Time Commanders

Each week four contestants come together as a team to recreate a historical battle via computer simulator. With two of the group playing generals with an overview of the battlefield, the other two play Lieutenants who are more in touch with the progress of the battle. When they lose or win, two military historians take them through on the simulator what actually happened in the real battle.

Who says learning can't be fun? In this lively, enjoyable show, historical battles (by which I mean Roman times) are recreated with modern day people playing generals and designing the tactics of the battle with the same resources that were available in the real battle. This is very interesting and it is quite fun to see how the battle comes together, it's like some strategy games on the PC but at a faster speed! If you like those games then you should probably like this show.

At the end of the show, the historians critique the strategy the group used and point out the moments in the battle where the tide turned (whether for or against them). They will then reset the simulator and let the battle play as it did in real life and talk through what really happened. Of course, it's not always that the real battle brought victory for the contestant's team but more often than not they are playing with a stronger force than the computer opponents.

Overall this is quite a fun show. I'm sure it plays to a select audience but the mix of history, battles and computers make it feel enjoyable to watch. Also of value are the strained faces on the contestants when they see their forces butchered because they made the wrong decisions! Enjoyable show.

This series taught me one important thing: always take the initiative.

The set up of this real-time wargames-programme seems rather silly: non-military contestants with little experience playing wargames must fight out a historic, ancient battle with the computer-controlled enemy. To carry out this mission they have full access to 'a 21st century warcontrol centre,' to top this they even have a real-time *sattelite-view* of the battlefield!

Don't be fooled though. Most of the fun comes not from the actual fighting on screen, but from the interaction between the human playerteam. There are four teammembers, two are generals who must delegate their decisions to their lieutenants. The thing is, both generals have the overall view of the battle, but the lieutenants are better suited for the actual man-to-man fighting. The real fun comes from the amount of cooperation and coordination between the players.

For example: one game, played by history students, one of the generals was very dominant and the other general was left with little to do but look on. This happens quite a lot during shows; it's extremely satisfying to watch a bully-general bark orders at his lieutenants, focusing on tiny bits of the fighting, caught up in *micro-management*, leaving his lieutenants with little to do but obey orders 'to move left, engage the enemy, no get back, defend...' Chaos, utter chaos! If things get really hot, players will start arguing with each other during the battle, or frustrated lieutenants will simply ignore orders and fight their own battle as best they can.

This means that most battles turn into chaotic scenes, which of course to the viewer at home is incredible fun, watching lifelong friendships put to the test. That's not to say there aren't actually good battles. The two best shows I saw were:

1) an all-female team of friends (and colleguaes); once again, one general completely dominated the HQ command table. Fortunately, this female general was actually quite good, taking the initiative and giving agressive attacking orders. Her lieutenants were also good, with one in particular who was ordered 'not to engage' with her elite troops. As most amateurs (myself included) are convinced elite troops should be kept in reserve till the moment they are really needed. This however was, as one of the military expert-commentators explained, a common made error. Elite troops should engage the enemy from the start if possible. If not, a commander runs the risk of losing the battle and then even elite troops cannot turn the tide.

Fortunately for the team, the lieutenant chose to ignore orders ('keep elite in reserve') and she acted on her own initiative and had the elite troops engage the enemy anyhow. The battle was won decisively by the team. Impressive, this was also the verdict of the two military expert commentators.

2) The other show that featured a decisive victory for the team was Alexander The Great's final showdown with Persian king Darius II (I think). This team of male life-long friends had the distinct advantage that its generals had had in fact quite some experience playing wargames. Needless to say, they won a decisive victory, although there was one little snag: Alexander The Great, used to command from the front, was killed in action! LOL.

Really hope there will be a new season of this great show, Time Commanders!

... but it's loaded against the competitors in this game. Four contestants are designated as 2 generals and 2 lieutenants and given an army to command in a computer simulacrum of a historical battle. On the technical side everything is perfect. The computers doing the simulation are running the engine written by The Creative Assembly, which is behind the Total War series of computer games (Shogun, Medieval and Rome). I can only dream about the hardware it must be running on, even 4 years later my quite modern PC doesn't make it look half as good! So far so good.

My main issue with this program is that they set the contestants up to fall. The one criticism from the reprehensibly smug military experts which was made every week (except on the rare occasions that the team doesn't fall into the carefully laid trap) is that no-one took overall command of the four man team. In which case, WHY DID YOU CALL 2 OF THEM GENERALS?? Surely it would have been more appropriate to call them General, Colonel and Lieutenants if you expected one to take overall control. The other common criticism is that the generals tended to micro-manage the action on the battle field rather than giving high level instructions and letting the lieuts decide the details of implementation. In other words, the generals spent too much time dictating tactics at the expense of enforcing an overall strategy. I feel this *is* something the contestants should have figured out for themselves.

It's probably obvious that I have played the Total War games ad nauseam. There are a few things that I learned very quickly from battles which would have stood these people in good stead. First and foremost is the eternal triangle of the battlefield: Cavalry kill archers, archers nail spearmen and spearmen are death to cavalry. There are exceptions, but 9 times out of 10 it plays out that way. I feel that they should have been told this before battles, I was not entertained by the humiliating routs caused quite often by tactical blunders which that maxim teaches against.

All in all, the part of the program I found most interesting was the computer playing out how the battle actually happened and the information given about the character and genius of old military commanders, snippets about how the different troop types, armies, weapons etc. functioned. And it is completely obvious that Aryeh has enormous respect for the Roman army and the way it went about its business, he repeatedly refers to it as a "meat grinder"!