Black Velvet: taste test of the Bismarck Cocktail

“Black Velvet” was mentioned in Massie’s Dreadnought as the the name of the “concoction” Otto von Bismarck favored in his younger days as a minor diplomat, before his geopolitical triumphs: the smacking down of Denmark in the Schleswig-Holstein affair; showing Austria just who called the shots in the Germanosphere; and treating the French like the soft cheese they had become in the Franco-Prussian War, not to mention unifying the German states into a Prussia-dominated nation.

Black Velvet was a mixture of stout and champagne, but the passage that mentions it has no other details, whether on proportions or which went in the glass first. So we were on our own. We used Guinness and Freixenet, a low-end Spanish champagne-like variety that’s a coupla bucks closer to real champagne than Great Western, and also keeps the whole affair European.

A pint glass was used and the base experimental starting ratio was three parts stout to one part champagne. Poured the stout in first and then slowly topped with the bubbly. Immediately it frizzed the perfect Guinness head over the top. A quick sip to prevent too much overflow was all champagne. Once it settled we stirred it gently with the handle of a wooden spoon and then had a first real taste.

The strong character of the stout was completely neutralized. The sensation was a mixture of hard and smooth. The stout provided the body that champagne can never have, and the champagne added a shimmering gloss that had, however, lost all fruitiness.

Second glass was more stout and just a topping off with a dash of champagne. Same effect. Apparently no matter how much you add, the dark nutty taste of the stout goes away, and what you’re left with is a full-bodied Teutonic non-fruity champagne. If the Germans had invented champagne, this is what it would be like. Makes a kind of sense.

Some notes on Bismarck: Not an intellectual by any stretch he was rewarded with vast estates for his victories; in one of the houses he filled the basement with all the books given him over the years, none of which he ever read.

Later in life, though he had few friends, he kept his fondness for food and drink. “On the rare occasions when Bismarck entertained, guests were astonished by the lavish table spread by the Princess and the courtesy and warmth exhibited by the Prince. Visitors arriving at ten p.m. would find awaiting them Brunswick sausages, Westphalian ham, Elbe eels, sardines, anchovies, caviar (usually a gift from St. Petersburg), salmon, hard-boiled eggs, cheeses and bottles of dark Bavarian beer. Bismarck appeared at eleven.”

He also suffered from insomnia. “At night he slept poorly or not at all. Often he lay awake until seven a.m., then slept until 2 p.m. Lying in bed, he mulled over his grievances. ‘I have spent the whole night hating.’ he said once. When no immediate object of hatred was available he ransacked his memory to dredge up wrongs done to him years before.”"

When his work redrawng the map of Europe was done, Bismarck had no dreams of world domination. “The years after 1887 seemed anticlimactic. The moments of daring calculation, of dramatic victories snatched from probable catastrophe, were over. ‘I am bored,’ Bismarck said in 1874. ‘The great things are done.’”

At one point he confessed to what might be diagnosed today as multiple personality disorder. “Faust complains of having two souls in his breast. I have a whole squabbling crowd. It goes on as in a republic.”

Source: Dreadnought, Robert K. Massie

Spam in History: Turbina at Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee Naval Review

Taking a break from Clancy’s Debt of Honor to pick up a brick (more like a cinderblock) that’s mentioned in it, Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie.

And before even getting to the numbered pages, we find an interesting episode. During the huge naval review to celebrate Queen Victoria’s 60th Jubilee (here’s the breathless contemporary NY Times account)  Portsmouth harbor was filled with the cream of the global nautical crop. The queen herself, though, was not up to attending due to exhaustion from the big parade a few days before.

During the stately proceeedings a small boat promoting a more modern mode of propulsion made an unexpected and unauthorized appearance.

The Turbina (aka Turbinia) zoomed onto the scene, disrupting the proceedings, before dignitaries from all over the world — and probably to the delight of the 46 train-loads of spectators from London. Its inventor, Sir Charles Parsons, was looking to make a splash in the presence of much of the British fleet and government, and representative ships from the world’s best navies. This page has more information and here’s the photo of the nautical spam in progress:

Spammed: Turbina disrupts the Queen's 60th Jubilee Naval Review. Queen Victoria was not present, but it's safe to say she would not have been amused.

