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Medieval: Total War II<\/p><\/div>\n
Ex\u00e9rcitos raramente contavam com mais de 1000 soldados. Campanhas podiam durar poucas semanas. Seu objetivo n\u00e3o era exterminar completamente o inimigo, mas exaurir seus recursos, for\u00e7\u00e1-los a prestar obedi\u00eancia e roubar gado.<\/p>\n
Esse \u00faltimo era de suma import\u00e2ncia, pois rebanhos eram uma das bases da economia ga\u00e9lica. Al\u00e9m de serem uma importante fonte de alimentos para ex\u00e9rcitos em marcha, vacas serviam de moeda em transa\u00e7\u00f5es comerciais e pagamentos de tributos.<\/p>\n
Por providenciarem muito ganho em troca de relativamente pouco risco, essas guerras eram muito frequentes. \u00c0s vezes, chegavam a acontecer mais de uma vez por ano.<\/p>\n
T\u00e3o inseridas elas eram na \u201crotina\u201d de reis irlandeses, e centrais para a economia pastoril, que o historiador Finbar McCormick<\/a> chegou a cham\u00e1-las de \u201cuma forma de competi\u00e7\u00e3o econ\u00f4mica mais do que de conflito militar\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Figura do livro “The Image of Irelande” de John Derricke (1581) mostrando um roubo de gado na Irlanda<\/p><\/div>\n
Esse tipo de guerra de pilhagem era menos importante para os ingleses, cuja economia se baseava n\u00e3o no gado, mas na produ\u00e7\u00e3o de cereais em larga escala. Mesmo assim, os s\u00faditos da Coroa inglesa com terras na Irlanda tamb\u00e9m participavam dessas escaramu\u00e7as e roubos de gado. Nem que apenas para estabilizar seus aliados ga\u00e9licos e se defender de saqueadores.<\/p>\n
Para um magnata nas fronteiras do mundo ingl\u00eas, aderir \u00e0s regras do jogo era o pre\u00e7o a se pagar pelo controle de seu senhorio.<\/p>\n
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Soldados ingleses recebendo suprimentos durante campanha na Irlanda, no final do s\u00e9culo XIV. Figura de “La Prinse et mort du roy Richart” de Jean Creton, Harley MS 1319, British Library<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n
Mobilizar ex\u00e9rcitos e supri-los com provis\u00f5es acabavam, assim, tornando-se parte integral do calend\u00e1rio anual, ao lado de deveres como a cobran\u00e7a de tributos e os ciclos da agricultura e transum\u00e2ncia do gado<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Isto faz a guerra ga\u00e9lica cair como uma luva aos princ\u00edpios do game design<\/em>. Jogos, afinal de contas, s\u00e3o ferramentas criadas\u00a0 sobre medida para representar e manipular sistemas de regras. \u00c9 relativamente simples, desta forma, traduzir esse \u201ccalend\u00e1rio\u201d hist\u00f3rico a uma s\u00e9rie de decis\u00f5es a serem tomadas pelos jogadores.<\/p>\n
O loop <\/em>b\u00e1sico e as fases do turno<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Os turnos do jogo representam as principais tarefas que reis irlandeses e magnatas ingleses teriam de desempenhar para mobilizar expedi\u00e7\u00f5es, ter sucesso nas campanhas e \u2013 mais importante \u2013 recuperar-se dos estragos provocados pela guerra.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Essas tr\u00eas etapas da ger\u00eancia da guerra n\u00e3o eram igualmente longas. Expedi\u00e7\u00f5es militares podiam durar poucas semanas, mas recrutar soldados, reunir suprimentos e coordenar esfor\u00e7os com seus aliados podia levar meses. Repor um rebanho roubado pelo inimigo ou reconstruir um mosteiro destru\u00eddo, ent\u00e3o, era trabalho para um ano inteiro \u2013 quando n\u00e3o mais.<\/p>\n
Isso traz um problema s\u00e9rio de gameplay. <\/em>Nem todos os deveres esperados de um rei irland\u00eas s\u00e3o interessantes a ponto de merecer um jogo. Poucas pessoas curtiriam um jogo que as obrigasse a encarar vinte rodadas de animal husbandry simulator <\/em>para cada rodada que passam em combate.<\/p>\n
Mesmo que top\u00e1ssemos o desafio de fazer um jogo em que a guerra fosse apenas uma side quest,<\/em> representar igualmente cada etapa do ciclo econ\u00f4mico o tornaria proibitivamente longo.<\/p>\n
