Rule the Waves

The early 20th century naval management and combat game Rule the Waves (and their earlier combat only game Steam and Iron) was first brought to my attention through one of Tim Stone's excellent Flare Path columns on RPS. I tried and enjoyed the demo of Steam and Iron, but the talk of designing, building and organizing your own fleet of ships was what really enticed me, so I settled down to wait for Rule the Waves. Another Flare Path column (which also captures what's so exciting about the game wonderfully) alerted me to the release, and so here I am in charge of the Italian navy from 1900 to 1925.

I chose Italy since I figured they would have a little more to do than Austria-Hungary, but none of the extensive colonial responsibilities of most other playable countries, and not too large a fleet or budget to handle. I also chose small fleets, and these two things combined for a very manageable number of ships. The following screenshot contains the entirety of my fleet in 1910 after 10 years of play - I've lost no ships, and have commissioned three more battleships, three more armoured cruisers, one light cruiser, four destroyers, and four minesweepers in addition to my starting fleet. I also have two light cruisers under construction, bringing me to a total of 40 ships. It might look a little intimidating (it certainly was to me at first), but once you get a feel for the details and capabilities of your ship classes, and see a few of the individuals in action, they'll start to feel like old friends.

You can choose to design your own starter fleet if you wish, but so far this game I've been leaning on the auto-designer as a basis for my own designs, and it seems to work perfectly well. I also haven't really had much reason to try designing particularly specialized ships, since Italy really only has to maintain a presence in the Mediterranean, so I've been mainly focused on maintaining a parity of battleships there with Austria-Hungary and France - this changed a little for me after I gained Kamchatka as colony following a war with Russia, so I now have two light cruisers and a minesweeper on foreign service in Northeast Asia (you need to maintain an appropriate presence in foreign territories where you have significant holdings).

Gaining Kamchatka was part of the peace accords following my second war with Russia, which actually went worse in a naval sense than the first war, but as in real life things don't always turn out as you'd wish or expect. The first war came as a bit of a surprise - I'd been expecting things to heat up with Austria-Hungary, but instead I found myself facing a handful of Russian cruisers harassing our Mediterranean shipping. My first battle of the game was a cruiser engagement, and started out as an underwhelming affair, with my small cruiser force (the light cruisers Nino Brixio, Taranto, and three supporting destroyers) sailing around futilely searching for enemies. I was a little confused at this point as to how the objectives worked in these scenarios, and there were no details to be found in the objectives tab - the Russians were attempting a bombardment, but I had skimmed that info in the pre-battle popup in my excitement to see some action. So we sailed around semi-randomly for around 15 hours, watching the sun sink and night fall, with occasional unclear reports of enemy sightings and unsettling gunshots in the distance.

The time limit for the scenario was coming up and I was resigned to an entirely unmemorable first 'battle', when at around 5:00am enemy warships were sighted, and the Taranto comes under fire - those small white circles!

Thirsty for action, we engage with gusto, and soon have estimations on the type of enemy ships, and score the first hit of the battle (I almost cheered at seeing that red circle appear). I was a little concerned to see an armoured cruiser, which based on my own ships would be better armed and protected than my light cruisers, but we could hardly turn away because of that.

In the end, that proved to be a simple misidentification, and both my opponents turned out to be CL Pallada classes. As you can see, they have the same 3,100 ton displacement, same speed of 21 knots, and half an inch more belt armour. They also carry more guns in total than our Nino Brixio class, but only 4 inchers and a few 3 inchers as opposed to our 5 inch guns.

The battle rages on and both sides take more hits, but overall we seem to be coming out in front. It's gratifying to see one of their ships burst into flame, and I keep pushing our cruisers to get in close and keep making those hits.

Fighting continues long after the time limit is reached, since battles only end when there are no enemy ships in sight of each other, and I don't intend to let my quarry get away while we hold an advantage. It goes on long enough that the Nino Brixio uses up more than half of her ammunition. Eventually the wounded Pallada class becomes so slow that her compatriot abandons her to our mercy and flees. We close in, and after circling her once the Taranto launches a couple of torpedoes in succession.

The second one puts her beyond saving, and she sinks. The Nino Brixio picks up 186 survivors, and that brings an end to our first engagement. A major victory indeed!

Of course, literally moments after seeing our victory points in the war increased to 726 compared to their 128, we get news about a big army offensive I earlier sacrificed some of my budget to accommodate.

Well, that's disappointing. Bloody footsloggers! Luckily, civil unrest in Russia eventually forces them to seek an immediate peace with us, and their advantage in VPs doesn't amount to anything. In the second war later I suffer badly from torpedoes hitting my cruisers, always as they close on damaged Russian ships seeking a repeat of the success in my earlier battle. Submarines had been researched and built by this point, and Italian subs were present in both battles - I'm wondering if I had in fact been hit by friendly fire (twice it happened!), or perhaps I missed torpedoes fired from Russian subs. In any case, once again unrest came to my aid and forced the Russians to the negotiating table, this time even offering concessions, so desperate were they to finish the war.

Since then it's been mostly quiet going into 1910, but as you can see from the first screenshot, tensions with France are high, and they've been recently working on new battle cruisers. So we'll see what the future brings. Whatever the case, I'm excited to finish this campaign and start another, probably still with small fleets but perhaps a larger nation.