And make a splash Parsons did.  Massie describes:

While the Prince was inspecting the fleet, the lanes between the warships were kept clear of pleasure and spectator boats by naval tugs and patrol boats. But once [royal yacht] Victoria and Albert had passed, an impudent maverick craft made a sudden appearance and began to race up and down the lines, weaving and darting between ships with astonishing speed and maneuverability. Patrol boats, attempting to overtake and intercept the intruder, failed. This strange craft, painted gray, shaped like a torpedo one hundred feet long and nine feet in beam, was Turbina,  the world’s fastest vessel, capable of 34 knots. Her performance was intended to persuade the navy to give up the heavy reciprocating steam engines which powered its warships and change to the steam turbine which sent Turbina knifing across the water. The boat’s designer, Sir Charles Parsons, was on board, standing just aft of the tall amidships funnel, which belched a flame at least as tall as the funnel itself. Racing among the towering men-of-war, defying authority, Turbina dramatically upset protocol. “Perhaps her lawlessness may be excused by the novelty and importance of the invention she embodies,” grumbled The Times.

Domesday Book: Taxing the taxable

Think your local, state and federal politicians are too grasping? Well if it’s any consolation a government with its hand in yourpocket is nothing new, in fact it has been going on for at least…at least…a thousand years  Only difference now is that the definition of “rich” has been quite widely widened to include the not-so-rich, like, perhaps, you. 

Back when Bill the Conqueror sent what must have been an army of auditors to every settlement in England to compile the Domesday Book the result was little more than a handful of rich folks worth soaking (not our characterization. See below.) And these worthies could also benefit from “patronage.” The king knew it and used it to his advantage. Patronage, considering what there was for the king to offer at the time, could easily be translated in modern terms to the phrase “government services.” And lately the term might easily also be translated synonymously as well to “government bailout.”

But don’t take our word for it. This is from the The Oxford Illustrated History of Britain, edited by Kenneth O. Morgan (quoted from the Oxford University Press paperback edition, 1988, starting on page 143):

Patronage was lucrative, Men offered money in order to obtain what the king had to offer: offices (from the chancellorship down), succession to estates, custody of land, wardship and marriage—or even nothing more concrete than the king’s goodwill. All of these were to be had at a price, and the price was negotiable. Here was an area in which a king could hope to raise more money by consistently driving harder bargains. In these circumstances any document which told the King how rich his tenants were would naturally be immensely valuable. Domesday Book is just such a record—and it showed that half the value of the whole country was in the hands of less than two hundred men. By fining these men heavily when they were in political trouble or by offering them what they wanted, though at a price, the king had found a practical method of soaking the rich. Of course the information had to be kept up to date and throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the Crown found ways of ensuring that it was. For example, one of the surviving documents produced by Henry II’s administration is the delightfully named ‘Roll of Ladies, boys and girls’. Thus to a hostile observer like Gerald of Wales the king appeared to be ‘a robber permanently on the prowl, always probing, always looking for the weak spot where there is something for him to steal.

Mongol

Saw Mongol last night, and it’s another one of those movies that illustrates the at-times wide gap between interesting and merely entertaining. It was good to see once, but you wouldn’t want to sit through it for repeat viewings. Master and Commander, and Gladiator are two such movies that do qualify for repeated viewings (and it’s not because the both have Russell Crowe.) The former is without a single line spoken by a woman, while the latter has two women intensely involved in the hero’s motivations. So it’s not a matter of sex.

[SPOILERS ahead.]

Besides the huge narrative gaps in Mongol, it appears that even movies made in Russia now must be “Hollywood” movies. Apparently Genghis Khan conquered a third of the Earth’s surface because of a woman. His rise? It was all her idea.

