TOAW 3/4 or World in Flames

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

ORIGINAL: Neilster
The general quality of the game system, its global nature (with the associated naval stuff that interests you), your complete control of everything from politics, resource movement, production, strategy and tactics; really recommends it.

I'd be curious to hear what enhancements have been made in TOAW IV to go beyond operational level warfare to the grand strategic level where players can make choices for diplomacy, research, production, etc. Certainly TOAW offers lots of good operational level scenarios, but MWiF offers the global grand strategy game. Again, I'd be curious to hear what TOAW IV may offer along these lines.

About none, as far as I know. There is going to be a WW2 scenario but AFAIK it's just a huge scenario. It appears TOAW 4 will mainly offer a revised UI and much improved naval model.

Cheers, Neilster

[Neilster]

I wouldn't recommend World in Flames though if you really want an AI opponent as of course it doesn't have one and I've never felt quite right playing against myself since most victories in war and battles come from "mistakes" and knowing what's coming takes the fun out of your opponent making a mistake. Would the Romans have made the mistake at Cannae if they knew what Hannibal was going to do?

Whilst an AI would be better, solitaire works in MWiF. It's very difficult to envisage all the potential decisions/moves of the non-phasing side. I also employ coin flipping or a die roll to decide the course of action if there are two or more possibilities that seem equally viable.

Cheers, Neilster

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: pzgndr
I'd be curious to hear what enhancements have been made in TOAW IV to go beyond operational level warfare to the grand strategic level...

ORIGINAL: Neilster
About none, as far as I know.

I think there is scripting for player decisions, which could be strategic level decisions, and clever use of these could make for a good strategic game. Not sure what has been done for TOAW IV. Maybe someone will chime in about a scenario to be included in the release and what it covers. Regardless, I'm looking forward to the operational level scenarios in TOAW IV, and eventually to the ETO scenario with AI in MWiF one of these days.

[Lobster]

ORIGINAL: Neilster

ORIGINAL: Lobster

Dear lord. Please people use words. You do understand that not everyone on the planet knows what MWIF, WIF, CTGW, DC:B and any other of the plethora of acronyms mean right? If someone were reading this and looking for a game they would be at a loss.

WiF: World in Flames...an award winning paper and dice wargame by Australian Design Group

MWiF: Matrix WiF...The computer conversion of the wargame

TOAW: The Operational Art of War...An operational level wargame with many scenarios, mostly from the 20th Century

Cheers, Neilster

It is very neat when they take a popular paper and die game and port it to a digital format. I wonder how difficult it would be to program a computer opponent. Thanks for the education. [;)]

[Neilster]

It is very neat when they take a popular paper and die game and port it to a digital format. I wonder how difficult it would be to program a computer opponent. Thanks for the education.

It isn't going to be easy but Steve, the developer, took on the whole project because that's what he wanted to do. He's an AI expert and a very experienced WiF player, so he's a good man for the job.

Many people have said that a good AI will be impossible for MWiF; comparing the complexity of the game to that of chess, with its 64 squares, few piece types and tight rules etc. How could you possibly write an AI for MWiF?

Well, without going too deeply into how AIs are written, chess programs generally use some variation on the Minimax algorithm in combination with a quiescence search. The later reduces the potentially huge number of possible moves from a given position.

Even so, this technique isn't possible with MWiF, and it's AI will work differently, so the chess analogy isn't valid. That MWiF is a port of the physical wargame is advantageous, in that there is decades of experience in the player base that is directly applicable to MWiF.

On the MWiF forum, quite some time ago, strategies for all the major powers (who also control minor powers) were thrashed out in some detail and Steve has recorded the results. He has also developed a pseudo programming language that will be used as part of the AI. He's done a lot of work on it but has been disciplined in sticking to his task list, which at the moment has him squashing (mostly esoteric) bugs, before tackling the AI.

Cheers, Neilster

[rico21]

A complex computer wargame game written in one language penalizes other players who do not master that language. Unless its dominant language is mathematics.