So...
The turn ends on a one when the axis passes.
Germany is not conquered because the Russians did not have time to capture Stettin. One impulse short... The siege of Berlin was really a killer! Hence, the axis performs better than in many games I've played.
Some lessons learned: The Japanese did well in China. However, this did not prevent a severe come back by the allies. This come back was worsened by the fact that many Japanese land units were engaged deeply in China. They could not be withdrawn in time to reinforce the motherland or critical victory hexes, as I could do in other AAR. I'm still wondering why the Japanese should advance in China, considering both the cost (units are bound to be lost in attack), and the fact that it achieves nothing (few if any resources to gain); he only reason would be to reach a conquest of China; but that is something that I never ever came close to. I'm still wondedring about a strategy for Japan!
On MWIF itself, much can be said. None is good.
It has been 20 months now since the game release. Within these 20 months, no new features have been added: it has been a time for bug crushing. But as the game advances, I note that game crashes still exist (in the 4 last turns I had more than 3 crashes); I also note that the game performance problems have not been solved, far from it. In many case, these delay have no visible cause: why would
picking up a plane from a carrier to go on a mission (whatever the mission) take 30 seconds or more is absolutely beyond my understanding! There is just nothing to check: a carrier at sea is in supply by the rules; so what is the game doing ? There was also that time when returning ships to base took more that 8 minutes... For god's sake! Thats absolutely incredible, and once more nothing can explain such delays. Then, of course, picking up a land unit often takes 30 seconds, then 30 seconds more when placing it back on board: not always, but much too often.
From all this, as a professional programmer, I can draw some conclusions, and they are not good for the game. The first is that it is obvious that Steve still doesn't master the code. I don't blame him: he had to take over the old delphi code, which itself was very likely a huge mess: experience shows that it is often better to restart from scratch after having learned the mistakes not to do. The worst part of this is the supply routine which is a pile of s..t. Weighting my words. The first problem with is is that is it based on the wrong paraygm: in this game supply is attached to the units while it should be attached to the hexes as a topological property! Hence, the game cannot show you maps of the supply network for a given country! You have to know the rules to know if moving a unit in such or such an hex will put it out of supply. There are also other problems, less pregnant, but nonetheless annoying: the interface is just bad. That probably comes with Theme Engine, just a bad choice. Difficult to place windows as you want, sometimes windows refuse t come on top and you have to move other windows away (and when this happens with a modal window blocking the game, you're toast.) Then there is the dramatic choice that whenever one changes the current playing major power, the focus usually shifts to another place in the world. That's really a poor ergonomical choice and makes playing CW/USA very tedious.
As for the future of the game, it is bleak and it would be naive to believe that there will ever be a playable AI. In the current game state, that's plain impossible. I don't even believe that the performance problems will be solved: this would probably involve rewriting the supply routines from scratch. Why no AI ? because unless it cheats, the game will have to suffer the same slowness when investigating possible moves, and then when actually playing them: the underlying poor performance in the basic game engine (supply or whatever causes the sluggishness I met) will just prevent the AI to react in an acceptable time for players. Unless one is willing to accept 1 or 2 hours turns for the computer near the end of the game.
In all honesty, I'm really disappointed with the game now.
Yet, it is still a bit better than having to place all the pieces down on the map.
