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Offline letmein

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Off-Topic:
« on: November 03, 2009, 10:20:10 AM »
The rules:

You may, on the whole, speak about anything the admins will let you get away with.  They'll let you get away with a lot.

Obvious no-no's are personal attacks on people, spamming, and general douchbaggery.
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Offline letmein

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2009, 10:23:13 AM »
Just to get things rolling - off of the "Micromanagement & Big Question" thread, which was horribly, horribly hijacked (blame Doc) into a conversation on spacec strategy games.  Unfortunately, I've never played any of the Master of Orion series (yeah, I know, sad...), nor Galactic Civs.  Its not really my genre.  Basically the only one I've played is Homeworld, and that's less a "strategy" game as a "tactics" one.
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Offline zodiac44

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2009, 02:04:27 PM »
Aww, c'mon!  Doc couldn't have hijacked that thread alone.  I am the master off-topic commentator.  You have presented me with a unique challenge here, however.  How can I hijack a thread which specifically is for off-topic comments?

I shall have to ponder this.  Perhaps it will be my magnum opus.
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Offline necno

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #3 on: November 03, 2009, 03:02:20 PM »
You could try making this post about a particular something? then you could proceed to hijack it. Homeworld was a great game the story was pure brilliance. I in general prefer tactical game over strategy, which is why i really wish i could play Dawn Of War II. Many believe that tactical games are also true strategy games.
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Offline letmein

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #4 on: November 03, 2009, 07:10:49 PM »
I don't know;  people get the terms "tactics" and "strategy" mixed up.

I never played DoWII, but I used to have the first one.  It was OK, not great.  My favorite games are still probably strategy, most notably Civ, followed by pure shooters.  NOT Halo.  NEVER Halo... that game is the single most overrated piece of junk, ever.  For singleplayer, gotta be Half-Life (either one), for multi, CoD4 (Modern Warfare).
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Offline DocClox

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #5 on: November 03, 2009, 07:29:05 PM »
It's a question of scope: tactics is for small local engagements; usually squad level, never extending beyond a single battle.

Strategy is on the scale of logistics and troop movements. A brilliant tactician can win every battle, but if his strategy sucks he'll end up stuck in the middle of nowhere, with no fuel, no ammo, and surrounded by the enemy.

You need both, though. If your strategy is reasonable, but your tactics suck, you may wind up with too few effective troops to deliver the killing stroke.

The X-Com games are good examples of both: you send in a squad to recover a saucer - that's tactical. You have dozen operative and you need to scout the aliens and eliminate them with minimal losses. You finish that and you go back to the strategic screen, which lets you build bases, set research priorities, recruit and equip agents, and so on.


Offline letmein

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #6 on: November 03, 2009, 07:59:44 PM »
That's as good an explanation as I've heard.  Of course, that's using the strict war interpretations of both: their meanings have stretched in more recent times, to apply to other realms of thought.  Same basic principle, though - tactics is small-scale, strategy is large scale.
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Offline zodiac44

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #7 on: November 03, 2009, 08:41:25 PM »
People talk big about tactics and strategy - which is fine for games - but in the real world, logistics wins wars.  He who gets resources (troops, food, ammo, equipment, etc) where they need to be most effectively wins.

WM, of course, is neither tactical, strategic, or logistic.  It is a resource management game, akin to Settlers of Catan in many respects (on a game-theory level).
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse" and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse."

Offline letmein

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #8 on: November 03, 2009, 10:28:09 PM »
I'd say that's debatable, especially as you go backwards in time.  Certainly, logistics is the most important factor in modern warfare, but public  support is swiftly becoming more vital - some would say, after 'Nam, *more* vital.  You can have all the equipment in the world, but if you don't want to use it there's no point.

Now, going back in time, ancient warfare had many more considerations than pure logistics.  Perhaps the most important one was pure morale, but I would say that before the Renaissance, the point of logistical superiority isn't the clear superior.
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Offline zodiac44

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #9 on: November 03, 2009, 10:48:33 PM »
The goals of modern warfare are also considerably different than they were a century ago.  War used to be about conquest.  Politicians could rile up the public with jingoistic speeches, get the nationalistic blood boiling.  "We're better than them, we're gonna kick their asses and take their land!" was all the message they needed to get public support.  Today, in the US at least, we fight wars of principle, which the public is less likely to get behind.  People see the hypocrisy of invading another country so the citizens of that country can have the right to determine their own future (as if, in the act of invading them and shoving democracy down their throats, we aren't destroying any chance they have of a self-determined future - but that is a discussion for another day).

