Are There Any Games Where Harassment and Skirmishing are Viable and Useful?

[Cheimison]

Most conflicts in a war, including wars between major powers like the War of the Roses, consist almost entirely of skirmishes, raids, and fortification defense/destruction. The set-piece battles play very little role. But set-piece battles are basically all there are in most grand strategy games, and what does exist in the way of fortresses or raiding (for example, you can build forts in EU4 and raze the land of a province) are largely irrelevant and unnecessary. In RTW you automatically lose a battle you quit if the enemy is sitting in their fortified positions and refuse to leave, which is nonsense - if you're cooped up behind your city walls you can't do jack about me leaving.
The focus is almost always on troop concentration, big slug-fests and assault-style sieges. Now these did have an important function in certain historical wars, but I feel like skirmishing and raiding are practically non-existent and their important role in disrupting supply lines, communication and destroying infrastructure and manpower are ignored by most games.

One of the exceptions I can think of are the Grand RTS games like Age of Empires, where skirmishing and raiding are actually useful. But most games it just doesn't exist (along with manpower, supply lines, communication, etc.)

Are there any games where skirmishing, raiding and holding positions (as opposed to amassing huge stacks and dropping them onto enemy armies) is actually represented and useful?

[jomni]

I guess your question is more on strategic raiding than tactical skirmishing during set piece battles.
Some AGEOD games (Renaissance, American Revolution) due to very punishing logistics rules make skirmishing / raiding viable.

[Cheimison]

I guess your question is more on strategic raiding than tactical skirmishing during set piece battles.
Some AGEOD games (Renaissance, American Revolution) due to very punishing logistics rules make skirmishing / raiding viable.

Yeah, after I wrote this I realised that an example I could have given was Revolution Under Siege, which is about the biggest guerrilla raid ever. It's probably on the rather extreme end of that, even for AGEOD.
Alea Jacta Est doesn't seem to have as much C&C and supply detail as some of the other AGEOD games, but getting your baggage trains and ships destroyed is a pain in the butt in that, too.

As far as tactical skirmishing, from what I have read most light infantry/missile units play way more of a role in games than they did in historical battles. Aside from elephant duty, usually the skirmishers would shoot and harass each other for hours, and then do basically nothing in the battle. In most games archers and slingers are basically right on the front line and used to soften up enemies immediately before a charge, which would probably not work and just get them killed IRL.

[Commundert]

ay way more of a role in games than they did in historical of the other AGEOD games, but gbattles. Aside from elephant d

[bayonetbrant]

One the challenges you'll have in what you're describing is scaling.  Essentially, those kinds of conflicts, and more contemporary ones like Algeria, and even now in Afghanistan, is that you have small unit battles with an outsized strategic effect. 

So if you want to fight the actual shootouts, you're playing the equivalent of Squad Leader.
If you want to see their effects, then you're playing the equivalent of one of the COIN games.

Finding a game that gives you both the small unit detail and the (inter)national political effects?
Someone else can pitch in on the digital side.  On the tabletop, it might be Persian Incursion, but that's all aerial combat.

[Cheimison]

Finding a game that gives you both the small unit detail and the (inter)national political effects?

I'm not even necessarily thinking about the skirmishes being represented by an in-game battle ala Total War, but at least being able to direct some manpower and men towards disrupting supply lines, setting your 'stack army' to detach units to harass and rob the locals, etc; which could have major effects due to economic and manpower impacts. In EU4 piracy and blockading is actually useful and can create major disruptions of the enemy's finances, but there's nothing equivalent on land.

The Hegemony game actually represented this fairly well, raiding and pillaging could be very profitable and effective at softening up the enemy before you moved in with your main armies.

[Queeg]

I'm not even necessarily thinking about the skirmishes being represented by an in-game battle ala Total War, but at least being able to direct some manpower and men towards disrupting supply lines, setting your 'stack army' to detach units to harass and rob the locals, etc; which could have major effects due to economic and manpower impacts.

I think AGEOD's Civil War game models this pretty well.  Using cavalry raiders and partisans to destroy supply depots and railroads is an important strategic goal, particularly for the South.  It's one of the few games where you can effectively blunt an opposing offensive by interrupting supply.   

