Part 5: Information/Intelligence

Information in war is never perfect. In even the simplest wargames we don't know everything about the enemy. In chess we can see his every move, yet we don't know his plans. In battles in the Total War series we can see his units but usually not their stats. In most RTS's we can't see enemy bases or units unless some of our soldiers are near them. In even more realistic games, like the Project Revolution mod for Battlefield 2, commanders can't accurately tell what the players themselves are doing.

1 Obtaining Ingelligence

Getting information, aka intelligence, is done several ways in real life. We can try to intercept enemy communications and spy directly on them. We can hire spies to collect data for us. On the operational or tactical level, we can do reconnaissance. We can send special troops like AWACS planes or light cavalry to approach the enemy and tell us what they see. Or, we can do reconnaissance by force, which is probing the enemy with some troops without committing our forces to a full combat. The enemy's response gives us some information on what he's planning to do.

We could try to guess how the enemy acts. One way is learning their doctrine. For instance, in the High and Late Middle Ages the Byzantines knew that Western armies preferred direct confrontation and generally had poor supplying and did their best to find food from the surrounding area. The Byzantines exploited that and when fighting Western Europeans avoided the enemy army for some time until the soldiers began to starve. Only then, when the Franks' dps and hp were lowered did the Byzantines risk their own troops' hp and dps. Another way is to try to understand the enemy general's methods and personality. Even Sun Tzu advocated that. If we do, we can send our spearmen to where he usually sends his cavalry, or exploit his weaknesses and taunt/provoke him if he is impatient or easily angered.

2 Using Intelligence

Predicting the enemy plans

As I already mentioned, if we know the habits of the enemy general, we can be better prepared for his most likely ways of attacking, the most likely routes of cavalry or positions of archers.

Controlling the enemy's actions

We can also manipulate the enemy. As a universal rule of wargaming, players attack weaker or equal enemy armies and try to flee from bigger armies. Therefore, if they know our army to be stronger, they will pull back, hoping to fight another day (minute?) when the odds are more favorable. If they see that we have less hp/dps, they will attack and use the opportunity to destroy our troops before we can muster more. So, if we are stronger, we can hide half our army and let the enemy approach in fighting range. Then, we get out of the cover and our whole army will drain a lot of the enemy's hp, while the smaller enemy army will not drain as much. Then the opponent will pull away, but only after being deceived into coming to our force.

Similarly, we can pretend to be stronger than the enemy and make him avoid confrontation. In the Battle of the Falernian Territory during the Second Punic War, Hannibal was campaigning in Italy when at one point he found his army trapped in a river valley by the Romans. Unwilling to risk a direct confrontation with the Roman general Fabius, Hannibal could do little other than stay there and be surrounded. When the night fell, however, he ordered his men to tie torches to the horns of the two thousand oxen of the army and direct them at the Romans. The Romans, not sure whether Hannibal had hidden troops or surprising reinforcements or some supernatural power, moved away and Hannibal escaped.

A more extreme example is that of Zhuge Liang, a Chinese general from the Late Antiquity. At one point he was residing in a town with few soldiers, away from his army, when he heard news that an enemy general, Sima Qian, was very close with his army. Capture seemed inevitable. Throughout Ancient China, Zhuge Liang had a reputation of laying traps and using cunning. He decided to bluff and ordered the town gates to be opened and he himself stood on the wall above them, chanting religious chants and looking innocent. Seeing this, Sima Qian naturally suspected a trap of some sort and withdrew.

Just as people make a fight or flight decision based on the size of the eny army, they also decide how much troops to send in specific parts of the battlefield based on how strong the enemy is there. Thus, the same logic works on the tactical, as well as the operational level. However, it is restricted by the game mechanics and how much we can hide.