Pointers please

[JudgeDredd]

I wrote this in the Uncommon Valor forum, but seeing as I have came across a copy of WitP second hand, I thought I could maybe post it here

Basically, looking at the game on startup (and I can only imagine the feeling would be multiplied ten fold with WitP), I just see a lot of everything.

I mean....where does one start...and how do you continue. For example...

If I were to start with a couple of bases in America, with loads of troops and ships etc, then there is a starting place. I know what I have to do...expand out from the US either helping of fighting for the islands....

But as it is, I don't know where the troops are, transports, aircraft...I mean....it's like someone has just thrown down a lod of counters on a boardgame and said "Play".

I'm not slating the game here....they are providing a historical representation of the area at the time....but...WHAT DO I DO?

Also, being as everything is everywhere, how do you experienced players remember where you started...what you moved...where you last saw the marine division that you need to move to island x...where those long range bombers where so you can move them to ilsna dy etc, etc, etc....I mean, do you write it down? Do you start from the upper left of the map and work towards the lower right?

I am just lost when I start this game up....completely lost. It's having no idea what to do. I had a similar experience with X3-Reunion (space combat/trading sim)...I had no idea what to do...so it's played very little.

I think it's an inherent problem with games where there is "no specific" objective or the gameplay is so open, you have no idea how to achieve the objective...not the developers fault, rally...after all we've been screaming for open play for many a year...but it's frustrating not knowing where to start or what the objective is or, when the objective is mentioned, not knowing how to achieve it.

Billy

Some people posted that they look at each base for infantry/aircraft/navy and make notes...is this how you play? I mean, I find it quite daunting to look at the map and remember what is where...

How do you start? Do you have a plan at first? Look at the map and decide what needs troops on, where to move them from? Do you start by making an inventory of where everything is.

I do apologise to asking you old sweats this, as I'm pretty sure your bored senseless hand holding n00bs...but if you've got a spare 5 minutes to helps someone NOT get scared on their fist turn, I'd appreciate the time greatly.

[Feinder]

To be honest, the way I started my first mega-campaign in WitP I started up Scen #15 as Allies. Set all other theaters to computer control, except SouthEast Asia. This limits the scope of your imminent brain hemorrhage.

Playing only SEAsia gives you some Land, Air, and Naval units to work with, without giving yourself a major stroke. The AI is very forgiving. It doesn’t care if you replay a turn or restart because you didn’t like the results (esp when learning).

But only having to worry about Burma/India allows you wrap your brain around the mechanics and learning, before taking the plunge into everything. It won’t take you that long get very familiar with your units, and look to expand your control. You can either restart, or simply turn off the AI (take control) of whatever other theaters you want (taking over the DEI isn’t a major step).

You just have to take it slow, and believe it or not, you really –will- learn where all your chess pieces are.




And yes, I have taken the time to type up a document that has my "opening moves" as allies when playing a Scen 15 (as allies, you can't save a file, so I have everything written down, everythign from changing objective hexes to where to march to intended sqadron relocations etc). When you start playing WitP you -will- get yourself a notebook.




Some more stuff…


As an experienced player, I basically go by “theater round-robin”, and check status to make sure what I want is moving to where I want it to go.
1. NoPac and shipping.
2. WestCoast.
3. Shipping lanes to Hawaii.
4. Hawaii.
5. Hawaiian islands, Midway, Johnston, Palmyra, Christmas.
6. Shipping lanes from Hawaii.
7. Northern SoPac (Canton, Baker, Howland, Tarawa, Makin, Apanama, Naru)
8. Souther SoPac (all points south from Canton to Suva).
9. Northern Solomons (Lunga, Tulagi, Tass, shipping to/from Solomons)
10. Southern Solomons (Noumea up to Lunga, and all shipping).
11. New Zealand and shipping
12. Shipping between Oz and SoPac
13. East Oz
14. South Oz
15. North Oz and Perth
16. Shippig between Oz and India
17. SRA (if I owned it)
18. Burma (if I owned it)
19. India and shipping
20. China

Yes, there’s a lot WitP. On any given turn, any of those “sections” might go very quick. Others, might take 30 minutes, depending if I have ops going or if there are enemy CVs prowling my shipping lanes.


