Ivan Bunakov, VP of Buka, and Svetlana Ladoshkina, International PR Manager, were kind to give me an interview. The interview was mostly about the upcoming Aggression: Europe 1914, but partly also about the Pacific Storm add-on, Pacific Storm: Allies. Mind you, it was all happening slightly unplanned, so there was no demo and no show running, just the interview. Also, large parts of the interview were performed in Russian, so this is mostly a translation.

First are a few questions about particulars of the gameplay. From other previews and screenshots, it is clear that Aggression: Europe 1914 uses a global strategic level game to represent the whole state of the war, whereas it uses a tactical RTS engine to represent certain battles. This is similar to the in-house Pacific Storm (but on land), but also to other games such as the not so successful Axis and Allies.

Interviewer: How are units (infantry, artillery) represented on the world map and what is their equivalent on a tactical map?

Ivan: In the strategic mode there are no single units. Instead, we have historical `heroes' such as Lenin, Stalin or Mussolini. There are also different types of heroes (political, military). These, when in a city, can buy different units, such as infantry, artillery or planes, which must be produced there. Thus, each hero represents an army.

An infantry icon in a hero's retinue, for example, means a full squad of 16 men on the tactical map, whereas an artillery icon means one piece of cannon plus the men necessary to use the gun.

Interviewer: What happens if in one battle a squad loses all but one man - will it be a full squad again in the next battle?

Ivan: It depends. If you have other squads with heavy losses, then they will simply be merged together to form full squads again. So every lost man counts. If it's the last squad of it's type, then it will remain at its reduced strength.

Interviewer: Do units gain experience during the course of the war? What influence does experience have?

Ivan: Units have several stats, such as morale or health. If an inexperienced unit comes under fire, it will easily panic and get out of your control. Then they either lie down or begin to move erratically around. More experienced units take more of a beating before they panic. They come back under control faster and they also can sustain more damage, for example.

Interviewer: You mentioned cities and production, what are the key concepts of managing a city?

Ivan: Each city has a set amount of population which can change due to takeovers. If the entire city is left as civilians, then they are very happy, but they don't contribute to the war effort. In order to make a city useful, you can set a certain percentage of the population to do research for you or to produce tanks, cannons, etc. The more people are forced to work or are converted to be researchers, the more unhappiness accumulates. Different types of government also have an influence, such as whether you have a monarchy, anarchy or a democracy.

Interviewer: So, similar to Civilization?

Ivan: In a sense - yes.

Interviewer: How are the differences between the nations fleshed out in terms of balance? I mean, there are two approaches to balancing: one is to balance all sides until you cannot figure out which one it is you are playing currently and the other one is to deliberately imbalance each side so that you know exactly you're playing that powerful nation with which it's hard to lose.

Ivan: For one, the starting technologies differ between the nations. This has direct impact on the battles on the tactical map. The Germans, for example, already have the machine gun in the beginning, which gives them a huge advantage over the Russians. The Russians, on the other hand, have an excellent cavalry, which allows a good player to compensate for the technological disadvantage. These differences alone make for very different play styles for each nation. Additionally different countries start out with differing amounts of population and production capacity, which is also fostered by the different amounts of cities each nation starts out with.

Interviewer: How does technology work?

Ivan: There are five epochs, which are represented by key technologies (such as planes). In order to reach the next epoch, the player has to research eight secondary technologies, before he can research the next key technology. Some technologies are military (medium tank, new artillery), some are civil, such as new crop collecting technology which increases population or production capacity of your cities.

Interviewer: Let's talk about persistence and the feeling of having influence on the game world. What happens if I bomb many buildings in a certain tactical map?

Ivan: If you win and take over, the game will determine how high the losses to the civil population were and the city will have a reduced population and production capacity, especially after using nukes.

Interviewer: That's interesting. But what if I just do a lot of damage to buildings or even factories or other infrastructure on the map and then retreat? Will there also be a population/production hit?

Ivan: No, then the province will be in it's former state. You see, any tactical map represents only a very small piece of the given province, so particular buildings do not have too much meaning. It's also about being realistic when trying to actually finish a game. This is one feature which had to be cut. Additionally we want to focus the game more on action, instead of management such as in Pacific Storm.

Interviewer: And what if I do take over a province (while doing a lot of environmental damage), will that damage be still visible, if the enemy counterattacks shortly thereafter?

