Campaign Game VP System needs revision

[KWG]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



Well..pushing over the alps to Berlin will probably cost me the game from the -1000 vp cost of not invading France. But your right...I haven't done the math.

History has no place once the game starts. I agree that it has a huge influence on how the game is created. How the objectives may or may not be assigned. How the pieces work.

But once the game starts....history has no place. It has done its bit. Now it is my turn.

History is VERY MUCH still there, its up to the player to do a 'slight return' of it.


slight return - to move partially back in an artistic direction that was abandoned or forgotten

[LiquidSky]

ORIGINAL: KWG

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



Well..pushing over the alps to Berlin will probably cost me the game from the -1000 vp cost of not invading France. But your right...I haven't done the math.

History has no place once the game starts. I agree that it has a huge influence on how the game is created. How the objectives may or may not be assigned. How the pieces work.

But once the game starts....history has no place. It has done its bit. Now it is my turn.

History is VERY MUCH still there, its up to the player to do a 'slight return' of it.


slight return - to move partially back in an artistic direction that was abandoned or forgotten

Why? If somebody wants to mimic history more power to them. I will use that information against them.

[KWG]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

ORIGINAL: KWG

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky



Well..pushing over the alps to Berlin will probably cost me the game from the -1000 vp cost of not invading France. But your right...I haven't done the math.

History has no place once the game starts. I agree that it has a huge influence on how the game is created. How the objectives may or may not be assigned. How the pieces work.

But once the game starts....history has no place. It has done its bit. Now it is my turn.

History is VERY MUCH still there, its up to the player to do a 'slight return' of it.


slight return - to move partially back in an artistic direction that was abandoned or forgotten

Why? If somebody wants to mimic history more power to them. I will use that information against them.

mimic? thats a 180 to my statement.

"history has no place".... The game itself is history.

Whatever you do in the game is a slight return of history.

A "slight return" is to play a song in a different way/style, yet its the same song.

[DTomato]

I agree with KWG on principle, that history is important. But I agree with Liquid Sky on practicality. Once the game starts, no matter how much people protest otherwise, game trumps history. Many of us like history, but few of us will play a losing game simply to recreate it.

But then again, if history is irrelevant and all exploits are valid, then what is the point of playing a big, complicated, historical simulation like WITW? It becomes nothing more than an overblown game of Risk. I want to have fun and mental stimulation first and foremost, but for all the time and aggravation I spend, I also want to learn something about history and why things happened -- or could have happened.

Michael

[HMSWarspite]

Why go to the trouble of creating a game that so finely represents history up to turn 0, but then wanders off into fantasy land? A lot of bunk is talked about games that follow history being boring and constraining. However in my view this always misses the point. We have a game where the armour piercing capabilty of a P47 pilot's pistol is debated together with discussion of when the Mk2 spam can was available and hence whether national morale should rise in April or May, and then people say "History has no place once the game starts. I agree that it has a huge influence on how the game is created. How the objectives may or may not be assigned. How the pieces work."

Or less obtusely, people who post a big long historical critique of why carpet bombing as done in a certain AAR is unrealistic and unhistorical, and then post that History has no place... "Unhistorical Air system - WAD but a poor design in my o..." post number 37 anyone?

I just dont get it.

I want complete freedom to make decisions that real historical figures could have made. I am not constrained to make the same choice as they did, but if they did not have the option of basing Bomber Command in Sicily, I do not want it. Or more accurately, I want the constraints that would have made them discard it however much they might have wanted it... On the other hand, basing 8AF round Lincoln and BC in Suffolk. Fair game choice. Go for it. Knock yourself out.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

Exactly! Now you get it. There is nothing about Rome that makes it important as a war winning objective. Not even in history. It didn't make the Italians quit the war...they did that earlier. It didn't make the Germans give up Italy..they still defended as much as they could. Only the newspapers cared about Rome. Or Paris. The war continued on.

It wasn't just the newspapers; the political leaders of both sides, the High Command of both sides and perhaps most importantly the general public all cared about the capture of Rome and Paris. They were important political objectives for both sides. And, of course, if it was the Russians who captured Paris and Rome then everyone would have cared even more.

If you want to look at history and figure out what victory conditions they were playing for..well...they played until the other side quit. Or were made to quit. That's it.