And more stuff…

Well, when beginning a game, it -is- important to "take inventory", to get a feel of what is where so you can use it.

Use the buttons to “display all ships”, “display all squadrons”.

When you do “display all ships”, then “remove all ships” from the selection (it’s a button).
Then “show only CVs”.
You can click on the right location column, and it’ll take you to the TF or base where the CV is.
Now you know where your CVs are. These obviously the most important units you will ever worry about.

Turn over off the CVs.
“show only BBs”
You can see where you BBs are, etc.

You might do this for CAs as well. Frankly, you’ll be most interested where the CAs and CLs are, that are at sea.

I wouldn’t worry about DDs and other ships. Suffice to say, you have a lot of them. Just getting familiar with the scenario and where your large surface fleets (capital ships) are, is what you’re doing.


For you air units, you can do something similar, select the land-based air icon. It’ll give you all the air units deployed at bases for the entire game. You can narrow things down by selecting fighters or bombers etc. Or further narrow by selecting a squadron, and then “show all units of this command” (would give you all the SEAsia units, also often times air units are scattered across the map and not within their command).

-F-

[kilowatts]

I think you HAVE to start with the tutorial and smaller scenarios, just to get the feel for what's important and what's not, what the capabilities of the units are etc. I did the tutorial and the Coral Sea scenario from both sides before beginning my first campaign.

It definitely helps if you have a good understanding of how the war progressed in real life as that will give you a guage to measure your progress against. IMHO Against the AI the Allies are easier to play for a newcomer to the game since there's not much you can do for the first few months anyway. By the time the Allies have enough stuff to make life complicated you've got a good deal of experience under your belt. Plus the Allies don't really have to worry about production.

Yes, I make notes - on a day-by-day basis. I filled up two notebooks for my first campaign. Each day I wrote up a synopsis of what happened, what was planned etc. When reviewing the turn I start in the top-left (India) and then work through each area in a counter-clockwise path. Each game-month I revisited my strategy and set objectives etc based on how things went.

There are tools around to export data into Excel etc, see the 'Must read' thread. I haven't used them so can't vouch for how effective they are. If all else fails just ask the forum for help.

Mike

[histgamer]

[font="times new roman"]I am still a beginner and I know I am probably screwing myself over as Japan because I don’t pay much attention to its production however I find the grand campaign as Japan doable, yes its daunting however its manageable as a beginner because you only have 1 navy to deal with, your empire really isn’t as vast as the allies are at the start (even if that will quickly change) also you don’t have the resources really to attack EVERYWHERE at once, I am having more success in the PI and DEA historically than Japan did, that is to say I am advancing slightly faster (currently late January of 41 so its probably to early to tell) but you still don’t have enough to take everything you need to take at once.[/font]
[font="times new roman"] [/font]
[font="times new roman"]So basically if you like a challenge I think starting as Japan (if you don’t do much with the production modal at least early) is reasonable.  [/font]

[wdolson]

It helps to know something of the history before you start. Then you have an idea of what is where.

This game is not for the faint hearted. It can't possibly be won in a day, even if you play for 24 hours. A campaign is a many month project at minimum. Daunting? It can be.

Personally, it's the best game I've ever played, but I'm more a history nut than a wiz bang gamer.

As far as strategy goes, if you're playing the Allies, the Japanese will beat you up for the first 6 months or so. Even the AI will beat up a good Allied player for a while. The Allies start off with a lot of territory to defend and not much to defend it with. The first six months of game time, the goal is to minimze losses.

As time goes on, new units will appear on the West Coast of the US and in Karachi, India as well as some in Australia. It will be a few months before the flow of new units is significant.

I recommend playing the tutorial first. It's a fictional scenario based on the Marianas Turkey Shoot. It will give you a feel for game play.

Bill

[tsimmonds]

If you don't have a sound grounding in the campaign history, you'll be lost. But regardless, I recommend a smaller scenario to get the mechanics down, and then move on to the big stuff. The tutorial is good, as is the coral sea scenario. After that the Marianas scenario is good OJT for invasions as you have to do at least three really nasty ones to win the scenario. Plus good practice for driving ships around.

