Death Of An Empire
A terminal wargame of the Franco-Prussian War, 1870.
You are the Commander-in-Chief. You don't move units. You issue orders via dispatch riders and hope they arrive in time. Your formations march, fight, and die based on your decisions, but the fog of war is thick, your reports are late, and your subordinates have minds of their own.
July 1870. France declares war on Prussia. On paper, the French army is superior. The Chassepot rifle outranges the Prussian needle gun by double, the mitrailleuse is decades ahead of its time, and French soldiers are veterans of a dozen campaigns. It doesn't matter. In six weeks, the French Empire is destroyed.
Not by inferior weapons but by inferior command. The German system, built on Auftragstaktik and Moltke's General Staff, lets subordinates act on initiative. The French system demands they wait for orders that never come. At Spicheren, neighbouring corps could hear the guns but didn't march. At Wörth, MacMahon fought alone. At Sedan, an entire army was surrounded because Paris ordered a march everyone knew was suicidal. This game makes you feel why.
| Feature | Detail |
|---|---|
| Nine scenarios | The 45-day Grand Campaign, the Frontier Battles, the battles for Metz, Mars-la-Tour, the March to Sedan, Sedan, plus what-if variants (Niel Plan, Defensive Concentration, The Wet Summer). |
| Command asymmetry | German commanders act on initiative when they hear gunfire. French commanders wait for orders that arrive late or not at all. German players get three orders per turn and a faster command cycle; French players get two and political interference from Paris. |
| Fog of war | You see only what your scouts report. They are not always right. |
| CRT combat | Bombardment, infantry assault, cavalry charges. Terrain and entrenchment modifiers. Chassepot range advantage modeled. |
| Historical orders of battle | 25+ commanders with unique initiative, aggression, and personal traits. |
| Supply | Depots, supply lines, French intendance chaos. |
| Political pressure | Paris sends directives. You can comply or defy, with consequences either way. |
| Weather | Historical 1870 conditions affecting movement, artillery, and reconnaissance. |
| AI opponent | Concentrates forces, pursues retreating enemies, fills defensive gaps, holds reserves. |
| PBEM multiplayer | Exchange fog-safe save files with a friend. Opponent cannot see your hidden units. |
| Spectator mode | Watch the war play itself to learn the campaign flow before taking command. |
Why this subject
The Franco-Prussian War is one of the most consequential wars most people have never played a game about. It produced the modern German state, ended France's continental dominance, set up the conditions for the First World War, and rewrote the textbook on how armies should be organized. The Prussian general-staff system was studied and copied by nearly every military in the world afterward. DOAE is the digital extension of Ray's wargame-design eye into the same under-covered historical subjects the print catalog has been mining for years.
Stack
Rust, ratatui, crossterm, rodio. Twelve period music tracks (Liszt, Elgar, Piefke, Planquette, Wagner, Schumann) all from public-domain recordings. Built by Ray with Claude Code.
Buy
Released on itch under Conflict Simulations LLC at $3.99. conflict-simulations-llc.itch.io/death-of-an-empire.
See also
Auftragstaktik, the German doctrine the German side of DOAE models, also names Ray's tactical OSINT terminal. Same principle, same builder.