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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   3075 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for June 8, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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I was thinking something more like: "what are the simplest, most abstract games which punch above their weight in encouraging historical strategies?" Games which reward pike blocks not because someone programmed an explicit stat bonus, but because the rules of their game world imply the physics of ours.

Ah, you want the Diplomacy of wargames, don't you? Simple rules that end up creating interesting and realistic-looking situations. Except even the big D doesn't work like that. WWI wasn't a free-for-all where alliances were brokered and broken every six months.

It's the same with wargames. On the one hand, you need to understand why historical armies fought they way they did. And this is something actual historians can't agree on. Why did the Helenistic phalanx demolish the Persian army, but lost to the Roman legions, which then never succeeded against the Parthian army? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ How do you distill the lack of knowledge into simple rules?

On the other hand, if you want the rules to create interesting outcomes, you probably want to avoid including clearly broken meta in them.

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