Para contornar esse desafio, resolvemos dividir nosso turno em duas fases, cada uma em uma escala diferente de tempo.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
A fase de guerra <\/strong>representa as opera\u00e7\u00f5es militares. Nela, jogadores dever\u00e3o realizar as decis\u00f5es que compunham o dia-a-dia da marcha.<\/p>\n
Cada fase de guerra dura um dia<\/strong> em \u201ctempo de jogo\u201d. Ela pode ser repetida por um n\u00famero qualquer de rodadas, at\u00e9 que todos os jogadores tenham se desmobilizado, derrotado seus inimigos ou sido eles pr\u00f3prios destru\u00eddos.<\/p>\n
A fase de manuten\u00e7\u00e3o<\/strong>, por sua vez, representa todas as outras etapas na administra\u00e7\u00e3o de um reino relativas \u00e0 guerra. Ela dura de nove meses a um ano em \u201ctempo de jogo\u201d, e inclui a cobran\u00e7a (e pagamentos) de impostos, redu\u00e7\u00e3o da devasta\u00e7\u00e3o e reconstru\u00e7\u00e3o de assentamentos destru\u00eddos.<\/p>\n
Ela tamb\u00e9m inclui a incid\u00eancia de \u201cdesastres\u201d, representados por cartas compradas no in\u00edcio da rodada e cujos efeitos persistem at\u00e9 o in\u00edcio da pr\u00f3xima fase de manuten\u00e7\u00e3o.<\/p>\n
Ao contr\u00e1rio da fase de guerra, a fase de manuten\u00e7\u00e3o dura apenas uma rodada. Assim que todos os jogadores a tenham jogado, passa-se imediatamente para a fase de guerra.<\/p>\n
Cada fase oferecer\u00e1 um leque de a\u00e7\u00f5es aos jogadores, baseadas em decis\u00f5es que os reis e magnatas teriam de tomar nessas mesmas circunst\u00e2ncias.<\/p>\n
A\u00e7\u00f5es representadas em vermelho no diagrama acima \u2013 como comprar cartas de desastres ou alimentar seus soldados ao final da marcha \u2013 s\u00e3o obrigat\u00f3rias. Aquelas representadas em amarelo s\u00e3o situacionais.<\/p>\n
Para saquear um assentamento, \u00e9 necess\u00e1rio ter um ex\u00e9rcito na casa correspondente.\u00a0 Para iniciar combate, \u00e9 necess\u00e1rio ocupar uma casa cont\u00edgua \u00e0 do ex\u00e9rcito que pretendemos atacar. Ainda assim, nenhuma dessas a\u00e7\u00f5es.<\/p>\n
Um jogador pode, se quiser, passar uma fase de guerra inteira sem participar de nenhuma batalha, valendo-se de estrat\u00e9gias fabianas<\/a> para esgotar os recursos dos inimigos. Ou, ainda, decidir n\u00e3o se mobilizar<\/strong> e \u201cpular\u201d a fase da guerra para reunir suas for\u00e7as e agir depois.<\/p>\n
O resultado, pelo que pudemos sentir de nossos primeiros testes, \u00e9 um jogo que traz o feeling <\/em>de um war game<\/em>, mas no qual o sucesso depende n\u00e3o s\u00f3 das decis\u00f5es t\u00e1ticas de cada jogador, mas no planejamento anterior e no fator acaso.<\/p>\n
Embora seja curta, a fase de manuten\u00e7\u00e3o tem uma influ\u00eancia decisiva no sucesso das guerras. No atual estado de desenvolvimento, estamos ainda balanceando os pre\u00e7os dos recursos e os efeitos das cartas de desastre. Nossas sess\u00f5es preliminares, contudo, revelaram que suas penalidades, somadas a momentos desvantajosos (ex. uma rodada na sequ\u00eancia de uma guerra custosa), podem tirar reinos de conflitos antes mesmo de conseguirem pegar em armas.<\/p>\n
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Textos de cartas de desastre<\/p><\/div>\n
Sempre \u00e9 poss\u00edvel apostar o destino do reino em uma vit\u00f3ria milagrosa no campo de batalha, como l\u00edderes medievais sem d\u00favida j\u00e1 fizeram. Por\u00e9m, nem mesmo um comandante brilhante pode virar o jogo se n\u00e3o tiver guerreiros para comandar ou comida para aliment\u00e1-los.<\/p>\n
Manter a economia em bom estado \u2013 e ter o cuidado de se aliar sempre aos mais fortes \u2013 \u00e9 t\u00e3o ou mais importante quanto a habilidade com uma espada.<\/p>\n
Evidentemente, vit\u00f3rias e derrotas s\u00f3 fazem sentido se soubermos o que est\u00e1 em jogo. No pr\u00f3ximo di\u00e1rio, portanto, falarei sobre o que um jogador deve fazer para vencer \u2013 e o que evitar para que seus oponentes levem a melhor.<\/p>\n
Como diriam os irlandeses, beir bua! <\/em>— \u201ctome a vit\u00f3ria\u201d \u2013 ou ,no sentido figurado, \u201cboa sorte\u201d!
