Short scenarios?

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

I do feel that very small stand-alone introductory scenarios, just a few impulses long, will be needed to complement the tutorials.  It takes a lot of self-discipline to read tutorials hour after hour and not actually try out in a game what one has just learnt.  The trouble is that if Barbarossa and Guadalcanal are the only 'small' scenarios on offer, there is a real danger that a newbie will dive in prematurely, suffer information overload and then just give up entirely.

I think a mini-scenario on the Norwegian Campaign would be superb for introducing the naval mechanics painlessly.  It's a campaign that could easily have been an Allied victory, so fun for both sides.

To introduce the land rules, how about featuring the Italian invasion of Greece?  Or the Winter War?  And for introducing the air rules, perhaps the invasion of Crete?

If such mini-scenarios feature operations that could have gone either way (so not the German attack on Poland) and are themselves well-balanced, they could also be used for an evening's tournament play.

These sure are good ideas, as is a campaign of Poland 39, but Steve has said that creating scenarios was a nightmare, nothing easy to add to the game, so I think that we will stay with the tutorials and the Barb 41 scenario, which is already real good for starters.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

I do feel that very small stand-alone introductory scenarios, just a few impulses long, will be needed to complement the tutorials.  It takes a lot of self-discipline to read tutorials hour after hour and not actually try out in a game what one has just learnt.  The trouble is that if Barbarossa and Guadalcanal are the only 'small' scenarios on offer, there is a real danger that a newbie will dive in prematurely, suffer information overload and then just give up entirely.

I think a mini-scenario on the Norwegian Campaign would be superb for introducing the naval mechanics painlessly.  It's a campaign that could easily have been an Allied victory, so fun for both sides.

To introduce the land rules, how about featuring the Italian invasion of Greece?  Or the Winter War?  And for introducing the air rules, perhaps the invasion of Crete?

If such mini-scenarios feature operations that could have gone either way (so not the German attack on Poland) and are themselves well-balanced, they could also be used for an evening's tournament play.

Marcus,

The main obstacle to creating new scenarios is the amount of diverse data required for even the simplest of scenarios. Control of territory worldwide is needed, political relationships between all 250+ governed areas/countries is needed, and the list is much longer.

While as a player, looking at the paper map, it is easy to say, let's take these 2 dozen units and push them around on the map. But for the program to do that, it has to have filled out all the parameters necessary for all the rules. You can open the rule book at random, close your eyes and point to a paragraph on the page. I will bet that there is data that has to have been read in at the beginning of play to implement that rule. No data, program go boom.

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Orm

It would be nice if it was possible to put an earlier endate to at least one scenario.

For example

Fascist Tide: (short game)
September/October 1939 to Nov/Dec 1943; 26 turns.

Victory conditions would have to be set for such a scenario.

I would be willing to make a suggestion on victory conditions if it is possible to ad it to the game.

The Annual 2000 had a list of all objective cities at all turns of the game, and listed who controlled them.
Using that, it is easy to come up with new numbers of objective cities for each major power at any turn of the game, to replace those of 24.1.2.

For example, the number of objectives for N/D 43 for each major power is :
Ch 1
CW 17
Fr 1
Ge 18
It 4
Ja 10
USA 10
USSR 6

If the objectives each side controled historically each turn is added to MWIF you could get a comparison on how your country does in MWIF compared to how it was that month during the war. It would be nice to have a screen for "victory progress" that lists this.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Orm

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Orm

It would be nice if it was possible to put an earlier endate to at least one scenario.

For example

Fascist Tide: (short game)
September/October 1939 to Nov/Dec 1943; 26 turns.

Victory conditions would have to be set for such a scenario.

I would be willing to make a suggestion on victory conditions if it is possible to ad it to the game.

The Annual 2000 had a list of all objective cities at all turns of the game, and listed who controlled them.
Using that, it is easy to come up with new numbers of objective cities for each major power at any turn of the game, to replace those of 24.1.2.

For example, the number of objectives for N/D 43 for each major power is :
Ch 1
CW 17
Fr 1
Ge 18
It 4
Ja 10
USA 10
USSR 6

If the objectives each side controled historically each turn is added to MWIF you could get a comparison on how your country does in MWIF compared to how it was that month during the war. It would be nice to have a screen for "victory progress" that lists this.

More appropriate as a reference document (e.g., PDF) than as part of the code.

[Mingus Roberts]

Whatever happened to the Spanish Civil War mini-scenario with DOD? It had limited land, sea and air play with invasions and all that jazz. I learned before WIF 5, but I used the Spanish Civil War as a teaching tool for several players (including my wife) and it worked great as a contained theatre.

