Introduction by Congress of Vienna Assistant Designer & Editor – Fred Schachter:This article is appearing after conclusion of an InsideGMT article series, a Standard Game After-Action-Report (AAR) of one of Congress of Vienna’s Scenarios, “The Clash of Armies”, which starts in August 1813 and runs through the end of that fateful year which encompasses many of the epic battles of a truly epic era. For those four episodes, see: GMT Games – Congress of Vienna

One of the Design/Development conundrums the CoV Team confronted during its fun and intriguing journey is how to characterize this wonderful creation of designer Frank Esparrago. Is it a wargame? The hardcore grognard wargamers, of which I number myself, certainly believe so, particularly when playing with all the “Wargamer Flavor Rules (WFR)”… which, as explained below, will be retitled “Optional Historical Rules (OHR)” going forward. That term seems better suited to those rules’ intent, eh?

Then there are the CoV Team’s Eurogamers, who proclaim that Congress of Vienna’s Standard Game is representative of the more involved kind of Eurogames they so enjoy. It’s almost like Designer Frank had two angels perched on his shoulders as he labored on his game creation… one a “Wargamer Angel” and the other a “Eurogamer Angel” each whispering their imprecations into his ears. Whom did he heed? Well, from the reception Congress of Vienna has received to date… it seems to be offering something to gamers of all flavors!

In this article Frank shares some of the design considerations he’s confronted in bringing Congress of Vienna from concept into a GMT P-500 offering. For those interested in learning more of CoV’s genesis, see: Congress of Vienna Designer’s Notes (Part 1 of 2) – Inside GMT blog If you enjoy reading of how a designer deals with complex game elements… this article should strike a chord of interest! With that, take it away Frank!

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Prelude: What’s in a Name? Changing “Wargame Flavor” to “Optional Historical”

David. S, one of our more outstanding Congress of Vienna play testers, provided the following comment:

“Wargame Flavor Rules’ seems like an inaccurate description to me: they are really “Optional Historical Rules”.

The former denomination was one chosen by some play testers with the most “wargamer” soul within them and we went with it; but really, after thinking about it carefully, I and other key members of the team believe David S. is right!

These are a set of rules that make the game more historical, but I would not dare qualify them with the appellation “wargamer”. What was I thinking?! For this reason, from now on, we are going to refer to them as “Optional Historical Rules” (OHR). We are sorry if use of the previous description causes any confusion to InsideGMT readers interested in the game. With this article, we are going to explain the reasoning for these optional rules.

Tactical vs Strategic Napoleonic Wargames

When you create a game like Congress of Vienna (CoV) with its major political and diplomatic elements; you know some of the “certainties” of a standard wargame which must be exceeded (see in Figure 1 an example of “traditional” strategic CDG Napoleonic wargame).

“Exceeded?” Let me explain: when you seek to design a wargame about the battle of Waterloo, you know with perfection through historical hindsight the initial disposition of units, generals, and army corps’ organization. Perhaps as a game developer you must validate your designer’s decisions regarding combat strengths, movement allowances, unit command and/or cohesion to assign to each unit. You also do the same analysis for each of the hexes on the battlefield or areas should that be the selected map graphic approach.

For example, what defensive value to assign La Haye Sainte or Hougoumont? Should a stream be portrayed as fordable or unfordable, or should you depict a sandpit or not, if only for historical reasons? The designer must create a Casualty or Combat Results Table with appropriate terrain and morale modifiers charts. You could leave some uncertainty as to whether some British units will arrive in time for the battle on Wellington’s right flank and “design” the key moment of Prussian units’ arrival on the French right wing (exactly historical, or do you give this a degree of uncertainty?).

For you are planning a game of THAT particular historical battle! Therefore, the decisions that you leave to future players (the C-i-C’s of their armies) are somewhat limited and focus on where and at what moment of the game they will attack, defend, or retire, how they maneuver cavalry, where and when to launch assaults and charges, should they form squares, or where and how to place artillery batteries and reserves … ah the choices, oh, the choices!

