Why Buy this Game?

[76mm]

As I've mentioned, I'm not familiar with this game, so have spent a fair bit of time looking around this forum, including the AARs, to try figure out what the game is all about and why it seems to be so popular.

So far about all I've been able to tell is that it is a large, complicated, WWII macro-strategy game which will eventually accommodate multiplayer. I've never really been a fan of WWII macro-strategy games, however, so am having a hard time getting excited about it, especially since for now I'd be limited to playing solitaire or live via network. Most of this genre seems rather simplistic for my taste, but that doesn't seem to be an issue with this game... (you need hard-copy manuals and everything! [:'(])

I'd be interested in hearing from some veteran players (I guess of the board game as well) about why this game is so great? Or is this one of those games that if you have to ask this kind of question, don't bother?

[warspite1]

Try this for a start. Depends what you mean by simplistic. If you mean you want WITP-AE type historical realism then probably best to steer clear.


tm.asp?m=3413464

[76mm]

Thanks warspite, that's a helpful thread.

I am actually not interested in WitP-level detail at all, when I referred to other games as simplistic I was thinking more about games a few notches up from Panzer Generals, etc.

One thing absent from your post, however, are more of a description about what makes the game FUN. It is hard for me to tell so far whether the game would be long, complicated, and fun, or long, complicated, and tedious... What cool decisions have players faced in their games, or what interesting situations have played out?

And personally I'm afraid that the AI for a game like this will be a complete waste of time; nothing against the devs but it sounds like developing a competent AI for a game like this would be virtually impossible.

[Gizuria]

I have to admit that this is my favourite strategy game and so I'm a bit biased. I've played a lot of wargames in my time but this one stood out, just like ASL stood out.

Turns are of variable length. It's like a game of tennis. You have no idea just how long it will take to play a single turn in the game because there are so many impulses. The number of impulses per turn is a factor of the weather. In your impulse, you can perform different types of actions, Naval, Air, Ground or Combined and each has its strengths and weaknesses. Units that don't get disorganised are available to fight in successive impulses where units that don't do so well in the ground combat will get disrupted and be out of the turn unless re-organised. You can use your HQs to re-organise your units but this will disorganise your HQ. Decisions that are actually interesting and meaningful making a global war strategy game feel more like an operational level game.

While the game's ground combat model is fairly straight forward, there is so much ingenuity in the design that it makes each battle unpredictable. One example comparing it to AH's A3R game is that you have a wide variety of ground units that influence your options each impulse. A3R just had 3-3 infantry counters and 5-5 (I think) armour counters, a small number of air base counters and some 9 step naval units. It was a great game at the same scale as WiF but WiF is far more detailed in every possible way.

The production model is fantastic. And there are lots of meaningful decisions to make each turn as well. Do I get rid of those obsolete fighters so to improve my chances of drawing a good fighter at the expense of reducing my force pool? There are gearing limits to consider as well. You cant just build 20 new ships one turn and then 6 new air units either. More meaningful and interesting decisions.

Where the game really shines is the naval and air games. Naval battles are an absolute joy to play. With several impulses, you can capture the unpredictability and excitement of the action at Midway within a strategy game of this level. The air game is very detailed as well allowing the player a far broader range of options and decsions within a single impulse.

There is so much more to this that it's impossible to cover in a short post and I'm too anxious to get back to the game to go into them.[&o]

[76mm]

haha thanks for the post FD, good to hear from a fanatic.

One thing no one has mentioned is how diplomacy works (or doesn't). Obviously in a two player game I guess it wouldn't be very interesting/important, but what about multiplayer? What are the victory conditions, and how do they affect diplomatic issues? For instance, I suppose that Germany can choose not to invade the USSR--if so, given the disasterous repercussions, why would German players invade anyway?

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

Thanks warspite, that's a helpful thread.

I am actually not interested in WitP-level detail at all, when I referred to other games as simplistic I was thinking more about games a few notches up from Panzer Generals, etc.

