Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: M60A3TTS
It can be a challenge just finding players of equal ability.

This game is like Chess in that differences in player ability quickly become apparent and steadily become exaggerated as the stronger player takes a grip on the game.Unless you are closely matched the game soon spirals out of control.I think it proves that it's very much a game of skill, luck plays very little part in it.

I don't quite buy this analogy to chess. I think it's more the case that the game has a number of built in feedback loops can get out of hand very easily. The entire morale mechanic, for example. And this despite various tweaks to normalize it. The design is inherently unstable. Good players consciously or subconsciously seek to leverage these mechanisms and once they succeed, it's hard for the opponent to recover.

There is even more of a feedback effect than chess, I'd agree with that.At least with chess your pieces don't become steadily more or less powerful according to how well you're doing.It's similar though in the way that a player with superior skills can make your position untenable remarkably quickly.

I think Flaviusx is correct. In chess everyone knows the moves. They're rudimentary. The better players "see" the board and make the better moves.

But WITE is so complex that it takes time to learn the game rules, experience to how to use them, and then a talent (aptitude) for what Flaiusx describes. Guys like MT, Pelton, Flaviusx, and, unfortunately for me, THEPROS (Sillyflower and Blephegor) "know" what to do; whether consciously or unconsciously as Flaviusx states. Here's a personal example in my progress (a slow one) in WITE..

In a recent game I had to deal with a moderately strong Russian infantry unit with an 80% level 1 fort in a swamp hex that was preventing me from securing a big isolation. From my experience I "knew" that hasty attacks with the 3 Pz units available would fail. So I had to come up with another solution - I skirted around the unit in an unconventional way that worked.

As my motto says, "It takes time to play well. How long ?? It will take more time to tell."

From my relatively poor experience, the keys to win are (from the more to the less important)
- knowledge and understanding of the rules and mechanics... and it's really complex to handle with. Playing this game for more than a year I'm regularly discovering new points.
- experience: surviving your first blizzard as GHC. knowing the "true" effect of terrain, etc...
- tactical skill
- strategical skill

ORIGINAL: Flaviusx

I don't quite buy this analogy to chess. I think it's more the case that the game has a number of built in feedback loops can get out of hand very easily. The entire morale mechanic, for example. And this despite various tweaks to normalize it. The design is inherently unstable. Good players consciously or subconsciously seek to leverage these mechanisms and once they succeed, it's hard for the opponent to recover.

The "feedback loops" or as I like to call them exploits.

As with all games the top 5% of players know the exploits and look amazing until they are findly nerfed yrs later in most cases. From my 20 yrs of online playing, once the exploits are removed then you find out some of the 5% really survived on exploits and not skills. You also fine some of the guys that were good and not using exploits become great.

Most of the "feedback loops/ exploits " on the GHC side have been nerfed other then the Dragons for The Fatherland airlift.