AE and WitE and WitW

[Canoerebel]

From time to time, I check out the WitW and WitE forums to see if anything of interest is gong on. I never considered getting into WitE but wanted to pull the trigger on WitW (it came out during my two-year sabbatical from AE). I didn't make the buy because interest in the game seemed pretty weak from the outset.

WitE is still showing activity, but WitW seems nearly dead. As of this morning, WitE has 11 active AARs (loosely defined as one that's been updated at least once in July). WitW hasn't had any updates this month. AE has 38 active AARs.

AE's activity is remarkable. Even two or three years back there was concern that some inevitable slippage might be occurring as a large number of veterans left the game over time. But even then it was clear that lots of newcomers were being piped aboard.

This game is truly a classic.

[robinsa]

I totally and wholeheartedly agree. The WITPAE and WITE forums are the only forums on the web I frequent.

[Dili]

Like i have been saying WITP series is the game that best tries to achieve the three services combat well developed. It looses a bit in land but not enough to not be a big way above everything else.

It has Sea, Air and Land and none of them seem to be a caricature, an afterthought placeholder or a schematic system where detail in one service is offset by outrageous lack of detail in another. It is more whole.
Where is sea combat in WITW?

[moonraker65]

I got WiTE but I still don't understand the interface. So I haven't bought any add ons for it and didn't re-install when I had to wipe everything and start all over again recently either. I hope that when the next gen of WiTP AE comes out that they keep things pretty similar because I think the interface is the main reason why WiTE and WiTW aren't as popular. Way too complicated

[John 3rd]

I've only played UV, WitP, and AE over the last thirteen or so years. Have little interest in anything else. I imagine most Forumites can say the same thing...

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: moonraker

I got WiTE but I still don't understand the interface. So I haven't bought any add ons for it and didn't re-install when I had to wipe everything and start all over again recently either. I hope that when the next gen of WiTP AE comes out that they keep things pretty similar because I think the interface is the main reason why WiTE and WiTW aren't as popular. Way too complicated

I never figured WITE out either.

[Canoerebel]

WitE has some dedicated adherents and drew some good AE players, so there must be something there. Perhaps it's just that there's alot of organic interest in the East Front.

But WitW appears to be a total flop. It drew a few AE players (Cannonfodder and Grotius come to mind). They had some nice things to say about the game. But the lack of interest in that game has been rather remarkable.

[mussey]

I played a very small amount, but couldn't buy into how it ran the air war. So I came back home to AE. Maybe some day I'll pick it up again.

[Jorge_Stanbury]

I own the 3:
AE: 2 active games (Japan at March 42, Allies at February 43)
WiW: played maybe 3 hours, it didn't catch my interest
WiE: played maybe 6 hours, tried to bur again got bored very quickly

Why is AE so good compared to these other games. In my opinion:
- best air/ naval model ever done in a game, nothing even close. land combat is not too advanced but adequate
- Replay: watching the replay is a highly enjoyable, sometimes tense activity. It is like watching a soccer match, and this is something that the 2 other games lack; you get a simple report of what happened.
- Significant detail
- Game balance

[Macclan5]

WiTW does interest me ~ especially historically / hobbyist / personalities / political elements.

I am in deep negotiations with Santa Claus currently for WiTW and all expansions

It will be even more fantastic if the guru's offer a battle of France ( 1940 ) expansion pack to it.

Sadly some teen-aged children and a spouse have drafted a fairly hard negotiation stance over 'total hours on desktop' [8D]

WiTE is a 'theater of battle' that never appealed to me.

--

The Consol approach to WiTW does look somewhat complicated but there is an AAR on "how to win the west with a major victory" that is chalk full of screen shots.

I assume the learning curve will be similar to WiTP but honestly since each turn is a week (as I understand) I would think the deployment management decisions will be less intensive as you get into a rhythm of managing each turn.

The big challenge is apparently the strategic OOB as in USAAF 8th vs Bomber Command vs RAF Coastal vs Tactical Bombing support ... not the lower level OOB we manage in this game.

