After the Machiavelli campaign, I suppose I need to reflect on what I have learned from it. After all, it was something I had long had in mind, had not really planned, and launched rather quickly. So, how did it work out?
Firstly, I did enjoy it. I got five wargames out of it, all of which were different even if three of them involved the French. The support system does lead to some unbalanced games, but they did not always go to the largest army, so that seems to be a good thing. The terrain rolling system worked as well, as it should have done, having been in production for a while.
As far as the armies go, my DBR 100 AP forces just about managed, although I kept running out of gendarmes. I have eight bases which is just about sufficient for two 100 point forces, but, of course, with the supports, I was a little short from time to time. Something to be considered for the future.
As far as the rules go, I think I am slowly getting the hang of skirmishing. The first Papal States against Venice battle certainly proved to be a learning curve on that. The last battle too emphasised the importance of skirmishing correctly (and luckily). The disruption to the French gendarmes gave the Imperialists the edge. Speaking for the French, they are extremely destructive if they get into combat on their terms. Except for the Imperialists, the rest of the forces in Italy have nothing much to match the Swiss with and have to get fortunate to win the cavalry battle.
Strategically, the French won, although the forces were starting to range up against them. In part, the French were lucky in that the diplomacy rolls ensured that mostly they were left alone to pick off the autonomous garrisons. In the end, although French and Imperial relations were cordial, the temptation to attack the isolated French garrison of Milan proved to be too much. Similarly, the Spanish Neapolitans, needing to expand in a hurry, were landing up in confrontation with the Papal States. That could have been quite interesting.
Still, I think stopping the campaign at the point I did was the right thing. The struggle, as historically, would have been to turn back to French tide, trying to persuade the Italian states plus the Imperialists and Spanish to unite against them could have been tricky. I think the diplomacy table needs a few additional rolls to permit the breaking of friendships and alliances in terms of the strategic situation.
The initiative card method worked quite nicely, although poor Florence never drew a card for any movement. Mind you, everyone left them alone which could well count as a win in the period. As I said at the beginning, I was trying to limit the number of battles per move which could have been generated if everyone had moved every turn. That would have overwhelmed me, although the wargames could be rather short.
The movement system in Machiavelli is extremely simple and allowed for the campaign turns to take only a few minutes. If I regard a campaign game as being a generator for tabletop wargames then this counts as a success. Winter turns take a moment or two longer, because of counting controlled cities and working out where extra armies go, but that is a strategic exercise in itself. The Papal States, for example, reinforced the northwest, leaving their home states vulnerable to the Neapolitans.
Where next, you might ask. Good question. I have hinted at something relating to the Thirty Years War, and I am investigating maps. The problem is that Germany was such a patchwork of micro-states at the time that maps are a real problem. I have a couple, one of Germany from an old The Wargamer magazine, and one from an old Strategy and Tactics. This latter covers most of Europe but is ugly. The game with The Wargamer has been described to me as being beautiful but unplayable. Certainly, the components are as good as Machiavelli’s, but the gameplay is anything but clean and simple.
The real problem with a TYW campaign is in my own head, of course: the scope. Looking at the S & T map, my horizons opened to the whole of Europe. Looking back at The Wargamer map, it then feels a bit constrained. Yet the former does not, of course, have the detail that the latter does, and having read Peter Wilson’s book on the TYW, I think the role of Electors is quite important. These states are marked on The Wargamer map.
Looking around the web there is a Diplomacy variant map of Europe in 1600 which might work. However, one of the joys of the Machiavelli map is that you can tell the difference between a fleet and an army at a glance, which is not possible with pins. Add to that my aspiration to include more states than the seven given in Diplomacy and you might see why I am shying away from that again. After all, the Elector Palatine really needs to be represented as, after all, he started the whole war.
So now I am veering back towards the The Wargamer map, using the national counters to represent armies. One of the problems of both the magazine games is that they attempt to cover both the strategic and the tactical. There must have been a trend at the time for this sort of thing, and it leads to enormous stacks of ordinary and elite infantry, similar cavalry, light artillery, and siege artillery. It all gets a bit, shall we say, unstable. So the plan is to represent armies (there is only a little fleet activity) with national counters and, possibly, allow the recruitment of siege trains. I will need some rules for besieging the various cities on the map, with and without a train, but apart from that it might work.
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