AGEOD, the publisher of the Birth of America series, is relatively new, but the brains behind it are practically as old as computer strategy gaming itself. Phillipe Thilbaut, the designer of the legendary Europa Universalis (the board game on which the slightly less legendary series is based) is the design brains behind this outfit, and by extension behind Birth of America 2.
The game is an operational simulation of a wide variety of military conflicts large (very large) and small, from the tiny brawl of Pequot’s war in the middle of the seventeenth century to the continent-spanning War of 1812. Along the way players can choose from several grand campaigns, like the entire American Revolution or the entire French and Indian War. There are also smaller scenarios that deal with specific theaters in these larger struggles. Playing the American Revolution campaign all the way from start to finish (and winning, barely) took me about six hours all told, and I probably rushed it. So if you’re into this game then you should have a lot of blissful stack shuffling ahead of you.
Yankee
In BoA 2, dragging one stack of units on top of another to trigger a battle is as close to the blood and guts of a combat engagement that players get. That doesn’t mean things are totally abstract, and the player has nothing keep track of. The game is extremely detailed. Terrain, weather, supply, training, the abilities of your leaders, their experience and morale can each one by themselves tip the balance of power in favor of one force over another. You can even watch each individual battle unfold from a pop-up box and see at the end of each battle how things went.
Those stacks I mentioned are made up of several types of individual units. Garden-variety militia and regulars (one can be trained up to the level of the other after a sufficient amount of time) form the backbone of every army, artillery provides firepower in battles and does damage in sieges, supply caravans keep men fed and marching, and leaders can greatly increase the capabilities of the troops under them.
Scenarios are won by a combination of prudent army construction, skillful maneuvering, political calculation and nerves. BoA 2 is not an easy game – far from it – but it's not inscrutable either. If you spend time getting beaten up for mistakes, you'll learn, and the satisfaction of entrapping an army and cutting it to pieces, or brokering a key deal which brings in an ally with lots of firepower, becomes ten time more satisfying than it would have been otherwise.
BoA doesn't pull any cheap tricks to keep things competitive; all the data you'd need to win is displayed right in front of you, the AI doesn't appear to cheat, and all the options you have available at any given point are clearly explained by tooltips and the manual.
The scenarios themselves are very diverse. Some are clearly intended as tutorials: Pequot's war, for instance, and the scenario dealing with the first few months of the southern campaign in the Revolutionary War. Others are highly detailed behemoths that simply can't be tackled by anyone other than an experienced player. The French and Indian War scenarios are the prime examples of this, with fifteen years' worth of gametime, fighting from Cuba to Nova Scotia, and dozens upon dozens of units and forts to worry about. The sides are historically accurate, obviously, so playing as the French is a real challenge. BoA 2 lets you pick your own level of involvement, however, and even for the casual player there are tons of scenarios to play.
Doodle
Graphically, BoA 2 is almost too good. The map, which is the thing you spend most of your time looking at, is wonderfully drawn, as are all the unit graphics. The interface is very accessible, and for the most part the game presents everything relevant on a single screen. Too many war games just give you a topographic map and NATO symbols. BoA, however, attempts to replicate the lush map illustrations of the period, and the results are very easy on the eyes, especially in a genre that typically turns its nose up at graphical fidelity.
The only real complaint I have is that the tutorial is not terribly comprehensive. A lot of the learning occurs by trial and error, which, to be honest, is probably the best way to teach things, but I would have felt better having been given more instruction prior to taking the reins for the first time.
But this is an insignificant issue. Birth of America 2 is rock-solid, highly polished, and very, very fun. It doesn't rock the boat – there's really no need to – and for the right people it offers the promise of long happy hours orchestrating conquest behind the keyboard.
