WitE 2

[morvael]

ORIGINAL: Northern Star
I'm ready to fight for the Dark Side!

Which one?

[SigUp]

ORIGINAL: Northern Star

Is there a way to make the Red Army fight in the south in WitE 2.0?
In my current pbem game my Soviet opponent is doing a slow and masterful retreat in the south while he reinforced Leningrad with everything possible. He is using unit zoc to avoid every kind of encirclement and if I encircle some units he breaks the encirclement with attacks of 6+ divisions.

So at the moment I'm an extended Lvov opening fangirl because it's the only way to encircle some units when playing against an experienced opponent!

How is the southern front going WitE 2.0?
Let me know...

P.S. If there is need for other testers don't forget me please... I'm ready to fight for the Dark Side!

ORIGINAL: loki100

believe me, the WiTE Lvov fantasy is off the agenda in WiTE2, there is a rather nice modelling of the differential level of combat and command capacity/readiness between the SW and Western Fronts in the opening days.

... and any German player planning to support the Ukraine campaign off the Romanian-Soviet rail net is in for a shock too.

its hard to say where things end up but at the moment both sides have real problems in the opening 20 turns. The Germans curse every Soviet counterstroke for burning off supplies etc needed to push forward. The Soviet player had better get used to defending with 4-6,000 man rifle divisions.

[Northern Star]

ORIGINAL: morvael

ORIGINAL: Northern Star
I'm ready to fight for the Dark Side!

Which one?

Germany... The Germans had less resources to fight historically so it will be a great challenge... The Soviets had everything to fight.

I hope that the victory conditions will be balanced to avoid any German or Soviet advantage, and that they will favour the best players.

I still remember my early WitE alpha testing efforts to improve my Lvov pocket when many other efforts were made to limit it... It was very interesting to push as fast as I could to find the limits of WitE... This is nice to do during alpha testing, to find the weak points and improve.

[loki100]

just a comment on the brigade issue. MichealT's opening issue/assumption was that this is something that the Soviet player uses.

From some testing (both vs AI and in PBEM), with the axis, I'm doing a lot of defensive work with regiments, sometimes in a line, sometimes holding strongpoints with gaps. I think the reason is that salients are much more a feature of WiTE2 - and that being encircled is not so immediately fatal. The net result is a much longer front line as both sides will cling to a key hex which in WiTE you'd just abandon.

Without the zoc this is inviting disaster - and its pretty scary even with that safety net when you see a long front of strung out regiments and just hope the Soviets also have massive supply problems on that sector.

Doesn't answer any of the questions posed over the last 2 pages of this thread but it may provide a bit more context for consideration.

[Capitaine]

ORIGINAL: HMSWarspite

That is illogical. Much has changed in WitE2. The game is of the eastern front for 4 years. No one throws punches of less than a corps and yet we have got into this one issue.

My view is that it would not be justified in an otherwise perfect game for a brigade to exert significant influence on a unit passing up to 10 miles away under all circumstances. But neither would it be justified for it to never do so. In addition, the attacker has a huge advantage in knowing exactly where it is (to the hex), and if no ZOC this gives even more information as to where it isn't. There is also the Issue that in a simple rule you introduce another issue in that a stack of 3 brigades would t have ZoC, but combine them and they do (you cant combine brigades that don't match before someone says just combine them, so the confused defence is penalised very hard). No one has yet suggested a mechanism that seems sensible, capable of implementation and that doesnt introduce more issues.

I think we have got to remember this is a game with certain simplifying assumptions. People are latching on to one issue based on real life perceptions of it, without any regard for the overall game. For instance, is it realistic that even the best prepared army in defence has to make do with one or more predesignated units riding to the rescue of an attacked stack, and once the attacker is into open terrain they just have to watch for the rest of the week? Is it realistic that there is no restriction on a unit that has moved most of its movement points already combining with one that hasn't moved, to attack a hex. The second can then hop into its time machine and exploit, in effect using time that was only available before it attacked? Mechanics are needed to mitigate these effects, which since they are not real, will struggle to be real also.