True, but hindsight is always 20/20. We know now that regardless of what happened the Germans were not going to quit until the bitter end. But at the time the Allies had no reason to believe that would be the case. After all in their only experience with a previous World War the Russians, Germans and Austrians all quit long before their respective capitals were captured.

Game victory points is not a measure of history. It is a measure of how you play a game. If, in your football example, the game rules are changed so that points are scored differently....and your favourite team decides to keep playing the game the same way and losing then the coach would be fired for being stupid. No body would praise them for being 'historical'.


And history has no place in a game. As soon as the first counter is pushed, history and game diverge. If I invade Italy, push over the Alps and take Berlin in spring '45 I will probably lose the game.

Victory points are used to guide behaviour. And that behaviour is defined by the victory points. The problem is not the behaviour.

Again we disagree. I believe that the Victory Points (or score or whatever you want to call it) awarded in any game simulating the real world should be reflective of the real world objectives it is trying to simulate. I agree with you that if they changed the rules of real football any coach trying to play under the old rules should be fired. I further agree with you that if a computer simulation of football used a different scoring system than real life football it would be stupid of anyone to play the computer simulation as if the scoring system was the same as real football. But I also think that if the developers of the football simulation are marketing it is a reasonably accurate simulation of real football, you would be well within your rights to advise them that this is not the case and request changes. The difference between us is you don't care if it is an accurate simulation or not and I do.

[Dobey455]

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

Game victory points is not a measure of history. It is a measure of how you play a game. If, in your football example, the game rules are changed so that points are scored differently....and your favourite team decides to keep playing the game the same way and losing then the coach would be fired for being stupid. No body would praise them for being 'historical'.

And history has no place in a game. As soon as the first counter is pushed, history and game diverge. If I invade Italy, push over the Alps and take Berlin in spring '45 I will probably lose the game.

Victory points are used to guide behaviour. And that behaviour is defined by the victory points. The problem is not the behaviour.

But why should optimal game play and historical plausibility be mutually exclusive?

Surely that's the point here? That if the underlying scoring system is designed "right" then you should be able to play purely for score and find that the result is you end up using "realistic" strategy and tactics.

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: Harrybanana

True, but hindsight is always 20/20. We know now that regardless of what happened the Germans were not going to quit until the bitter end. But at the time the Allies had no reason to believe that would be the case. After all in their only experience with a previous World War the Russians, Germans and Austrians all quit long before their respective capitals were captured.

I disagree. Neither Entente nor Central Powers demanded Unconditional Surrender though. The Allies knew they were dealing with a totalitarian regime. They demanded total destruction of the Nazi German state and German militarism. So it was not unreasonable to expect that the said system would resist until the end.

[szmike]

ORIGINAL: Dobey

ORIGINAL: LiquidSky

Game victory points is not a measure of history. It is a measure of how you play a game. If, in your football example, the game rules are changed so that points are scored differently....and your favourite team decides to keep playing the game the same way and losing then the coach would be fired for being stupid. No body would praise them for being 'historical'.

And history has no place in a game. As soon as the first counter is pushed, history and game diverge. If I invade Italy, push over the Alps and take Berlin in spring '45 I will probably lose the game.

Victory points are used to guide behaviour. And that behaviour is defined by the victory points. The problem is not the behaviour.

But why should optimal game play and historical plausibility be mutually exclusive?

Surely that's the point here? That if the underlying scoring system is designed "right" then you should be able to play purely for score and find that the result is you end up using "realistic" strategy and tactics.

I don't think it could work. In real life it is hard to min-max for several reasons. The game is somewhat simplified model where you can min-max if you find optimal parameters as set in engine. Thus optimal and historical gameplay are pretty much exclusive.

[soeren01]

I am missing some basic questions in this discussion.

What ARE Victory points aside a number that tells you how succesful you have played the game in the end?

Are they a tool of the game designer, to adjust the difficulty of some styles of playing (use Heavy Bombers for SB, not for TB) ?

Do they represent the political pressure put on High Command (U-Boat bombing, V-Weapons bombing, high losses) ?

Something else, a bit of everything ?

[JeffroK]

IMVHO, the VP system in WITW is an attempt to force players into recreating history. It also feels like the Army is there to attract targets for the AirForce

VP for strategic bombing of specific targets, landing in Italy & France, keeping garrison levels up, avoiding losses etc.

If more time had been put into the game there would be other ways of "encouraging" players to follow similar strategies by means of rewards/penalties and the game may have taken another 12 mths and cost 50% more.

