"Cruel Necessity"
"Is . . . is that absolutely necessary?
Alrighty, this is the last post in the series. You’re relieved, I can tell.
Again, I have the first edition of this game, so that’s the version I’m looking at here.
“Cruel Necessity” is a solitaire tower defense type game in the States of Siege series from Victory Point Games.
Similar to “Charlemagne,” from Hollandspiele, not VPG, they share some features and I will compare them here in this post because I want to.
A Good Game:
This is a good game. Let me just say that first to better frame all the criticism I’m about to heap on it. If you like this sort of thing, you should like this. I can see why this series is so popular. Loads of little difficult choices. Options. Risk. Ups and downs. It’s got cool thematic game components and it might also be a little addictive too which is another sign of quality in something like this.
I’m not a fan of the slipcover sleeve pizza box packaging, though. Otherwise, I think the parts and pieces of "Cruel Necessity" are fantastic.
Good rules and rulebook; ordered intelligently, logical, helpful to the new player, writing is clear and straightforward and the game works well, has an organic natural flow (apart from back-to-back Battles, which I’ll address below).
Map and game components on the table look great and are conveniently and smartly arranged.
Several interesting mechanics employed in “Cruel Necessity.” The flexibility of Zeal is a great solution to a number of solitaire game design problems.
And I appreciate the Clubmen and Deviltry markers.
Love the political-religious tracking system. Accessible and at the same time an excellent mapping of some complex hard-to-pin-down abstract factors.
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| Political track: up good, down bad |
And there is Ireland, well done.
Criticism:
But for me, there’s a big disconnect between events, the strategic situation, and the general flow of the game. There’s not enough of a convincing “responsive” feel coming from Royalist forces so that it at least suggests to me on some level that I am struggling against another will that’s both aware of and acting against my interests. The way events affect opposing forces and their value levels would make more sense in a game meant to model an actual siege operation, where defenders suffer a particular brand of fog of war.
And so, I imagine this system works really well for a literal siege game, but using this engine for other more abstract or figurative “sieges,” conflicts like insurrections or rebellions, it maybe doesn’t work all that well. I feel a mismatch, an ill fit, a crammed, forced, tightness or imbalance somewhere. It is perhaps a mésalliance for a siege game to attempt to model macro geopolitical situations. There’s a certain persistent incoherence or fogginess to the pattern and chain of events in “Cruel Necessity.”
For instance, in the game, you generally don't know where any of the important people are at any time. It's a feature, not a bug. Charles does eventually turn up sort of attached to a Scots Army but that is a special case. Except in Battles, you have no idea where to find Rupert or Cromwell or Hopton and Waller. I think this too adds to the overall fogginess or disconnected sense I experience playing the game.
However, the main driver of the disconnected sequence, or lack of coherent narrative, is the event card. It’s just too much, they overwhelm. The complete randomness is often jarring. Charles hoists his flag in Nottingham after you’ve already fought a bunch of hard battles. You’re attacked by an Army you just trounced and the Monarchy gets a boost in the polls. It can seem really senseless at times. Other historical game designs do this as well. I don’t like it. “Wilderness War,” for example. There’s too much card play emphasis. History gets all jumbled and it’s hard to ignore that in a historical game.
Also note, that you can totally lose the game early, but you can’t win early. As long as you don’t lose, you will play through the entirety of the event deck. As a reward for enduring a steady procession of unavoidable unpreventable difficulties and penalties, and holding your own against same, the game nevertheless insists on subjecting you to a strict, yet arbitrary, lengthy, predetermined, course of abuse.
Victory after battle ought to, at least potentially, have more of an automatic, immediate, and pronounced impact on the military and political landscape than it does in “Cruel Necessity.” It’s impossible to effectively destroy a military association or an Army? If only for a turn?
History isn’t a parade of disconnected random things. Acts of God do happen, but when representing history, the story of something like war, I think a linear coherence isn’t an unreasonable expectation.
Also, to me, it feels like the player is always reacting in “Cruel Necessity” (echoes of “Charlemagne”), is never allowed to take the initiative and make the big play. The Battles, always foisted upon Parliamentarians, never sought, can erupt at any time regardless of how beat up or pinned down the Royalists appear to be. And Parliament can’t ever force the enemy to battle. (Yes, you can Campaign, but it won’t result in a Battle) The player can never really go on the offensive because turn to turn, anything can happen and the happenings are often largely unrelated to the current state of game or the player’s strategic positioning. Regional Royalist forces possessed of seeming endless reserves, a sort of incredible tactical immunity and an adamantine spirit, are able to exert steady unrelenting pressure on your strategic strongholds. They just keep on coming. It’s hard to develop anything long-term here apart from shoring up stuff while playing whack-a-mole and running ‘round putting out fires, which might, again, be fine for a literal siege model, but the British Civil Wars weren’t a siege operation.
Finally, there’s the mini-game Battle Mat thing again. Many many games do this in some way. Many. It rarely works well, in my view. The version in “Cruel Necessity” is better than most, though. Certainly better than “Charlemagne.” There are special units you can risk using, more nuance, much faster resolution, so much so that it almost feels not worth sorting the pieces and setting them up half the time. In and of itself, the Battle Mat sequence is fine every few turns, but it becomes disruptive when the event deck gives you battle after battle in a row. You just sorted it all, put the pieces back in their box, shuffled and then Battle again. This can happen. On and on, actually.
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| Battle Mats setup, then commenced play, units revealed, cards drawn, modifiers applied, etc. |
And yet…
I am still more than willing to try another one of these, though.
But next time it will be one themed with an actual siege situation, a Rorke’s Drift type thing, which is I think maybe where this game came from originally, i.e. was hatched, developed to model an actual siege scenario or something like that, anyway.
All in all, I don’t love it, but it’s cool.
Conclusion of this survey of solitaire games:
Finally, in the spirit of wrapping up the survey . . .
Right.
Originally, I wrote 1200+ words on this presenting a few of the findings suggested by the survey. There are several tentative conclusions or testable questions raised by the survey that could be examined or argued at length. But as I looked back over the section I’d written, something came over me, something told me, whispered in my ear, to keep those findings to myself and leave it at that. Was told that I’ve said more than enough already to convince anyone who wasn’t quite sure before that I should probably just be quiet, anyway.
A bunch of games didn’t make the cut for inclusion in the survey. Excluded were some unapologetically paragraph-based games (as opposed to “Ambush!” that almost seems ashamed of its paragraphs) or games that are multi-player but also include solo play rules, or any of the many cooperative games that can also be played perfectly well, or better, solo.
And I know that most of the games I’ve covered in this series of critical posts are old now. One reason for that is it seemed like a logical place to start a survey and then also some of these games, “States of Siege,” for example, they keep putting out interesting new titles that are really just tweaks to and reskinnings of older core engines. Some of these are undoubtedly better than others, but still, one can probably get an idea about the newer games playing an older title.
So, now this survey, along with some other materials, has yielded a substantial catalog of suggested do’s and don’ts and things to try in an attempt at a solitaire game design. Recurring themes and some telling consistencies emerge even in this tiny sample. All things considered, I’d have to say, the survey of solitaire games has been a very useful exercise.