Of course, among possibilities, is it perhaps too much for Grouchy having his French forces arrive during the first hours of the battle to sweep away the Allied right wing, or that the bulk of the II British Corps, which was near and not in Halle 8 miles away, arranged at the battle’s beginning to repel or engulf the entire French left flank, or more dramatically, that Blucher’s Prussians never arrive at the battle? If one or more of those happen in a game, the result would not be Waterloo, but a completely different battle from what historically occurred!

But a game like Congress of Vienna, at a grand strategy level with its strong political and diplomatic components (including negotiations), causes you, as a player, to explore other types of decisioning. These decisions are the same, or even more influential, than those taken to resolve a simple battle!

Of course, bear in mind that the battles of the Napoleonic Wars could be decisive, like Austerlitz or Trafalgar, or to the contrary, and more frequently, be indecisive and bloody affairs such as Wagram, Borodino, Lützen…and so many others! (See Figure 2 below, a Congress of Vienna example of a massive battle on the Bavarian-Saxon border between the French Grande Armée and the combined Allied Coalition Armies of Bohemia and Silesia (just before the dice roll!).

In a given theater of operations, the concentration and timely appearance of all potential units and their coordination is unclear. There’s almost always a certain amount of “Fog of War” involved. We, as a C-i-C, can decide to fight or realize a strategic withdrawal to hopefully reduce potential losses. 

Furthermore, do we concentrate different army corps or not (to avoid potential attrition), choose a suitable battlefield to aid in achieving victory: that is, if we possess, and decide to use one or more CoV battle cards, or we how to react appropriately if we suspect – or know for sure – that such military cards may be in the enemy´s possession?

The preceding Figure 2 illustration serves as an example emulating the climactic Battle of Leipzig (which took place in our game’s Saxony space). We all know it was a shattering defeat for Napoleon; but not as decisive as the defeat suffered by his nephew Napoleon III at Sedan 55 years later during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War.

Let me tell you of an intriguing possibility if both Bernadotte’s army from the north and the Austrians from the south had closed the sole French line of retreat. Had this occurred, this battle would have been an even more terrible French defeat and capitulation; possibly resulting in the end of the Napoleonic empire at that time, months before it historically occurred. But it also is equally true, that if on the first day of battle, the Allies had acted uncoordinated or the French more inspired, Napoleon could have achieved a significant victory like that obtained from the battle of Dresden two months earlier… ah, the possibilities!

For a more expanded modeling of the Battle of Leipzig in terms of the Congress of Vienna game, see this InsideGMT article: The Battle of Leipzig in Congress of Vienna (CoV) | Inside GMT blog .

In the Development of CoV, we tried to find in the battle system a balance between factors which would be known to both sides: such as the total forces of armies on each battlefront (tracks), elite units, earthworks, and adequate supply lines (with the simplified and abstract Resource marker system), homeland, mountain terrain and other elements that inherently generate a lot of uncertain fog of war effects (see Figure 3 for a list of CoV battle modifiers).

Among the latter are effective concentration of troops, army corps adjusted arrival timeline, or battlefield accident types of fate. In CoV, these depend on the military cards players will use. But since these cards could be spent during the Diplomatic Phase, thereby remaining unused in the common discard pile for the War Phase; a correct handling and adequate calculation of probabilities is required to maximize a player’s chances for victory. … or on many occasions simply avoid defeat or minimize casualties.

Integrating War and Diplomatic Issues: CoV Victory Point (VP) Scoring

The feeling of deciding the fate of your nation through key battles is part of the fun and intensity of experiencing this game. But a purpose of CoV is also to decide how to manage each nation after a possible defeat or victory (such as Leipzig, or elsewhere) … what happens next with war, diplomacy, and policy, and how to position the Major Power being played for the future peace? This is what CoV effects with a VP system incorporating political and diplomatic decisions as well as military events.

