The Wargamer

The Wargamer's Editor-in-Chief, Jim Zabek, recently had a chance to chat with Philippe Thibaut about Great Invasions before its North American release. Philippe is the original designer of a number of games, including Europa Universalis (1993), La Grande Guerre 14-18 (1999), Pax Romana (2003), Great Invasions (European release: 2005), and more recently Birth of America (2006) and the upcoming Ageod's American Civil War. He currently leads the company AGEOD which is renowned for its recent WEGO turn-based historical strategy game, Birth of America.

The Wargamer (WG): Can you briefly describe Great Invasions to our readers?

Philippe Thibaut (PT): Great Invasions plunges you back into Europe of the Dark Ages, a time in history where hundreds of nations and barbarian tribes rush to assault the civilized world. There are roughly three different periods in the whole era covered by the game:

• 375-632: time of the initial barbarian onslaught on the decadent Roman Empire, from the arrival of Huns till the birth of Islam, and including the Byzantine revival and reconquest of lost lands under Justinian.
• 632-843: while the barbarian threat recedes in the West, the Muslim warriors burst out of the Arabian deserts. This is the age of Jihad, where the strength of Islam leads the Arabs to the almost complete conquest of the civilized world.
• 843-1066: the last stage is that of the last wave of invasions, and particularly the Vikings attacks (culminating with the Battle of Hastings in 1066). That is also the time when Charlemagne's empire crumbles and the rise of feudality, signalling the entry of Western Europe into the Middle Ages.

Great Invasions is historically faithful to politics, economy, diplomacy, religion and art of war in the Dark Ages.

WG: The Dark Ages were an astonishingly tumultuous period of time. Virtually no nations, empires, or kingdoms survived intact through the period. Can you describe some of the challenges you faced in creating a game where many of the sides seemed to rapidly rise and fall?

PT: The historian Michel Rouche’s expression, “a game of snooker with nations”, is a perfect illustration of this era in which one people followed another in a frantic dance before disappearing altogether. One of our first problems, and not the least difficult, was to decide whom the players should represent.

Actually, it is practically impossible to find more than one nation that lasted from the beginning to the end of the period (except for the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine Empire). Even when I thought of shortening the period or cutting it into sections, I still couldn’t find at least four distinct candidate nations which fulfilled the requirements. Although I identified more than 150 nations, each appeared on the global stage for just a short period of time before disappearing, undergoing some kind of transformation, or being assimilated. It was impossible to imagine a civilizations game in which a single people would maintain its stronghold throughout the game or where its disappearance wouldn’t mean its defeat.

Not only did we need to find a way around the problems related to changing nations, we also needed a method of simulating the evolution of each of these civilisations - from an early barbaric state to its heyday and on to its downfall - in an entertaining manner.

The Dark Ages was also the period during which most of Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin were Christianised, after which Islam spread like lightning, beginning in the 7th century.

The energy of Christianity and Islam was, however, accompanied by a long line of heresies, schisms, dogmas, councils, synods, holy wars, and other such lovely events. Religious subjects are seldom dealt with in video games, but they were unavoidable in this project. We had to reinvent and find ways to integrate such a rich background into the game.

Finally, we had to find a way to make the players feel as though they were living and creating history. We needed to design a method of playing which would satisfy both those players wishing to recreate famous historical events and those who wanted total freedom to experiment. We had to provide a well-designed system which would enable players to live out their own version of history in which, as in real life, exceptional events suddenly changed the course of history.