[Cheimison]

I think AGEOD's Civil War game models this pretty well.  Using cavalry raiders and partisans to destroy supply depots and railroads is an important strategic goal, particularly for the South.  It's one of the few games where you can effectively blunt an opposing offensive by interrupting supply.

One of the few games where supply even exists!

[Rayfer]

I'm not even necessarily thinking about the skirmishes being represented by an in-game battle ala Total War, but at least being able to direct some manpower and men towards disrupting supply lines, setting your 'stack army' to detach units to harass and rob the locals, etc; which could have major effects due to economic and manpower impacts.

I think AGEOD's Civil War game models this pretty well.  Using cavalry raiders and partisans to destroy supply depots and railroads is an important strategic goal, particularly for the South.  It's one of the few games where you can effectively blunt an opposing offensive by interrupting supply.

There have been a number of older posts painting a not so complimentary picture of ACW2.  I think it's an outstanding game. The above comments are spot on.

[Sir Slash]

The TW games from Empire TW to Shogun 2 had destructible buildings in regions, farms, ranches, mines, temples, you could send fast quick units over to take-out to injure the enemy economy and public order. And the AI would do the same back to you. I liked it. But it apparently did not make it into Rome 2 or anything since-- all the buildings are in the cities and can't be touched unless you take the city. Too bad I say. It made raiding fun.

Birth of America 2 has Indian/Native American units that can not only raid but set ambushes. They are hard to spot, damned hard to catch, and a successful ambush can ruin a much larger army. And can make you... :pullhair:

[FarAway Sooner]

Yeah.  The more recent TW games give you the option of letting your troops Raid in a countryside.  It's a nice way to raise some income while diminishing the enemy's.  But the mechanism is highly abstracted and there's very little room for managing your effectiveness at that sort of thing.  The same thing is true in many 4x games.

I'm assuming what you're looking for is a more elegant mechanism to model that sort of thing, as opposed to just the ability to do it?

[JasonPratt]

Forge of Freedom is another grand strategy title where assigning raiders is important, especially for the south. But in a different way also for the north, since the south necessarily has to leave a massive coastal area lightly-or-unprotected, making it easy for the north to send relatively small task forces around by navy to screw (somewhat unrealistically) with the soft underbelly of the Confederate Crocodile.

(Not counting the tactical skirmish options in FoF.)

In our current nearly-over mp game of DC: Blitz, Barthheart has made fine use of Polish cavalry (and some infantry) to seriously screw with the backfield of my Nazi invaders. In fact, this is arguably the main way for Poland to win the game -- it even has a strong secondary consequential effect where I pretty much have to spend time eliminating his pockets rather than advancing onward because I don't dare leave them alone to mess with my supply lines!


In a quite different way, the recently released Pre-dynastic Egypt (which plays much like a worker-placement strategy Euro) almost necessarily requires the player to manage ongoing raids against nearby neighbors in order to keep them from getting strong enough to mess with you instead (which harassment can easily be fatal to your campaign chances) while also helping boost your income of food and production.


In a quite different way again, the Scourge of War system -- which admittedly gets into rts, but not in a very standard fashion -- gives a lot of scope to cavalry actions on the field as part of maneuvering the regiments of corps and armies around.

[Philippe]

Mosby's Confederacy is mostly about raiding.  I think it's published by Daedalic and you can find it on Steam.  I found myself liking it when I played it, though it's one step above casual. 

Not currently on sale, but you can Wishlist it and wait for December.

[Moreb]

Forge of Freedom is another grand strategy title where assigning raiders is important, especially for the south. But in a different way also for the north, since the south necessarily has to leave a massive coastal area lightly-or-unprotected, making it easy for the north to send relatively small task forces around by navy to screw (somewhat unrealistically) with the soft underbelly of the Confederate Crocodile.

(Not counting the tactical skirmish options in FoF.)

I LOVED FoF and wish Western Civilization Software could have done a second one. It seems they had a couple of big misses with Conflict of Heroes and Brother Against Brother.

[Boggit]

At the strategic/operational level I agree with all who mention the AGEOD games, as the engine does this very nicely. However, Brant makes a really good point about squad level games, and any of the Squad Battles, Graviteam or Combat mission replicate harassing and skirmishing well.