------------------------------------------------------------"A Military Strategy Game" from January, 1990------------------------------------------------------------ The general sighed as he handed the binoculars back to thelieutenant. From his vantage point high in the NorthernMountain range, he could see two enemy divisions advancingrapidly toward his own division stationed south of CentralLake. That last remaining division had fought bravely andfiercely, but the men were on their last legs. Heavy lossesin earlier battles had weakened their numbers to one-fifththeir original fighting strength. Most of the armored trooptransport units were damaged or destroyed; as a result,their own movement had slowed to a crawl. As tired as the men were, they realized that they were thelast hope for defense of their capital city. If they wereto fall, the enemy could advance and occupy the capital in amatter of hours. Victory seemed so close only a few daysago, and now defeat was staring them in the face. Thegeneral picked up the walkie-talkie and relayed his ordersto the division commander. "Proceed due east," he said,"and attack the advancing enemy divisions." Perhaps theelement of surprise would make the difference, he mused. Ineither event, he would know the answer before the day wasthrough. Invitation to Play ------------------ Does that scenario sound interesting to you? Have you everwanted to match wits with one of your friends to see whowould make the best military commander? Have you ever seenas many cliches used in just two paragraphs of purple prose?This month's program is a very simple military strategy gamefor two players. It allows each of you to command themovements of a ten-division army. You decide when and whomto attack, with the ultimate goal of entering youropponent's capital city and declaring victory. Have you visited a toy store or an arts, crafts, and hobbystore lately? If the ones in your town are anything likemine, you will find one or more aisles devoted to warstrategy games. This type of game is nothing new; "thinkingmen and women" have been enjoying this type of entertainmentfor many years. Devoted fans have organized clubs, wheremembers meet to re-play key battles from the Roman Empire'sconquests, the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, andother famous battles from history. Several magazines aredevoted to this field, too. Although the version presented in the listing attached isquite simple, it does introduce and illustrate severalfundamentals of war gaming. First, it is played on ahexagonal grid; most if not all war games use thatarrangement. As you will see, on its turn each playing"piece" on the game board can move in any one of sixdirections; hence, the usage of the term "hexagonal" or moresimply "hex", from the Latin term for "having six sides orangles". Second, combat between opposing armies is decided using aunique blend of luck and skill. As you will see when youplay this game, each army division is assigned a numberindicating its strength. When you attack an opposing army,the ultimate outcome of that battle will be decided based onodds calculated from the relative strengths of those twodivisions. Board games use dice to determine that outcome.Of course, the computer does not need dice; your Grandy willbe using using its random number generator for that purpose. Finally, this type of game encourages logical, independent,unconventional, and strategic thinking. There are actuallyvery few rules in the game, and there are no guaranteed orobviously successful strategies. Thus, no two games areexactly alike. Each of your friends will present anentirely different challenge -- possessing his or her ownstrengths and weaknesses. Rules of Play ------------- Eventually you will have an error free copy of the program.How do you play? First, locate a friend, your spouse, or asibling to play with; this game requires two players.Second, type RUN to begin. You will be greeted withinstructions to enter the name of player number one. Playernumber one will command the armies and defend the city inthe northwest corner of the map (more on that later). Youmust also enter the name of player number two, who willcommand the army in the southeast corner of the map. Following the entry of player's names, the program willdisplay a chart demonstrating the hexagonal movement system.It might be wise to make a quick pencil sketch or a screenprint of that chart. According to that system, if you wantto move to the northeast, you must choose direction "1". Amove due east calls for direction "2". A move to thesoutheast is in direction "3", and so on. Once you have studied the chart long enough, press any key.A map showing the two capital cities, all of the armies, twomountain ranges, and a lake will be shown. Player numberone's units are shown as red characters on a whitebackground (or dark characters on a light background if youare using a monochrome monitor). Player number two's unitsare shown as white characters on a red background (or lighton dark). The capital cities are shown as arrowheads. The armydivisions are shown as numbers, initially all "3", "4" or"5" characters. The mountain ranges are shown usingtriangular characters; you will have to use a littleimagination to see them as mountains. The lake is a blueblob. Placement of the mountains and lake is random; thus,every game will be slightly different. The "period"characters placed in the hexagonal arrangement represent theplaying field. The numbers representing each army division serve twopurposes. First, they indicate how far each division canmove during your turn. For example, on your turn, each oneof your "3" divisions can make three moves. Moving from itscurrent position onto any one of the six surrounding(unoccupied) field markers represents one move. You cannotmove through mountains (they are assumed to be impassable),into the lake, or off of the playing field. The numbers also indicate the fighting strength of thatdivision. When one of your divisions attacks an enemydivision, their numbers are used to determine the finaloutcome. The probability of success in an attack is definedto be equal to the attacking unit's strength plus onedivided by the sum of the attacking and defending unit'sstrengths. For example, when a "5" attacks another "5", theprobability for victory is equal to (5+1) / (5+5) or 60%.Notice that being on the offensive (which often carries theelement of surprise) is quite an advantage. Command Decisions ----------------- On your turn, each of your ten divisions will begin toblink. If you wish to move that division, press one of thenumbers "1" through "6" to move it one space in thedirection indicated by the hex movement chart (that wasdisplayed on the opening screen). If you do not wish tomove that division at all or you do not wish to move it anyfurther, press "P" to pass. Your next division will beginto blink, so that you may move it. Once you have moved all ten of your divisions, the programwill check to see if any of them are in combat position.Combat occurs whenever one of your divisions is adjacent toan opponent's division. If any of your divisions isadjacent to two or more enemy divisions, you get to decidewhich one to