Help me love this game!

[CaptainKoloth]

I'm no newcomer to Grigsby games- I LOVE WITE, WITW, and WITE 2- but I finally got around to trying this and I'm really struggling to enjoy it. I can see the depth and detail of the simulation - maybe I'm thinking about the game "the wrong way". Please, convince me to approach this game with a different frame of mind and give it another chance!

I think fundamentally what's been bothering me about it is not what people usually mention - the micromanagement- but what feels like a severe lack of player agency or connection between the moves I make and the results on the screen. Maybe in part due to the combination of the WEGO structure plus the incredibly detailed nature of the simulation, I feel like when I end a turn of the day, I'm sitting there for an hour (figuratively) watching the computer play itself. There are so many encounters which are individual enumerated and, I assume by design, difficult to predict ahead of time, that I feel like I'm just endlessly watching two AI opponents play each other in a manner over which I have little or no control. I realize this is probably a decent simulation of the experience of an actual WW2 Pacific commander, and that I do have agency in terms of how I set up the units and their orders, but I feel like I have no idea how my actions are really actively contributing to what I see on the screen, I have little ability to affect it, and if I just kept all my units with the same order for a few weeks I'd get about the same result. It doesn't feel like I'm playing a game so much as watching a game be played.

Am I missing something fundamental in the game structure, or is this sort of why the game is so loved by the players who are looking for that experience in the first place?

[dr.hal]

in a way you're giving the game a backhanded compliment!!! You're not supposed to know what's going on or what's going to happen. You only set up what you think will produce the desired outcome, but due to literally thousand of variable (in real life, it's millions), what transpires is usually a surprise, at times a nasty one! So I think an attraction to the game is what I think you're seeing as a fault! I could have it wrong as I might be misunderstanding your post. Hal

[CaptainKoloth]

in a way you're giving the game a backhanded compliment!!! You're not supposed to know what's going on or what's going to happen. You only set up what you think will produce the desired outcome, but due to literally thousand of variable (in real life, it's millions), what transpires is usually a surprise, at times a nasty one! So I think an attraction to the game is what I think you're seeing as a fault! I could have it wrong as I might be misunderstanding your post. Hal

No, that IS kind of what I'm saying. I guess in my mind though for a game to be fun there's some balance between fog of war and agency such that you feel like you're having some identifiable impact on the game. Obviously for big-picture operations like what overall thrusts your forces will make you have control, but i feel like each daily turn is totally chaotic (and also extremely long as i watch it play out with no ability to affect it). If you take the War in the... games (i.e. East, West), there is still fog of War but you select unit, move or attack with unit, and you know instantly what happened and why.

And it's not only because that's IGOUGO and this is WEGO- there are other WEGO games where it's much clearer to me how my orders are impacting the game (e.g. Flashpoint Campaigns, Combat Mission), even if the results might not be to my liking on a given turn. I think the issue here is the combination of tons of units, extremely heavy fog of war, Wego, and a bunch of stuff happening between "issue order" and "impact on units" which isn't as clear to me as it is even in other Grigsby games.

[dr.hal]

Clearly you know history, so you understand the adage that no matter how good, detailed and comprehensive the plan, it seldom survives first contact with the enemy.... I think that's part of WITP/AE's attraction....

[Yaab]

CaptainKoloth, coming from the WITE crowd, I guess your main gripe is with land combat in WITP:AE. Or maybe it is the air/naval part of WITP:AE you struggle with? I guess you need to be more specific and give us examples of things that frustrate you.

Land combat in WITP:AE is black-boxed a lot so do not expect to have total control over it.

[M Peaston]

Land warfare seems a bit of an Aunt Sally in this game, it never seemed to get the developers’ attention in the way that, say, air warfare did. (No disrespect of course to those that did work on the land war aspect).

There are some tactical options in the game that can have an immediate effect, e.g. Task force composition, optimising altitude settings, layered CAP, the right balance of fighter escorts, CAP and fighter sweeps. Having leaders with the right skills helps. But there is much you can do to influence the outcome of a battle that sits at an operational level.