This kind of VP scoring is clearly reminiscent of Eurogames. This is particularly so, since in Churchill – our foundational model and inspiration – it incorporates this design element… and because throughout Congress of Vienna‘s development, numerous Eurogame play testers left their indelible imprints through small but subtle details incorporated into CoV’s rules.

Here’s another salient play tester quote:

I really don’t like conventional multiplayer games because the erratic strategy or inexperience of one player can “ruin” the whole game, or at least “destroy” your well-designed strategy. This we have suffered and therefore have tried not to let happen in our games of CoV (Frank Esparrago fixed that to an extent!).

We may think the evolution of wargames made many multiplayer game mechanics successfully work in a kind of self-balancing manner: for example, as used in the COIN System or Churchill. We have done everything hopefully possible so that in Congress of Vienna; a player who acts AGAINST the spirit of the game does not ruin the experience for everyone else during a multi-player contest. Everyone should have fun and the CoV environment makes it so!

How have we done that? With four game design concepts:

1) A sufficiently broad VP System which allows, for example, that if a Russian player does not attack through the Central Europe Front (track A), which was the historical Allied strategy; the Austrian player may “steal his wallet” in Italy, or the British player will oppose letting him gain vital British Financial Aid Issues to fund Russia’s diplomatic efforts, military policies and operations.

2) VP Scoring is therefore designed to balance the game. Thus, for the player who is winning it costs more effort to get additional VP, and conversely, the player who is losing can more easily receive VP. The “Congress of Peace”, “Future Government of France”, and “Pax Britannica” Issues are good examples of this.

3) An Infrastructure of Diplomatic Negotiation -transferred from Churchill– and with addition of a trade card mechanism that can terribly penalize players who act illogically … for no one will offer that player good cards during a future trade, or that player’s negotiations (an attempt to move an Issue marker on a CoV Diplomacy Track) will be consistently debated, causing him to receive a good portion of his own medicine in payback. “What comes round goes round”.

4) Re-playability: Finally, if a game goes “off the rails”, particularly with Congress of Vienna’s scenarios, you know it is over in only an expended afternoon and you can easily play a new contest to learn if things could turn out differently. If that happens after 200 hours of, for example, an “Empires in Arms” game (AH); player frustration can be almost deadly palpable.

The Wargamer vs Eurogamer Soul of CoV: Standard Rules vs Optional Historical Rules

During CoV’s design we had numerous play testers with different gaming preferences move the “wargamer” and “Eurogamer” soul of CoV towards one side of the scale or the other. These have not been days entirely of wine and roses!

During development of the game; we had doubts about what could work and what would not. Furthermore, how would certain changes affect the balance of the game, pacing, rules complexity, and/or the game’s length? In fact, we have been building standard rules where simplicity and a relatively shorter length of game prevailed; and another approach called Optional Historical Rules (OHR).

These primarily add historical accuracy and more “puzzle elements” for players to ponder in exchange for more rules to remember and implement. However, except for Congress of Peace, these OHR are relatively simple: so while they do add to the quantity of rules; they do not add unacceptable complexity… particularly to veteran grognard gamers.

Today, both approaches coexist in our intensive CoV testing program. For we’ll keep play testing until the happy point that GMT advises the game can go into production. Some play testers (present and past) as well as InsideGMT readers of this article may want to retrospectively know where we are now and what differences these two souls are within Congress of Vienna‘s design.

To satisfy that curiosity, we therefore provide the following table of Differences & Similarities between Standard and Optional Historical Rules. This shows which aspects of the game have been affected and which have not. The parenthesized number after certain words cross-reference to a related explanation, in the form of a Table within this article. For example, “added Turn 11 (1)” is for Table Note #1 below.

An added bonus of the Table is that it conveys the structure and contents of each Major Phase of a Congress of Vienna game turn with its associated latest rulebook references.