attack. Once again, you use the hex movementchart to tell the program which direction to attack. During combat, you will hear the sound of gunfire as youwatch the battle progress. The two armies will continue tobattle each other, reducing each other's strength by oneunit at a time, until one is completely vanquished. An armyreduced to a strength of zero will disappear. You can winthe game by entering your opponent's capital city. It doesnot matter if you have completely eliminated your opponent'sarmies; you must still march into their capital city to makeit official. Once you enter the opponent's capital, the winner isannounced and you are offered the chance to play again. Ifyou decide to play again, the game will restart. If not,the screen will clear and you will return to BASIC's "OK"prompt. To return to DOS, type SYSTEM and press ENTER. Thenext time you want to play this game, you can simply typeBASIC WARGAME from the A> or C> prompt and press ENTER. Programming Details ------------------- Those of you who are interested in writing your own programsmight be interested in learning more about how this programworks. Several arrays are dimensioned in line 1060. ArrayN$ contains the two players names. Array P is used toremember the game board position of both player's tendivisions. Array M contains information pertaining to armymovements. Array D is used during the search for combatsituations. Each "dot" on the playing field is assigned a number. Thenumbers are arranged so that a move to the northeast (ordirection "1") decreases the position number by 19. A movedue east increase the position number by 1. These moves aswell as all the others are stored in array M, whose valuesare defined in lines 1080 and 1090. The players' names are accepted and stored in lines 1110 and1120. Lines 1130 through 1210 present the hex movementchart and wait for any valid keystroke to begin the game. Lines 1250 through 1280 set up four user defined functions.Line 1250 defines function FNZ(X), which returns a randomnumber between 1 and X. The next two functions FNR(X) andFNC(X) translate the playing field position number X into ascreen row and column number, respectively, like those usedin a LOCATE statement. Finally, function FNL(X) returns theASCII value of the character occupying playing fieldposition X. The game board is presented in lines 1320 through 1390. Thesolid green background is printed in lines 1330 through1360. The field position dots are printed in lines 1370through 1390. The initial playing field positions andstrengths of all army division are read and displayed inlines 1430 through 1450. The DATA statements of lines 1460through 1490 contain that information. The capital citiesare displayed in lines 1500 and 1510. Mountains and Lakes ------------------- Lines 1550 through 1590 look for a clear spot to place thelake. When a clear area large enough to hold the lake hasbeen found (picked at random), the lake is displayed inlines 1600 through 1620. Similarly, two mountain ranges aredisplayed in lines 1630 through 1700. Each range containsseven little mountain peaks, using ASCII character 127. One player's army positions are represented with an arraypointer of zero; the other uses an array pointer equal toone. The calculation of T (answering the question "whoseTurn is it") in line 1700 selects one player to go first. Lines 1740 through 1760 announce the current player's name.The FOR-NEXT loop beginning in line 1770 blinks each of thecurrent player's remaining armies, and allows that player toeither move it or to pass. If the player decides to movethe current army, line 1850 calculates a value for C -- theASCII value of the field position in the direction ofmovement. Line 1890 checks to see if that army is about toenter the capital city; if so, the game is over and theprogram jumps to line 2460. If C is not equal to 250 (the"dot" character used to represent an unoccupied space), thenthe move is invalid and is ignored. If however the move isvalid, the screen is updated along with array P which keepstrack of each army's position. Line 2000 begins the check to see if any army is in combatposition. If there is only one opposing army adjacent to agiven division, then the program jumps immediately to line2210 to begin combat. If there is more than one possibledirection of attack, lines 2110 through 2170 allow thecommander to select that direction. Combat is handled in the section from line 2210 to 2360.Line 2250 is my feeble effort to make gunfire sounds. Noticethat it uses the NOISE statement. Most other PC compatiblecomputers do not recognize the NOISE statement. To insurethat this program will also work on those other pitifulbrands, I have included an ON ERROR GOTO statement (back upin line 1070) which will jump around that troublesome NOISEstatement. Calculation of the probability of combat successis handled in line 2260. The subroutine in lines 2410 and 2420 clears the bottom halfof the screen for messages. Lines 2460 through 2500 handlethe end-game situation, allowing the user to start a newgame in line 2490 or to exit the program in line 2500. Lines2540 and 2550 are special ones which are called when anerror occurs. Line 2540 checks to see if the error occurredin line 2250 (the one containing the NOISE statement); ifso, a short click is issued and the program resumes on theline following the NOISE statement. Wrapping Up ----------- Here are a couple of ideas for program improvements, whichyou can use as a challenge and a test of your programmingskills. You might want to change the initial positions ofeach division on the playing field, or to change theirinitial strengths. You can change the strengths quiteeasily up to "9" units by editing the second number in eachpair of numbers shown in lines 1460 through 1490. One interesting and rather simple change would be to limitcombat to only one exchange between opposing armies; thatis, instead of fighting until one division is completelydestroyed, limit the results of any single combat session toa one-unit reduction in one of the two opposing armies. Thatintroduces the strategy of retreat, but it also lengthensthe game. Once a division's strength is lowered as a result of battle,it can never recover those lost units. Perhaps you wouldlike to modify the program so that on each turn, some ofeach unit's strength is restored. You can pretend thatrepairs have been made to damaged transport equipment, andthat reinforcements have arrived to replace casualties. This war game is not nearly as ambitious nor as rich indetail as some of the boxed games available in toy and hobbystores. However, it should serve as a good introduction tothe field, especially if you have never played a game likethis before. If you really like it, there are quite a fewcommercial software packages that you might enjoy. Visityour local Radio Shack or some other software store, and askto see some of their military strategy game titles. Asalways, I encourage you to write with questions, comments,or suggestions for future columns. If you write with somekind of programming question, be sure to include a selfaddressed stamped envelope with your letter; I will do mybest to answer all of your letters. See you next month!
