ORIGINAL: mantrain
I am surprised so many people love this game. Thing is, games are to enjoy, but if it takes so long to learn, well, surprising so many breached that cliff of required knowledge to enjoy this game.
Because actually the enjoyment begins while learning. I know, and played, the series for a very long time now (about 10 years), but I will never forget the feeling of awe when I began to understand what wonderful love for detail was put into the game, on so many levels, what it means to be able to conduct grand strategy with so many tactical layers, and how complex and intelligent the overlaps between those layers were designed.
mantrain, if you feel overwhelmed by the learning curve, don´t worry. Many people here learned the game by jumping right into a grand campaign, but others have not. I am a big fan of the small scenarios, and reccommend them everytime I see someone new to the game posting about its scale.
If you have not already, check out Damians great basic tutorials for a start, then launch a scenario:
1000mile war is a great way to start making mistakes. Use it to get a general feel for the very basic game mechanisms, how to conduct small amphib ops, fight surface battles, and how to fight sub war, conduct ASW, and do small scale air ops.
Coral Sea is the best way to get a basic understanding of how a carrier battle works.
Both above scenarios are very short and can be handled in a few days, depending on your time available for the game. This enables you to replay them in case you want to eradicate some errors you made in your first attempts. Switch sides to understand the difficulties presented to your opponent. If you start to get bored by the small scale, usually it is a good sign to increase the scale.
Fire up Guadalcanal, and I promise, if you already understand the basic game mechanics, and know a bit about the historical background of the campaign, even against the AI the game will be fascinating. Play both sides, take your time, and enjoy the replays. Good analysis of the combat replays and reports are very important for later grand cmpaigns, and PBEM. Thankfully they are exciting to watch when it is your own units fighting for survival.
This approach has two big advantages: You can split the learning curve into smaller segments, and you can pay much more attention to details which will be missed in later by the scale of the grand campaign. Who cares if that approach takes half a year, a year, or longer?
The great thing about WitP is, the journey is the reward.
Edit: Tuorials are here
