The Die Should be Cast

Carl von Clausewitz in On War said:

“Since all information and assumptions are open to doubt, and with chance at work everywhere, the commander continually finds that things are not as he expected.”

The pressure to make decisions in a problem space where there is so much doubt is one of my favourite aspects of wargaming. In such a strategic environment where there are rarely “optimal” moves players are forced to draw on more than their pure analytic skills. Players need to have the courage to trust their intuition and their prior choices to best an opponent when randomness is involved in decision making.

This article is about randomness affecting games, strategy games in particular. I am not trying to say that using randomness or not using it in a game's mechanics makes the game in question inherently better or worse. What I am trying to explore is the differences in random and predominantly non-random games and make a case against those who say randomness has no place in strategy gaming. Randomness in gaming is something of a spectrum I will not claim that chess and Starcraft don’t have random elements but they certainly have less RNG than some.

In chess all variables are set, all possibilities and permutations can be calculated and accounted for. Of course the possibilities are near endless and making the optimal play depends on the predictive power of the player, making for one of the most interesting battles of wits in gaming. In broad terms, this is the way Starcraft works, determined mechanics being manipulated by players who do their best to predict and make the optimal plays. Decision making in Starcraft comes down to how well one can understand the situation they find themselves in and conceive of a response. The lack of randomness in Starcraft means that there is usually an optimal play for the given situation. It is up to the player to recognize that move and execute it, just as in chess. Starcraft moves fast enough that achieving these optimal plays is difficult even if the given player recognizes them, driving actions per minute to be an important skill. Starcraft also presents its players with a wide range of concerns base building is just as important as unit micro and the cognitive load of the multitasking is immense.

Company of Heroes is a useful foil to Starcraft as it embraces randomness in many of its mechanics from model placement to artillery scatter to armour penetration and beyond. Unlike Starcraft, when two identical units fight the outcome is not determined by who attacks first (although it still helps). This is because some digital dice are being rolled to determine if the model’s weapon will hit or not and which models of the squad are being hit. This fact fundamentally changes the decision making model of the players. Instead of divining the optimal actions and putting them into effect as fast as possible, CoH players must exercise a great deal of risk management. CoH and other randomness based games are about playing the odds and planning for contingencies.  

This kind of decision making process demands combined with the high value of units and their durability means that not only are small skirmishes harder to predict but they are also more important. In this case, other mechanics help to alleviate some of the sting of bad rolls, the retreat mechanic and the inherent survivability of units means that so long as a player doesn't lose full squads in combat, little economic damage is done.

Single actions rarely guarantee success in CoH what they usually do is tip the balance. Affecting combat is very important in both games but how it’s done is very different because of the mechanics Involved. Less random mechanics mean that a unit is always going to be used for the same purposes, to easily predictable effect. Random elements mean that outcomes are harder to predict, forcing players to consider more outcomes related to an action. Affecting combat in both games usually means positioning units and using abilities but in CoH, the fog of war penetrates both these actions as well as the simple damage inflicted by the engaged units.