Try running an air campaign flying aircraft at extended ranges from undersized airfields with insufficient Aviation Support, you’ll soon find that battles start turning against you and your reserves draining away. If you want to improve the chances of intercepting and defeating an enemy air strike you’ll want radar, and maybe fighters with a good climb rate. Do you want to put your fighters on 100% CAP? That’s probably fine for a day or two, but after that watch out for pilot and airframe fatigue, not to mention low morale, having an adverse effect on performance. Having an air HQ nearby can affect how many aircraft fly on a mission; leaders can also influence this.

A division with enough support and supplies will suffer less from fatigue and low morale, and therefore fight better than one that doesn’t. Having enough preparation points has an important effect on combat. HQs are important here too, and getting the preparation of a Command HQ and Corps HQ conjoined with a combat unit’s preparation can become a powerful combat modifier. Again, leaders with the right balance of skills can influence all this.

These are just a few examples I can think of. Actually, there is another very important one I can think of - Pilot training. Don’t get me started on that though, I hate it! But without it you won’t win the air battles you need to win.

CaptainKoloth, when I first played this game I felt a bit like what you described; resolving the turn just seemed like a giant bot-fest. The problem I had was that it was not immediately obvious to me what the things were that I should be doing to improve my chances in combat, and when I did start to learn (often with advice from this forum), they were things that needed multiple turns to implement and likewise once implemented took time to show their effect. Of course, your opponent is going to be doing all the same things……

I’ve barely mentioned getting the logistics right. Running out of supplies and fuel can seriously hinder military operations - as I know too well.

I actually find that when running the turn there are always more things I could have done to improve my chances but if I were to do everything I’d never get the turn sent off.

I hope this helps; admittedly this game is not for everyone, and I’m sure that all of us who play it find it very frustrating at times. One of the reasons I enjoy playing this game is that I find the process of trying (and often failing) to master the game’s seemingly endless subtleties an immensely rewarding experience.

[RangerJoe]

It is advisable to play the Coral Sea and then the Guadalcanal scenarios until you have learned what you need to learn there, playing both sides to learn their strengths and weaknesses. Don't go into the campaign game right away.

[altemosejd]

I just started playing in earnest about a month ago. It is one of, if not the best, historical war games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. That being said, all I can offer you is my opinion and a caveat - your personal opinions are valid and I hope you don't take the following as me trying to diminish your take on the game. My intent is to explain how I frame and enjoy playing.

First, I think it's important to realize that this is more of a strategic level war sim with most of the micromanagement at the operational level (I heard that the air war was developed by a separate team, which is why it seems to dip more into the lower operational level). Now, my actual combat experience is with the infantry at the company level, but even in 2015 in the sandbox with all the wonderful technological advances we currently had, orders were not carried out immediately or exactly as you'd envision. Once you're engaged, you're engaged and the fight comes down to the individual. Even as a PL, all you can do is make sure the boys have ammo and they're pointing in the right direction.

I added that to highlight how even with tacsat radios and direct links to aircraft above, it was very often chaos. Jump back to 1941 and I can only imagine the uncertainty, FOW, etc. is increased dramatically from what I dealt with. This is what I love about this game. It reminds me of the infamous Robert E. Lee order at Gettysburg "Take that hill if practicable". Only it's me sitting on my computer getting ready to relieve a commander for not doing exactly what I asked.

If it is as simple as trying to understand why your carrier strike force did one thing or the other, I learned quite a bit from playing the Coral Sea scenario - I had multiple saves pre contact with different aircraft settings that allowed me to work out what was effective against what. I at least have a better idea if I made a mistake or if the enemy's vote held more weight than mine. This would extend to other aspects of the game as well - surface combat, ASW, recon, amphib landings, logistics, etc. Try it out, reload, change it, run it again.

