There’s arguably not much point in analysing General Staff’s AI at the moment as the code that ensures the game’s Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century soldiers soldier sensibly and believably is still under the rasp. What I can do, having toyed with the current beta build, is give you an idea of what purchasers of Ezra Sidran’s singular tactics game will and won’t get.
Playing General Staff reminds me a little of playing Peter Turcan’s Waterloo. As in Waterloo, at set intervals (turns usually represent ten minutes of action) you’re shown the state of the battlefield and given the opportunity to issue orders. Unlike Waterloo, GS does try to explain what occurred between one flipbook page scrap snapshot and the next.
Each turn resolution generates a string of unit reports. By clicking through these sighting, casualty, and rout-related snippets and studying the linked map animations, you can, in effect, watch the key actions of the past ten minutes unfold. Compared to, say, first generation Combat Mission with its compelling, sixty-second turn movies, the General Staff approach to WEGO turn illumination feels a tad ungainly, but it gets the job done.
Similarly quirky is an order issuing system that somehow manages to ignore genre conventions and involve both mouse and GUI buttons. I found the Riverview way pretty unintuitive at first, but can now dispense commands fairly speedily.
As unit counts are usually pretty low, I can live without formation and group movement. What I would like to see implemented before launch are toggleable unit info bars and a ‘show all current orders’ hotkey. Right now, you have to click a unit to see its vital statistics and its current order. Not ideal.
More positively, few turnbased wargames blend simplicity with groggy, optional features such as dense Fog of War and galloping couriers, in the way that General Staff does*. Assuming Riverview can deliver the smart, adaptable AI they’ve promised (more on AI at later date) their long-awaited creation should find an appreciative audience.
* Or offer such a range of multiplayer options.
