Strategy Gaming Online - Reviews : Dragoon

Ratings

Code Issues

a) Graphics: 3
Really nice, for 1986.
b) Audio: 4
Some decent background music, but a tiny palette of action sounds
c) Interface: 4
Hotkeys? What hotkeys?
d) Stability: 8
Seemed pretty stable

Play Issues

e) Solo play gameplay quality: 4
f) Length of play/replay value: 7
They did provide a large number of scenarios, and an intriguing list of scenarios representing PARTS of other major battles, a really good idea.
g) Multiplay quality: 4
Hotseat only.
h) Learning curve: 8
Relatively standard rules, familiar for most in the genre
i) Manual/documentation quality: 5
Would have been higher, but no tutorial at all.
j) Installation (size, difficulty): 9
Flawless, small footprint.

Overall Rating: 5.6 – "If you absolutely MUST play battles from this era, then you really have no choice as they are the only game in town. But brace yourself for a trip back to ‘computer wargames in the 80’s’ and mediocre AI at best. Everyone else should keep shopping – there are much better games out there."

You know, when I first got Dragoon, I was totally psyched. I’ve been an Austrophile forever, and one of my favorite paintings of all time is one of General Laudon during this war. I even wrote my senior paper in college on Austrian history. I’ve played a number of miniatures rules for the period and was extremely excited that someone has finally decided to go after this severely underexploited genre. Dragoon is a wargame representing the Seven Years’ War (more commonly know in the Anglo-Saxon west as the "French and Indian War") from 1757-1764. The company blurb at battlefront.com says it also simulates the War of the Austrian Succession (which it doesn’t). Whether they are simply in error (the WoAS was 1740-48) or optimistic (the scenario editor could certainly be used to make battles from this period) is indeterminate.

The game comes with an comrehensive 75 page manual that describes everything necessary to play with a few functional black and white illustrations. There is no tutorial section however, and this would have been useful. It installs in what is today a paltry 9 megs of space, and has relatively low hardware requirements. I did very much like that the game never took over the Win9X toolbar, allowing you full volume and session control during the game.

Dragoon is a hex-based game, familiar to anyone who is a serious wargamer. The play of the game is initiative-based, centered on the corps commanders. Each commander has an initiative rating, and when his turn comes up, you can decide to activate him (and his subordinate units) or defer him for a more opportune moment. This is an extremely handy feature, which other turn-based games would be well to copy. When a commander is activated, his units that start the turn within his command range are available to act.

Units are one of 4 relatively simplistic (but accurate) categories: Infantry battalions, Cavalry squadrons, Artillery (up to 15 guns), and Light Infantry (battalions again). Hexes are 150 years across, and turns represent about 15 minutes of real time.

The premise of 18^th century warfare is represented essentially accurately. That is, units move in columns and fight in lines and never the twain shall meet. Fighting in column will get your unit slaughtered, and moving much in line will usually disrupt your units so as to make them incapable of any useful contribution. Formation changes are very simplified – too much so – and line or column are your only choices. Infantry attacked by cavalry are apparently able to form square, but you are not given the option to command them to do so in any way - which frankly is a major omission. ASIDE: I believe it was in the midst of the Mollwitz scenario where Austrian Cav are far superior to the Prussian side, and I had left a couple of Infantry Battalions in a bad spot where they were certain to be swarmed upon by said Austrians. Form square? Hah. Apparently real men take on cavalry in line and only form square when they have no choice. Of course, they didn’t MAKE it to square, and so quickly routed off the board. I happen to know that the Austrian drill instructions of 1740 discussed the forming of squares under threat of cavalry action, so the fact that neither they nor the Prussians are allowed to here is a serious flaw.

Why is this Austrian General commanding from the middle of the Prussian lines?

The spiders await us! (Actually, the flags are supposedly showing the double-headed Habsburg eagle. Ha ha ha ha!)

Strict Zone-of-Control rules are in force, and if you forget to reform your unit or make any last minute changes before you move to contact, you’d better be happy because they are basically stuck there until they either win or lose. Units are measured in the number of effective soldiers they have, as well as by morale and disruption (which, predictably, affects everything else negatively). In this sense it’s a very straightforward and accurate representation of the mechanics of the era

However, the implementation of these (I daresay) well-understood and accurate mechanisms leaves something to be desired.