One thing absent from your post, however, are more of a description about what makes the game FUN. It is hard for me to tell so far whether the game would be long, complicated, and fun, or long, complicated, and tedious... What cool decisions have players faced in their games, or what interesting situations have played out?

And personally I'm afraid that the AI for a game like this will be a complete waste of time; nothing against the devs but it sounds like developing a competent AI for a game like this would be virtually impossible.

warspite1

Mmmm Long? - yes, complicated? - in some places, fun? - %^&* yeah!

The reasons for this are numerous, but I would categorise under the following headings:

Quality of the counters, maps etc i.e. the aethestics: This for me is a big issue. A game that looks messy and/or gives you a headache just to read the info is a no no. MWIF ticks the aesthetic box and then some.

Chrome: Another important area. Playing with every ship from WWII + some ahistorical what-ifs... heaven. The aircraft are named types not faceless "fighter" or "bomber". The land units are, in the main, historical (at least in designation).

Realism: The game gives you a WWII framework. Whilst decisions and options within the game on strategy are wide and varied, the backdrop to this is a few hard and fast rules that gives every game a WWII feel.

Micro-management: Although there is lots to do, the majority of things to be done are FUN. From production and the building of units, to planning operational and strategic objectives to actually moving and attacking - this game is FUN - its not a chore. You are not choosing what breakfast to give to Private Jones of the 43rd Uttoxeter Yeomanry, but you are spending a lots of time planning and executing attacks, choosing what resources to use, and where e.g. do you use aircraft to ground strike, to support land attacks, to defend intercepting fighters? There is so much to think about and you cannot do it all.

In short, Best. Game. Ever.

[Neilster]

I agree with Fascist Dog. What I like about the game is that you are the supreme ruler. Basically the only limitations on your actions are the gameplay ones. You control grand strategy, production, political decisions and operational manoeuvres.

You really have to plan ahead because some units take a very long time to build. However, as the U.S., if you lay down all those carriers you're going to need to defeat Japan NOW, you may have nothing useful to lend-lease to a collapsing Soviet Union. You often have to build stuff just in case. If France disintegrates rapidly and the BEF are annihilated, hopefully Germany built some units suitable for Operation Sealion.

You get to do ahistorical stuff like capturing Gibraltar and Suez to close the Med, invade Australia as Japan or link the Axis up in India. When I'm playing, I like to imagine what all this stuff would have looked like in real life...German tanks fanning out through the Middle East...Fallshirmjaeger descending on Gib etc

Trust me, it's fun [;)]

Cheers, Neilster

[solops]

"Why Buy this Game?"

Good question. I have no idea. Until it gets an AI, buy the boardgame which is fantastic.

[Peeking Duck?]

ORIGINAL: solops

"Why Buy this Game?"

Good question. I have no idea. Until it gets an AI, buy the boardgame which is fantastic.

Umm. No. This game (MWIF), in its current form is vastly superior to the board game version. Not just for the obvious reason of space savings, but primarily because it implements the rules correctly, thus saving countless hours debating over something as simple as a conjunction in one sentence of the rule book. In addition, it's immersive, that is if you like playing as the Supreme Commander of any given major power. There are loads more reasons I could go into, but it appears you've already made your mind...without having tried it...

[alexvand]

Let me give you a small picture of one of the decisions that I am enjoying greatly right now.

I'm playing a solitare global war game in order to help me learn the interface and knock the rust off after not having played this game in at least a decade.

As the Italian player on Sept/Oct 1939 it's clear that the British are moving against Italy very aggressively. Almost the entire Commonwealth navy is in the Med dominating every sea zone with all of their carrier air poised to port strike the Italian Fleet. What are the Italians to do? Do they declare war pre-emptively? But that will affect US relations and likely cause the US to enter the war sooner! In fact, if Italy lets the Allies be the aggressor it may delay the US multiple months. But the CW also has the Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary transports in the med loaded with troops heading to Malta or somewhere and the Italian fleet might have a chance of intercepting them.

Does Italy keep its fleet in port and hope that Anti-Air prevents too much damage? Do they sail their fleet just to get it out of range of the allied carriers? Do the attack?