The nature of war is changing as well.  In the armies vs terrorists world, it is less of a war and much more like an occupation.  The US army in Iraq and Afghanistan is facing challenges similar to the Union army in the post-Confederate south, the Germans occupying France, the Japanese in China, and the Soviets when they invaded Afghanistan.  You can't win an occupation - the only way to end the conflict is to withdraw or outlast the insurgents - and it usually takes at least a generation to do the latter.
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse" and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse."

Offline letmein

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #10 on: November 04, 2009, 12:36:41 AM »
Or what I'll term the Third Option:  just kill a lot of people.  That was, at one time, quite effective - rather frowned upon nowdays, though.  At least, if you're a First World country, and not in Africa or, possibly, the Balkans.  Or Tibet.  But, again, different day's discussion - you make a good point in that the point of war has changed.  With the advent of death on the megascale, priorities change.  No one has yet been dumb enough to start a war of pure genocide (again, focusing on the First World anyhow), and the wonders of capitalism, globalism, and "public support" make wars of territory/resource gain rather moot too.

Occupational wars just get... messy.  Generally, if you're in a position to occupy that means you *started* in a position where the two people's beliefs are offset, and any occupation (no matter how peaceful) won't exactly change that fact.  Couple that with the rather odd trend against assimilation in modern times, and, well...  yeah.  On the other hand, there is one notable case of an occupation battle that was wholly and completely won:  the Native Americans.  Now, granted, there are some considerations there, but in the end it was still basically a long, long occupation that went astoundingly quickly given the distances involved on all sides, and the fact that the occupiers were outnumbered for a long while.
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Offline zodiac44

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #11 on: November 04, 2009, 02:09:12 AM »
The Native American tribes were defeated through systematic campaigns of forced relocation and genocide.  The "war" (for lack of a better term for the collective efforts to wipe them out) also saw the first (and only, to my knowledge) large scale use of biological warfare, with smallpox being the weapon of choice.
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Offline ker

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #12 on: November 05, 2009, 08:49:51 AM »
The Native American tribes were defeated through systematic campaigns of forced relocation and genocide.  The "war" (for lack of a better term for the collective efforts to wipe them out) also saw the first (and only, to my knowledge) large scale use of biological warfare, with smallpox being the weapon of choice.

Nowhere even near the first.  They used to catapult plague-ridden corpses into cities during sieges in the middle ages.

Offline DocClox

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #13 on: November 05, 2009, 09:26:25 AM »
People talk big about tactics and strategy - which is fine for games - but in the real world, logistics wins wars.  He who gets resources (troops, food, ammo, equipment, etc) where they need to be most effectively wins.

Logistics is part of strategy. Strategy is everything that doesn't involve firing bullets. But you're right in so far as modern technology has had a profound effect on strategy, with logistics becoming comparatively more important. The days when an invading army could forage or plunder anything it needed are long gone :)

WM, of course, is neither tactical, strategic, or logistic.  It is a resource management game, akin to Settlers of Catan in many respects (on a game-theory level).

It's strategic. There is conflict, and you have to make plans to win. You have no control over the tactical engagements so it's strategy. Of course, the conflict is a very minor part of the game at the moment, so resource management does fit better.

Offline zodiac44

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Re: Off-Topic:
« Reply #14 on: November 05, 2009, 11:16:25 AM »
Nowhere even near the first.  They used to catapult plague-ridden corpses into cities during sieges in the middle ages.

I'm aware of that, I was referring to wide-scale deployments.  Plague weapons tended to be used on a case-by-case basis when besieging cities, as a means of instilling fear, rather than a weapon intended to kill every single member of a tribe.  Smallpox blankets were spread far and wide with the intent to commit genocide on multiple tribes.  Plague weapons saw occasional, one-off use in small-scale deployments.
Capitalization is the difference between "I had to help my uncle Jack off a horse" and "I had to help my uncle jack off a horse."