And then there were those wide-as-the-steppes-themselves narrative gaps. One minute Temujin is wandering around the landscape (as he does a number of times after escaping stocks and cages, etc., once with divine assistance) and the next second he has a horde! Just like that.

Uniting the tribes is given a brief mention and his establishing of laws scanty lip service. Much more interesting would be how the uniting of the tribes came about in some more detail. Yes, a major rivalry is addressed ironically and climactically but a few of the earlier rivalries with leaders who did Temujin dirt were left unresolved. Nor was there any clear indication of what happened to his mother. If the researchers don’t know, that’s one thing, and they don’t have to speculate ahistorically. But some clear acknowledgment that perhaps being orphaned was a factor. This was not achieved if intended, since his inner strength could be traced to before he lost either parent. As it is Temujin comes off as a fairly one-dimensional character in a single-minded, and almost whipped, quest for Borte.  

And for all it’s slow-mo violence, the filmmakers chickened out on depicting the cruelty and barbarism of life on the steppe. No one gets nailed to the wooden horse to take a week to die. But the secret to Temujin’s success? Being kind to the families of dead warriors and orders not to kill women and children. Call it the feminization of the Great Kahn.

And for the big epic battle Temujin’s winning “tactics” amount to a squadron of double-sword wielding horsemen, straight from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, a line of pop-up archers and again, divine intervention. The historical Ghengis’s accompishments along these lines are sold woefully short.

While the Mongol khannish wedding traditions were interesting, launch the story, and provide a nice little bookend, letting the viewer leave the theater giving all credit to Borte, who was having children by everyone but Temujin, was almost as bogus as having that teeny-booper helping Beethoven conduct the debut of the 9th Symphony from behind the oboes in Copying Beethoven. Almost.

For those historical film buffs and Mongol enthusiasts out there you’ll want to see this one. Hopefully they’ll do the sequel with a little more credit where credit’s due.

The worst part is that now that a big costly epic has been made of G. Khan’s early life, like Peter Jackson’s inept King Kong,  there won’t be another attempt in quite a while.

Europa Universalis: Rome – 4. Diving in

Click here to read Part 1 of this review
Click here to read Part 2 of this review
Click here to read Part 3 of this review

*** 

It would be impossible to review this game without touching on the ultimate Rome game, Rome: Total War. You will not avoid noticing some similarities in approach to the strategic game. Europa Universalis: Rome completely foregoes a tactical map. Your armies are pitted against the enemy and you have no control over their disposition or movement on the battlefield once they get there. All you get are the results. If it’s a tactical ancients game you’re looking for then Rome: Total War is still your best bet.  

The most striking similarity between the two will be the 3D game map, and in Europa you have nearly 100 percent zoom and full 360 degree turning abilities. Use the CTRL key to achieve this, then let it go and the map will stay in the viewpoint you set. And if you’re expecting state-of-the-art, realistic graphics you’ll have to look elsewhere. The art here is strictly serviceable, although clear and colorful. With these games the play is the thing, and the accuracy of the research. It may not be so difficult to find symbols of the Carthaginians for use in your game, but we wouldn’t know where to even begin to look for data on the Phangorians or some of the other more obscure ancient cultures that are present.

As for game play, this title strikes a middle complexity, somewhere well below the denseness of Victoria and above the relatively simple-minded Crown  of the North. Tooltips abound. Just about everything you hover your mouse pointer over will give you detailed information about the object under it. Hesitate and most often you’ll get even more details.

Alerts, the History log and Pop-ups are vital to tracking events in a far-flung empire. The Alerts will appear in the top middle of the screen to remind the player of the most important chores needing attention to optimize your empire, such as province governorships without an appointee and trade routes unfilled.

Other game news appears as messages and can either show in the History log that constantly scrolls at the bottom middle of the screen, as a Pop-up window or dialog or as a Pop-up that pauses the game. You have complete control over this for the many different types of messages. Tip: Check the Message Setting list in the Main menu and make sure that all types of messages are set to appear in the History Log. Then keep a close eye on the log and when a message comes up that you think deserves a Pop-up, right-click and set it.

