The below chart tracks national material capabilities (CINC as discussed in previous post) for the two Cold War superpowers:

Interesting how the US value takes a hit round 1970. In those years, the US decreased its military personnel from 3.5 million to about 2 million - with also certain reductions in military expenditure.

Here a military…

I've always had the urge to define national power in quantitative terms. Many histories strike me as overly wishy-washy due to an insufficient grounding in numbers. Not only does this hamper understanding, but it also presents a considerable challenge in terms of wargame design.

One scholarly effort to that effect is the "Correlates of War" project. It defines "power" as "the ability of a nation to exercise and resist influence - [...] a function of many factors, among them…

By the time Hannibal settled into winter quarters after his celebrated Cannae campaign, he might have felt in equal measure elated and frustrated. While many cities in tribes in Southern Italy had joined his cause (most notably Italy's second city, Capua), he had failed to secure the vital ports of Campania (most notably Neapolis), nor the strategically important Greek cities further to the south (Tarentum, Rhegium).

Cannae thus hadn't dealt Rome a knock-out blow by having…

Valley Games has now announced a First Punic War expansion to HANNIBAL. I suppose it's basically the variant once featured in THE GENERAL. It's been years, but in checking out that variant, I thought it fell short in two major ways:

1) In my view, a game on the First Punic War needs quite another map from that of HANNIBAL given the more narrow geographical scope of Hamilcar's war to that of his one-eyed son. Sicily  was the main theatre of this war and ought to be shown in sufficient…

I wrote the below article for DIPLOMACY WORLD a good year ago. Since then 1648 has undergone further changes, yet the below nonetheless serves as a good introduction to the game. For the game's rules, and maps visit http://www.dipwiki.com/index.php?title=1648…