Who is the player in this game ?

[Mathusalem]

I would like to play the whole pacific war, but I've not enough time. This game is too big. I have a job and a family, and can't spend more than one or two hours per day playing. Furthermore, my eyes are not so new...
I know the game will not change, but, although I like much of this game, the game suffers from not answering that question in the title of my post: who is the player in this game. As I can manage all troops, ships and planes of whole Japan, along with industry, I would feel myself supreme chief of the country (I know the Emperor did not rule). If american, I would be Pacific theater headquarter. (suppose I delegate ruling the English and Australian to the computer)
But I also manage the composition of every task force, counting how many transports I need to carry that brigade, checking if that base has enough plane engineers to handle 50 planes, so I'm a local chief. And when I see I also must choose the flight altitude of every single plane, I suppose I'm a lone pilot.
The level of the game should be more clearly strategic.

Here some ideas:
1) Is mine warfare useful ? Do you think it's necessary to drive groups of minelayers/minesweepers. It could be said that there were mines at port proximity and these coastal hexes could include the risk being hit.
2) There are more than thousand individual ships ! Many ships could be in squadrons, like PC, PG, transports and tankers. Probably also CVE's Subs and DD's could be in pairs.
3) For land units, combat units are enough. If you spend a few weeks to enlarge an airfield size from 2 to 3, you can imagine that engineers come along.
Manytimes, I lack one transport to carry the whole unit in a single trip, and then I must spend time to locate the different subunits and bring them together later.
4) Too many things to do with small airunits also.

Don't see this post as an offense, I tried to stay positive.
I just wanted to say that this game is a strategic one but you have to play it at a sub-tactical level, and that's impossible unless rapidly becoming divorced and unemployed.
In this forum, did a single player achieve a complete 4 years game ?

It's not only

[MengCiao]

In all war games the player is a cheap little two-bit diety. The kind they used to hand out at animal festivals until they took the strippers out of all State Fairs in the good ole USA. You're just a simulated cheap little two-bit diety so don't try anything funny (as they say).

If you are the Jap player, you're working for the Little Empire and its enigmatic Emperor.

If you're the Allied Player, you are working for yourself as the Spirit of the Allies in the Pacific.

[Feinder]

Yes, the game is a huge scale.

You'll get used to it, and figure out what you don't need to worry about, quicker than you think. It's like driving a car. Your first time out, you're constantly worried if you're checkiing your mirrors, or setting your turn signal, or checking your speed, or praying that you don't stall it at the intersection. But in a week, a lot of those actions are automatic, and litterally take care of themselves. The same is true for WitP. Esp once you get past the first turn (setting the ball in motion across the whole pacific), things get easier. And the more you play, the less you end up worry about the details, unless you choose to do so. Give it a week, and in short order you'll be much more at ease with "knowing what you need worry about".

There's a big pull between both camps of more mirco-managing (yes, many people want MORE control) and more hands off. It's just a matter of perspective.

Yes, the game can take forever. Even if you do 4 turns a (real life) day, at 2 day turns, it's going to take you about 9 months to finish (and seriously doubt you could keep that pace).

Oh, and if you're daunted by the size, you can always play one of the more local scenarious (like the Gualcanal campain).

And yes, Japanese production is dauting (I even still have trouble wrapping my brain around it). If you want to play Japan (blowing stuff up is fun!), don't worry about production. You've got enough gas and bombs to run around at full throttle for about 6 - 8 weeks (of game time), without touching anything. That'll give you enough time to figure out somewhat what you're doing. Then restart, and play for real.

-F-

[byron13]

As Feinder says, this has been debated before. If we are gods, then why can't we control research and design or make Montanas instead of Essex class carriers? Or, if Im dictating grand strategy as a five-star, why wouldn't someone else determine whether I need five or six LST's to load a battalion of tanks?

Ultimately, you would have to agree that only the player can set the overall strategy for the units on the mapboard (regardless of scale). Thus the only question is what the lowest level is that the player has any control. In some games, you are maneuvering a battalion, but you can make sure PFC Schmedlap is armed with a BAR and not an M-1. Or you set up the battleline for the taskforce but can drop down into the turret to fire a 5" shell. All games are this way.

Most of the old-timers knew that this was going to be a one-of-a-kind game covering the entire Pacific war at a remarkably low level. There were many discussions about having even more control. Few wanted less control. I would suggest to you that this is truly a one-of-a-kind game designed for grognards and not for the public at large. There are plenty of other games, including PacWar, that do not provide such breadth of responsibility. I think the game is just about right for what it was meant to do. If it is too much, then this game simply isn't your style, and you should look for something else. But the design crew did an excellent job of publishing a game that fulfilled the design goals and promises made years before; WitP is what it was intended to be.

[pasternakski]

I remember those discussions from way back in the UV pre-publication days. Your role in that game is fairly well defined at the theater command level, but even there it varies to some degree. For example, as the Allied player, you have joint control over the forces of all nationalities, which puts you at both a higher and a lower level of command at the same time.

Your command role in WitP is all over the place as the Allies, but rather easier to understand as the Japanese. Still, there are anomalies. As the Japanese player, you have complete control of strategic planning and execution. At the same time, you are pretty much constrained to a production continuum over which you have some, but not a lot of, control (much to the chagrin of some, who would like to boot the Emperor and take over everything). The bottom line is that you have difficulty tailoring your mix of forces to the tasks you want to accomplish. I think of this as being a pretty neatly historical outcome, but others disagree, which they are entitled to do, even though they are so obviously wrong...

On the Allied side, it's impossible to figure out who you are (identity crisis: I got up this morning not knowing whether I was a "churning urn of burning funk" or a "funky trunk of steaming junk"). You have, as with the Japanese side, full control of strategic planning, but no control whatever of production. Oh, and those naughty little "PPs." Sometimes, trying to get everybody under the right HQ at the right place is an entire game in itself.

You control all Allied nations (except the Soviets before they enter the war), but there are people lurking out there who can make your life miserable - like Winnie Churchill and his insatiable appetite for your far-too-few cruisers, capital ships, and carriers. You run the logistics network, but cannot dictate how many of what type of vessel you receive - and when you get it. You don't even know for sure how many CVs you're going to wind up with, because this is partially dependent on how many you lose (prompting some to invoke the reproductive habits of salmon as a metaphor for the process).

So, there you are. You've got a big mess on your hands no matter which side you play, and it behooves you to engage in a lot of micromanagement to straighten it out - or screw it up completely, which is what I usually manage to accomplish. I don't trust the computer to do anything right.

"Behoove?" Lawd-a-mercy, I ain't used that word for a long time. For a second there, I must have thought I was talking about cow feet...

[von Murrin]

WITP makes you a demigod.

And on 03/14/42, 21 PT boats were created...

[ZOOMIE1980]

In this forum, did a single player achieve a complete 4 years game ?

Nope.

[dtravel]

Well, if you listen to Mogami the player is the staff of the Supreme Commander of their side.