loading their muskets, shooting and wheeling in different formations, and doing all that
sort of stuff that I had visualized as what was cool about a Civil War battle. The time
came along when that was doable.
It seems like it takes whatWarCraftand the other, simpler RTS games did well,
but then adds a deeper level of simulation, where you have flanking bonuses
and other more traditional wargame features. Was it your goal to take a more
complex wargame and merge it with the fast-paced RTS format?
Again, the idea was to do
a Gettysburg battle game,
and then the genre of
“real-time” made the
most sense. I’d always
had a feeling in playing
any other board game
that something was miss-
ing. The sense that I get
from reading the histo-
ries, the stories of the
battles, is not captured in
a board game or in any of
the games I had played
about Gettysburg. The
time pressure, the sense
of confusion, the sense of
these different forma-
tions, et cetera, didn’t make any sense until you actually had to make the decisions
yourself. And then all of a sudden you realize, “Boy, it wasn’t quite that easy to do that
obvious maneuver that would have won the battle if only they had tried it,” or “Now I
understand why they lined up in these formations that seemed pretty stupid to me
before.” A lot of things started to make sense when the battle came to life. And that was
the idea, to include enough Civil War tactics like flanking, morale, and things like that to
really capture the flavor of a Civil War battle without overwhelming the player with
hard-core wargaming concepts. By representing the key factors that influenced the bat-
tle or that influenced tactics, you could naturally learn how to be a commander. You
wouldn’t have to follow a set of rules, but you would realize that, “Oh, if I give these
guys some support they’re going to be better soldiers, and if I can come in on the flank
then that’s a better attack.” And you go through a learning process as opposed to being
told how to be a good general. You learn that along the way. That was the intention.
I was wondering about the “click-and-drag” method you had the player use for
directing his troops somewhere. It’s very different from what other RTS
games employ. Did you use it because you thought it was a better system, even
though it was not the standard?
I’m not sure I’d do that the same way today. I think that click-and-drag made a certain
amount of sense, especially since as you dragged we were showing with the arrow
28 Chapter 2: Interview: Sid Meier
Gettysburg!