Bombing Uboats, Germans get a number of boats manufactured (like aircraft),If you bomb the factories they don't get built, bomb the pens and they are less effective. Failure to do so sees increased interdiction levels in the Atlantic (subject to Coastal Command commitment) and a decrease in "supplies" arriving in the UK.

Bombing V-Weapons, similar, destroy factories and VSites and you stop the rain of V1/2 which damage ports.

Germans dont lose VP for lack of garrisons, but dont keep up the numbers and the Resistance creates havoc with your LOC & Depots.

A good player should be avoiding losses, and have manpower limits which should bite if you are too profligate with your troops. (Especially with troops from NZ, Sth Africa, Poland & maybe pre DDay French, very limited reinforcements)

I'd like to see a "National Morale" system, too many UBoats & V weapons and the Brits suffer a loss to morale which affects production/reinforcements, No Luftwaffe and the same happens to Germany etc

I know these sort of changes cannot be made to WITW but it should be how things are approached, not the "hit with a stick approach" currently used.

[HMSWarspite]

More or less. VPs are there to enable people to tell who has won the game (otherwise it isn't a game!). Germany is going down, and hence you cannot have a Chess like win condition which is the same for both sides. Otherwise Germany needs to capture London to win! So, in an asymmetric game you need a 'did you lose (historically) less badly than average, and hence in game terms have you won?' mechanism.

Once you have this mechanism, you can use it to allow for things that are not in game as you say, like the effect of Uboat production on Atlantic freight, or the effect of V weapons landing on London on a major democratic government. This is what most of your examples are. However, you have misunderstood one. The manpower issue is key. The UK did not run out of manpower - the casualties did not significantly affect the number of able bodies in the labour pool - deaths were less than 1% of prewar population for the whole war. Whilst this is obviously higher as a % of working age adults, roughly 50% of the workforce was on war related work by late 1944, so it is a good order of magnitude figure. The US was even less limited by casualties, yet they transferred technical stream recruits to the infantry in late 1944!

The issue is the available manpower was fully allocated, that is any further increases required some other critical activity to give it up (not necessarily war related). Previously, undirected resource was still being taken up (more women to the services or the land who previously didn't work or had non-directed jobs such as domestic service, completion of the call up for the affected ages etc). The Army could have been kept at full strength for a while past 1945 at the cost of other projects; the UK knew the war was won and were allocating resources to post war efforts. Did you know that the British welfare state is dated to the Beveridge report, which was presented to Parliament in Nov 1942! Much government effort went into planning the reform of education in 1944. Significant change was started from mid 1945 (i.e. as soon as the European war was over). Thus managing the desire to limit casualties solely on the manpower pool would be very unrealistic. If the war went pear shaped, manpower would have been made available, and the situation would have been reversed. But, allowing it to go pear shaped to the extent that manpower needs to be made available must be seen as poor play by a WA player...The game must allow the manpower be available to reverse the situation, but needs to penalise (lose points) the player for needing to use it (i.e. having high casualties). There is also the public opinion effect on a democratic government of high casualties, but in my opinion, the UK would have accepted it as long as the war was going well and an end could be seen. Thus the reason for the VP loss for causalities is (IMHO) not what people usually think it is... Public opinion/morale would not be the issue, the disruption of plans for after the war is key.

[Joel Billings]

I just want to throw in that although I understand the reasoning and desire to build in-game reasons to perform some actions now incentivized through the VP system, some items are there to offset things that can't be as easily built in. German garrisons come to mind. They weren't just there to defeat local partisans. They were there because German high command only had a limited appreciation of the amphibious capabilities of the Allies. V-weapons were almost entirely a political weapon in that the damage they did was fairly minor and not enough to impact Allied capabilities. The political need to cut down on the V-weapons far outweighed any damage that could be reflected in the game. These are just a few examples. I also agree that providing all the in-game effects could be time-consuming, and as always we have to make trade-offs with our resources.

Not trying to sidetrack this active and interesting discussion, just wanted to throw in my 2 cents on this part of it.

[KWG]

With all the discussions in different threads, reading and contemplation of the system I can see that much thought has gone into the VP system.


The VP system is fuzzy and variable and to nail down every possible outcome would take a lot of game data. A estimation of the real WW2 VPs into game terms would interesting. The Vweapons and Uboots play in with justification.