Further I expect the naval side to be much less fulfilling.

[Canoerebel]

Interesting. I agree that watching the movie (combat replay) in my current game with John III has been worth the price of a movie theater ticket every single turn. I didn't realize you don't have that in those two games. That's quite a difference.

The ground model in AE isn't specacular, but it works since this is mostly an island war. Even China works by and large because it was mostly a static theater. It doesn't have to be in the game, but China in AE isn't Germany on the East Front, so the model works in China pretty well.

Stacking limits helped transform AE in remarkable ways - made it a much truer game.

And waypoint also made for a nice uprade.

I suppose the Matrix folks realize that AE is a masterpiece and take justifiable pride in what they've accomplished. Is it a burden though, at this point, in holding the attention of so many potential customers for so long? And what, if anything, could Matrix do to capitalize on our interest? Is it better to leave things as is, or at some point does Matrix say: "Hmm. This is obviously our most successful venture ever. What's the next generation of the game look like?"

[Macclan5]

ORIGINAL: Jorge_Stanbury

I own the 3:
AE: 2 active games (Japan at March 42, Allies at February 43)
WiW: played maybe 3 hours, it didn't catch my interest
WiE: played maybe 6 hours, tried to bur again got bored very quickly

Why is AE so good compared to these other games. In my opinion:
- best air/ naval model ever done in a game, nothing even close. land combat is not too advanced but adequate
- Replay: watching the replay is a highly enjoyable, sometimes tense activity. It is like watching a soccer match, and this is something that the 2 other games lack; you get a simple report of what happened.
- Significant detail
- Game balance

+1

..and emphasis on the last 2 which in some ways are understated.

As I mentioned before this game is learning and consequences and the balance is really in that sweet zone.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

WitE has some dedicated adherents and drew some good AE players, so there must be something there. Perhaps it's just that there's alot of organic interest in the East Front.

But WitW appears to be a total flop. It drew a few AE players (Cannonfodder and Grotius come to mind). They had some nice things to say about the game. But the lack of interest in that game has been rather remarkable.

They vastly over-priced it for the condition it was in at launch. IMO.

And, also IMO, obviously, starting the war in 1943 turned off many AE and WITE players. I know why they did that, but grand campaign players want a grand campaign. Not parachuting into a set-piece history.

[jwolf]

I have both WITE and AE. Both are great games IMHO though I admit that the administrative scale of AE is such that I long for some good staff officers to help out. WITE in comparison is rather more accessible though complex enough to satisfy the dedicated gamer. Again IMHO, WITW is not as interesting for largely the reasons Bullwinkle stated. I suspect that the main value of WITW in the end will be improved air and logistics models for WITE2.

[sventhebold]

Just like John the 3rd said these games have kept me alive and kicking my ass for many years.

[mussey]

What it needs is a "War in Europe - GE (Generals Edition)". Strategic enough to cover the entire time period, and geographic enough to cover the Battle of the Atlantic to the Steppes of Russia. To north Africa. Corp/Div level and all the ships at sea..... Allow me to dream....

[warspite1]

The biggest problem with War In The West is..... why?

At that stage of the war, July 1943, an Allied victory was pretty much assured provided they adopted the sensible application of the overwhelming force available to them and didn't do anything stoooopid*. Right. So where is the fun in that?

I am really surprised - and moreover disappointed - that this was selected as the subject for such a monster game. There are a number of campaigns in WWII that are, at the same time hugely interesting, poorly represented by game makers, and very importantly, were campaigns that could have easily gone either way. Imagine these on a detailed land, air, sea basis:

- WWII in Europe 1st September 1939 - May 1941. To win, the Axis have to be in position to launch Barbarossa by the end of the game OR have launched a Mediterranean campaign and taken key objectives e.g. Gib, Malta and Cairo. The Allies have to frustrate those plans. The fighting in France is crucial.

- War in the Mediterranean June 1940 - July 1943. There is simply so much to say and I've repeated it countless times. This is a game that has to be made.

- Japan strikes south: Papua New Guinea, Guadalcanal and the Solomons January 1942 - January 1944. Nuff said.


