mvr, and unit experience ratings seem to have been assigned based on uninformed guesses). Then there's the ongoing problem with making a realistic economic model. Throw in politics (the world's greatest arena for unbridled speculation and untestable hypotheses) and you have a game that is guaranteed to fail to please those of us who just want a decent simulation.

As for requiring either player to attack one or another place... or penalizing a player for not targeting historical objectives, that's stepping on the player's prerogative to set strategy and tactics. Defeats the whole purpose of the game.

Originally posted by Szilard:
So why did MacArthur win the argument? Politics! By "constrain MacArthur" I mean "constrain MacArthur's representation in the game to act like the real MacArtuhr" - whaetver. I'd still like to have optional rules or settable scenario options to bring in these kinds of constraints, if the player/s want them.

As I remember it, MacArthur met Roosevelt (there were others there too) and impressed him enough with his planned strategy, that Roosevelt gave him the go-ahead, over the other ideas being discussed.

The problem about removing politics, is, that you will continually get people playing Pacific War without experiencing the reality of it. Tactics will just become simple, and mondane. If something isn't done by a certain turn (ie. if Japan doesn't take the Hawaiian islands by 1942) then the game is lost. I would like for there to be multiple avenues for one side to win over another, even if these realities weren't 'historically feasible'. The US would never have offered a negotiated peace after Pearl Harbor, but, there must be a way to get the Japanese player to want to play after 1942.

Without any form of politics the British will have no reason to reinforce Singapore. In reality, it was HEAVILY reinforced, by an equivalent of 2 Divisions! Rationally, the British commanders should have sent these reinforcements to Burma, or the Dutch East Indies, however, the prestige lost in losing Singapore would be horrendous. The same goes with the Philippines. If the US ignored it, just think about the bombshell back home, and on the Philippines itse.f.

If we take away the pressures that these commanders actually faced then WitP can not accurately replicate what it was like to fight in the Pacific during WWII.

Another consideration for retaking the Phillipines was to liberate POW camps(with starving Americans in them) and the Phillipino people who were suffering a great deal!

Wasn't it Clausewitz who said that "war is politics continued by other means"? How can you have a war without politics, especially WW2 which had virtually every strategic decision decided or driven by politics?

As the Pacific was the "poor relation" of the Allies, reinforcements from other theatres should be driven by actual historical events. One caveat could be if the Japanese manage to seize HI, or land forces on CONUS triggering US reinforcements being diverted from the ETO which should have a big price to the US player. While there should be multiple options for overall strategy, there should also be realistic costs, benefits, deadlines, or restrictions.

Sounds easy, but beats me how to implement it. Perhaps the higher HQ's like Imperial GHQ should have to "declare" their overall "general" strategy from a menu of potential and realistic historic options? Then the game could allocate resources/benefits/handicaps accordingly?

Maybe there could be "diplomatic/morale points" awarded for certain actions or game events which could dictate whether the war could continue into 1946, a negotiated peace occurs at some point, or effects industrial output (home front morale) for one side or the other?

Also, there should be (unrealistic) advanced game options for the Japanese player to use his submarines for merchant interdiction, to improve his ASW capabilities, force coordination between the IJN/IJA, and to actually streamline industry and resource management. Wild eyed concepts for "Samurai Cowboys" I know, but make great "what if" campaigns.

It is very easy to have a WWII game, even a strtegic one, w/o politics. IMO it's a good idea not to have politics for two reasons.

1. Nobody really has a definitive idea whether or not a political game system can in any way model "reality" (not that any game models a reality in any way other than a sort of charicature). But anyone who claims that the US would have stayed out of the war w/o PH, that the political or diplomatic ramifications of ingnoring the Phillippines would have been severe for anyone (by either the US or IJA/IJN.. the latter might as easily have by-passed the whole thing, pounded it with a/c, and let the armed forces "die on the vine" as the US did with Rabaul and other places), or that Britain would have greatly suffered by ignoring Singapore, is basically just speculating about the unknowable. For Singapore, for example, it might have been a great boost to both the Pacific and Burmese campaigns had Britain simply delcared Singapore a free and independent nation and withdrawn all of its troops immediately. Certainly the Aussies would have been quite gratified not to have the 8th division used so uselessly.

