New v1.03.07 Public Beta Now Available!

[MarkShot]

Dear 2by3,

Can I ask why 2by3 never sets the bit in the EXE header that a 4Gb address space is supported. Without this bit, the EXE only has access to 2Gb. As best as I can tell flipping this for games such as WITW and WITE-2 does improve loading speed of the game and scenarios.

Of course, savy gamers may know how to use an EXE editor to do this, or at least, the existence of this easy utility. But why do you neglect providing most players with an easy speed up?

https://ntcore.com/?page_id=371

Thanks.

PS: I did ask once before and was told it is only betas, but actually I have never seen an official version with the bit set.

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For those who are not following me. The GG games are 32 bit EXEs; not 64 bit. Most players are running some version of 64 bit Windows. With 32 bit Windows, even if you had 4Gb of RAM, you could only use 2.3Gb of it, since the rest was memory mapped for things like video cards. In many gamer communities like Total War, this is a common tweak to accelerate older TW titles; especially graphic intensive mods. This is not some secret software engineer tech voodoo.

[Joel Billings]

I have no idea what your talking about. I'll have to ask Pavel or Erik if they can answer this.

[Joel Billings]

@MarkShot - I got this back from Pavel:

MarkShot speaks about LAA (Large Address Awareness) setting which is by default is off for 32bit application, which allows to use 4G of virtual memory instead of 2G. Wite2 and Witw are not graphic intensive games and don’t require lots of memory (almost never exceeds 1G). So I don’t think that LAA (Large Address Awareness) would give much benefits. (I see no performance boost in loading game/scenarios). And since game is using 3rd party dlls (ex. Steam), extra testing is required to ensure it is stable with LAA enabled.

[MarkShot]

Thanks, Joel.

[DarkHorse2]

A number of long awaited meaningful changes. Very nice.

Very happy to see the German SU units renamed to denote their motorization.

[DarkHorse2]

I kind of like the change to the NATO military symbol for the German "Light" Infantry Divisions.

It is a shame they do not enjoy some kind of combat benefits in rugged terrain.

But, none-the-less, it does make them easier to identify to swap them out for other, heavier Infantry Divisions in the TBs.

The main purpose of the German Jäger Divisions was to fight in adverse terrain where smaller, coordinated formations were more facilely combat capable than the brute force offered by their standard infantry counterparts. The Jäger divisions were more heavily equipped than the mountain Gebirgsjäger equivalents, but not as well armed as a larger infantry division. In the early stages of the war, it was the interface divisions fighting in rough terrain and foothills as well as urban areas, between the mountains and the plains. The Jägers (means "hunters" in German) relied on a high degree of training, and slightly superior communications, as well as their not inconsiderable artillery support.

[s2tanker]

With an experienced opponent, is anyone still seeing a continuation of the two largest remaining flaws in WITE2 1941 campaign: the inability of the Axis to even remotely hit their historical line of advance and the utter destruction of the Axis forces due to winter?

It seems to me, having played through spring 1942 a few times with an experienced opponent (we're both retired lieutenant colonels with extensive gaming experience and historical understanding) that the system remains seriously flawed in its simulation of the first 9 months of combat.

Is there any intent to fix this in subsequent patches?

[s2tanker]

It seems to me that the easiest way to fix the scenario is to cause the harsh winter penalties to be switched on and off a few times during the first winter.

[Joel Billings]

I don't think this is the norm with very experienced players. Some of the more recent AARs show that the Germans can and do meet or exceed their historical terrain gains. The first winter doesn't have to be horrible either. The art of 41 German play is all about pushing as far and fast early, while also managing the units so there are always some fresh units to take advantage of opportunities that come up. Unlike almost all other games, do not see your MPs each turn as something to use or lose. In fact retaining MPs the regain CP and Fatigue is crucial, as is often keeping units out of newly conquered territory (both to keep from spending extra MPs to move into them and to recover x3 CP/fatigue from your unused MPs). I've seen too many players just pushing pieces forward. Always think before you move into that newly captured hex. Often it's better to stop and wait for the next turn. By doing these little things, you can keep more of your units fresh, allowing the ones you are using to go further and hit harder. Early versions of the game were harder on the Germans, and at one point the Soviet tanks were quite effective. That was changed many versions ago, so Soviet 1941 tanks are very vulnerable, and in general the German player can be very strong in 41 and again in Spring/Summer 42 once they recover from the first winter.

[dankhippos]

With an experienced opponent, is anyone still seeing a continuation of the two largest remaining flaws in WITE2 1941 campaign: the inability of the Axis to even remotely hit their historical line of advance and the utter destruction of the Axis forces due to winter?

