Sicily & Italy scenarios

[Capitaine]

This has been a gripe of mine since I started playing WitW, and is the reason, really, for my setting it aside after learning it and playing the early scenarios. It's been a while since I've played, but it appears to me that the various Italian theater scenarios that begin with the invasion of Sicily do not all have the same starting OOB and set up. For example, the Sicily [only] scenario begins with the actual invasion. Later scenarios forego the invasion and start with the Allies already ashore; and the other forces appear to be in different locations as well.

This lack of symmetry among scenarios all starting at essentially the same point in time frustrates me. Why was this done that way? I want the scenarios to start the same and just expand and extend from that. Isn't that more sensible?

[Capitaine]

I posted this nearly a year ago and got no reply. What I'd been looking for was a complete Italian Campaign scenario starting the same way as the Sicily scenario: With the actual invasion.

Doesn't anyone else have this complaint? I don't understand why the campaign scenario omits this? Is there something flawed about it? And thinking back I believe there were unit deployment discrepancies among the Italian scenarios too, which I found inexplicable. Shouldn't the discrepancies be fixed in the direction of historical accuracy, which ever way that was?

[cfulbright]

Capitaine,

I think the scenario designers have made improvements/corrections in units and deployments which you will see in the latest available public beta (1.02.15), and they may continue to do that.

Do you want an Italian-only scenario? The 1943 campaign scenario certainly gives you the complete Italian campaign, but of course also Northern Europe.

Cary

[LiquidSky]

It probably takes a lot of work to make a scenario. So much so that the casual person is not going to whip up an Italian campaign on their own, and the designers probably don't feel the demand high enough to justify all that work.


The 1943 campaign is actually kind of fun. As the allies, one could go all in and try and overwhelm Italy by bringing extra stuff from England...or they could leave a light force just good enough to hold a line, and send the rest into Southern France...or England for D-Day. The same with the Axis. THe battle in Italy is pretty much the only time they can have air superiority...and enough ground forces to actually give you a game. But the more stuff that gets committed to this theatre..the more has to return later....and possibly rebuild.

I think what makes the Italian theatre so much fun is this dynamic....and it would be lost if you were to only fight with the stuff they had historically...Over all...(at this level) the campaign is kind of boring. And the fun decision making stuff would be lost if you let a designer do that for you.

[Capitaine]

My complaint is really much simpler and basic, in that -- at the time of my OP -- the only scenario where there was an actual invasion of Sicily was the Sicily only scenario. All the rest of the Italian scenarios, including the Italian campaign scenario, start with Sicily already invaded. I realize that these Italian scenarios might not be the most popular, but they are included. So there should be the whole enchilada from invasion of Sicily to the "end" in the so-named Italian campaign.

I have no problem with non-historical options; I agree those are appropriate and good. As to historicity I'm speaking of At Start deployments. There were discrepancies At Start in the Sicily and Campaign scenarios. That's all.

Thanks for the replies.

[RedLancer]

For WitW there are only four people who work on the officials scenarios and only two of us who set up scenarios from scratch - we don't do it for a living and we are focused on WitE2.

The sad fact is that not one non-official scenario has been produced from scratch despite a full editor manual and access to the very same editor that we use shows to some extent how dedicated you need to be write a single scenario let alone a series that are coherent.

WitE didn't include an Op Mars scenario on release and I wanted one. I taught myself to use the editor and wrote one. Doing so led to an e-mail from Joel to help 2by3 and I haven't looked back.

Perhaps the solution, given the deafening silence on your original post is to do it yourself. I'll always be available for advice and help and maybe, just maybe, it will open the same door it did for me.

[Capitaine]

Thanks for your comments, John. I didn't realize that the Italian scenarios were non-official and therefore apparently not uniform in their representation. I was also looking for possible rationale in why the scenarios were done the way they were, but as you say the scenario team might be sparse and that information not readily known. I appreciate your attempt to explain -- I'm not looking for something additional, but insight into what was done and why.

[RedLancer]

You misunderstand me I think - they are official and I know why they don't match.

The reason they don't match up is that it is incredibly difficult and time consuming to align scenarios unless planned from the very beginning. There is no simple way to export and compare the data. As there are so few of us we don't bother as we write scenarios we are interested in and it is usually done from scratch. For ease it is usual to take critical battles as a start point as that makes gathering the initial data much easier as the number of sources are easy to find. I wrote Breaching the Gothic Line with no reference to the other Italy scenarios. It is coincidence that Breakout and Pursuit lines up with Westwall - Westwall's start date is set by Market Garden and not the end of B&P. I did plan that Bulge to the Rhine would roughly follow Westwall though but again Bulge provides lots of unit data.

For WitE2 scenario design Pavel has coded a time jump system that allows us to take an existing scenario and advance it any number of turns with the system automatically changing OB and Theatre Box deployments.

[Joel Billings]

I don't remember for sure, but I think the reason that the Italian Campaign doesn't match the 1943 campaign start is due to wanting it to more closely follow the historical flow. It might also have had something to do with the limitations of the AI given the more fixed unit count for the Germans (unable to pull from other areas if necessary as they can in the campaign). There was a specific decision made to have the Italian Campaign scenario start with the historical invasion. As John stated, we're limited in what we can do as there are only a few people interested in creating scenarios so we're limited in how many iterations of the scenarios we can create. The editor is available though, so it is possible for someone to make modifications if they want to.

[Capitaine]

Guys, it really helps me to understand what happened there. That's pretty much all I wanted to know. I had no idea how you created scenarios internally, nor what human resources were available to you. At least knowing the reasons I can explain to myself that this wasn't just some fudge factor going on. So thanks for taking the time to humor me.

OTOH, I do and would appreciate scenarios that can be extended from the same start point. So if that's possible in the future as with WitE2, I would be very pleased.

[barkhorn45]

I have wondered why the air assets in battleground Italy are different than the campaign ie far less.