\n<\/a><\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
In a previous article<\/a>, I introduced you to the ins and out of The Triumphs of Turlough, <\/em>\u00a0game I am developing with the members of ARISE and Laborat\u00f3rio de Estudos Medievais<\/p>\n
This post is the first in a series of dev diaries in which I will cover the creation process of the game\u2019s mechanics, their historical background as well as the dilemmas we came across in trying to transport 1276-1318 Ireland into a board game.<\/p>\n
In this diary, I will talk about the turn structure of the game.<\/p>\n
Playing the wars in Thomond<\/strong><\/h3>\n
As I explained in my introductory article, The Triumphs of Turlough <\/em>is a game about a war between two factions \u2013 Clann Turlough and Clann Brian Rua \u2013 vying to rule the ancient kingdom of Thomond, in south-western Ireland.<\/p>\n
As it is to be expected, its mechanics deal with the preparation of war.<\/p>\n
Here, it is worthwhile to clarify, first of all, what I am calling a \u201cwar\u201d. The types of conflict we observe in 13th and 14th centuries Ireland are a far cry from the spectacle of pitched battles and castle assaults we commonly associated to the Middle Ages.<\/p>\n
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Medieval: Total War II<\/p><\/div>\n
Armies rarely numbered more than 1000 soldiers. Campaigns could last as little as a few weeks. The goal wasn\u2019t to completely exterminate the enemy, but deplete their resources, compel them to obedience and steal cattle.<\/p>\n
This latter goal was of utmost important, as cattle herds were one of the foundations of Gaelic economy. In addition to being an important source of provisions for armies on the move, cows were used as currency in commercial transactions and payments of tribute.<\/p>\n
Because they provided a lot of rewards for relatively little risk, these wars were very frequent. Sometimes, they could take place more than once a year.<\/p>\n
So integrated they were in the \u201croutine\u201d of Irish kings, and crucial to the pastoral economy, that historian Finbar McCormic<\/a>k went as far as qualifying them as \u201ca form of economic competition rather than military warfare\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Picture from “The Image of Irelande” by John Derricke (1581) portraying a cattle raid in Ireland<\/p><\/div>\n
Raids of this nature were not as important to the English, whose economy was based not on livestock, but on large scale cereal production. Even then, however, subjects of the English Crown who held land in Ireland also participated in these skirmishes and cattle raids. Even if only to stabilize their Gaelic allies and defend themselves from pillagers.<\/p>\n
To a magnate in the frontiers of the English world, adhering to the rules of the game was the price to pay for the control of his lordship.<\/p>\n
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English soldiers receiving supplies during a campaign in Ireland in the late 14th century. Image from “La Prinse et mort du roy Richart” by Jean Creton, Harley MS 1319, British Library<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n
Raising armies and providing them with victuals, therefore, ended up being an integral part of the yearly calendar alongside duties such as the levying of taxes and the cycles of agriculture and transhumance pastoralism<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This makes Gaelic warfare a great fit for applying the principles of game design. Games, after all, are tools tailor-made to represent and manipulate systems of rules. It is relatively straight-forward, therefore, to translate this historical \u201ccalendar\u201d to a series of decisions to be taken by players.<\/p>\n
The basic loop and the turn phases<\/strong><\/h3>\n
The turns of the game represent the principal tasks that Irish kings and English magnates would have to perform to field expeditions, succeed in campaigns and \u2013 most importantly \u2013 manage the devastation caused by warfare.<\/p>\n
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These three stages of military management did not last the same amount of time. Military expeditions could last few weeks, but recruiting soldiers, procuring supplies and coordinating efforts with allies could take months. Even worse, replenishing a herd whose cows had been taken or rebuilding a ruined monastery was work for the entire year \u2013 if not longer.<\/p>\n
This presents a serious gameplay issue. Not all of the duties expected of an Irish king are interesting enough to feature in a game. Few people would enjoy a game which forced them to dredge through twenty rounds of “animal husbandry simulator” for each round they spend in combat.<\/p>\n
Even if we were up to the challenge of developing a game in which war was merely a side quest, representing each step of the economic cycle in the same level of detail would make it prohibitively long.<\/p>\n