We must get this back to the effect on the game. I still have not seen why attacking the brigade head on with the first unit to allow follow up units to exploit is not a valid tactic. And if you don't like the very idea of a diffuse brigade detfence, presumably a patch of 30% TOE divisions is just as bad?

The irony is, that with WITW supply rules, German offensive units may struggle for MP more often, and the use of small units to bleed than of what's left may become more significant. In which case I will change my cost benefit analysis... It may be essential to remove small unit ZoC, even with some smaller consequential negatives. I think the Devs will be on the lookout for this issue now and we probably need to wait and see. Roll on first beta AAR I say!

As a casual player, I'm just going to reiterate my objection to the brigade "ants" and their zocs simply on the basis of scale: WitE should remain a division scale game, and one player (or the AI) turning it into a bde-level fest makes the game very unpleasant. Way too thick defensive lines and, as argued, unrealistic zoc effects of these ants. On the other side of the coin, playing largely with bdes makes the Soviet side confused and tedious. Make the game playable at the division scale for both sides and dissuade the players from breaking down divisions except in the most dire cases.

[Michael T]

Anyways, and speaking bluntly, the design team is going to have at least one unapologetic Red Army fan boy. Me! I'll be there to represent its interests

Every sides needs their champion, who do the Germans get?

[Flaviusx]

Isn't Pelton testing?

For that matter I count you as being essentially on the panzer pusher side. If you haven't gotten an invite imo you should. You've got my vote anyways.

[STEF78]

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
....If WITE2 can fix logistics, the silly Lvov opener...

It's done.

Lvov opening isn't doable anymore

[STEF78]

ORIGINAL: Michael T

Anyways, and speaking bluntly, the design team is going to have at least one unapologetic Red Army fan boy. Me! I'll be there to represent its interests

Every sides needs their champion, who do the Germans get?

I played both sides in WITE and I'm testing the germans in a WITE2 PBEM

[Flaviusx]

ORIGINAL: STEF78

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx
....If WITE2 can fix logistics, the silly Lvov opener...

It's done.

Lvov opening isn't doable anymore

Very very happy to hear that.

It became a deal killer for me in WTIE1. One of the reasons I stopped playing. (Along with general boredom. Anything gets old after a few years.)

[Michael T]

For that matter I count you as being essentially on the panzer pusher side

Actually I like both sides equally. My desire is for a balanced game that has some scope for what if's.

And even though I have had played more games as German, I have actually spent more game time in a Soviet hat.

Pelton got banned.

[Flaviusx]

You may have played both sides but I think you prefer to be on the offense, and in WITE that translates effectively to a pro German bias. Plus in my estimation your views on the Red Army are a bit outdated.

Anyways, if Pelton isn't available due to bad boy misbehaving, I can think of nobody better than you to make the points you are already making here. Plus I'm guessing you'll be able to squeeze the most out of the new logistics system to see what is possible with it. It sounds much more restrictive than vanilla. (Part of the reason I'm not taking a hard stance on this ant ZOC thing.)

[Joel Billings]

Well I came back from vacation to see a nice discussion taking place here re ZOCs. In some ways I will respond to this in the same way I responded to the discussion about stacking. There are at least three major areas I think about when considering pushing for code changes:

1) Time/resources required to make and maintain the change, and likelihood of the change causing other code issues that can lead to a cascading time/resource suck.
2) Impact on the way the game plays out. Will it move us in a direction that fixes something that doesn't appear right about the game. How hard will it be to balance that impact to get the desired results vs. causing side effects that will push balance out of whack in other parts of the game.
3) Impact on the game interface. How will the player "see" the situation by looking at the map. Will the interface need changes that will make the game easier to play or comprehend? Will the change add to micromanagement that the interface won't keep up with.