TABLE NOTES

By reviewing the preceding table, you can observe that many rules remain identical between the Standard and OHR versions. If a Solitaire Player, or Multi-Players, desire a greater amount of decisioning and flavor to their CoV game, that’s available. The Congress of Peace Issue changes, in particular, are momentous both in terms of mechanics and that a game can sudden death end through a diplomatic rather than military resolution. This is in lieu of a political victory determined at the end of the game’s scheduled last turn, as can be usual in a typical CoV game between experienced players.

Additional Turn 11: Why end the game exactly when Napoleon was historically defeated? Isn’t gaming a search for historical alternatives? This minor additional OHR rule allows us to explore the implications of what could have happened if the war dragged on longer … as a potential negative, the game will take more playing time due to having an additional turn. Personally, I like this rule a lot since it allows the game to be extended if circumstances warrant without having to stick to an historical script… a script overtaken by a given game’s play evolution itself!

Conversely, this optional rule also allows the player(s) to choose making the game shorter, that is, ending a Campaign Game with Turn 9… which puts more pressure on the Coalition to get to Paris… if they can!

Trade Staff Cards: with this OHR, players can request the type of card that they prefer receiving in trade, but only by indicating whether the card is “Diplomatic” or “Military” (e.g., it could provide a DRM for battle). Really, this is a minor change in the rules; but increases playing time since players spend more time thinking and negotiating… which, of course, can add to the wheeling & dealing fun!

French Resource Reduction: France suffers Resource reduction when the Holland and/or Italy spaces become Allied controlled. This is another minor change that presses against the French towards the end of a game going badly for them. This potentially increases the velocity of an Imperial “Death Spiral” to defeat. It is historically accurate; but can add despair and stress to an overwhelmed French player (although we do have play testers who enjoy the added challenge)! This is another example of the endless design dilemma between historicity vs. playability.

Improved Players´ Treasury: Assignment of Resources is modified to allow the option of saving one Resource not expended for the next turn. This modification allows players to better manage Resources when a poor Diplomacy Phase result, that is, not winning a lot of Issues, causes them to spend few Resource markers. That unspent Resource could be a welcome boon next turn!

Congress of Peace: This Standard Game VP “balancing” Issue was transformed into a key Issue during OHR play testing. It adds complexity and increased power to an Issue which in the Standard game only effects VP.

This is a major change to the rules since the game could sudden death end with successful play of this key Issue.

For this reason, we placed these Congress of Peace changes into the OHR Section of the Playbook. We believe this particular rule is best appreciated by CoV experienced and gambler-type players! For those interested in learning more of this optional game rule and read of it in action, this link will bring a reader to a relevant InsideGMT CoV game AAR with some interesting post-game comments by the play testers: Congress of Vienna (with Wargame Flavor Rules) After Action Report Turns 6-8: “Austria at War” | Inside GMT blog

Distribution of Military Units and Fleets: In the Standard game, French replacements (depicted by blue triangles on the board) and military units from controlled Minor Countries (shown as star symbols) are received at the appropriate Major Power Capital Space.

Under this OHR, they are received in each specific location, and immediately placed into the track’s corresponding Army (placed in that particular front). Theoretically, it is historically accurate, but involves moving the relevant wooden cubes from different locations on the military map (this mainly effects the French player during the “early game” when France controls most of the map).

The Norway/Denmark Box: This box adds game complexity and playing time because it engenders additional specific rules. However, it is historically accurate and can make the game more fun. To make a broad analogy, the Norway/Denmark Box (which also represents a portion of northern Germany) functions in a similar manner to the War of 1812 Box with only the French and Russian players contending for it. Unlike the War of 1812 Box, however, any battle within the Norway/Denmark Box is considered a Major Battle. 

Landing in Holland: Under this OHR, the British player can realize an amphibious landing in Holland whose success provides a 3VP reward. Place this optional Army block near or on the Army of the Scheldt Box until making a landing attempt in Holland. This landing was historical but requires a sometimes “difficult” to achieve cooperation with nearby Russian-led Allied troops! The procedure is very similar to the Standard Game’s “Landing in Naples”.

