Making History: The Calm and the Storm

Making History reminds me of the games from Paradox, most famously Europa Universalis. That's a bit of a paradox (hem hem), because Paradox has its own (excellent) WWII game, Hearts of Iron -- but HoI is very much a war game, and while military conflict is central to Making History, the war side of the game is much more abstracted, and at a more grand strategic level, and it pays much more attention to economics and diplomacy. Much more like EU, in other words, but set in the 30s and 40s instead of the Early Modern era.

Making History also does one thing I've longed to see in other WWII games, but curiously, no one seems to have done before: it has scenarios starting in 34, 36, and 38, so you can experiment with trying to stop the Nazis as they march into the Rhineland, or Austria, or Czechoslovakia. Or for that matter, intervene in the Spanish Civil War, and have Republican Spain as a firm French ally when the inevitable war with the boche occurs.

As a WWII simulation, it's somewhere between the absurdities of Axis & Allies and the straightjacket of, say, Gary Grigsby's World at War; the diplomatic side is far more mutable. For instance, in one game I played, the Soviet Union joined the Allies at the outbreak of war--and Japan joined the Axis, with the US and Italy sitting out until much later. It also appears to me that conquering Russia is far too easy. The submarine war isn't handled particularly well (no explicit merchant shipping in the game, and thus no way to starve Britain). And yet the openness of the system has its benefits, too; there's less of a feeling of struggling against a system that's trying to force things to happen as they did historically (December 9th 1941, time for Pearl Harbor, ho hum) and more of a sense of terrifying possibility -- which is a better recreation, in a way, of what it was like to live through those years.

While the diplomacy system does lend itself to this openness, it's also frustratingly limited; as Italy, for instance, playing the 36 scenario, I was trying to make nice with Britain and France, and would even have been willing to join them in resisting the Anschluss -- but the only real way to jack yourself out of poor relations with somebody is giving them aid, and Italy has no resources to spare. No dice. That's one reason why the multiplayer game is more interesting; you can negotiate with actual people, and therefore can do things the AI diplomacy system doesn't allow.

Incidentally, while this is a turn-based game, it's not "I go, you go"; instead, you make your orders for the turn, while the other players are also doing so, and when everyone has hit "End Turn," the game updates. This is a far better system for multiplayer, because you aren't sitting around waiting for other people -- well, not as much, anyway: as, say, Italy, having moved your few units, you may be waiting quite a while for Germany and Russia, with their massive armies, to finish their orders.

The economic system is quite detailed, and perhaps daunting at first look, but is actually fairly straightforward; there are four basic resources (food, metals, coal, and oil), and production centers on the map for each. There's also a trade system, whereby you can purchase resources from other countries (or on the open market); as the war goes on, and you devote as much of your industry as possible to producing units and materiel, you will inevitably be running a big financial deficit to buy the resources you need. But that's okay; there's a -1% penalty to production for each $1b in debt you go, but otherwise you can run at a deficit forever.

There's also a simple tech development system -- simple, but with a lot of options, including such things as coal gasification and the atom bomb.

Some other nice features: You can play as any power you like (Argentina shall rule the world!--well, good luck); there's a robust set of modding tools, and a lot of attractive looking additional scenarios for download from the developer's site (including one for the Cold War world); and for educators, there's a guide for using Making History in a classroom context to teach something about the period. (Something, but perhaps not everything you'd want; there's no way to create the equivalent of Locarno or the Washington Naval Treaty in the context of this game.)

As for me, well, I'm junkie for strategic WWII games. I'll continue to fire up World at War when I want the whole war in an evening, or Commander: Europe at War when I want a traditional hex-based slugfest, or Hearts of Iron when I want operational depth. But Making History will continue to have space on my hard drive, too, both because it allows all sorts of historical "what ifs" that those games don't -- and because it has the best multiplayer version.