Characters are deceptively important, their traits and rivalries can have a critical effect on many game developments and on research in particular. Research is a direct function of your population levels but it can be maximized (or stunted) depending on who you’ve appointed as magistrates in the various research categories. When you click to appoint a character, whether as a magistrate, governor of a province or to a generalship of a legion, you’ll see the list of available unassigned characters. but clicking one actually executes the appointment. Because of this you can’t really see the into the next scteen which details their fired, family and rivals at that spot. There is a way to see the entire roster of characters, in the Ledger’s Country Overview.  You’ll have to check the details a character there ahead of the time you make an appointment, if the facts on the second screen are important to the decision, which they can be.

Characters also have a profound and flavorful effect on your control over the military units that fight your wars and put down the inevitable rebellions, barbarian eruptions and civil wars. A legion or a fleet can become so loyal to a character leading it that, though the unit may obey movement commands, you cannot split it or replace its leader. And be careful not to reassign the character who’s the object  of such unit loyalty, or you will not be able to assign anyone else to lead the unit either, leaving it at a disadvantage. Disbanding the unit will also be a costly affair. You may, however attempt to assassinate the character, with all the penalties that may entail, successful or not.

A little bugginess was detected in the family tree.  A daughter was announced born to a our consul but looking at his family tree immediately all it showed was 16-year-old son. And a random event once showed that another consul’s child was a little bossy on the playground. Checking the family tree we saw that the consul still had no children.

All in all though, the game play at first swipe has the potential for an addictiveness, and we’re still drawn to it. 

Click here to read Part 5 of this review

Europa Universalis: Rome – 3. On the March

Click here to read Part 1 of this review
Click here to read Part 2 of this review

***

Getting started with the game, as a single player for now, takes you to the main start-up screen. (Veteran Paradox Interactive players bear with us. Much of this will be familiar from other titles. And that’s the last time we’ll say that in this series so have patience, you veteran Europas.)  

Here, instead of the usual choice of scenarios, you’ll see a series of Bookmark buttons aligned vertically on the left. These represent significant milestones (a Roman invention, btw) in the Roman historical timeline. For even though you can play any of the highlighted available countries, the theme of the game is Rome, so for that reason this Bookmark metaphor fits nicely.

Below that on the left is a Calendar widget, you can choose any date between the earliest and latest that are covered by the game. The earliest date has been pegged as signifying the real ascendancy of Rome as a regional Mediterranean power, the era of the wars with a fading Greece. The entire span goes from, earliest to latest, 278 BC to 25 BC. In the game, though, these and all other dates are represented by the Latin equivalents, 474 AUC to 727 AUC. These years are marked from the mythical founding of Rome as known to the Romans of the time. AUC stands for Ab Urbe Condita.

The earliest start time/bookmark, is the above-mentioned Pyrrhic War (474 AUC), in which the remnants of ancient Greece under the leadership of Pyrrhus, managed a series of costly victories over Rome which sealed its doom – and giving us the term Pyrrhic victory. (”Another such victory over Rome and we are undone.” - Pyrrhus.)

Other Bookmarks include: The First Punic War (490 AUC); The Second Punic War (536 AUC); The Syrian War (562 AUC); Mare Nostrum (604); Gaius Marius ( 647); Caesar’s Gallic Wars (696 AUC); Alea lacta est (705 AUC) and First Emperor (723 AUC).

Pick a Bookmark or select any date in the Calendar, then click on any of the colored-in countries in the main window and the right side of the screen will show details of the chosen country’s leader, the leader’s rating in three areas, the type of government, the main diplomatic situation for that country (enemies and allies) and the difficulty rating of playing that country in that specific situation. If you’ve clicked a Bookmark you’ll get a paragraph describing the historic background of the scenario. Changing the date on the calendar makes that text disappear. But if you don’t wander too far in time the situation will be roughly the same. This feature alone shows the incredible amount of research that goes into the making of this and other games in the series.

Click the PLAY button and your legions are on the march.

