Monthly Archives: July 2014
GrogHeads Interviews Uwe Eickert of Academy Games
Grogheads’ Corinne Mahaffey sat down to talk with Academy Games’ Uwe Eickert at Origins. In person, Uwe radiates a cheerful enthusiastic intensity; game design is clearly one of his passions!
Grogheads: What new games do you have coming up?
Academy Games: The Conflict of Heroes Solo Expansion, and Conflict of Heroes – Guadalcanal are shipping soon. We will have a Kickstarter for Conflict of Heroes: D-Day Airborne Battles this fall!
In addition, in 2015 we expect to publish the first game in our Civil War/Napoleonics series: Gettysburg – Day 1 Bloody Crossroads. This will be the first game in a 2 or 3 volume set based on this battle. The map boards and counters are big and incredibly beautiful! (Check our website for pictures [http://academygames.com/games/fight-for-the-colours/bloody-crossroads-gettysburg-day-1]) This is a new system that implements some of our newest and most advanced design mechanisms; there will be no dice, no numbers on the counters, and no charts to look up. You will be able to see the detailed state of each Regiment by quickly looking at its Brigade Command board. This will tell you its fatigue, morale, and current capabilities. The game can be played with 1 to 8 players and the decision cycle for each player is constant, with little to no down time.
We have been doing a great deal of research on the US Civil War, concentrating on the soldier’s fatigue and mental aspects of combat. We have factored these aspects into the game mechanism, so that brigades act more like they did in battle, often flowing forward and back towards the enemy. We’ve been working on this for 4 years and hope to publish it in 2015.
Grogheads: Could you compare how you build computer games versus board games? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each medium?
Academy Games: We always start with the board game because we find we have more subtlety when we design the board game. If we have no computing power, then we build a better, more intuitive, more streamlined game to begin with, which we can then move to the computer.
When we create board game mechanics, the results are transparent; we know why we came to the in-game result that we did, and we learn the strategy of the game.
Computer war game AIs are often designed with a biased advantage. They are often given limited, hard coded orders. However, human thought patterns are not limited in this way. The Artificial Intelligence (AI) that we have developed for Conflict of Heroes utilizes a unique Emergent Behavior and Agent Based Logic that evaluates Battlefield Situational Conditions. The AI then implements the best Tactical Response based on its available unit assets and resources. If the forces and logistics are available, the order is executed by the best available AI unit. If not, the secondary procedure order is implemented.
We think people will be surprised by the intuitiveness of our board game AI. Our AI does not “smooth” results or have arbitrary advantages. No matter which side you take, the AI will kick most players’ butts 60% of the time. This system has gone through several development cycles and we have had help from some of the most cutting edge computer programmers, active duty Army officers, and game designers.
Tuesday Screenshot – Making History: The Great War
Back to Muzzy Lane’s Making History: The Great War; read the developer interview here.
click to enlarge
Italian navy
still afloat against the odds
and looking good too!
GrogHeads Advanced Research on Projects Advisory #48
So the 4th of the July, we’re bringing 4 excellent GARPA possibilities. No, we won’t bring you 19 on the 19th.
BOAR, MBT Expansion (GMT Games)
203 Orders to date – not there yet
GMT’s modern-day tank shootout MBT has the usual suspects: the US 7th Army and the GSFG. But there’s plenty of tank-blasting goodness up on the Lüneberger Heide where the British Army of the Rhine was facing down an equally vast array of Soviet forces. The MBT games are scaled at the squad and individual vehicle level, ensuring tight focus on tactical shootouts where a bayonet charge is always possible. MBT is on p500 itself, but while you’re over there, get an order in for BAOR, too, and refight the whole shebang back in the late ‘80s.