If it's more a psychological thing, I suggest taking a step back and just enjoying the successes and failures that come with higher level "leadership". Two examples that I haven't been able to stop thinking about:

1)Kuala Lumpur -had a squadron of fighters throwing back everything the Japanese came at them with for over 2 weeks. Well, the Japanese switched to a night bomb run and leveled the airfield, damaged 15 fighters on the ground. I was left with 3 operational fighters. That was the death blow, nothing I could do about it, not really my fault, but now I have to deal with it. 2 days later, the evacuation of Singapore is well underway, just can't gain air superiority anymore. That's the type of strategic and operational decision making this game models amazingly.

2)I'm now in the middle of evacuating as many men as possible from Singapore. Naval search flights spot a large cruiser taskforce off Kuching threatening to cut across the north Java sea. I move some dinky old Vildabeest's over to at least buy us a day to load troops. The japs must have diverted aircover elsewhere, cause my old WW1 Vildabeests tore up 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, and a destroyer. Later that afternoon they finished the job and sent them packing back to Saigon.

Both scenarios were unexpected and mostly out of my control. I didn't do anything differently with the fighters in KL, but one night changed my entire strategic outlook in Malaya. All i did with the vildabeests was move them to where I thought they would be effective. Perhaps a more cautious squadron commander wouldn't have even launched the attack that would keep the Java Sea open for the evac.

I'm not sure if that will help you love this game, but I wanted to at least share where I'm coming from when, on a Monday at work when I'm supposed to be filing timesheets, I'm strategizing getting my top pilots out of Manilla with the Kido Butai roaming around

[Moltrey]

I think at a basic level wargamers fall somewhere on the Control Scale: the strong need to see your decisions reflected in the actions and factors a wargame presents (the Micromanagement end of the scale) versus a more open-ended set of outcomes and behaviors based on the plans and decisions one makes.

At 60 I have seen the gamut of players in both tabletop, rpg and video games. They are all just personal preferences but many are pretty hardcore control folks. In TT, they move counters back and forth over and over, to the point that you have to "ride herd" on them as an opponent because they can end up putting a counter back in the wrong position. RPG min-maxers are so focused on perfecting their build that, for them, the story and social interaction takes a back seat to making sure their character has the best chance to succeed and make use of the rules- that is their "fun". I actually was in a Pathfinder group where our resident min-maxer told another experienced player who is much more "balanced' in roleplaying that "You ruined that character" in the choices he made (rude!). In video games they prefer having as much control over everything involved as possible and points along the way to outcomes.
There are lots of gamers somewhere in the middle of the scale and some who like to hangout on the far end where you are merely an organizer and planner, seeing things evolve on their own regardless of outcomes isn't a negative per se, but just another unfolding story in the grand scheme of a game session experience.

I believe WITP:AE is best for gamers who are able to 'embrace the suck' and lack of control that a Nimitz or Yamamoto and their staffs had to endure in the war. Someone would have to ask Gary Gygax exactly why he chose to program the game the way he did (I think a lot was just practicality), but there are certainly a lot of minimal control elements to the game that can be frustrating if you don't understand or misinterpret a game rule or subsystem - or if you simply prefer to have a more direct line between your actions and planning and outcomes and reactions down the line.

Based on your posts so far I would venture to say that perhaps WITP:AE just isn't your cup of tea, particularly if you can't find a happy place with how the game unfolds each turn after all the effort players put into it.
Let's be honest, it definitely takes a lot of patience and perseverance to learn and stick with WITP:AE. I am not sure if you invest the time it will take that WITP:AE will interact with you in a way that will be satisfying enough to warrant that time.

Having said that, if you can put yourself in a senior commander's shoes and let go of the need to control all aspects of the game, then I think you will learn to enjoy the game. You are correct that at times it can seem like it doesn't matter what you do, but repeated play can get you out of that mental loop, along with better knowledge of the game mechanics, etc. That and a very healthy obsession with the Pacific War.
Regardless, good luck!

[BBfanboy]

altemosejd, I applaud your sandboxing approach to learning the game. Not only to learn where all the settings are and how to use them, but learning when to use them is important too. It's part of what people in the field call 'experience'. For example, a common mistake by early users is to order a shock attack against an entrenched enemy - that X2 AV is sooo tempting. But if the terrain is against them and the enemy has built forts or field forts, disaster awaits.