Click here to read Part 4 of this review
Click here to read Part 5 of this review

Europa Universalis: Rome – 2. Tutorials and Manual

Click here to read Part 1 of this review

The in-game teaching tool is not interactive and not really a tutorial. You don’t actually click through the instruction along with the games. It’s a series of fairly static screens (you’ll see some animation in the background) with messages that point to and highlight the controls under discussion. They’re called “tutorials,” apparently, because that’s the custom in computer games. It’s better than calling them “static instructional screens.” 

Unfortunately there is no way to back up in the tutorials. If you click OK too quickly, or inadvertently, you’ll have to play the whole file over from the beginning. And similarly there is no way to end the chapter early. None of the game interface controls work and the OK button only takes you forward. So once you’re in one you must go on unless you want to end task. So in a way it works out well that the need to play and replay them is nearly nil. None of them are long, fortunately, and you can probably zip through the entire set in 30 minutes or less. 

On the plus side, the game’s background music accompanies the tutorials. As usual the developers have come up with a pleasing variety of era-evoking, ancient-sounding music. And it plays in random order too, an improvement over some earlier titles.  

The hard-copy manual is quite informative, touching on many subjects the tutorials do not and in much more detail on the ones that they do. It is profusely illustrated with sharp and clear monochrome screenshots. A thorough reading of the manual would be well worth the time spent.

Click here to read Part 3 of this review
Click here to read Part 4 of this review
Click here to read Part 5 of this review

Europa Universalis: Rome – 1. Out of the Box

 It has arrived, our copy this highly anticipated game. Over the next week or more we’ll share our experiences with it in our trademark multi-post fashion. As the main review fades posting may trail off  but if the game is worth playing then from time to time you may see more posts on into the infinite future. It all depends on the greatness of the game.

The Box
It’s a handsome package; tight, simple side-open outer box, with a 97-page full color manual on slick paper, and a high quality plastic disk folio. The cover is a striking illustration of Augustus Caesar, judging from images of his busts out there on the Web. A map of the game provinces is included, which is a nice-to-have but not destined to be an indispensable tool during actual game play. In this case it’s the thought that counts (and it makes for a nice background for do-it-yourself product photos.) Overall the game is well worth having on your shelf. And in our view if you’re going to pay $50 for a game you deserve more than a PDF on the disk. Paradox has always been good for this, but it looks like they’ve taken the next step graphically.

The  Patch
Starting the game brings up a screen connecting directly to news from Paradox interactive, the game developer, and version 1.1 update is available now. First things first then. Patch it up. Be sure to Download rather than Runand don’t forget to close the game launcher before running the download exe file.

Getting Started
One down note: We were interested in the “windowed mode” mentioned in the manual but could not get it to work. The “windowed=no” line in the settings.txt file was not present, and adding “windowed=yes” didn’t help. We also tried removing the “fullscreen=yes” setting altogether but to no avail. It always plays in full screen mode. We’ll keep our eyes peeled for a solution in the Paradox Roman forum and elsewhere and relay our findings. We like to have multiple windows open and though it is still possible to ALT-TAB away from and back to the game, it’s a bit slow, and we were hoping for somewhat more agile switching.

Otherwise the game holds all the promise of its predecessors. Like most in the Europa series, you can play as any of the available countries that start your chosen scenario, or, of course, take charge of Rome itself. The game is named after that empire because, according to the manual’s introduction, the earliest start date coincides with the 3rd century BC ascendancy of Rome over Greece as the Mediterranean superpower.

We’re looking forward to digging into this title, as the Europa series has always delivered on its promise of informative game play. As we’ve stated in a review long ago of the very first release, the games are like interactive scholarly documents, impeccably researched, with involving simulation of the economic and military decision-making.

***

Click here to read Part 2 of this review
Click here to read Part 3 of this review
Click here to read Part 4 of this review
Click here to read Part 5 of this review

Spies of Warsaw

Speaking of Alan Furst, his latest will be out come June ‘08. Click below for a good deal on the hardback preorder.

The Spies of Warsaw: A Novel