It seems to me, having played through spring 1942 a few times with an experienced opponent (we're both retired lieutenant colonels with extensive gaming experience and historical understanding) that the system remains seriously flawed in its simulation of the first 9 months of combat.

Is there any intent to fix this in subsequent patches?

Yep that is still how it looks, most games on the Kulik Gang discord end in Soviet victory before 1942, dis-including the very few games where the high tier axis player completely herds (retreat path manipulation) the soviets into oblivion. Pockets are even harder to hold in the new beta, due to multi role changes that were thought of completely without multiplayer balance. Winter is still really broken as AFV's explode and Soviet Cavalry has insane movement. The Blizzard RNG can also completely destroy you.

[RedJohn]

I don't think this is the norm with very experienced players. Some of the more recent AARs show that the Germans can and do meet or exceed their historical terrain gains. The first winter doesn't have to be horrible either. The art of 41 German play is all about pushing as far and fast early, while also managing the units so there are always some fresh units to take advantage of opportunities that come up. Unlike almost all other games, do not see your MPs each turn as something to use or lose. In fact retaining MPs the regain CP and Fatigue is crucial, as is often keeping units out of newly conquered territory (both to keep from spending extra MPs to move into them and to recover x3 CP/fatigue from your unused MPs). I've seen too many players just pushing pieces forward. Always think before you move into that newly captured hex. Often it's better to stop and wait for the next turn. By doing these little things, you can keep more of your units fresh, allowing the ones you are using to go further and hit harder. Early versions of the game were harder on the Germans, and at one point the Soviet tanks were quite effective. That was changed many versions ago, so Soviet 1941 tanks are very vulnerable, and in general the German player can be very strong in 41 and again in Spring/Summer 42 once they recover from the first winter.

Very experienced Germans generally can curbstomp very experienced soviets. With the current understanding of logistics and how to manage it, you shift from having a large supply deficit to meeting or even exceeding supply quotas as you get better with the dreadfully misleading logistics. Combined with herding of soviets, you eliminate the need for risky pockets and from what I've seen generally greatly reduce the risks of counterattacks whilst still being able to deal massive casualties. This sets you up for 42 when you hit your next power spike, and you can continue the grinding.

As the axis experience lessens though, the tables flip completely to where soviets generally stomp on the axis. Soviet mobility is fantastical, and with the ability to concentrate 150k men to attack hexes you can generally make consistent counterattacks especially when the axis isn't as knowledgeable about how to minimise the risk of those. Combined with a worse understanding of the god awful logistics, Germans underperform earlier and get stalled earlier. Pockets are a no go except in very specific circumstances, and they must be double stacked at the minimum to guarantee that the soviets can't break it.

I currently have not lost a single soviet game to date, ever. Across tens of games. I guarantee you though that if I played a top axis player, I'd almost assuredly lose assuming they're careful and don't throw.

When you actually gain enough knowledge about this games labyrinthine systems, they fall apart completely on both sides - it just so happens that axis superiority in the early stages of the war means they can snowball easier.

One pertinent quote I believe in the manual states that you cannot supply priority 4 everything and expect good supply. Except you can, and it's been that way for years. The only side that's not true for is axis in 41.

[Wild]

I don't find things nearly so bad as some of you gentlemen. In fact I find them quite good for AI play at least.
Never played multiplayer, and if it's as bad as you say I probably won't.
But I have in over 1000 hours playing the Axis and I find it incredibly enjoying. All in all the best East Front game I've played.

[dankhippos]

I don't find things nearly so bad as some of you gentlemen. In fact I find them quite good for AI play at least.
Never played multiplayer, and if it's as bad as you say I probably won't.
But I have in over 1000 hours playing the Axis and I find it incredibly enjoying. All in all the best East Front game I've played.

"Never played Multiplayer" is the key difference between your experience and mine and many others

[dankhippos]

There's is a disconnect between the players.
There are players like Wild, who plays single player and has fun and finds the game fine. I assume the devs make all their choices in game design to cater to this player.
There are players like me, toxic thug, zeb tucker, Jango, GoodByeBlueSky and many more, who see that the game is advertised as Multiplayer, and want a good working Multiplayer experience.
At the moment the Single Player and Multiplayer experiences are completely different. And Multiplayer suffers.
See multi role changes

[MarkShot]

This raises an interesting point in general.

SP and MP balance are not the same. I would argue that it is possible that MP balance needs its own more sophisticated form of handicapping. At least for WITE-2, it is generally friends playing due to the large time commitment ... I think negotiating a handicap is for more doable than with most MP gaming.

