I must be playing my solo games biased against the French. And this is a problem, since I am not conscious of it and it isn't a thing I 'want' to happen. But the results speak for themselves - the French, whether the Lace Wars, Napoleonic or WW2 variety are losing in my solo games at a rate that can't be just chance. This isn't being done at the dice-rolling level, so it must be happening at the decision-making level - I don't play as hard, or think as well, when I am playing the French, it seems.
What else could it be? Well, of the recent games, the Napoleonic naval rules are explicitly biased against the French and Spanish so it isn't a surprise they lost that. The WW2 stuff has been set in 1940, so in theory there shouldn't be a problem in their losing, although the actual scenarios haven't usually looked that slanted against the French. But the real killer is the One Hour Wargames stuff, which doesn't have tactical or strategical French inferiority baked into the rules. The only systemic difference between the British and the Franco-Jacobites is that the scenarios are written like a modern military exercise, with "Blue forces" and "Red forces". Not unaturally, I make Les Bleus the Blue forces and the redcoats the Red Forces. In actual military convention, blue forces are friendly forces, red forces are the enemy (hence the concept of "red-teaming" which has moved from military wargaming into more general parlance). So in theory, it is possible that there is a bias in the OHW scenarios in favour of making the 'Blue' mission a bit harder than the 'Red' mission - real military exercises work like that, since the Red force is often 'dumb' and the point is to work the 'Blue' troops, staff and/or commander quite hard. But if this is so, it is a bit hard to see and can't apply to all the scenarios, some of which are 'mirror image' affairs.
In theory it could be because I am more or less often the 'active' solo player with the French. Recently I have been the active player of the French in the WW2 campaign - but previously, I had done rather well as the active player, so that seems unlikely.
I am not in general terms anti-French in political or historical or cultural terms and I don't silently rejoice inside when the French lose - quite the contrary sometimes!
So, what to do? Do I need to remake all my forces as imagi-nations?!?! To be fair, if I were starting again from scratch today, I might actually do that, although for unrelated reasons.
Interesting observation. Are you a Francophile at heart! Have you gathered enough data points to properly test your hypothesis? The OHW scenarios are derivative of others’ works so it cannot be a OHW bias alone. I suggest flipping sides and having the French play the other side for a while and see if your conclusion remains.
ReplyDeleteFor my solo gaming, I try to play each side optimally and without bias. I wonder if bias creeps in unknowingly?
Well, I am definitely not a Francophobe! The OHW streak of British victories is 9, and on what should be a 50-50 balance that seems like quite suggestive data. The overall score is 14-5 to the British. And given that I am trying (or at least, I think I am trying) to play each side optimally too, that seems suggestive that something is up.
DeleteHumans are very adept at identifying patterns where there aren't any. While agree the data you have on wins/losses doesn't look great for the French, there is still an element of randomness in the impact of specific decisions for each side at specific times in each engagement, which can produce wildy variable outcomes. This is magnified in the OHW scenarios as with only six units on each side resilience is less and impact is magnified. There are equations to model this stuff in two dimensions (drift equations?) but as the number of dimensions increase, the outcomes become ever more chaotic.
ReplyDeleteI think I would agree with all that - although the magnification would naturally apply to both sides and OHW should be quite even. And now I am off to look up drift equations!
DeleteCould just be dumb luck - dice are dice and although Jon can probably blind us with science on probability theories or whatever, they do sometimes buck the statistical probabilities and give one side or other a much better (or much worse) result than they should do!
ReplyDeleteI just read through your little 1940 campaign and from a narrative point of view and taking into account a general English-speaking slant to events of that campaign, the dismal French showing seems very plausible and historically accurate!
Sure, and of course, you are correct, all this could just be a very weird statistical outlier...
DeleteYes, the campaign events speak to my point: on an individual events/decisions level, it is hard to point to specific things where bias has entered (although my toy Panhard crew performed amazingly badly in the last few games!); but the overall effect over a relatively large sample size was quite pronounced.
One suggestion might be to set up some solo games where you play the French, and the enemy (be they Brits or Bosche) are "played" by an AI system of some kind - that way, you are invested in the French who have a human brain making their decisions, while the Baddies just roll a dice or turn a card and do as indicated - if the French still lose more often than win, I would get rid of all your French troops - they are jinxed :)
ReplyDeleteThe recent Gembloux Gap campaign I have been playing has been exactly that: me (the French player) getting more-or-less crushed by the solitaire Threat Generation System!
DeleteBugger - ok, you have exhausted my suggestion pile then! Maybe you just subconsciously hate the French?! :)
DeleteCan't rule it out of course...OTOH my love of buying and painting French armies might suggest otherwise?!? Or do I subconciously do that to provide the whipping boys...?
