Imagine...

Aragorn · Post by **Aragorn** » Wed Sep 20, 2000 10:12 pm

...a grand strategy game where you control not only the russian front but the entire german (or allied) war effort.
Imagine a WiR map over the entire europe, not only russia, where fighting is done much like WiR... With France, Italy, England, Poland and a dozen neutrals are added. Then put some Diplomacy options and you got a game to last you a lifetime!

varjager · Post by **varjager** » Thu Sep 21, 2000 11:06 am

I second that!

Wouldent it be great with the details of wir.
And have all that under you command.

Yogi Yohan · Post by **Yogi Yohan** » Thu Sep 21, 2000 1:23 pm

Many are those who have been having wet dreams about such a game, with BOTH military detail (different equipment, historical divisions etc) and some diplomacy/resource management.

Personally, i'd like to see some politcal decisions thrown in as well. How do you administrate the conquered areas? Annex them? Military occupation? Set up puppet government? Make a new Soviet Repulic? The different options will have an impact on the level of resistance of the people and how much they contribute to your war effort.

Charles22 · Post by **Charles22** » Thu Sep 21, 2000 7:05 pm

At one time Matrix had a game on the drawing board called "Revenge for Versailles", which, maybe some day could be the future game for such a thing. Even just adding the Western Front and Africa would make for intriguing play. Can you imagine moving an entire corp from one theatre to another and then reaping the benefit/penalty for doing so? Unfortunately the 'other theatres' in WIR, are only modeled by the front falling completely apart. I know it claims that removing the units historically there will speed up the front's falling apart, but from what I've seen it's very definite instead. It either falls apart or it stays up. No ENTIRE front should collapse just because you might have taken half of the force out, especially just within a week. If a remake of WIR were done, along the same lines as it currently is (no playable 'other fronts'), the user should at least be given a prompt explaining how removing said units will weaken the front by so many weeks, and also that adding to it will strengthen it by so many weeks (it's eventual collapsing).

Having a good or perhaps even perfect idea as to how units will affect non-playable fronts may be somewhat unrealistic, but nothing is more unrealistic as the entire Western Front falling and Germany being conquered, when you removed one too many SS divisions or even regular iunfantry divisions for that matter. Having 'playable' other fronts would surely eliminate the nonsense of the other fronts falling apart in one week, and just make for more intriguing gameplay, period.

Aragorn · Post by **Aragorn** » Fri Sep 22, 2000 1:12 am

Do you think the project would be impossible then?
I mean, most of the battle game engine would probably be reusable, but that's it. You'd have to redraw the map completely and add new units. Then you'd have to reprogram the AI or at least add a new AI for the other fronts. A game at this level would also need the diplomacy options. Perhaps the game should start with in, say, 37 or 38... where the molotov/ribbentrop pact could still be negotiated... perhaps it'd be possible to take poland without the intervention of france/britain?
Then it'd be a real bonus if you could also reinvest resources and oil into the economy instead of only producing war materials... and another great idea to have options to administer conquered countries. And perhaps research to speed up the arrival of new units?
I wonder if there is enough of a market to make such a game worth making?

Charles22 · Post by **Charles22** » Fri Sep 22, 2000 5:01 pm

Myself, I feel there's always a market for something really different and worthwhile. Even if you didn't add diplomacy it would still sell, at least as well as one might expect wargames to sell. If you had WIR on the 'other fronts', that occurred after 6/22/41 and you made it clear that noone has ever made a game with as many theatres and with such accurate units/play, I'm sure that would be enough. Things like diplomacy would just be icing on the cake.

There is a way to make things work together, without needing a massive playable surface, larger than WIR had. You could fight something like you do campaigns in SPWAW. Each week would broken up into three phases (or one for each front in any case). The first phase of every turn would be the executing of orders on the Eastern Front, and when done, that would saved for the 4th phase (in other words, the 1st phase of turn two). France would be phase two (since it was occupied before Africa was), which of course would be relatively dead until '44. Africa/Italy would be phase three. Each phase would just be a different map, or you might look at it as three SPWAW scenarios that are VERY elongated in turns (to cover weekly turns from 6/22/41 on), and you would play WIR on each front with the maps not needing to change. In other words, the map used in WIR, would be your East Front phase, and the others would be of the same scale on that front. Now maybe expanding the WIR map to cover the other fronts is easier than that, but if memory is a problem with such a large map, perhaps splitting the map into three fronts would work better.

It's probably best that the game wouldn't try to model German pre-Russian invasion, because there was a huge score of places invaded, all requiring mapping, in order to not fall into some similar 'other front' trap we see in WIR.

Hauptmann6 · Post by **Hauptmann6** » Fri Sep 22, 2000 6:38 pm

There is a game pretty much like that coming out. Computer World in Flames, no AI though, only net play as the AI would take to long to program. If any of you have played the paper version of the game you know how good and big it is...

Haupt

Aragorn · Post by **Aragorn** » Sat Sep 23, 2000 5:43 am

Yeah, i've played World in flames as a boardgame and found it quite alright. I've also heard about the computer version being really delayed and some whispers about the game not making it at all!
What i remember from the boardgame would make a good computergame though. I'm only worried that the game will be too big and take too long time to be played "for real" over the net, if it makes a release... What's your impression Haupt?

roeslan · Post by **roeslan** » Sat Sep 23, 2000 7:23 am

I posted this one before (in pacwar I believe)
It would make an interesting game indeed,
even more if you could team up as axis or allied, so even a global game would be possible as each person could be in charge of a certain country or theatre.

Hauptmann6 · Post by **Hauptmann6** » Sat Sep 23, 2000 7:38 am

Well suposedly fromt he ADG website they will have a beta out this fall, availible for purchace. As to the net game, what I read was it will be savable ect. but there are too many times that the other player input is needed so it will not be Pbem.
Other than that, drool... hehe

Haupt