To get around this issue, we decided to split our turn into two phases, each of them represented in a different scale of time.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
The war phase<\/strong> represents the military operations. In it, players will have to make the decisions that comprised the day-to-day activities during a march.<\/p>\n
Each war phase lasts one day<\/strong> in \u201cgame time\u201d. It can be repeated for an indefinite number of rounds, until all the players have demobilized, defeated their enemies or being vanquished themselves.<\/p>\n
The maintenance phase<\/strong>, on the other hand, represents all the other stages of a kingdom\u2019s administration cycle pertaining to war. It lasts from nine months to one year<\/strong> in \u201cgame time\u201d and include the levying (and payment) of tributes, the reduction of devastation and the repair of destroyed settlements.<\/p>\n
It also includes the occurrence of \u201cdisasters\u201d, represented by cards drawn in the beginning of the round and whose effects persist until the next maintenance phase.<\/p>\n
Unlike the war phase, the maintenance phase lasts for a single round. As soon as every player has passed their turn, the game immediately progresses to the war phase.<\/p>\n
Each phase will allow players to take a number of specific actions, based on decisions kings and magnates would have had to take in these same circumstances.<\/p>\n
Actions represented in red in the diagram above \u2013 such as drawing disaster cards or feeding soldiers at the end of a march \u2013 are mandatory. Those represented in yellow are situational.<\/p>\n
To raid a settlement, it is necessary to have an army standing in the corresponding place in the grid. To initiate combat it is necessary to be next to the army one wants to attack. Even so, the player is not required to take any of these actions.<\/p>\n
A player can, if they want, spend a whole war phase without participating in a single battle, making use of Fabian strategies<\/a> to deplete their enemies\u2019 resources. Or, yet, choose not to mobilize<\/strong> at all and \u201cskip\u201d the war phase to gather their strength and prepare for future actions.<\/p>\n
The result, from what we could perceive in our first tests, is a game that has the feeling of a war game, but in which success depends not only on the tactical decisions of each player, but on previous planning and the chance factor.<\/p>\n
Although short, the maintenance phase has a decisive influence in the outcome of wars. In the current stage of development, we are still balancing resource costs and the effects of the disaster cards. Nevertheless, our preliminary sessions have shown that the cards\u2019 penalties, paired with unfavorable circumstances (e.g. a round immediately after a costly war) can knock kingdoms out of conflicts even before they manage to take up arms.<\/p>\n
$\"\"$ <\/p>\n
It is always possible to risk the fate of the kingdom in a miraculous victory in the battlefield – as medieval rulers certainly did on occasion. However, not even a brilliant commander can turn the tide in the absence of warriors to lead or food with which to feed them.<\/p>\n
Keeping the economy in a sound state \u2013 and staying friends with the right factions \u2013 is just as or even more important than prowess with a blade.<\/p>\n
Evidently, victories and losses only make sense if we know what is at stake. In the next diary I will talk about what a player has to do to win the game \u2013 and what they should avoid to prevent their opponents from coming out on top.<\/p>\n
As the Irish say, beir bua! <\/em>\u2013 \u201ctake a victory\u201d or, in the figurative sense, \u201cgood luck!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Image of Ireland\u00a0de John Derricke (1581) Em um artigo anterior, eu apresentei a voc\u00eas os detalhes de Os Triunfos de Tarlac, jogo que estou desenvolvendo com as equipes do ARISE e do Laborat\u00f3rio de Estudos Medievais. Esse post \u00e9 o primeiro em uma s\u00e9rie de di\u00e1rios de desenvolvimento, em que contarei passo a passo […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[580,21],"tags":[175,483,589,671,427],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/20200915-cover-dev-diary-1.jpg?fit=1920%2C1080","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9rUzW-5OM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22368"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22368"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22368\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22394,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22368\/revisions\/22394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.finisgeekis.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}