I suppose you'd have to code in the Republican forces to use the units.

mr

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Mingus Roberts

Whatever happened to the Spanish Civil War mini-scenario with DOD? It had limited land, sea and air play with invasions and all that jazz. I learned before WIF 5, but I used the Spanish Civil War as a teaching tool for several players (including my wife) and it worked great as a contained theatre.

I suppose you'd have to code in the Republican forces to use the units.

mr

The units are not a problem; they are already in the unit data. It is all the other stuff.

[WarHunter]

Any added short scenarios along the lines of Barbarossa and Guadalcanal, will only be played at best a few times. Not really worth the time to code them.

MWiF is meant to be played Full Map. Its why i will buy it, 99.99% of the people who will purchase it dive into the Global war scenario before fully understanding the game complexity, completly. Even as a boardgame it was that way. That is wargame human nature.

Barbarrossa takes the Russians and Germans, pits then against each other with "Historical" forces and within 5 turns is resolved. But as i know having played it, you want more. You want to change those forces whichever side you play. You want more.

Same with Guadalcanal, Japan vs USA. You want more. Working the Air/Sea angle requires patience. You find out quickly there is never enough naval forces for everything wanted. But the shortness of the scenario is an appetizer for the Global war. You want more.

I would expect many who are new to the game will head for the Global war scenario. Play it a few times as any nation they want. Learn and start over. At some point the single-player will give way to the Multiplayer. Then the learning starts again.

Why?
Because you want more.

[Grapeshot Bob]

How about a Battle of Britian scenario?
 
Unless you could make a limited version of Lebensraum for this purpose.
 
Another good scenario would be the Axis conquest of Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete.
 
That is unless these are already included.
 
 
 
GSB

[brian brian]

I think the way to go for learning the game would be to give players an already set-up version of Barbarossa and Guadalcanal. Maybe even a fairly historical set-up, with everything in supply at start. Then they could try out moving the units directly from the Ground-Strike phase, rather than having to take time to set up the units themselves. That would require only creating a saved game file. An even simpler scenario does sound appealing from a newbie point of view, but if you can't handle taking command of the German army at the launch of Barbarossa or the whole USN in the Pacific before Midway, you'll never be able to play World in Flames anyway. How many pieces do the Germans have in 'Barb? 75? That sounds like a lot...but it is one of the smaller totals you will ever be in charge of while playing WiF. Or you can start out playing the Russians against the AI, and the piece total drops off very quickly. That would be my educational advice to learn the game ... play the historical set-up Russians against an AI German in the Barbarossa scenario. Decision-making would be quite manageable for anyone.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: brian brian

I think the way to go for learning the game would be to give players an already set-up version of Barbarossa and Guadalcanal. Maybe even a fairly historical set-up, with everything in supply at start. Then they could try out moving the units directly from the Ground-Strike phase, rather than having to take time to set up the units themselves. That would require only creating a saved game file. An even simpler scenario does sound appealing from a newbie point of view, but if you can't handle taking command of the German army at the launch of Barbarossa or the whole USN in the Pacific before Midway, you'll never be able to play World in Flames anyway. How many pieces do the Germans have in 'Barb? 75? That sounds like a lot...but it is one of the smaller totals you will ever be in charge of while playing WiF. Or you can start out playing the Russians against the AI, and the piece total drops off very quickly. That would be my educational advice to learn the game ... play the historical set-up Russians against an AI German in the Barbarossa scenario. Decision-making would be quite manageable for anyone.

I agree with many of the other posts herein that a scenario even shorter than 5 turns would be good to have. I just don't have the time to create it, and the process is so complex that no one else could do it giving the intricacies of the code.

Though playing Barbarossa as a first "crack at the game" is reasonable, there are many smaller steps towards learning that need to be mastered first. The sequence of play is not intuitively obvious. Becoming comfortable with what all the numbers on the counters mean takes time. And so forth. That is where just playing 1 or 2 impulses with a couple dozen units would be great.

I believe we are in general agreement with the idea of setting up a saved game so it is "ready to go". And then let the player push the units around and see what happens. To do this right, we should have at least one such saved game for each of the 11 scenarios.

The main problem with learning the naval movement and combat system is that operations take place over a wide area of map. Just look at the range of the Japanese naval units that start in Singapore in the Guadalcanal scenario. I really want to have very good answers available to the new player when he asks "what do I do now?". Otherwise he will never play the game through even 1 turn.

Which leads to the needs for text to accompany each of the "ready to go" saved games giving the player some advice on what is good, what is bad, and where there are choices to make.