Then of course, there's the opportunity presented to the Germans to sail their surface units since so much of the British fleet is in the Med. But that would mean they would have to spend time moving ships when they want to be moving land units to finish off Poland. What's the best choice for them?


And all of these choices are in the first impulse of the first turn of the game. And I haven't mentioned the fun I'm having with Japan and China in the new Asia map!

The whole game is like this!

[alexvand]

ORIGINAL: solops

"Why Buy this Game?"

Good question. I have no idea. Until it gets an AI, buy the boardgame which is fantastic.

Only if you have space!

What's more I've already learned I was playing at least one rule wrong and I've only been playing the game for an hour or two!

[Dorb]

Why guy this game?
I'm guessing if your are a wargamer that has a passion and loves WWII - being in charge of the whole show, and realize hobbies are and can be expensive(after all they are not food, shelter and clothing) and if you have the money and want to play the game, and help support folks that are making a living bringing these to us to spend our disposable income on... I would say buy it.
The game is going to be supported and around for a very long time, just wait for what add-ons come out down the road(including the AI) and join in when you want to and can afford to take the plunge. No biggy, we will all be here still to help out.

For me, I have been wargaming since the late 80's - when I saw this game back then and with the scale I always thought this was for extreme WWII geeks. Now in my 40's, following this for the last few weeks, I bought it and the maps to finally see for my self what these diehards were playing all these years that kept this thing going(and made it a PC reality). I really have no idea when I will play it as I have several games ahead of it I am messing with at this time, but winter is coming and I'm sure one of these long cold nights I will start the process of digging into it and figuring it out.- Hell maybe by then then AI will even be out.

Until then cheers and see ya on the battlefield.[:)]

[Ur_Vile_WEdge]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

One thing no one has mentioned is how diplomacy works (or doesn't). Obviously in a two player game I guess it wouldn't be very interesting/important, but what about multiplayer? What are the victory conditions, and how do they affect diplomatic issues? For instance, I suppose that Germany can choose not to invade the USSR--if so, given the disasterous repercussions, why would German players invade anyway?

There are two major diplomatic factors you want to keep in mind.


Firstly, until the U.S. gets involved, they're watching everything that the active combatants are doing. Aggressive and nasty things by the Allies, such as attacking neutral minor countries loses U.S. entry chits, whereas aggressive Axis actions, like attacking the same, or conquering France, or possible Japanese atrocities coming to light when they take Chinese cities, makes the U.S. public more inclined to get involved (more U.S. entry chits).

Those chits are really important, since they control not only how early the U.S. enters the war, but allows the U.S. player to get progressively more involved, start doing things like signing the Lend-Lease act or guarding the convoys in an ever increasing cordon from the east coast.


This tends to exert a moderating influence on what players are doing, but it's not controlling. For instance, as the Commonwealth/Great Britain, I very often like to declare war on Portugal on my first turn. True, there's a 50% chance that this loses a U.S. entry chit, but the easily transported resource, the prime usefulness of Lisbon as a port, and most importantly, the incredibly important airbase in the Azores are worth the possible hit. Other players, however, might calculate differently.


As for objectives, there are 67 objective hexes on the map. Each one you have at the end of the game gives you a point. You win the game not by controlling the most objectives (the CW almost always has the most at the end of the game), but by having the most relative to how well your nation did historically. Now, they don't always help you win the game, (Pago Pago is worth a point, yet I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it as a major naval base, and it has 0 implication on movement or production, unlike say, Gibraltar, which is also worth the same one point, but is probably the most important single hex in the game), but you do sometimes see a scramble for them. I've seen a couple of games where the main western allied counter-attack in 44 isn't in Normandy, but up through the Adriatic and into the Balkans. It's a much harder route to attack, but it has the prime objective of beating the Soviets to those lovely victory hexes in that part of the world and stealing points away from them.



So to answer your question as to why would the Germans ever want to attack the Soviets, in game logic it's this. The Soviets actually really want to fight the Germans. There's no way to get anything approaching their historical score without overrunning Eastern Europe for them. And if you don't attack them when they're weak, they'll just sit there and build up an unstoppable army, and then come around and attack you when they're strong.