DeleteA hard thing to know for sure as to what is 'causing' these results to happen. I know for my solo OHW scenarios I play both sides as say generic SYW Austrians, so there are no national biases to possibly skew the game. Also I will pick and choose which rules seem most appropriate to the scenario, generally either Black Powder II or Honours of War. Each gives quite a different game due to the movement rates and shooting ranges, so you have to be careful there.
ReplyDeleteAlso I tend to play one side, normally the Attacker, but it helps switching seats to the other side of the table to then play the Defenders turn. I don't always do this due to time or space contstraints, but it does help to balance any possible 'bias'.
Thanks for that Steve. Maybe ultra-generic forces would prove to be the answer - the literal Reds and Blues, perhaps. I do sometimes rotate the board to achieve the effect you suggest, but I haven't noticed it make any difference...not to say there isn't one, of course
DeleteTricky, but an interesting problem. Unconscious bias is notoriously difficult to track down. I find that I tend to be biased towards the army on whose side of the table I am sitting, so waling around helps.
ReplyDeleteIn terms of trying to tackle the bias (if it exists), have you considered automating both sides for a game or two and seeing what happens?
In terms of the OHW stuff, you could try swapping the red and blue army tags, but does that seem to be a bit facile given the problem.
No solutions from here, I'm afraid, but I recognise the problem.
The automating suggestion is an interesting one...I suppose that would work if the AI was implemented rigidly enough (if it weren't, then it wouldn't be that much different to the current situation); I am going to think about that
DeleteYour sample size sounds pretty small so it could just be random chance. If you are concerned you could dice for it. Whenever you're making a decision come up with more than one option and dice which one to implement. It's not perfect as you could just fabricate dumb options for the French. Perhaps if you could propose a stupid option (1 on a d6), two sensible options A&B (2-3 & 4-5 respectively), and a brilliant option (6 on a d6). The brilliant option could even allow a temporaray (that turn only) bending of the rules to allow something that is realistic / historical / feasible but usually not allowed under the rules.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks, Rob. I don't think the sample is 'that' small, although of course you are right - it could just be a very flukey streak. I think your approach to decision-making is good (I have used variations of this myself, previously) and it might be the right time to implement it.
DeleteThere are gamers who just simply struggle with playing solo because they can’t disassociate themselves from both sides and play impartially, so they generally need solo or AI systems - but from your AAR’s I don’t get the impression that represents you.
ReplyDeleteI do around 3/4 of my gaming solo and I like a bit of command chaos in the rules, as it places a hand of restraint on the shoulder of the solo gamer. So for example in Black Powder, you roll for command and if you fail that is the end of that brigades activation attempts for that game.
Also Random Event Tables force situations on the solo player that they must deal with, leading them away from any favouritism.
I would say that a common cause of ‘favouring a side’ is that if one side is clearly the attacker, the player might tend to put themselves in the shoes of that side, wanting to win the mission so to speak.
I also think that OHW aids the defender as units (the attacker) cannot fire and move, so that combination of attack and taking ground is harder. If the attacker moves, the defender fires without being fired upon. Also elite defenders in cover are very tough to get out and generally it takes 2 units to do that, yet OHW have roughly similar sized forces, so the disadvantages that the attacker has are not always levelled up by getting more troops.
It might be interesting to explore your dilemma further (1940), by making the French the attacker, with a clear objective and even boosting their army size to achieve that and just see how that goes. Perhaps choose some actions that the French won, so historically better troops, equipment or battlefield position would have contributed and should be baked into the game and again judge the results.
Either way, I’m sure it is external influences rather than anything else at play here.
More good ideas in this one, thanks Norm. In the recent games when I was using Ruse de Guerre, I think it is fair to say that the British had the better of the 'tempo' game which is used to represent command and friction, which obviously helped...
DeleteOne thing I am hoping for is that drawing my own attention to it by writing about it will help to provide an antidote if I am subconsciously paying less attention to the niceties and detail of movement when I am playing the Franco-Jacobites. Anyway, I have a couple of different things about to hit the tables I hope, I will see how they work out.
Read, ''1000 years of annoying the French'', by Stephen Clarke. Then you will know why you are biased!
ReplyDeleteHa!
DeleteAs a french man, I am happy that you does not dislike us! As a wargamer I noticed one day that I seemed to like the british army very much. Wargaming gets us more open minded and that is a good thing for peace preservation.
ReplyDeleteThanks! And maybe you are right. On a good day, it helps us to be more objective, share the perspectives of people who we might not have naturally been taught to sympathize with, and not least, that no nation or people has a monopoly on, or is devoid of, courage, honour and glory.
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