Matrix Games Forums

Wow! This was an epic game and an even more impressive AAR! You must have put in many hours and a huge effort to not only play, but also document this game. What set this AAR apart from all others, you have recorded every single die roll and have also put it in context before, like probability of success and the consequences. This made it possible for us readers to follow your game very closely. This project dwarfs all other AAR in comparison.
Thank you, Ronnie.

The outcome of the game itself was mostly defined by
(1) the pre-game arranged understanding between Soviet and Japan players
(2) the decision of the US player to go all-in against Germany and to neglect Japan, until it was too late.
With hindsight, the early fall of China could have been delayed/avoided, if the USA&China player would have chosen a more conservative approach. Germany would have been completely conquered by the Soviet player alone, albeit probably only some turns later, if the USA&China player would have used a more balanced approach and assigned a bigger part of his overall ressources to the Pacific instead of Europe.

It is also encouraging to see, that a full Global War scenario game can be played from beginning to end. It is proof, the program has a good enough inherent stability. It is just a pity, the program version actually used had to be downgraded to 3.2.0 within the course of the game to reach the end. It would be so much nicer, if the reported bugs in the latest version 4.4.1 could be fixed quickly, so the game could be completely played using the newest MWIF version, which is also promoted and distributed by publisher Matrix Games!

Angeldust2 wrote: Wed Aug 24, 2022 5:53 am It is also encouraging to see, that a full Global War scenario game can be played from beginning to end. It is proof, the program has a good enough inherent stability. It is just a pity, the program version actually used had to be downgraded to 3.2.0 within the course of the game to reach the end. It would be so much nicer, if the reported bugs in the latest version 4.4.1 could be fixed quickly, so the game could be completely played using the newest MWIF version, which is also promoted and distributed by publisher Matrix Games!

1. Thanks for your comments & following! I really appreciate it!

2. I do plan additional summaries, commentaries and data to this AAR and encourage you and others to continue following and certainly comment on such. Also, there's something that Angeldust2 did in our game as Germany that Frank didn't do in this game that I believe caused Germany an early exit from the war. How's that for a teaser!

3. We started this game on May 24,2021 and finished on August 22,2022. This AAR was started on June 26,2021 and will continue for a while longer.

4. One advantage of all the data I logged and how it was logged is that I can go back and filter and summarize it in almost infinite ways. For example, below is the evolution of the MWIF versions used and the rationalize why. By retrograding permanently to version 3.2.0 (debug) on turn 21, we did lose a couple of newly coded optional rules. While there were some bug fixes in 4.x that we also lost there also were some regression bugs introduced in 4.x that we didn't have to deal with. One of which in the latest public beta 4.4.1 (Debug) is game stopping! More significantly, the supply calculation times in 4.x can at many times be frustratingly slow compared to 3.2.0 (see log entry, Global # 1349).

Using a historical counterfactual approach to compare game vs historical objectives for belligerents not conquered and conquests dates for those that were the following is how the 8 belligerents would rank at game's end:

Place Belligerent(s) Score
1. Japan 3
2. USA, USSR 0
4. France -1
5. CW -2
6. Italy NA. Historical surrender 8/8/43 (turn 24), Game incomplete conquest ND44 (turn 32).
7. Germany NA. Historical surrender 5/7/45 (~turn 34*=MA45 end of turn conquest phase), Game complete conquest ND44(turn 32).
8. China NA. Historically not conquered, Game complete conquest SO42 (turn 20).

So using this standard Japan still won, the USA & USSR equaled their historical totals, France & CW slightly underperformed. Italy outlasted their historical surrender by 1 year & 4 months. Germany failed by 4 months to last as long as they actually did. Finally, China performed the worse by surrendering 2 years & 8 months prior to the end of the war versus historically surviving the entire war.

Congratulations on finishing the game, and completing your tremendous AAR.

Thank you all for the AAR, and especially to rkr1958 for making the posts. Very interesting read.

Courtenay wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 12:59 am Congratulations on finishing the game, and completing your tremendous AAR.

Orm wrote: Thu Aug 25, 2022 10:21 am Thank you all for the AAR, and especially to rkr1958 for making the posts. Very interesting read.

Appreciate it and thanks for following!

I'm not sure what to make of the land combat summaries.

There were less than 500 land combat attacks over 6 years (36 turns of war). Specifically, a total of 468 land combat attacks were made, of which 233 were assault (49.8%), 231 were blitz (49.4%) and 4 were overruns (0.9%). Only 4 overruns in total seems low to me.

The win percentage was 91% and wasn't that much different between assault (90.6%) and blitz (91.3%). The biggest difference was between the axis (88.7%) and allied (92.3%), +3.6% difference in the allies favor.