Remember that starting out, the design for War in the East was inspired by the early boardgames on the subject (like SPI's War in the East). There was a conscious decision to make the game play like a boardgame, and to follow boardgame constructs. Both to keep the game simple (relatively speaking) and to keep the game "familiar" to the audience that would be interested in this game. I find it interesting to find a post saying that if only the design team had more boardgame experience we would know about some of these issues and possible rules. Gary and I grew up in the 60s and 70s playing boardgames, and continued playing them even after we started making computer games. Pavel came along 20 years later but also has a big history with boardgames. We may not know all the various rules that have come along, but we know a lot of them (or most of them). As stated, we started off with WitE1 being more a homage to the games of the 70s. Again, this made things simpler for us on the interface side of things, and simpler on the gameplay, and I think that's one reason WitE did so well given that fundamentally the game is massive and not to be picked up by the faint of heart. There were some sacrifices made in terms of realism, but there were gains that came from this approach (at least in terms of 1 and 3 above).

Now that we are where we're at, any changes being made have to be looked at through the lens of the 3 categories I listed above. I agree that stacking is not ideal, but where is it really impacting the game, and what change can we make that won't add unreasonable dev time and won't cause interface issues that negate much of the benefits to be had. I agree that in an ideal world the composition of the forces in a hex should impact the delays imposed by the ZOCs. However, again, one must look at the alternatives with those 3 categories in mind. The game, any game, is nothing but a series of abstractions that taken together either work or don't work. Arguing the realism of any one item in the abstract is like a straw man argument. Easy to make, sometimes very convincing, but not entirely intellectually honest (sorry, not trying to offend anyone's honesty with my limited ability at analogies, I know you guys all want to make a better game, or a better game in the way you enjoy it).

One more thing. With WitE I very much wanted to have a game that was like a boardgame. One where the rules weren't so complicated that a player couldn't actually calculate out MP costs and have an ability to plan out a move. Clearly as the game developed, and complexity was added (along with FOW), that simplicity was mostly lost and the game became one that has to be played more intuitively. This is true in combat where looking at CVs alone doesn't work, so good players get a feel for what it takes to win a combat (but you never know for sure). Same goes for movement, where costs going through ZOCs and rivers and bad weather make knowing MP costs virtually impossible except when you mouse over a particular hex with a particular unit selected and see what you will have left if you make the move. Players have to become more intuitive about how far they can push their units through an enemy line. Gary prefers this in his designs and is happy to see players get a little less info and be faced with having to make more intuitive decisions, and where the game is less deterministic. I can say now that after WitE/WitW/Torch, I have reached the point of acceptance that this system is not a boardgame, and that the players don't have to know everything. So if we do come up with some variation in ZOCs, we might not even have to show this on the map, especially if by looking at CV values and/or unit types a player could get a sense for how likely a hex is to be more costly to move through than another. This doesn't mean though that we'll make a change. Items 1 and 2 above might argue against it, but we will consider it, as we have considered many changes since WitE1. It would be nice to make carpets less effective, but if/how we do this has to account for the issues above.

Speaking of changes since WitE1, we have two already, one of which has come up in this thread a few times already. One, we've added movement delay costs associated with combat in a hex. This is in WitW already. When a combat takes place, based on whether a hasty or deliberate attack and the final odds, some amount of movement delay is added to the hex. This delay does adds to the cost to leave the combat hex. So it's not harder to get into the hex (I know, I know, it can be hard to get into a hex), but it makes it harder to move out of the hex. This accounts for the time it takes to fight and win the battle, and the fact that this gives exploiting units less time remaining in the week to move through the combat area. Yes, another abstraction, but it does what we want it to do in adding some time delay based on the amount of resistance. Second, WitE2 has a rule that causes units to lose MPs in their next movement phase when they are attacked. Again, it is based on the odds. This makes it more advantageous to launch spoiling attacks.

