What’s in a name? Apparently, when Decision Games went to publish Joseph Miranda’s operational-level simulation of a hypothetical mainland Chinese invasion of Taiwan they couldn’t decide on a title. Invasion Taipei appears on the cover. TAIPEI: The Communist Invasion of Taiwan, 2000 was on the rule book. Taipei: China Invades is the BoardGameGeek listing. After looking at the over, with two of three photos showing naval action, my comments on the game posted to BGG showed further confusion:
This is a game of GROUND combat on Taiwan. Three other (major) factors of the battle are abstracted: Information Warfare, Air Warfare, and Naval Warfare. IO is treated as an operational overview using IW points. The air module is something akin to Crisis: Korea 1995 or the Fleet series. Naval warfare is TOTALLY abstracted out. For me, these three components are even MORE important than the land battle, hence my lower rating for inappropriate focus.
This week I relooked at Taipei and have some different thoughts.
In [1.0] INTRODUCTION, the claim is made that “The game simulates the full range of modern operational level warfare, including land, air and information operations.” Note the lack of naval. There are naval aspects to the game but they are heavily abstracted. The focus of the game is the fighting ashore in Taiwan. Combat focuses on ground and air units. For the most part, this campaign is presented using a somewhat standard hex & counter wargame approach.
The real difference in Taipei is the Information Warfare rules. IW in the game comes in two flavors, C4I and Information Warfare. First, certain units are given a C4I Rating. Units with a C4I rating can execute Infiltration Movement (move from one enemy Zone of Control – ZOC – to another ZOC). They also have a choice of which Combat Results Table (CRT) they want to use (there are three in the game). Most powerfully, units with a C4I Rating and “In Command” gain a second impulse to move and fight.
The Advanced Rules Game includes [25.0] INFORMATION WARFARE. This form of IW takes two forms; missions (such as EW, PSYOPS, or OPSEC) – what the military commonly calls EW & Cyber today – and the Information Warfare Index. The IW Index is a balance of world opinion, political support, and media access for both sides. Executing IW missions affects units on the battlefield. The IW Index is shifted based on Direct Action; a shifting of points up or down the index based on battlefield actions and results. Each player strives for IW Dominance which add Political Points.
Political Points leads to the victory conditions and probably one of the most confusing parts of the game for me to grasp. In concept it looks simple. To start with there are no Victory Points to track. Instead, there are two types of victory in Taipei; military and political. A Military Victory is straight-forward – occupy both Taipei city hexes AND at east three other city hexes AND at least two port towns. A Political Victory is a bit more complicated. A Political Victory occurs if, at the end of the game, one player has at least twice as many Political Points as their opponent. Political Points are earned by adding the cost taken in the Scenario Options PLUS 50 points for IW Dominance. Grokking the interaction between Political Points and Scenario Options and the IW Index takes a bit of work. Not helping is the fact the IW Index is not included in any table or on the map. My IW Index was found on Grognard.com.
The “game thesis” of Taipei appears to be a simulation of the then-current thinking about the Revolution in Military Affairs. In this case, Miranda focused on the advantages a C4I-enabled force would bring to the battlefield. Thus, the US forces have a C4I advantage while only a few allied units can fully integrate. The Chinese forces, on the other hand, are far more numerous but, with very few exceptions, lack the C4I to compete with the Coalition. Outside of Information Warfare, Miranda approached the battle in very conservative, conventional terms. The third CRT is names the AirLand Battle CRT – clearly a throwback to the 1980’s AirLand Battle concept from Europe and executed in the 1990’s in DESERT STORM. Taipei does not take on the then-emerging concept of Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) – the naval campaign just to get to Taiwan.
Looking at Taipei through this narrower lens, in this case as only a simulation of a C4I-enabled force fighting a non-C4I enemy, the game makes more sense. After one play I am not sure one can draw too many lessons from the game. Given its age, that may be too much to ask. Then again, AirLand Battle is making a bit of a comeback. Instead, I probably need to accept Taipei for what is is; a time capsule of then-contemporary thinking of the impact of information warfare on the battlefield.
Rocky Mountain Navy Gamer 