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As I am an SP player, I prefer to be able to get a good game out of the AI for someone of average experience; meaning that this is not my one and only title. I do know guys who play one and only one title ... more common when you get older and learning curves and context switching is pain.

[GoodbyeBluesky]

The thing is you can adjust the Ai experience easily.You have several ways and levers to do that by increasing the morale of the AI, etc but you have none to do so in PBEM play apart from going into the editor and editing files yourself

[dankhippos]

This raises an interesting point in general.

SP and MP balance are not the same. I would argue that it is possible that MP balance needs its own more sophisticated form of handicapping. At least for WITE-2, it is generally friends playing due to the large time commitment ... I think negotiating a handicap is for more doable than with most MP gaming.

---

As I am an SP player, I prefer to be able to get a good game out of the AI for someone of average experience; meaning that this is not my one and only title. I do know guys who play one and only one title ... more common when you get older and learning curves and context switching is pain.

Hey friend,
I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time to reply, and not only that, but to understand the key issue here completely. Multiplayer needs its own balance! Either the Devs can make a multiplayer scenario themselves, or trusted members of the community can like wiedrock or zebtucker. At the end of the day I want you to enjoy singleplayer, because not everyone can afford the insane time sink that is multiplayer wite2, and I want to enjoy MP just as much as you do singleplayer.
Thanks,
dankhippos
P.S. Discord link for competitive multiplayer and even some singleplayer guys.
https://discord.com/invite/XJG3EGRz

[Joel Billings]

I agree that balance is different for H2H versus AI play. With the AI, players can and do adjust the difficulty to come up with their desired play level. For H2H it is tougher. But it is possible to use a bid system to balance the game to the levels that you believe your H2H players are at. One way if you don't care about side is to bid for side using morale help as the factor. Basically, the player willing to give up a higher morale help level gets to pick the side. Players can also come up with adjustments to the victory conditions to incentivize players to act a certain way, but if the issue in your games is that the German player can't make it as far as you think he should be able to in 41, then you probably have to balance with morale help. This could be combined with adding some extra VPs to certain objectives that you'll only add on for the Germans, so as to encourage them to push further in 41/42, but this would have to be done offline.

We try to balance the game for H2H and AI, but it's near impossible to do that (and that isn't even accounting for skill levels of the players, so it's really a multi-variable problem). It used to be that we assumed 90%+ of the games played were AI games, so clearly getting a good AI balance is important. IIRC, we may have seen stats that as many as 30-40% of the players play some H2H, although the numbers that only play H2H once they learn the game are probably around 10-20% at most. I don't think we can solve this for all situations, so I encourage those of you that play H2H find house rules or other edited changes to get a game of your liking. One thing is that we hope we're no longer making changes that have a big impact on game balance (like some of the earlier versions did). So you should be able to make adjustments based on recent experience and they should continue to apply.

[dankhippos]

I agree that balance is different for H2H versus AI play. With the AI, players can and do adjust the difficulty to come up with their desired play level. For H2H it is tougher. But it is possible to use a bid system to balance the game to the levels that you believe your H2H players are at. One way if you don't care about side is to bid for side using morale help as the factor. Basically, the player willing to give up a higher morale help level gets to pick the side. Players can also come up with adjustments to the victory conditions to incentivize players to act a certain way, but if the issue in your games is that the German player can't make it as far as you think he should be able to in 41, then you probably have to balance with morale help. This could be combined with adding some extra VPs to certain objectives that you'll only add on for the Germans, so as to encourage them to push further in 41/42, but this would have to be done offline.

We try to balance the game for H2H and AI, but it's near impossible to do that (and that isn't even accounting for skill levels of the players, so it's really a multi-variable problem). It used to be that we assumed 90%+ of the games played were AI games, so clearly getting a good AI balance is important. IIRC, we may have seen stats that as many as 30-40% of the players play some H2H, although the numbers that only play H2H once they learn the game are probably around 10-20% at most. I don't think we can solve this for all situations, so I encourage those of you that play H2H find house rules or other edited changes to get a game of your liking. One thing is that we hope we're no longer making changes that have a big impact on game balance (like some of the earlier versions did). So you should be able to make adjustments based on recent experience and they should continue to apply.

Thanks for your response Joel. I appreciate gaining insight into the balancing progress.

[MarkShot]

Joel,

As this is a niche game and MP players are often friends, you need to allow them to handicap as well. Like we will play chess, but I will spot you a bishop since I have a +300 ELO rating.

Although I don't MP. Thanks for your support. As you know there has been much news in the press recently about developers who refuse to talk to their customers.