Gary Grigsby’s World at War: A World Divided Goes Gold

[Alex Fiedler]

Sequel to Award-Winning World at War with Diplomacy, Espionage and Events!

Matrix Games and 2by3 Games (www.2by3games.com) today announced the sequel to the acclaimed Gary Grisby’s World at War has gone gold. This new sequel, Gary Grigsby’s World At War: A World Divided, adds a host of new features to grow the engine well beyond the original game in terms of grand strategy. A World Divided includes spies, neutral country diplomacy, variable political events, unit experience and scenarios that occur after the war as well as starting earlier than the original.

The original game, which recently awarded the 2006 Origins Vanguard Unique Game of the Year Award, puts players at the helm of one of the five major nations during the Second World War. Managing supply lines, production, troop movement, and resources, it had a simple and elegant design with variable levels of difficulty and detail.

Gary Grigsby’s World at War: A World Divided will take this design to the next level, adding espionage, code-breaking, variable political events, unit experience and neutral country diplomacy. These changes vastly affect the dynamics of play and add entire new layers to the grand strategy mix of the original. Players will have to learn to be more flexible with their tactics, facing more important decisions on these new fronts.

In addition to the new features in Gary Grigsby’s World At War: A World Divided is a completely new ‘what-if’ scenario that carries forward from the end of the war into a conflict between the Western Allies and the Soviet Union. Russia’s massive and experienced army is up against the West’s well equipped forces and industrial might. In addition to simply starting with this scenario, players have the option to jump right from the end of their normal campaign game of WWII into this alternate history. This creates a whole new set of strategic choices as players will have to think into the future and plan for their war against the other super-power while still fending off the Axis forces.

The overall ease of play is retained in Gary Grigsby’s World at War: A World Divided. The game will ship with four tutorials, three campaigns, and five different scenarios starting from 1939 and the invasion of Poland and extending into the mid 1940s.

[Les_the_Sarge_9_1]

Nice that it went "gold" I just want to hear when it goes "on sale".

Got a local friend that was sniffing around my copy of GGWaW and I convinced him to just hold out for the newer better one.

We want something other than Civ IV to play all the time.

[Traveler]

Having played the first game, I'm not sure if it's worth buying this one.

Have the graphics been upgraded?
Is it any easier to edit the starting conditions?
Can the triger points be changed? I spent a lot of time trying to change the trigers that made various factions enter the war, but was never very happy with the results.

[Joel Billings]

The map graphics have been improved and the art for the units now can change during the war as their attributes are researched and improved (for example, there are 3 German tanks, PIII, Tiger I, Panther, and we've pointed out in the manual how to mod this to add any number of graphics for each unit so we're hoping eventually to see lots of different weapons art in the game - we also provide Nato symbols for the land units as an option). There are no combat animations but the information you get in the detailed combat report screen has been improved. Modding the scenarios is still done through the data files, however the system having to do with Soviet and US entry in the war is radically different. They have War Readiness levels that impact their production levels and ability to declare war on the Axis. Neutral countries now can lean toward one side or another and actions taken by the players can influence this. These can all be modded in the data files. The game plays quite differently given War Readiness and Neutral country diplomacy. There are also scenarios that start in 1939 and 1946, including 2 variants for 1939 that make for better play versus the AI.

[Twotribes]

I thought going Gold meant it was going to ship? When will this be available for purchase?

[Traveler]

It's not even listed at GameStop.com.

[Uncle_Joe]

Gamestop wont have it. Its initially being released as Digital Download only. Later on down the road, it may or may not make it into retail stores.

[Traveler]

Is the manual in a PDF?  How many pages will it take to print?

[MrQuiet]

Any chance of making the manual available for reading now?

-MrQuiet

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: MrQuiet

Any chance of making the manual available for reading now?

-MrQuiet

nope

[Marc von Martial]

ORIGINAL: Traveler

Is the manual in a PDF? How many pages will it take to print?

Yes, PDF, it is a monster [;)]

[tgb]

Define monster. More than 200 pages?

[Marc von Martial]

Nope less, I don't have the exact page count currently.

But keep in mind, this is no US Letter pages, but "DVD case size". So you can print page spreads to a US Letter page, which basically halfs the to be printed page count.

[Joel Billings]

Here's something new from the manual:

14.1 VICTORY POINTS

Some victory conditions are based on the Victory Points of either the Axis or Allied side. The Victory Points for each player is the sum of that player’s Production Level (see section 14.1.1) and Strategic Points (see section 14.1.2). All Allied World Powers are added together to determine the Allied Victory Points and all Axis World Powers are added together to determine the Axis Victory Points. These values are shown at the bottom of the Strategic Map screen (pictured below) and are updated continuously during the game. The values are shown for each player as two numbers added together with the left-most value next to the factory symbol being their Production Level and the value to its right next to the globe being their Strategic Points. A similar total is given for each Side.

The value at the bottom right of the screen (52 in the screenshot) is the Axis High Water Mark which is equal to the highest number of Victory Points achieved by the Axis side at any point during the game (thus this number never declines). Just to the right of the High Water Mark in parenthesis are the value(s), if achieved, that will benefit the Axis player (see sections 14.2 and 14.3).