There is the ability to shift focus within the VP system itself. VPs can be abandoned all together for a max focus on battlefield results or one can do the reverse. And of course any point of varing degree or equalization. And you can switch strategies at any time, you can change to a new one each turn.

The fact that the VPs system is so variable and open may be the exact thing that causes it to seem out of whack, because its being played in a way to achieve a out of whack result.

[Harrybanana]

ORIGINAL: KWG

With all the discussions in different threads, reading and contemplation of the system I can see that much thought has gone into the VP system.


The VP system is fuzzy and variable and to nail down every possible outcome would take a lot of game data. A estimation of the real WW2 VPs into game terms would interesting. The Vweapons and Uboots play in with justification.


There is the ability to shift focus within the VP system itself. VPs can be abandoned all together for a max focus on battlefield results or one can do the reverse. And of course any point of varing degree or equalization. And you can switch strategies at any time, you can change to a new one each turn.

The fact that the VPs system is so variable and open may be the exact thing that causes it to seem out of whack, because its being played in a way to achieve a out of whack result.

I am not disputing that a lot of thought went into the VP System and I am not trying to completely over throw the System either. What I am saying is that not enough thought went into how the VP System affects the End Game from Late Summer 44 (and perhaps earlier) on. The current system penalizes the Allies (or, if you want, rewards the Germans) for taking casualties. At the same time the VP System rewards the Allies for capturing and holding certain hexes (Cities and Urban hexes) by awarding a few VPs per turn. However, no VPs (positive or negative) are awarded for holding or not holding these objectives at Games End. So it is inevitable that in every game (except those where the capture of Berlin is likely) a point will be reached where the negative casualty VPs the Allied Player will incur for capturing an objective will be greater than the VPs he will gain from holding that Objective until Games End. Therefore the smart Allied Player will simply stop attacking and, if he does so, the smart German Player will start attacking.

So I am not sure what you mean when you say that the the "VP system... may seem out of whack because it is being played to achieve a out of whack result". Do you mean that playing the game to Win (by not attacking as the Allies in the last part of the game or attacking as the Germans) is playing in a way to achieve a out of whack result? Or do you mean continuing to attack as the Allies (as I am doing) is playing in a way to achieve an out of whack result?

Either way I continue to maintain that the VP System does not just "seem" to be out of whack, it is out of whack. Or at least it is out of whack with the historical objectives and motivations of the Allies and Germans.

[KWG]

I didnt mean to speak comments for anyone but myself.


Out of whack not in a bad way but in that the end score does not always sync with how well one is doing at the end.


Take for example a chemical reaction. It only matters what the start energy state and the end energy state are, no matter if there is 1 or 1000 steps inbetween.


For the VP system it's the opposite; the steps matter more, not so much the end state itself.

[JeffroK]

The VP system is out of whack because you can win the game without winning the war, or win the war without winning the game(this is a bit harder)

[KWG]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

The VP system is out of whack because you can win the game without winning the war, or win the war without winning the game(this is a bit harder)

Yes, it would have to be played within just the right parameters to win the game and win the war (land wise), as the system is open and flexible which may be as it was intended.

[JeffroK]

But in playing WITW the VP must replicate history, if you were playing some hypothetical scenario they can be "open & flexible"

[LiquidSky]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

But in playing WITW the VP must replicate history, if you were playing some hypothetical scenario they can be "open & flexible"

Absolutely not. VP's do not replicate history. In this way lies madness.

It's July 1943....how important is:

Caen. One year later it will be the focus of many major offensives for a month. At the beginning of the game I doubt any Allied Generals are even thinking of the place.
Arnhem. A year and a half later it will be the objective of a major campaign to end the war....again..nobody knows where it is in July 1943.
Bastogne. Held behind enemy lines. Rescued by an army. Meaningless town in 1943.

There are certain history in play at the beginning of the game. The allies are committed to invading Sicily. They want to knock Italy out of the war, but haven't quite figured out how yet. They tentatively want to invade around Taranto, the Toe and/or Sardinia.
They really really want to invade France as early as possible.
They want to bomb cities and industry to knock Germany out of the war.

That's it..thats all the history you have in July 1943. From here on in, as the allied player you are creating your own history.

VP's are just a measure on how well you play a game. There is no extra reward for mimicking history.

Winning the war is just your opponent conceding. Everything else is just points.