ORIGINAL: Myrddraal
we have a set of game rules which, despite relative simplicity, almost always lead to historical advances in the early war, stagnation along historical frontlines in the middle war, the economic deterioration of economies and manpower shortages, shell shortages, and assault technologies finally breaking the deadlock. ...
We do this without any artificial gamey rules to force historic situations.
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I thought I had made it clear that it wasn't a deliberate misrepresentation, and that it's something we may be able to address in a patch. But never-mind, the key thing I'm asking you to do is to give the game a chance, and not write it off before you've played through a campaign...
Okay, I took a breath and started a new campaign with the full intention of giving the game a chance, but my initial impression that this is not a game for me has turned into a certainty. I simply cannot enjoy it because of the extent of abstraction and over-simplification involved.
After reading Lord Zimoa's posts in the "Naval War" thread it is obvious that, contrary to what you wrote, there are several deliberate misrepresentations of the historical situation in the game, for example the size and positioning of the AH army, the size of the British navy, France's rail capability, value of the cities in Alsace and the Ruhr area and so on. If a game, when started with the historical conditions, is prone to lead to vastly ahistorical results (like AH steamrolling Russia or France penetrating deep into Germany early on) then something is obviously wrong with the game mechanics and I'm not sure if the fix for the problem should be to simply change the situation.
And I do believe that not representing the historical situation correctly in order to achieve the desired game play is fully equivalent to artificial gamey rules.
I do understand the wish to create a playable and balanced game but
in my personal opinion you went way too far. In addition to what I already mentioned I for example noted the following obvious oversimplifications that I just cannot accept:
1. The issues with the naval aspect of the game have already been discussed in other threads. Naval war is a game of hide-and-seek. I think it is impossible to properly simulate the naval war in an IGO-UGO game with a turn length of two weeks and any attempt to do it anyway is bound to lead to strange situations (like the Hochseeflotte engaging on of Britain's cruisers in the North Sea and then calmly waiting for the Grand Fleet and submarines to arrive and take it out).
2. The British blockade was an important, perhaps even the most important, factor in the war that led to Germany's eventual defeat yet it is apparently not represented in the game at all. The game only knows production points and the countries all produce those so the severe effects of hunger and lack of resources that plagued Germany because of the loss of maritime trade simply don't exist in the game.
People often believe that the successful allied offensives in the last months of the war came because of the tanks. Of course tanks played an important role but just as important was that the spirit of the German army was eroding quickly due to the disastrous supply situation in Germany.
3. The fighting power of units depends solely on researched technologies and efficiency. Morale, which was an important factor for all armies, is totally neglected, as is experience, training, organisation, leadership etc.
And efficiency, while existing in the game, is also handled strangely. For example a unit does not lose any efficiency by marching. So even if a unit marches as far as it can through enemy territory it finishes the turn as fresh as if it had rested the whole time - really??
4. Why can units can attack after marching but not the other way around? The same with repairing - units cannot march after being repaired (which I find okay) but they can be repaired after marching, even after marching the maximum distance into enemy territory! This makes no sense.
Btw your reply
4. Why can units move farther when they fight?
The control system is simple, and that is intentional. The idea of the 'advance' move isn't intended as some kind of blitz tactic, it was introduced because otherwise situations developed on the tight frontlines where an enemy unit was destroyed but no friendly units could move to fill the breach. This is a very frustrating situation which is solved by this game mechanic. It does result in the perhaps odd situations in the opening moves of the game, but in the long run it is a good rule (imo).
does not convince me at all. the problem could be solved much more logically by simply disallowing units to attack if they don't have enough MPs left to enter the target hex (which is actually my point - if a unit could not move into a certain hex for lack of MPs, how can it attack that hex??)
But what finally broke my goodwill are the supply rules. I played the Entente, allowed the AI to advance along the channel coast and used an opportunity to cut off four German units in the Calais/Rouen area. To my surprise those units stayed in half-supply. Apparently the game rules allow all cities, even recently captured enemy cities, to keep units in decent supply indefinitely. I'm sorry, but this is complete and utter nonsense.
It may well be that the game manages a somewhat historical course of the war in France. This is not difficult to simulate, there just have to be rules that make attacks on entrenched opponents very unlikely to succeed in the first years of the war and then give the attacker much better chances in the latter stages. But from what little I have experienced myself and have by now read about in other threads I cannot see that the same is true for the Eastern front or the Italian theatre.
I'm not saying the game should be changed. The purpose of a game is enjoyment, and if lots of players enjoy CtGW then you did a good job. But I must ask you to change the "unprecedented realism and accuracy" part of the product info which I feel cheated me into buying this game and wasting my money.