To me that is the great thing about GGPW. I can pull the US troops (most of them anyhow) out of the Phillippines and use them to make a *better* defense. I can pull the 8th division and sometimes a Malay Division or two out of Singapore and make a better defense. I can concentrate the Dutch troops in ways that makes the Japanese assault something other than a walk-over. Similarly the Japanese can elect to conduct that second air-strike against PH (with few real consequences and little danger of losing ships and a/c using the flawed GGPW aircraft stats), they can invade Hawaii, Australia, or really give their best effort to finishing off the Chinese or even over-running India.

The solution for motivating players to take territory is to give them VP for taking that territory, not constraining them to do so with some completely speculative guess about what might have happened.

My second reason for disdaining politics in WWII strategic games is that every game that has tried it has really missed the mark in laughable ways (I'm thinking about A3R here). In every circumstance that I've seen "politics" just means an excuse to give the Axis more tools in the box to accomplish what they could not achieve militarily.

Without politics a player can do things that the commanders in reality COULDN'T do. Many wargamers try to strive for reality, and the absense of politics will severely curtail reality. It is like trying to play Pacific War without Land Combat Units. They weren't primary (Aircraft and Sea Power dictated) but without them you are really missing something.

If the option of politics, or at least VP's gained for liberating captured bases, or holding bases up to a certain point, then the strategies used in the Pacific War will NEVER replicate reality. This doesn't mean that you MUST follow these restrictions, it just means that you will have to do better later on in the game in order to make up for these lost VP's, or political points.

People will play WitP using exactly the same unhistoric strategies as PacWar. The British should not allow for the evacuation of Singapore without consequence (this was heavily debated on the Pacific War message list!), and ignoring the Philippines should also cause problems. In REALITY, the war wasn't just about defeating Japan, but, in keeping international promises AND trying to regain face for early defeats.

Also, certain things like abandoning the Dutch or Australians should also cause penalties. If the US just retreated to its own territories and ignored ABDA and ANZAC territories completely there would be conflict within the already shaky allied forces.

Politics is critically important in wargames. Politics is also one of the most ignored factors in modern wargames. Most of the older ones, using cardboard and pencils had intricate political systems. Computers are much better at processig this information accurately than a human with a sheet of paper. Also, these political arenas do not have to be as complicated as our own. Merely just worked into a Points system that reflects victory or not.

The commanders in reality didn't have free reign to do whatever they wanted. This being a wargame, we should want to at least have the option to do it as realistic as possible.

Hi, Singapore was reinforced because the commanders thought it would help. They were mistaken. If you think they would have just thrown those troops away you are mistaken. If we want to force "Historical" mistakes down the players throats thats one thing. Myself I always find over the course of the game to find ways of inventing my own mistakes. If in fact there was/is a simple way for one side to win the game no matter what the other side does then the game system is wrong. By pass PI against me when I am Japan and you will find the defenders of PI on Saipan/Iwo/Okinawa but thats not the problem (The allies can attack more then one place at a time) There is a simple basic reality of history all Japan players must face. They took on the worlds only real super power with an Army from pre world war I
and tiny airforce and a fairly modern well equipped Navy (that can't hold doodly)[airforces and navies don't hold ground] I don't think the allies need any in game help (like Japans interservice fighting) And any Political requirements that hinder the allies can not cover up the basic problem, which is Japans is going to recieve a butt kicking. So then we are faced with why would anyone want to be Japan and why would they continue to fight after 1942. Speaking only for myself, because Japan is the only side my actions can result in a change from history. Anyone can win as the allies. How to achive the impossible (given historical capabilities) Was it possible for Japan under any set of circumstances to win a victory over the US? I find making rules to stop Japan from taking PH pointless (I can never figure out how to haul enough troops and supply) While victory for Japan must be won before 43 I don't see how it can be done, given the fact the US would never surrender under any circumstances to Japan. So the Japanese player must have a way of winning the game (winning the war is out of the question) SO any player who chooses Japan must be prepared for a defense (Survival=victory) There is no such thing as crippling lossess to Japan in the early war only crippling inaction. The only real questions I need an answer to is "how long do I have to last? and how big do I have to be" answer these and you install all the politics ect on both sides you need.

------------------
I'm not retreating, I'm attacking in a differant direction!

Good discussion! My take:

1. I think that taking certain bases that historically never fell to the Japanese should trigger some reaction from the Allies. Reinforcements, larger commitment from them to the Pacific theater and a corresponding BIG victory point bonus for the Japanese for achieving that major victory.

