NATO Division Commander (1985)
It was the era of complicated board wargames, where phone books passed for rules, and every time fun and realism clashed, realism took center stage. The knock on computer wargames at this time was their relative lack of sophistication. So, never one to shirk from a challenge, Sid decided that he could re-create the board game experience on a computer.
Design: Sid Meier
Publisher: MicroProse
Genre: Wargame
Difficulty: Advanced
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While his decision may seem strange in hindsight, keep in mind that virtually every other strategy game designer was trying to do the same thing. Why? Simple: Avalon Hill and SPI board games were what the first generations of computer game designers had grown up with. And for all their flaws, the best of these games - such as Afrika Korps, Third Reich, and Terrible Swift Sword - were bona fide classics well worth emulating.
 | "[T]he lessons from NATO Commander are probably more negative ones than positive."
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Theoretically, with the computer handling all of the tedious bookkeeping chores, NATO should have been much simpler than a board game to play. It wasn't. Rather than formulating a strategy to keep the Warsaw Pact from overrunning Europe, most players spent time fighting the steep learning curve. Reviewers at the time evidently loved the game, but I suspect most of them were intimidated.
What NATO taught Sid was that complexity is never a substitute for depth. Later, Sid wargames would either be much simpler - and more fun - or (as with Civilization) would make their complexity more digestible with easily understood subsystems.
Next: Conflict in Vietnam 