There's also some minor stuff about neutrality pacts and certain rules for picking up minor countries, but htose are more details than grand strategy factors.

[DSWargamer]

Games come in so many forms.

I couldn't be paid to play Battlefield 4 or Call of Duty Ghost. Shooters offer me nothing.
I have no trouble not playing MMOs. Not my thing.
I prefer turns, so anything without turns likely will not interest me.

Now it is a shame WEGO is not the dominant mode of computer wargaming. It would sure eliminate a lot of the gamey aspects.

This game though, it has so little in common with Battle Academy. But I can like both. I have WitP and WitE. I wish I had the common sense to not buy games I have no reason to expect I will have the time for Moving countless 1000s of units every turn is exactly how it sounds.

Games can be hard to learn, and games can be hard to play, and it not be the same thing. It is easy to understand the controls of Battle Academy, and hard to win at all if you are not as good as the opposition. WitE is mainly about learning HOW to control the game. A person might take days figuring out the interface, and then be devastatingly good at winning it.

From the OPs first post, I'd be inclined to suggest, this game would be of no use to you even if free and with an AI to play against.
It doesn't sound like you would want to play it.

Most of the discussion though, is really centered on how a game we have been waiting for years is finally a reality, and some are over the moon for it, and some are entirely disgusted at it for some aspects of the release. Me, I am 100% satisfied. I can assure you there are some here 100% unsatisfied.

You can please some of the people some of the time, most of the people most of the time, but some people are never happy and seem to enjoy being unhappy in some fashion about almost every game that is on sale.

[Klydon]

I know a little about 76mm from the WiTE forums.
 
While this is a physically big game, it doesn't have the issue of being super detailed like WiTE and apparently WitPAE. You don't have stuff like making sure to move commanders, move support units, etc like you do in WiTE.
 
By the nature of the impulse system and having to select a type of impulse (air, land, sea, combined), it also means you can't touch all your units in a given impulse. That in itself is also a important strategic decision but also a time saver. I don't have a good count anymore since it has been so long since I played and I never played with all the expansions, but I would say you are looking at most 50-150 counters for a nations entire armed forces at their peak and you can't use them all in a single impulse. 
 
Most anything is possible in game from the standpoint of declaring war and invading someplace. In its current version, there are two big things to take into consideration in terms of invasions from a "political" standpoint of view. First, if the US is still neutral, US entry into the war will be affected by who is doing what (US doesn't automatically enter the war at a fixed date and no one really knows when they will enter, including the US. They may know when they are close, but they don't know what will trigger them being able to enter the war). Given there are big advantages given to the surprise rule, the US usually enters after Japan launches an attack. When that happens may be Nov/Dec 41 and it may not be. I think in most cases, the US has about a 6 month "swing" depending on the actions of the other countries. It is possible to get them into the war earlier and they may not enter until 1942. The second "political" issue is dealing with partisans of whatever country you invaded. Some countries are more active than others, but it drains garrison units from whoever did the deed and typically will give the other side some additional units to play with depending on who it was.
 
Eventually the game will hopefully include the "Days of Decision" series. Right now, the world is aligned as it was in 1939. Playing a "game" of Days of Decision before means all that is out the window. Austria may not be part of the Reich. Different deals can be reached between different countries. The Spanish Civil war may or may not happen and it can take a different course depending on who supports who. 
 
The other thing with this game is some of the complexity can be controlled by what optional rules are selected. There are tons of them. Many add additional units/rules. All these optional rules can also be used to help "balance" the game between players of different skill. (Want to put a major hurt on the Axis? play with the oil option for example).
 
There are rules for outright wins I think. Normally a game is decided on playing to the historical conclusion of the war and them comparing the number of victory cities each side has. There is an optional rule to extend the game to 1948.  
 