As for stacking, knowing what we know re the difficulty of changing the 3/hex limit makes a change problematic. Pavel has considered allowing player's to create a special unit in some hexes that contains other combat units, and acts like a combat unit. This would be mostly (or entirely) for urban and port hexes, where high unit density was achieved. In most other cases, doctrine prevented dense concentrations (I say most cases as I acknowledge situations where you should be able to stack higher, especially when you're dealing with smaller units). However, no change will be easy, and again, with limited programming resources, we may decide that this falls low on the list and fails to make the cut. We like the basic idea, but we have no magic wand that would allow us to implement the change quickly.

The dev team does enjoy reading active discussions with suggestions for improvements, so please continue to discuss these things (just please be civil).

[Michael T]

@Joel, the reason I question 2by3’s board gaming experience is because from day one WITE has lacked certain aspects that are common place in similar board games. These aspects mostly are related to ‘ants’ having undue influence and equitable stacking rules. It is not a new observation I make.

Can you tell me why you would design a game in the first place (given 2by3’s board gaming experience) that gives ant’s undue sway when the issue has been raised, argued and solved in the board game arena for decades?

You won’t find a board game designed these days or even in the past 10 years where an ant will impose undue influence.

So why? And why after all the years since WITE 1.0 was it not considered till now to make a fix? When this issue has been raised and debated on more than one occasion previously.

Are you saying all those board game designs that do accommodate for lesser influence of ants are wrong? Or are adding complexity for no good reason? Not that I would call two different zoc levels as complex.

Having said all that, I do appreciate that you are looking in to it now. I really do. I just wish I did not have to create such a maelstrom to get some kind of review happening in the first place. Because it appears that the only way to induce action is to irritate and goad.

[Joel Billings]

Well, we are going back now about 6-8 years, but we weren't as uncomfortable about ants as you are, and we had about 50 other things we were trying to get right. By the time we got those things right, making further changes would cause a lot more re-balancing. At some point we had to accept some things as they were in order to move on. We felt that the game worked and was fun, although that one item was not as nice as we'd like it to be. Radically changing the game (both for 2 player and AI balance) was not something we had the time to deal with (relative to many other issues pulling on us). In the alpha stage we are always more willing to look at everything, even if in the end we reject a change for the reasons I mentioned.

[Michael T]

Ok I get it. But it's not just me. Other players have the same issue. I hope it's not too late or too difficult to include it now. Thanks for listening. The aim, as always is to improve what is already very good.

[chaos45]

Michael T---also a long time board gamer---one thing you are forgetting is that in many of those board games stacks of ants units with independent artillery regiments often did exert Zocs or in effect became ad hoc divisions.

Something in WITE you cannot do since your independent artillery regiments are all in corps/army HQs and not on map. Just some food for thought.

[MechFO]

@Joel, another one for the list

Please also look at/experiment/ consider making accessible in the Editor,

the ability to adjust detection probability. I think it would solve a lot of the attack optimizing one sees in WITE.

Don't know how much effort this would require, but ground recon didn't make it far once front lines were consolidated and air recon has problems if not open country and good weather. Obvious problem would be if AI uses same system as player, since it probably can't deal with the lack of information.

[Michael T]

I think we are done with ant zoc's now. The powers to be are deliberating. They are also looking at stacking. It's in their hands.

So my next question is, that long debated bane of all East Front games.

The runaway strategy, so often employed by players of both sides. I hate it.

Is there anything in the works that will make this method of defense less appealing?

[Flaviusx]

My sense at this point is that optempo has been slowed down in a variety of ways. That by itself makes runaways a lot less appealing. Standing your ground and counterattacking is much more profitable now.

What's driving runaways is weeklong turns with 50 mps and generous logistics and the WEGO system. Furthermore surrounded units don't instantly die anymore, necessarily.

The power of the defense relative to the offense has increased across the board here.