Now that Leigh is my lodger once more he has decided that we can play some multi-player war strategy games once again, and his favourite at the moment is called Hearts of Iron II - Doomsday edition.
I have never played it before, and there are plenty of different options and things to do to keep you occupied even before the actual fighting starts.
So he suggested that I play through a couple of the tutorials first and then try jumping into the full game against the computers to learn the ropes before I try and take on a couple of human players.
I agreed and my first full game was playing the Americans.
Harumph ... what a fiasco ... what rotten luck ... what a complete waste of time.
The game is set up with random events that "might of" happened, historical events that "really did happen" and giving each major country a level of AI that will let them alter their plans as they see what goes on in the rest of the world.
In my game so many things went differently it wasn't even a war game.
- Despite German and Italian assistance, Republican Spain defeated National Spain in just a few months.
- Japan got so badly beaten and repelled by the National Chinese that they were too weak to attack anyone else.
- Russia decided not to join the attack on Poland with Germany.
- France and England did not declare war on Germany when it annexed Poland.
- England decided to let Ireland be fully Independant.
- Germany failed to annex all of Czechoslovakia.
- Russia failed to get anywhere in Finland.
- Germany did not even attempt to invade, occupy or even influence any other European country.
- The Japanese did not attack Pearl Harbour.
- National China was so strong during the Japanese war that they began to invade other countries.
These are just the highlights, or rather lowlights, and by March 1944 there was still no actual war in Europe, or any fighting going on anywhere else either except with the Chinese who were gaining ground on all fronts.
So after about 18 hours of building up forces there was no war to fight and no enemies to battle or countries to liberate, at least not unless I wanted to become the aggressor and have the rest of the world turn on me as it did historically on the Nazi's!
When Leigh arrived home I showed him and all he could do was shake his head in amazement, say that it had never happened to him in 4 years of playing the game, and finally agree that I could either declare war just to learn more about the combat system or start all over again.
Pah, some war game ... didn't even get to fire a single shot, let alone drop a H bomb.
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