Unlike a lot of games of this genre, the unit mix is pretty reflective of each countries armed forces. The German units are really good, but you never have enough. Italian army units give the feeling of being "bleh". There is potential in their fleet. The Japanese navy represents a powerful, but brittle force. The UK has tons of naval units, but the quality isn't that hot. Their carrier air is bad to start the war. The US starts with very little beyond their old battle fleet. The US air force will be a huge power house. The Russian army gives the impression of numbers, but not individual excellence until later in the war. Their air force can be powerful, but is short ranged (same issues with the Germans to a point).
 
Hopefully this is more in the realm of what 76mm may have been looking for in terms of a response.
 

[76mm]

guys thanks for all of the comments, very helpful and interesting. sounds like I'll pick this one up, although I'm inclined to wait for a d/d only option.

I still sounds like a two-player game would not be as fun as multiplayer, and it would seem like the Axis player would have a significant advantage in such games, being able to coordinate German-Japanese strategies, etc. Is that much of an issue? For instance, it seems like the Axis would be better off with Japan not attacking the US, but ganging up with Germany against Russia, and then maybe against the US. Does the game tend to channel players to using the same strategies over and over?

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: 76mm

guys thanks for all of the comments, very helpful and interesting. sounds like I'll pick this one up, although I'm inclined to wait for a d/d only option.

I still sounds like a two-player game would not be as fun as multiplayer, and it would seem like the Axis player would have a significant advantage in such games, being able to coordinate German-Japanese strategies, etc. Is that much of an issue? For instance, it seems like the Axis would be better off with Japan not attacking the US, but ganging up with Germany against Russia, and then maybe against the US. Does the game tend to channel players to using the same strategies over and over?

warspite1

I only ever played two player. The bonus is that whichever side you are on you get to play with huge fleets Japan vs US, huge armies USSR vs Germany. So you get the best of both worlds.

[Neilster]

guys thanks for all of the comments, very helpful and interesting. sounds like I'll pick this one up, although I'm inclined to wait for a d/d only option.

I still sounds like a two-player game would not be as fun as multiplayer, and it would seem like the Axis player would have a significant advantage in such games, being able to coordinate German-Japanese strategies, etc. Is that much of an issue? For instance, it seems like the Axis would be better off with Japan not attacking the US, but ganging up with Germany against Russia, and then maybe against the US. Does the game tend to channel players to using the same strategies over and over?

No. A Japanese attack on the Soviet Union is trickier than it sounds. The terrain is nasty, supply is difficult and the Ruskies can afford to take a hit there with little dislocation to their war effort. That's not to say it isn't a possibility though. It may make the difference the Germans need.

A successful Japanese Pacific campaign can net the Axis lots of victory points and, as historically happened, they aren't easy to budge.

That said, in two player mode, it is probably best to play each power with one eye on global Axis strategy and one on what's best for them. I'm no expert though. Perhaps an actual expert could answer this better.

Cheers, Neilster

[Ur_Vile_WEdge]

Dogpiling the USSR is a time honored strategy, although the core of it isn't the Japanese attack on the Soviets (which at best, is a distraction), the real meat of it is this:

As mentioned above, you can't move all your units at once. You're usually concentrating on one broad arm of your forces, like your land units or your naval units, and the other arms can only make limited, if any moves that impulse.

So when you're doing the big brawl in the east, Germany has something of a conundrum. You want to advance, so that means land actions, but you kind of need the air support to make your attacks work, and your best planes all have tiny ranges. The Soviets are often retreating just out of your air cover, which forces you to move up to them, then waste an impulse doing an air rebasing everyone, or trying to move your planes up incrementally with the moves you get on your land action and leaving yourself open somewhere.


So the trick is: Germany lends lots and lots of money to the Italians. They build up a lot of fighters and land bombers. They're not quite as good as what the Germans have, but they can be good enough. Germany always calls a land, and Italy almost always calls an air. Germans move up, Italian fighters cover the advance constantly. It can get pretty ugly.

[stormbringer3]

From reading the above it appears to me that Italy starts the game already at war so there is no option to delay its' war entry to build up before entering. Is that a correct assessment? Also, it appears that you have the option as Japan to not attack the U.S. and perhaps concentrate on China, the Commomwealth or Russia. Is that correct?
Thanks for any information.