Ivan: Again, no.

Interviewer: Are the tactical battle maps premade or randomly created each time a battle occurs?

Ivan: There are 82 different battle map types. Basically, each city is surrounded by a number of tactical maps, so depending on the direction from which a given city is being attacked, the appropriate map is chosen to play the battle out. For large cities, for example, the corresponding maps contain lots of buildings, fountains, plazas and so on.

Interviewer: Is there weather in the game and does it play a role?

Ivan: No, not planned.

Interviewer: I understand that the strategic map plays in real-time...

Ivan: ... pausable!

Interviewer: ... yes yes. But what if two battles occur at approximately the same time?

Ivan: During the course of one battle, the time stands still on the strategic map, so once the first battle ends, the second begins.

Interviewer: Is there a timer for battles?

Ivan: No, depending on the amount of forces and playing style, a battle can be over in 5 minutes or it can take considerably longer. The fighting ends when one of the sides has not a single man standing.

Interviewer: Will it be possible to do the sniper trick like in those Sudden Strike games? (slowly advancing, taking them out one-by-one.)

Ivan: We plan a prolonged open beta test (beginning in November) where this and other kinds of exploits are supposed to be discovered and then fixed. Besides, squads communicate between each other, so if one squad comes under fire, then all nearby squads will come and help...

Interviewer: .. which is exploitable again, of course!

Ivan: ... yes (laughs) but we will see.

Interviewer: Speaking of exploits and AI, in your other game, Pacific Storm, one of the main critique points was the bad AI, with for example single planes coming after you only to shot down one by one. Will that be fixed in the add-on?

Ivan: The game has been changed in that single planes are grouped into wings now which try to act coherently. There was also this other issue that if you had only one plane left, then ten other planes couldn't really shoot it down. This was made so that the player has an incentive to either actually fly one of the ten planes and shoot down that one, or, on the other hand, have some fun shooting some of the ten planes down using his one plane. But obviously this kind of 'cheating' backfired, so it is removed.

Interviewer: Ah, that sounds good then. Now, back to Aggression: Are there spies or other special units on the map? Or how do I possibly find out, what the enemies are planning?

Ivan: No, there are no spies. But in order to find out what they are planning, the heroes play an important role. A military hero can have a skill which allows to see exactly which units another hero in a city nearby has. A political hero doesn't see that, but he sees production, happiness and other such data. Additionally, good relations to other countries will make it so that they inform you about plans a third country has. This allows you to pull over your main armies to the other side of your country just in time to counter that new invasion of the German.

Interviewer: Are the resources and corresponding dependencies such as oil?

Ivan: No, nothing like that.

Interviewer: Now also some more technical questions. Do you outsource and if yes, then what and how much do you outsource?

Ivan: Lesta outsources about 30% of their content creation, mainly graphics. The remaining work is done in-house. The localization is mostly outsourced.

Interviewer: How many people does it take to make a localization?

Ivan: We noticed that a quality localization makes or breaks the financial success of a release. Therefore, for a 200-300 thousand running words game about 16-20 translators, voice actors, sound producers, etc. need about 2 months to translate everything. Then a dozen of people from our company check everything additionally, because professional translators do not know games good enough.

Interviewer: How is scalability of quality managed and are different levels of texture quality prestored?

Ivan: The common techniques like LOD and lower-res textures are there and everything is precomputed and prestored. For the Russian market, a bigger size of the game actually makes it more profitable, because the price depends directly on the numbers of CDs! Aggression will come either on DVD or on 3 CDs.

Interviewer: The obvious question: What do you think will be the requirements for Aggression?

Ivan: I think the recommended requirements are nothing spectacular - take a 3GHz CPU, throw in some GeForce 6800 and you are on the safe side. Take the usual 30% off that and you have the approximate minimum requirements.

Interviewer: How long do you plan to support the game with respect to patches?

Ivan: Usually a good game (such as Neighbours from Hell) sells about four to five years quite well, but after a year of patches it is already very mature. Therefore we currently plan on approximately one year of bug-fixing support.

Interviewer: Thank you very much for this in-depth and detailed interview!

TCancer would like to thank Svetlana Ladoshkina for helping set up the interview, Ivan Bunakov for his thoughtful answers, and Your Conscience for conducting the interview in a manner befitting a True TCancer Patriot. Salute.