*of course real life is a little more complicated than that, but you get the gist.

[bomccarthy]

ORIGINAL: Macclan5

WiTW does interest me ~ especially historically / hobbyist / personalities / political elements.

I am in deep negotiations with Santa Claus currently for WiTW and all expansions

It will be even more fantastic if the guru's offer a battle of France ( 1940 ) expansion pack to it.

Sadly some teen-aged children and a spouse have drafted a fairly hard negotiation stance over 'total hours on desktop' [8D]

WiTE is a 'theater of battle' that never appealed to me.

--

The Consol approach to WiTW does look somewhat complicated but there is an AAR on "how to win the west with a major victory" that is chalk full of screen shots.

I assume the learning curve will be similar to WiTP but honestly since each turn is a week (as I understand) I would think the deployment management decisions will be less intensive as you get into a rhythm of managing each turn.

The big challenge is apparently the strategic OOB as in USAAF 8th vs Bomber Command vs RAF Coastal vs Tactical Bombing support ... not the lower level OOB we manage in this game.

Further I expect the naval side to be much less fulfilling.

I have been playing WITW for the past few months and am hooked, for the time being. In many ways, the air war portion is more complex than AE and you have to think somewhat differently when deploying your air assets – you can manually assign individual groups/squadrons to air directives, but this will often limit their usefulness, since it will make them unavailable for other air directives. Similarly, you can manually assign the aircraft loadouts, but this forces the unit to use this one loadout for all air directives to which it may be available. You may desire this, or may not.

Most satisfying is the ability to designate the routes for your raids, weaving between flak concentrations, and overlaying air superiority directives for your shorter-range fighters on those routes. But you have to make sure you give your air superiority directives a higher priority than your bombing air directives, to increase the probability that the shorter-range fighters sweep the defending fighters before the bombers fly through the area.

In the past few months they have fixed some bugs and recalibrated some air combat algorithms that were causing a lot of frustration (such as all of the flak units attached to an hq firing at each and every interdiction raid, blowing all 24 Typhoons out of the sky before they have a chance to drop their ordnance).

Much of the air advice on the forum is provided by serious gamers for whom historical considerations are secondary. The fact that their advice works for the purpose of accumulating victory points may indicate that more tweaking to the air engine is needed. Their strategic bombing tactics (shotgun approach of 10 raids per day with 50 planes per raid) usually results in significant damage to German industry but also losses that would have rendered the 8th AF ineffective after three weeks and subjected their commanders to courts martial.

Naval warfare is largely non-existent, beyond generic transport capability, naval gunfire support, and vague naval air support of amphibious operations. It is frustrating for an AE player, who would like to be able to assign specific USN Hellcat squadrons to air superiority and close support missions over Southern France.

As mentioned by others in this thread, the biggest problem with the game is its scope – a strategic game picking up the story more than halfway through. It’s kind of like skipping The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers and beginning with Return of the King. It’s still a good story, but not as compelling.

In my opinion, WITW is a great start – most of the elements are there and will get a better test in WITE 2.0. They will then need to be combined with a serious naval engine and baked into a grand story.

[bomccarthy]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Interesting. I agree that watching the movie (combat replay) in my current game with John III has been worth the price of a movie theater ticket every single turn. I didn't realize you don't have that in those two games. That's quite a difference.

You can set the preferences in WITW to watch a combat replay - all the way to watching where and when a bombing or recon mission is attacked by interceptors and how many escorting fighters are defending (and if any air superiority fighters in the vicinity are being added to the melee). At the same time, you can watch the individual plane loss counter grow in each combat. Most players don't choose the extreme level of detail, since air combat resolution can then take 45 minutes, or longer. On the ground side, you can watch messages streaming in regarding how close support a/c are attacking an enemy ground unit, how much artillery is firing, and at what range a ground attack is halted.

[NigelKentarus]

I agree about WitE, I like that theater, just didn't play it enough to get a good feel for the interface. I never tried WitW though. And being an old sailor, I have a soft spot for AE.