2. Victory points should be awarded players for holding and taking important bases. Again perhaps a bonus for holding past historical fall, whether it is Singapore/ Bataan in 42 for Allies or Manila for Japanese in 44/45 as example.

3. The political aspect can be modeled into the historical reality that wars are fought for territory. Given enough time, Japan might gotten more out of the conquerred territories but unlikely in the short time frame of this game. So why do they take these places? Victory points. If Singapore and Manila's fall caused an uproar in London and Washington, imagine what would have happened if Ceylon, Sydney or Hawaii fell???!!

I have to add my 2c to this one:

I am firmly in the 'Pro Politics' camp. To get rid of the political aspects of a game of this scale is to simply make it wildly inaccurate. The 'political' constraints imposed on the commanders were real, no less real than supply constraints for example, and have to be modelled to at least some extent to prevent strategies that would have been simply impossible in real life. There is NO WAY that the British would have withdrawn from Singapore without a fight. That would have been a massive blow to Imperial prestige and could have led to all sorts of bad effects, possibly all the way up to a major revolt in India. If you say that the British can just walk away from Singapore without penalty then the game is no longer a recreation of WW2, it just has a map and some combat counters that happen to match the WW2 Pacific theatre. To me, saying that you want a game without political aspects is equivalent to saying that you just want to have the combat aspect of WW2 without the unneccesary hindrance of worrying about supply. Yes it might be fun but it isn't a simulation of WW2.

This becomes even more of an issue if there are multiplayer options for the game (I don't know if there will be). For example, in real life the Brits were keen to reconquer the lost parts of their empire, again for prestige and the more practical reason that it would make it easier for them to retain control of the colonies after the war. That is why they were pushing for the invasion of Malaya. The US were arguing against it because they didn't have any reason to grab Malaya, as well as being 'anti-imperial' in their thinking.

As to how such things could be implemented in the game, it can range from a simple victory points system (most likely) upwards, depending on the complexity the designers have the time to include. Geof has some very good ideas in his post above.

I say include the political aspects, along with some what-ifs as options, as much as possible.

I don't see how politics can be completely ignored, but I think it needs to be a very simple model, probably just victory points for possession.

I think that the PI are the best case in point. As I recall, Admiral King (CNO) was in favor of bypassing the PI. Admiral Nimitz actually supported General McArthur. Whether this was politically motivated or Nimitz didn't like the idea of major air bases sitting on the flank of a thousand mile supply line from Guam to Formosa is subject to speculation, but the latter seems more likely. General McArthur was threatening to resign if the PI were bypassed. We gonna model that? Mac runs for president, wins, we have Pacific First strategy, Red Army ends up in Paris. Nah, lets not. Lets just have victory points.

However, the effect on the US population of capital ship losses and casualties should not be minimized. After all, the same population that gave us this great victory also gave us Vietnam. Nothing is more flighty. The opinion seems to be that the Japanese cannot win a historically modeled game. I disagree, there are possibilities. Any major naval battle in mid 1942 should be won by the Japanese under game conditions. This should give the Japanese over a year to consolidate their defenses, finish off New Guinea, perhaps take Australia out of the war.

Paul

"Prestige Points" for holding objectives, with a variable scale based on capturing/holding locations on/before/past certain dates? Sinking major surface units, capturing or eliminating entire units or HQ's, isolating bases, or successful raids (Doolittle type, midget sub attacks, commando raids ect.) could also entail gaining or losing "prestige points". As I said before, these points could (at least partially) help determine unit availability and availability dates, new tech, industrial output, negotiating terms, continuing the war ect.

The game should definitely not try to model what the generals and admirals themselves were thinking (eg. Macarthur threatening to resign). After all we are playing those generals/admirals. But it does need to model the environment in which they operated, in my view. 'Political' as well as physical.

As far as having a variety of things for which points are won or lost ('prestige' points or victory points or whatever), the feel of the game would be enhanced if they were different for each of the belligerents. For example, the US should begin to accumulate a larger political penalty if they lose HUGE numbers of troops, say in an invasion of Japan, while the Japanese would be less susceptible to a penalty of that type.

VP for kills and accumulated VP for holding territory (not VP that disappear when your opponent reconquers the objective) seem fair enough. Include in that VP for the US holding objectives that the Japanese can easily take in 1941 and 1942 (like Wake, Midway, New Guinea, the Solomons, New Caledonia, Hawaii &c) and you've got a set of game victory conditions that motivates both players to attack.