The AI has a strong tendency to use Shock Attack so I often hole up in good defensive terrain and let his forces break on my defences. Then when he is heavily disrupted and fatigued, my troops can make a SA and destroy or rout them (checking first that there are no enemy reinforcements about to enter the hex). Yeah, it's taking advantage of an AI predilection, but for a long time it's the only way the dismal Allied units can gain any success.

Another Allied experience idea - don't put super-aggressive commanders in command of your BBs. Charging torpedo-armed enemy ships with your fat cows is likely to be painful! Surface combat tends to be a dance like carrier battles. First, the long-range duel between heaviest ships, then the DDs and smaller CLs take over and clash over best torpedo firing positions. Then the sides disengage with some more heavy ship gunfire. But if one of the big ships takes a torpedo and slows down, all the enemy fire gets concentrated on it and will likely leave it a burning wreck.

Anyway, even with experience helping you there will be surprises and setbacks/losses, so buckle up and rise to the challenges!

[Zovs]

...I have seen the gamut of players in both tabletop, rpg and video games. They are all just personal preferences but many are pretty hardcore control folks.

... but just another unfolding story in the grand scheme of a game session experience.

I believe WITP:AE is best for gamers who are able to ...embrace the... lack of control that a Nimitz or Yamamoto and their staffs had to endure in the war.

...perhaps WITP:AE just isn't your cup of tea, particularly if you can't find a happy place with how the game unfolds each turn after all the effort players put into it.

Let's be honest, it definitely takes a lot of patience and perseverance to learn and stick with WITP:AE.

..invest the time it will take that WITP:AE will interact with you in a way that will be satisfying enough to warrant that time.

...if you can put yourself in a senior commander's shoes and let go of the need to control all aspects of the game, then I think you will learn to enjoy the game.

...and a very healthy obsession with the Pacific War.

One of the best posts on this subject to date.

[btd64]

...I have seen the gamut of players in both tabletop, rpg and video games. They are all just personal preferences but many are pretty hardcore control folks.

... but just another unfolding story in the grand scheme of a game session experience.

I believe WITP:AE is best for gamers who are able to ...embrace the... lack of control that a Nimitz or Yamamoto and their staffs had to endure in the war.

...perhaps WITP:AE just isn't your cup of tea, particularly if you can't find a happy place with how the game unfolds each turn after all the effort players put into it.

Let's be honest, it definitely takes a lot of patience and perseverance to learn and stick with WITP:AE.

..invest the time it will take that WITP:AE will interact with you in a way that will be satisfying enough to warrant that time.

...if you can put yourself in a senior commander's shoes and let go of the need to control all aspects of the game, then I think you will learn to enjoy the game.

...and a very healthy obsession with the Pacific War.

One of the best posts on this subject to date.

Ditto....GP

[altemosejd]

BB, appreciate it. Getting my butt kicked creates problems, and I do enjoy problem solving!

[RangerJoe]

BB, appreciate it. Getting my butt kicked creates problems, and I do enjoy problem solving!

That is the best way to learn.

[Tanaka]

I'm no newcomer to Grigsby games- I LOVE WITE, WITW, and WITE 2- but I finally got around to trying this and I'm really struggling to enjoy it. I can see the depth and detail of the simulation - maybe I'm thinking about the game "the wrong way". Please, convince me to approach this game with a different frame of mind and give it another chance!

I think fundamentally what's been bothering me about it is not what people usually mention - the micromanagement- but what feels like a severe lack of player agency or connection between the moves I make and the results on the screen. Maybe in part due to the combination of the WEGO structure plus the incredibly detailed nature of the simulation, I feel like when I end a turn of the day, I'm sitting there for an hour (figuratively) watching the computer play itself. There are so many encounters which are individual enumerated and, I assume by design, difficult to predict ahead of time, that I feel like I'm just endlessly watching two AI opponents play each other in a manner over which I have little or no control. I realize this is probably a decent simulation of the experience of an actual WW2 Pacific commander, and that I do have agency in terms of how I set up the units and their orders, but I feel like I have no idea how my actions are really actively contributing to what I see on the screen, I have little ability to affect it, and if I just kept all my units with the same order for a few weeks I'd get about the same result. It doesn't feel like I'm playing a game so much as watching a game be played.

