StrategyFront Gaming

From Russia With Love

In the midst of World War 1, there emerged an often forgotten conflict that profoundly shaped the modern world: The Russian Civil War. This was Communism’s first resounding victory over the old order of European monarchies. Now you’re able to play it out in AGEOD’s wargame Revolution Under Siege Gold. 

The Russian Revolution is an incredibly interesting conflict that featured multiple Russian factions, foreign interventions, and a rogue contingent of Czechozsolvakians who traveled across to the coast of Siberia just to get home. 

The conflict is ripe for alternative history scenarios, with the variety of different factions at play, and the conflict’s impact on subsequent history.

Background on Revolution Under Siege Gold

AGEOD brings the Russian Civil War to life with it’s highly detailed but cumbersome Adaptive Game Engine. Like all AGEOD titles, the game uses a WEGO system for executing turns.

After you’ve planned your army movements and made your decisions both you and the enemy will move at the same time. 

This creates a more chaotic situation as you’ll have to take into account the enemy’s potential plans as well.

With an “I go, you go” system, which most turn-based games use, you’re able to see the moves the enemy makes before putting your own plans in motion. 

How is Revolution Under Siege Gold’s Gameplay?

The system is easy to learn, with movement consisting of picking up units and dropping them where you want them to go.

The game will tell you how long it will take them to get there. The game is divided up into asymmetric territories that armies will move through. When two armies enter the same territory they will eventually clash in a battle. 

I say eventually because there’s a good chance they won’t join battle immediately and will instead jockey around for position before engaging.

This, like much of the goings-on in an AGEOD game, happens behind the scenes without the player’s input. 

Turns take place over 15 days so you’ll want to plan your army movements to take palace over that time since using less than that will be inefficient. Unless you’re planning to dig-in or besiege a city.

Leaders are a huge part of the game as armies without proper officers will gain significant debuffs in battle and movement. You’ll also not be able to create death stacks. As armies rely on a certain amount of supply which can be exhausted. 

Armies also have an officer activation modifier which means that if they fail an activation test, then they will not be able to move for that turn.

This can be frustrating as that army you were counting on to reinforce you for the main battle could end up being delayed. 

This is meant to simulate situations where commanders were delayed, insubordinate, or didn’t receive the orders correctly. Once you’ll realize what’s going on you’ll have to arrange your plans to account for the fact that some of your forces may not move that turn. 

Warfare in Revolution

The unit composition is intuitive, with the most basic group being a regiment which can form brigades, and then armies.

You’ll have everything from infantry to armored trains at your disposal. Certain troops can only be trained in certain territories, meaning losing ground could mean losing a valuable pool of soldiers. 

The game features an entrenchment system that grants bonuses to your army the longer they stand in the same territory. This means the game often favors the defender in battles since the attacker will be fighting an entrenched position and may not have all their forces on the field.

Where it becomes more complex is when certain units can desert if they’re brought too far from their homes. All units will melt away if they don’t have enough supply for too long.

This forces you to think about army supply when making your moves. As a result, overextending your forces can lead to utter disaster. 

Battles are abstracted and mostly out of your hands but the game has incredibly detailed after-action reports. Reading these will tell you exactly what happened and why your army won or lost.

Still, these after-action reports clunky. It’d be nice to know at a glance why you did so well in a fight, without having to dive into pages of text. 

Territory control is divided up into two factors: faction loyalty and military control. Moving an army through a territory will bring it under your control, allowing supplies to pass through. 

Whether the people are loyal to you or not is another factor. You can gain loyalty through political actions like building structures. Or if loyalty becomes too low the area can rebel and spawn regiments of partisans. 

Factions of the Russian Civil War

The multiple factions of the civil war are all playable, with the game being divided up into different scenarios.

You can take on more manageable campaigns, like the Finnish Civil War or the Siberian Campaign before tackling the behemoth main campaign. Which covers the entirety of the war. 

In the larger scenarios, the game becomes far more complex. There are many historical scripts that can prevent certain units from moving, spawn armies, or otherwise interrupt the game.

Unless you read the hefty rulebook these can come out of nowhere and be frustrating. 

Victory in Revolution Under Siege Gold

Victory in the campaign is gained through breaking your enemy’s national morale. When you capture a city, win a battle, or promote officers will contribute to your own national morale. While subtracting from the enemies.

More National Morale will buff your units, increase your production output, and eventually allow you to claim victory. 

Of great importance are strategic cities and centers of supply. This game is about maneuver warfare not attrition.

You don’t want to be slugging it out whittling down the enemy force. Instead, you want to outpace them, cut their supply lines, and break their will to fight. 

Critique

The game can be downright baffling at times. Especially, when you can’t figure out why you aren’t allowed to move some unit. Or even worse why you lost that battle where you had an advantage.

The frustrating thing is it’s all there, it’s just hidden behind layers of menus and text. 

The game also struggles with some of the organizational aspects, it can take a while to carefully set up and manage your armies, logistics, and supplies. This is tedious work that takes you away from the meat of the interesting strategic decisions.

That being said, some players will love the organizational and supply aspects of the game. But I wish there was more feedback to them. For there to be more of an impact on having a well-organized army vs. one that’s a mess. 

Graphics & Sound

The game takes great care with its presentation. Everything from some individual regiments having their own portraits to each leader being represented is great. The map is beautiful and overall the graphics while not good by any means have a charm to them. 

What’s not so great is the performance and the UI. Go on any forum about AGEOD games and you’ll have someone talking about performance.

The engine is hugely detailed and is simulating a lot of things at once. Meaning even on great PC setups it will chug and stutter.

Remember to save often because crashes will happen.

The UI is definitely cumbersome, but once you get the hang of it, then you may come to appreciate its fairly utilitarian design.

Conclusion

Revolution Under Siege: Gold is one of those great games that cover an interesting historical period and succeed as a challenging strategy game.

While it hasn’t aged well in graphics, overall readability, and performance, the depth of its strategic decision making.

If you want to really challenge yourself, playing multiplayer is an amazing way to really take advantage of the organizational systems. 

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If you’d like to purchase: Revolution Under Siege Gold on G2A.com