If you want to play the IJN and see the IJA marching triumphantly along Hollywood Blvd then a historical *simulation* is not for you.

I don't agree that the game should make any assumptions that should automatically allow the IJN to win any naval battle in 1942 because, historically, they were 0,1,&2 (wins, ties, losses) in carrier actions and something like 3,4,0 in major night surface actions. Attacking an American cruiser force with an IJN cruiser force at night with comparable numbers (or vice versa) should be an uncertain outcome for both sides because, folks, that's just how it was. In war, crap happens, including not only "Japanese TF surprises US/Aus cruisers parked at Savo Island" events, but also, Japanese search planes spot two US BBs and report them as 2 CAs, American visual sighting occurs before Japanese visual sighting or US radar sighting, US DD TF ambushes Japanese harbor sinking several ships with torps and escaping w/o damage while Japanese cruisers fire blindly out to sea (Battle of Balikpapan style), and Gee Whiz, we just fired 20 long lance torpedos and all of them missed. All of these things happened in 1942.

Originally posted by mdiehl:
If you want to play the IJN and see the IJA marching triumphantly along Hollywood Blvd then a historical *simulation* is not for you.

Hear! Hear! Well put mdiehl.


If all the what-ifs are put together as a package, because there will be some interaction among the what-if possibilties which means you'll need a "system" to handle conflicts between options, but then allow the player to select what what-ifs happen, or are possible, then that should be enough for everyone. If you want to play with no historical connections, fine, turn it all off and send the IJA to Los Angeles. You want to play under a somewhat historical situation but you want to do a few things differently (or allow the possibility for those things to happen) great. Turn on everything but those few options you want to suspend, and see if the IJA could have, with most of the historical forces from China used as reinforcements, taken Australia. If you want a full historical situation, then leave everything on, and see if you can do better than Nimitz or MacArtur under the same restrictions they had to deal with.

Hi all,

reading through this forum again is interesting. My comment is that it wasn't just the admirals and generals visions that determined how the war was fought. Churchill and Roosevelt disagreed widely as to what the postwar reality of Southeast Asia was going to be, and this had major effect on the conduct of the war. Churchill wanted the reestablishment of the British Empire, whereas Roosevelt was more interested in the development of postwar China as a regional power to stabilise the region. Hence the massive amount of effort the US spent getting supplies into China. PacWar doesn't model this too well, but the massive allocation of transport planes to fly supplies into China (over the Hump) had ripple effects on all the other campaigns worldwide.

Just some more food for thought.

Actually, at Balikpapan the IJN had only destroyers, and I think they were off chasing down a Dutch Submarine which had just fired some torpedos before the US ships came in. Sure, not everything is 100% guaranteed, but, the odds of the Japanese behaving better in a night engagement were much better than that of the US, before they learned how to use radar. Some of these blunders were strategic (ie. putting two IJN Battleships, which in reality were more like Battle Cruisers, in restricted waters close to shore with little room to manuver or fire from long range against a large number of destroyers and cruisers), but most of the good actions by the US were either gauranteed (1914 Kirishima vs. 1941 South Dakota and 1941 Washington) or after the US learned how to fight (ie in late 1942, early 1943).

Not every night action before late 1942 should ALWAYS be guaranteed as an IJN victory, but, in this game, like reality, the odds were definitely in their favour.


I see politics as a guide for the player, not a restriction. Without these guides and incentives there would be absolutely no reason for you to follow history at all. I doubt wether anyone with any experience at Pacific War would try either as the Axis or Allies to follow the game process as historically as possible. Why not? Becuase without an incentive the Allies have no reason to reiforce or even bother to hold Singapore, they would never go to the Philippines over Formosa, let alone bypass everything and just bomb from Iwo Jima and Saipan. The Japanese would not suffer from both the IJN and IJA attacking in different directions in late 1942.

Keeping the VP=Kills/Control of Land will do nothing in guiding where someone will attack. What makes Singapore more important than Rangoon? Why Manila over Takao? To Pacific War these are just bases, with statistical value based on utility. In reality, people don't work that way. In reality, Singapore might = Rangoon with regard to utility, but, politically Singapore is worth a multitude more than Rangoon. The same is with Manila over Takao.