Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: Naughteous Maximus

I've been down this road before, but its been awhile so I will ask it again. I know that you guys have been working hard on this game and I appreciate the effort made as well as I'm sure everyone else does but will this game eventually involve the Balkans? The Bulgarians switched sides when the Soviets got close and you had the Russians entering Yugoslavia. I was wondering if certain triggers, if met, could make this happen? If not possible in initial game, maybe it could happen in a future expansion of the game. I just think that it would be an excellent scenario having the Germans trying to stabilize their southern front with all the chaos going around them. [&o]

The Theatre Box and Event system oovers all this. Once the Soviets move into Romania, eastern Yugoslavia becomes playable on the map allowing the historical offensive via Belgrade into S Hungary.

ORIGINAL: loki100

ORIGINAL: Naughteous Maximus

I've been down this road before, but its been awhile so I will ask it again. I know that you guys have been working hard on this game and I appreciate the effort made as well as I'm sure everyone else does but will this game eventually involve the Balkans? The Bulgarians switched sides when the Soviets got close and you had the Russians entering Yugoslavia. I was wondering if certain triggers, if met, could make this happen? If not possible in initial game, maybe it could happen in a future expansion of the game. I just think that it would be an excellent scenario having the Germans trying to stabilize their southern front with all the chaos going around them. [&o]

The Theatre Box and Event system oovers all this. Once the Soviets move into Romania, eastern Yugoslavia becomes playable on the map allowing the historical offensive via Belgrade into S Hungary.

Fantastic, so I assume that the Bulgarians will enter the war on the Soviet side in the game? [&:]

We don't include the Bulgarian forces. AFAIK they fought in areas of Yugoslavia that we leave out of play. We only open up the northeast section of Yugoslavia as playable area when the various events kick in. It appears the Bulgarians were involved in the push to Vienna in the last two months, but we decided it was small enough of an impact that we left it out. We do have Romanian, Polish, and Czech forces that fight for the Soviets, with most of the forces triggered by events.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

We don't include the Bulgarian forces. AFAIK they fought in areas of Yugoslavia that we leave out of play. We only open up the northeast section of Yugoslavia as playable area when the various events kick in. It appears the Bulgarians were involved in the push to Vienna in the last two months, but we decided it was small enough of an impact that we left it out. We do have Romanian, Polish, and Czech forces that fight for the Soviets, with most of the forces triggered by events.

Will any of Tito's army appear in the game and if not, can I use the game editor to mod the scenario and add them and possibly some Bulgarian units. I'm going for full authenticity here.

Will the game have options for the AI to control various Army Groups within the side you're playing? For example lets say I'm playing as the Axis, can I allocate the AI to play Army Group North and Centre, while I play Army Group South only?

It doesn't have Tito's army, or Bulgarian units, although I think you could add some in the editor if you wanted to take the time. Although we have Bulgarian nationality in the database, I don't think the systems are set up at present to fully support them.

There are no mechanisms to turn the play of certain armies/army groups over to the AI. We provide AI assistance for the air force, and for depot management, but that's it. If you only want to play one section of the front, we suggest trying the smaller scenarios, or joining a large team game.

Hi there!
This is a very interesting decision. Would you mind explaining, how this decision was made? Has it something to do with technical issues, price-performance, wargame-philosophy or something completely different? I am very curious about it, because the idea of AI-supported systems in complex strategy games is also very interesting. I'm not a huge fan of wargames but currently I am visiting an online lecture about Ethics and AI, that's also a reason, why it sparked my interest.
Thank you very much for your time.

Greetings!
Wolfgang

If you mean the decision not to have the AI play portions of the human player's front line, I'd say it's mostly the time required to do that right versus the number of players that would use it. It would be a lot of work to write the AI so that it used only certain units and had to keep within a given boundary. It could be done, but it would be a huge project that would add additional complexity to building the AI. Balance that against the few players that would ultimately be happy with their AI compatriots to enjoy playing this way. Also, the attacking AI (especially one that relies on finesse) requires some help level boosts to get it to be challenging for most players. We'd have to add boosts for the human versus the human side AI. It just gets to be a lot of time and trouble for not a lot of benefit. At least that's how we see it.

Thank you for the answer. Yes, it must be very difficult to implement it. I thought about it sometimes. The first question arised: Who moves first. You or your AI-delegated Army Group, Army, etc. ? The only "easy" imagination I could come up with, is like, the AI is moving (maybe all?) your Units, but just in a kind of template style and then you as a player modify the moves you want and end the turn. But I don't know, if this is any kind of fun. Nevertheless, it is an interesting thought.

Again, according to rumors, the USSR does not have a fleet? However, like Russian localization? It seems to me that your game in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet is popular, in the game, I think, you can teach the history of the Great Patriotic War.
Maybe you are not aware that during the war years the fleet played a significant role, including the Northern Fleet, which defended convoys delivering arms under Lend-Lease. I don’t know if there are significant studies in English on the topic of the war in the East, in the USSR in 1960 there was a 6-volume collection of the Ministry of Defense on the topic of war, then there was a 12-volume volume on the history of the second imperialist war, it is much smoother, but it describes all theaters military operations.
Maybe such literature is not available in your public domain? Or is there more of a technical implementation problem?

Would it be possible to get an advanced look at the manual for WitE2?

The naval war is abstracted in the game as it was in WitW. There is the ability for the Soviets to launch amphibious invasions in the Black Sea with some naval gunfire support, but we decided adding a full naval war was not worth the effort. It could easily have added many months to the development time and for little real benefit.

As for making the manual available, that's something that's up to Matrix. Have they released manuals in the past?

There is no need to create "full" naval war mechanics because there was no normal abilities for "full" naval battles. But at least will be good to improve fire abilities for Soviet ships of both Fleets (Baltic and Black Sea). So they will be able to provide fire support not only during amphibious landings but for any units in the fire range. Besides such support there could be added shore/artillery bombardment and even some kind of counter-battery fire (battleships had main calibre guns that had maximum fire range about 30 km, and some others naval coastal artillery guns even more).

Here is my translation of the spreadsheet for one TOAW4 mod.
"Naval artillery during Leningrad defense Sep-Oct 1941". It's from book about coastal artillery during the war, based on the report dated Jan 42.

notes:
actually 101st RR Art.Bde was formed only on Jan 42, before it there was smaller RR art.units
Pulkovo-Dudergof it's a local heights where was placed guns from "Avrora" old cruiser.

Also these ships should be targets for German aviation/artillery and whats happened when aviation (if I'm not wrong Germany had per one special air-naval groups for Black/Baltic sea) has less targets we can see in the "strange" air-war in the WitE.

As for making the manual available, that's something that's up to Matrix. Have they released manuals in the past?

I don't know. But it doesn't have to be anything fancy. A txt file would be enough. Or just an excerpt, for example about the air war or the logistics system.

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings


As for making the manual available, that's something that's up to Matrix. Have they released manuals in the past?

They do.
Check Shadow Empire. The manual is freely downloadable here:
https://www.matrixgames.com/game/shadow-empire

Will WITE2 still have one week per turn system?

yes

Then I don't see a point in releasing a new game with the same flaws.

Then I don't see a point in releasing a new game with the same flaws.

[&:] What would you suggest? Daily turns?