Am I missing something fundamental in the game structure, or is this sort of why the game is so loved by the players who are looking for that experience in the first place?

Help me love those games. I own them all and whenever I think of getting into them my eyes glaze over with all of the land units. Here I understand where everything is and what I need to do. And I love the control you have of your airforce and fleets. The WEGO and watching all of your decisions play out is what I love the most. You get all of the emotions of watching a movie. That you get to watch all of your planes and pilots and ships and ship captains carry out your orders no other game does this it is amazing. You do have tons of control over everything as much as you want but of course nothing ever goes perfectly. Start small scenarios and give it time and you will love it.

[Chickenboy]

If it's more a psychological thing, I suggest taking a step back and just enjoying the successes and failures that come with higher level "leadership". Two examples that I haven't been able to stop thinking about:

1)Kuala Lumpur -had a squadron of fighters throwing back everything the Japanese came at them with for over 2 weeks. Well, the Japanese switched to a night bomb run and leveled the airfield, damaged 15 fighters on the ground. I was left with 3 operational fighters. That was the death blow, nothing I could do about it, not really my fault, but now I have to deal with it. 2 days later, the evacuation of Singapore is well underway, just can't gain air superiority anymore. That's the type of strategic and operational decision making this game models amazingly.

2)I'm now in the middle of evacuating as many men as possible from Singapore. Naval search flights spot a large cruiser taskforce off Kuching threatening to cut across the north Java sea. I move some dinky old Vildabeest's over to at least buy us a day to load troops. The japs must have diverted aircover elsewhere, cause my old WW1 Vildabeests tore up 1 heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, and a destroyer. Later that afternoon they finished the job and sent them packing back to Saigon.

Ditto what the others have said already.

From my own perspective, I'd suggest that you stick with it until you get 'hooked' like altemosejd has described above.

Back in the day, while personally struggling to climb the 'learning cliff' that is this game, there were several hooks like he's described above. Things that I pondered on my drive into work, things that I thought about while falling asleep at night, things I ruminated over while in some boring meeting at work. Resolving these hooks and seeing how my orders (even at the operational or theater level) manifest themselves cemented my feet in this game. I've never experienced that same obsession with any other war game of any type.

It probably didn't hurt that I had extensive experience with the two prequels (Uncommon Valor and War in the Pacific-the OG) and mostly knew what to expect. WiTP:AE was another iterative bigger bite at a much bigger apple. It's got to be that much tougher coming in as a WiTP:AE-adjacent noob.

Stick it out. Find the unique pleasure in each turn. Find how your orders saved the day or muffed the punt. Learn from it. Obsess on it. Start with the small scenarios and expand your understanding of the mechanics. Take on the AI in a full war scenario. Lament your losses, celebrate your victories.

When you think you've got it down pat, take on a PBEM. That's a whole 'nuther world, but it's not for the faint of heart or those who haven't been steepened in this intoxicating brew. Drink up!

[dr.hal]

Well put Chickenboy!

[Gratch1111]

The thing that makes this a beautiful game is that unlike other strategy games this actually makes you think. Many, or every, other strategy game is a numbers game. Once you get to a certain point the game is just...over, even if the game in time is far from over. This is where this game shines because you are always a mistake from losing, especially if you play Japan.

But I saved the best for last, the game is like an onion. You think you have the game figured out and then your realize their is another layer to how the game works, and then another layer etc etc. Im sure there are many here who knows all the layers, Im still finding new ones and most of them are Eureka moments, "I had no idea about that"

I have played strategy games for 40 years and this is by far the best, nothing comes close, even with the flaws