About
Zones of Control

 

In 1979, Origins V was held at Widener College in Philadelphia. 

A young lady approached me as I was walking across the campus, who declared, “I know what ‘Zones of Control’ are all about.” I actually thought that it was very cute, and a little bit of a come-on. But she had a point.

The Zones of Control and how they are treated are a very fundamental decision high-up on the decision tree, and you have to make those decisions and stick to them, or else the game dissolves into a mass of jello.

As stated in Wargame Design Magazine, Vol III Nr. 3 (p. 12), the term “Zone of Control” is a misnomer, but it is a term in general use that people readily understand (from a gaming perspective). Some designers have substituted different terminology, such as “Zone of Influence,” but that doesn’t really alleviate the problem in the gamer’s mind when it comes to trying to understand this in historical terms. On the battlefield there is no such thing as a “Zone of Control.” 

Within the context of the game, the term “Zone of Control” is useful, but if we look at the actual battlefield, where there are no hexagons, what is being described is the “Flanking Effect.” A unit that has been surrounded by enemy ZOCs has been flanked.

I also have a design reason for wanting to avoid what are called "in contact" units. There are several instances in which a unit can end up with this exceptional status, but this gives a unit a very nice advantage for no cost. It's a 'gimme'—very bad design. The basic type of ZOC you have impacts almost everywhere. An exception is like a fold in the carpet, it just spreads about and never flattens.

On the other hand, not only are exceptions unavoidable, they are the very stuff of bringing history to life. Exceptions make the game a simulation. But they have to be few in number and reduced to a fine point. 

For example, in the series rules (10.31), all enemy units in a player’s ZOCs must be attacked, and all of his engaged Combat Units must attack. There are then listed six exceptions:
• Units in Towns, Improved Positions, and Chateaux
• Artillery units (three different exceptions)
• Road March (all unit types)
• Cavalry units that charged.

Because of its bombardment capability, artillery has the most exceptions; because of its ability to charge, cavalry has one. For all unit types, there are two (units in built-up areas and in Road March).

ON LOCKING ZONES OF CONTROL

This is a misleading term that many gamers crack their heads on. Instead of trying to imagine exactly what this animal called a “Zone of Control” would look like on a battlefield—whether we should imagine the adjacent hexes filled with skirmishers—what if we dropped all such imagining and regarded “ZOC” as nothing but a technical term for certain geometrical configurations within the hex grid. Then you might see that the ZOC rules define very simply when a unit has been outflanked. You don’t have to get bogged down defining the unit’s front or its flanks, but the result is right. When we say a unit is “surrounded” in the ZOC rules, an enemy would have to be on one (or both) flanks. Perhaps there would be less confusion if we called this the “Flanking Effect.”

—Wargame Design Magazine, Vol III Nr. 3 (p. 12)