Originally Posted by contracycle

Well all simulation games suffer from the flaws already mentioned of being very limited in their capacity for precise accuracy. Who today really knows how medieval warfare worked, for example? All of them are abstractions to a greater or lesser degree.

Well, of course. But I still think there are meaningful degree of variation between a board-game or even a mini-based wargame modelling Waterloo and WH40K. Furthermore, I am not sure I agree with your "who knows how medieval warfare worked". Sure, we can't travel in time. But I thought archaeology and the studies of the various sources plus academic re-enactment/recreation did give us a pretty good idea of what went on and when.

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You'd be crazy to try and apply the lessons learned in a game literally, but if you learn concepts like flanking and ambush and local superiority, they can be applied to whatever real tools you do have.

Fair point but do you really flank, let alone ambush, in a chess game?

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Originally Posted by Gilles de Rais

Sure, we can't travel in time. But I thought archaeology and the studies of the various sources plus academic re-enactment/recreation did give us a pretty good idea of what went on and when.

Problem is, we never see anyone killed. So there are historical anecdotes of for example people breaking swords in the heat of battle, but we are never going to see anyone weilding a sword with the same level of fear and adrenaline and so on to know if that's true or hyperbole. I think the whole issue of just how protective armour was is extremely vague and uncertain, despite the frequency with which you see pundits making confident assertions.

In Delbruck's study of medieval warfare, he suggests that knights didn't charge in line; instead they apprached in a wedge formation, and the wedge folded out into a line at the last moment, the reason for this being that a line is unwieldy and prone to disorder.

So, while I am indeed interested in archeology and other modern studies, how much of that actualy makes it into games is an open question. What we've got instead is a huge mass of stuff that "everyone knows".

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Fair point but do you really flank, let alone ambush, in a chess game?

Well I certainly think you flank, in that you;ve got pieces which only move in certain directions and therfore how you approach them, is significant. You've also got pieces that can cross the whole board in one move. So you could move a rook on your own left rear to your rear right, and then to the opponents rear, wquite easily. As for ambushing, I think you can but it assumes casual players who are prone to mistakes and distractions etc... but that's much the same thing. Pro players are aware of the possibilities, and computer players can't help but be aware.

Anyway, I'm not necessarily saying chess is a good example of either of those, only that a game can teach principles as well as specifics.

Originally Posted by contracycle

Way to broaden your horizons.

An open mind is like a fortress with its gates unbarred and unguarded.

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