Old Gamers Never Die: Learning (or Relearning) Strategy in 'Crusade in Europe'

Actual screen shot from my first session of Crusade in Europe since 1994.

Back in the late 1980s, before I acquired my first MS-DOS-based PC, I owned an Apple IIe that I received from my father's brother, Sixto Diaz-Granados, as a gift. I was in college and majoring in journalism then, so I mostly used my Apple for school-related projects such as ENC-2301 essays, articles for the student newspaper, and term papers for the courses that required them. 

But even though academic work was my primary focus, I'd be lying if I said I didn't play computer games on my Apple computer. Being young and with not much of a social life, I was, at least for a while, a bit of a gamer while I was in college and even for a few years after that.

In my previous post on the topic of gaming and MicroProse's Crusade in Europe, I wrote about how much I enjoyed military-themed strategy games and simulations when I had my Apple IIe. Sure, I also attempted to play games from other genres, including Summer Games from Epyx Games and Activision's Aliens, but my favorite go-to games between 1987 (the year I received my Apple) and 1992 (the year I bought my first IBM-compatible DOS computer) were the three Command Series games published by MicroProse: Decision in the Desert, Conflict in Vietnam, and Crusade in Europe. 

Of the three, Crusade was my all-time favorite, even though Decision in the Desert was a direct prequel set during the 1940-1942 campaigns in North Africa before the U.S.-British Operation Torch and had a similar graphic user interface and game design. I liked Conflict in Vietnam and Decision well enough, but I spent more time playing Crusade due to my fascination with the campaigns in Northwest Europe during the closing stages of World War II in the European theater of war.  

Heck, I kept on playing that game even after I got a PC that ran on DOS and Windows; I only stopped because my Apple IIe's color monitor finally gave up the ghost sometime in the mid-1990s.  And until a week or so ago, I thought that I'd never sit at my computer and command my virtual troops again until I discovered a site (www.myabandonware.com) where old-school games can be played via a DOS emulator, either as a download or from a compatible browser. (I chose the browser option; I am somewhat reluctant to download the game file directly.)

Learning (or Relearning) Strategy

I've played Crusade in Europe a few times over the past week. During my usual workdays (writers and bloggers do keep schedules, even though we are free to set our own hours), I try to limit my time on Crusade to the short (30-45 minutes) scenarios, such as Clearing the Beaches in the Battle of Normandy game or Market-Garden: A Bridge Too Far from the game based on the ill-fated airborne operation to capture a bridgehead in Holland in the fall of 1944.

This past weekend, though, I spent a few hours playing a longer scenario, The Liberation of Paris, the fifth and final variant of the Battle for Normandy campaign. 

This is a long game that begins on at 6 AM D-Day (June 6, 1944) and ends at 6 PM on August 25, 1944 unless a player beats the computer (or another human player in the "hot seat" mode) before that date.  When I owned the game (complete with manual) and played it on my Apple, playing long games such as The Liberation of Paris or even the longer Crusade: The Battle for France wasn't problematic. I had a box full of 5.25-inch floppies to save games in (Apples did not have hard drives), so if I couldn't play Crusade in Europe in one sitting because of school or the odd social occasion, I'd just hit "S" to save the game, take the game disc out of the drive, swap in the save disc, store the game in a file, then resume the session at a later time.

Screen shot from Day 1 of Operation Market-Garden: "A Bridge Too Far." 

Now, of course, I can't do that, so I played The Liberation of Paris last Sunday in one extended session that took most of the afternoon. I had no major plans that day, and it had been a long time since I had last commanded the Allies and freed France's capital from the occupying German army. 

I'm not going to regale you with a detailed "after action review" of my weekend exploits; it would take me hours just to reconstruct the game from memory, and you'd probably be bored by the time you got to the part about my version of Operation COBRA. 

I will, however, tell you what I learned - or rather, relearned - about strategy and tactics while playing Crusade in Europe.

• Terrain Matters: Although the game's graphics are primitive by 2018 standards, one of the things that Crusade in Europe gets right is the role played by terrain in modern warfare. You don't have to be a West Point grad to know that the rougher the terrain is, the harder it is to move your divisions or to attack enemy positions, especially if those positions are held by troops in defensive formations. You can draw arrows on a map all you like to indicate what you'd like to do; it's quite another matter to make your planned operations go well if you're attacking a dug-in infantry or panzer division on hilly terrain or in the confining spaces of the Normandy bocage (hedgerow) country. 
• Logistics Matter: Although Crusade in Europe handles the distribution of supplies without player intervention, it's up to you to make sure that your lines of communication are secure and kept from obstruction by enemy units. In game-playing terms, this means that you must make sure that none of your units gets surrounded by enemy units or ends up isolated (even if it is not surrounded) so that supplies can't get to your troops. I lost the 2nd Armored Division (13,200 men and 320 tanks) because I got too cocky in mid-game and tried to outflank a German defensive line just north of Argentan.  The division didn't get surrounded, but I'd placed it several hexes away and a bit to the northeast from the main American army. The 2nd Armored was not in contact with the enemy, but a German division's "zone of control" prevented the Allied supply trains from reaching the stranded unit, so it ran out of fuel, food, and ammo and surrendered because the other Allied forces could not link up with it once it became immobile.
• Air Power Is Not a Panacea: Crusade in Europe only allows players to command tactical air units equipped primarily with fighter-bombers. The game doesn't tell you what aircraft types are in use, but I suppose the main U.S. aircraft is the P-47 Thunderbolt; the Royal Air Force probably fields the Hawker Typhoon ("Tiffy"). Both of these planes were used to good effect in the ground-attack role and did a lot of damage to the German armies in Normandy and elsewhere during the war. If used properly, the tactical air wings can wreak havoc on enemy units, especially if the targeted German division or regiment is in mobile formation or is low on supplies and cut off from other friendly units. However, air units cannot annihilate enemy units on their own, especially if they are attacking fortified positions, and they are likely to suffer heavy casualties, especially in days when the weather is "overcast." 

The game manual cover for the Commodore 64 version of Crusade in Europe. The Apple II version's manual had a similar illustration, but the cover was done in a different shade of blue.  

Even though I knew the basics of Crusade in Europe and defeated the computer's German armies so soundly that the scenario ended 10 days before the historical cut-off date of August 25, 1944, I still made mistakes, both in my strategy and in my tactics. I focused too hard on capturing Cherbourg and Avranches early in the campaign, but didn't think too much about defeating the Germans' Fifth Panzer Army in the British sector. Consequently, the Wehrmacht held on to Caen well into August, and it was only by the slimmest of margins that I was able to capture Paris and a few other critical points by August 15, 1944.

That having been said, next time I'll do better.