The game appears to be a product from the 1980’s. The graphics (allegedly 24-bit) are downright ugly, not even meeting the standards of the late-80’s Napoleonic game "Fields of Glory" (Microprose). Sounds are limited to the occasional horse-clop, tromping march feet, guns firing, and a whinny.

[One nice feature however is that they have implemented differing animations for volley fire (usually the first shot a unit fires) versus sustained fire, giving you a good feel for what condition the firing unit is in.]

Unit pathfinding is atrocious (watch the column of infantry climb the hill and go through the forest, instead of taking the road around said hill), and waypointing is not available. Each unit must in effect be lead through the nose on its route.

The AI is horrible – playing the Western End of the Battle of Kolin, the Austrian top general Daun rode calmly in front of his guns, past two battalions of Prussian infantry, and set up his command position amidst the Prussian lines. While I agree that his view of Prussian dispositions would have been unmatched from such a vantage, I suspect that he probably wouldn’t have done that in real life.

Zoom control is one of three levels, although the graphics are so painful at the lowest and highest resolutions, it’s unlikely anyone would ever use them. Even something as simple as game auto-scrolling of the map area isn’t implemented – what year is this, again? Right-clicking for hex info is implemented at a rudimentary level, but the geographical layout of things makes the player click all over the board (for example, there are no hotkeys listed in the manual – everything is moused).

And counterintuitively, they indicate a fire combat to be resolved by a smoke cloud on the target (not on the firing unit, as would make logical sense). It’s easy to get used to, but still kind of backwards.

This is the second substitute General Daun. The Boys from Brazil were already at work in 1757...

These are my troops, and you can tell they're German because frankly they look like nutcracker men

And despite my basic agreement with the simulation rules under the system, I have some (narrow) reservations about the rules paradigms themselves. Firstly, artillery is not attached to anyone. This is inviting abuse by players, by allowing them to in effect form "Grand Batteries" of massed guns 40+ years before such was the case historically. Second, units move far too quickly. It’s possible for a Prussian unit, in line, to travel 900 yards (a half mile!) in 15 minutes, and only suffer minor disruption. The Prussians were good, but not THAT good. Thirdly, units’ routing is far too unpredictable. Understanding of course that conscript armies were inherently unreliable no matter how well trained, nevertheless the variability in Dragoon is amazing. Two battalions of the same regiment in one scenario both took fire from multiple guns and infantry at 1 hex range. One suffered more than 200 casualties, and stood. The other took 16, and fled. Strange. Further, it doesn’t appear that the Generals matter at all to their armies – something definitely ahistorical in this period. In the Battle of Kolin recounted above, I captured Daun, the commander of a LI detatchment, and BOTH their substitutes. Don’t you think the Austrians might have at least asked for a ceasefire at that point?

Finally, to their credit a scenario editor is included, which ran very well and was simple and clear. Building a simple scenario took little time and ran without trouble. (Although I have to say it – when you’re writing a game of something so narrow in scope as Dragoon, why do you have a "side A" and "side B"? Especially when point is made that "side A is always the Prussians" – wouldn’t it be simpler to call them, oh, I dunno… Prussians?)

All my criticisms aside, it is refreshing to see someone approach this era. Unfortunately so much gets in the way I can’t recommend this game. If you absolutely MUST play 7-years’ War scenarios and can’t figure out how to make Age of Rifles simulate them, perhaps you might enjoy Dragoon. But anyone else: Dragoon will leave you wanting. It’s long past the time that "serious" wargamers have to settle for clumsy interfaces, rudimentary systems, and ugly graphics. We can come out of the closet – it’s the FPS gamers that everyone thinks are weird now (ha ha). Dragoon just kept hearkening back to the era when we didn’t have any good choices, so we had to settle for games like this. Like taking a shower with a raincoat on, you feel like something fun is going on somewhere, but you’re probably too far removed to have any fun.

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Reviewed by Steve Lieb