Battles for Paris: This OHR better simulates the historical 1814 Campaign of France and captures the resurgent excellent performance of Napoleon and several of his military commanders, as well as the small but still terrifyingly proficient French army against the all too frequently poorly coordinated Allies.

Tactical Battle Matrix: This OHR synthesizes better than most other OHR’s the design dilemma of including fun, but time-consuming complexity vs. quick-moving simplicity. It embodies the doubts that a “Wargamer” soul may coexist with that of a “Euro”!

This OHR, a homage of adding tactical flavor to battles, is based on the tactical battle matrix of the excellent Avalon Hill games “1776”and “War and Peace” published in the distant years of 1974 and 1980 respectively.

This added game mechanic does slow the amount of time needed for battle resolution, while inserting an additional element of fun tactical flavor and “fog of war” which many players may enjoy. This optional rule has a new DRM (Dice Roll Modifier) based on a secretly selected tactical battle chits matrix result. Each side selects a face-down chit, simultaneously reveals them, and apply the results. These tactical chits allow greater uncertainty and interaction of players in battles. During play testing, we’ve noticed battles decided by the additional DRM the Tactical Matrix provides.

Allied Control of Prussia and Bavaria: This is a minor change that clearly benefits Austria and especially Russia in an OHR enhanced game. This sometimes contributes to France trying to retain these two spaces to prevent its inveterate European opponents from obtaining additional VPs! This rule can offset inexperienced Allied players contending against a savvy and CoV experienced French player.

VP for the Grande Armée’s Strength: This OHR is historically based but adds a minor increase to game complexity since it must be checked each turn. Also, in many cases, the French player slows down his speed of play to consider alternatives regarding this potential source /drainage of French VP.

Associated Revisions to Congress of Vienna’s Game Board

The preceding results in associated modifications to the Congress of Vienna game board. It is below provided (see Figure 4).

It includes a former optional rule, the Russian Persian War Box, which is now part of the standard game. Playtesting revealed it best to add this potential impediment to Russia’s ambitions. Now both the Norway / Denmark Box and the Scheldt Space are optional rules. In the same way, the rest of the optional rules, are indicated by violet labels.

Another change play testing and some spirited discussion of the history behind the game wrought is that a major battle is no longer possible for the War of 1812 Box. Battles in this theatre of war were simply not of the same magnitude nor consequence to the larger struggle in Europe which the Congress of Vienna game encompasses. Consequently, a victory in the War of 1812 Box will still move the Status Track marker as before but will not result in a +1VP to the victor / -1VP to the vanquished as does a Major Battle in Europe. Players still need to take care to have at least one unit (or fleet for Britain) survive after a War of 1812 Box Battle or the usual VP penalty for that shall still be inflicted.

Finally, the Fleet Demobilization rule creates a “Royal Navy Reserve” space which has been added near the London Space for Britain to retain fleet pieces it does not wish to deploy upon the map (e.g., to the War of 1812 Box). This is a helpful aid since Britain has the option, at the beginning of a turn, of trading two fleets for a Resource or VP (albeit a reverse trade is not possible… the British player can’t trade 2VPs in for a new fleet)

What Remains to Finish in the Development of Congress of Vienna?

As previously stated, we’ll continue play testing the game, particularly its scenarios such as “Clash of Armies” until the happy time CoV goes into GMT production planning.

We are also lavishing attention on Congress of Vienna’s Bots and its Solitaire Game since the play test versions should benefit from additional editing and refinement. The CoV Team is a somewhat insular group; therefore, it is our intent to share the latest Bots through InsideGMT and obtain reader feedback (and perhaps invite those expressing interest to Vassal take them out for a play spin themselves).

What a fun ride it has been and we thank those readers of InsideGMT who support us with their P-500 Congress of Vienna patronage, support, and encouragement!

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