[bradfordkay]

Personally, I have an atlas of the Pacific theatre imprinted on my brain... Yes, my interest in the Pacific theatre of WW2 started back in '66 or '67 with dad's copies of The West Point Atlas of American Wars and Life's Picture History of WW2. After I had digested those books for a couple of years, in '69 we discovered Avalon Hill wargames...


The best way to handle each turn in the campaign game is to 1) identify the locations of conflict (not every area will have combat every turn, and 2) systematically go through your major bases and convoy routes.

This means that I pay attention to the combat replay to get a feel for what is happening that turn. After that, I will look at my units starting with the US west coast and work my way west across the map. Generally, it is west coast, alaska, hawaii, cenpac, sopac, swpac, australia, PI, SRA, burma and then india. I don't usually have to look at each of these areas every turn, but I will if I know that I have something going on in that area.

You do want to look at every area fairly frequently if only to make sure that you catch a glimpse of the enemy sightings - sometimes they will pop up in unexpected areas. If you're not paying attention, this can cause ugly surprises...



For the first turn, take a very long time. Identify the areas where your troops are concentrated. For the allies on Dec 7, this will be US west coast, Oahu, Australia, the Philippine Islands, Malaya, and India. The PI and Malaya, which appear to have lots of troops, do not have enough to hold out... it's your decision as to whether you want to invest more troops in those areas or not. I usually don't, as the ships taking them in tend to get sunk by smart opponents...

Then decide where you want to make a stand. Keep in mind that for the first six months you will not have enough troops to hold all the valuable real estate, so you want to prioritize where you do want to make a stand. Since there are spies everywhere, I will not discuss my priorities...

Warning, Australia does not create enough supplies on its own to base any major offensives from there. If you want to base any offensives from Australia (like MacArthur's SWPac command did IRL), you will need to deliver at least supplies and fuel to Australia. It also helps to deliver oil and resources, as Oz has some heavy industry that can turn those into fuel and supplies.

[mc3744]

Initially I felt the same, totally.

Now, after over 2 years, I have memorized every base, (size, supplies, fortifications, ...), every division, carrier, BB, fighter squadron and so on and so forth.

I have two PBEM running (one as Allies and one as Japan) and I could tell you quite precisely, by heart, what troops, ships and planes I have in each base.

Regardless that, every turn I check base by base, squadron by squadron and port by port.

I follow an East-West direction, but it's really not important. Just figure out your own routine, stick to it and improve it over time.

As to what to do, a lot depends on wat your enemy does [;)]
The Allies are easier initially because you can afford to 'only' react.

With Japan you have to think forward a lot, especially in terms of supplies and fuel.

Welcome to the club of the crazy WitP players (you can't play it unless you are OCD [:D][:D])

[JudgeDredd]

Excellent tips.....thx very much for taking the time to post.

I have done the tutorial, printed the tutorial manual out and completed it...

I look forward to my first turn tonight

Oh...one other thing...is there a printable map of the region? I'd like to split it up into manageable segments

[treespider]

Just do it!!!
 
Start with some AI games and just order stuff around... over and over again...eventually you get into a rythym...
 
There are a number of veteran players around here that still get surprised by learning things they could or could not do...
 
For the first 6 months of the war notes for the Japanese are useful..after that things settle down.

[tsimmonds]

ORIGINAL: JudgeDredd

Oh...one other thing...is there a printable map of the region? I'd like to split it up into manageable segments

The map is made up of 18 bitmap files in the ART folder (WITP1, WITP2, etc, I believe). You can easily print out any of these.

note: the bases will not appear on these maps, as they are applied by the game software.

[Nikademus]

starting with a smaller scenario can be a good idea too.

[Feinder]

I look forward to my first turn tonight

 
I'm sure what you meant to say was...
 
I look forward to doing my first turn this week...

[;)]
 
-F-

[qgaliana]

ORIGINAL: Feinder

I look forward to my first turn tonight

I'm sure what you meant to say was...

I look forward to doing my first turn this week...

[;)]

-F-

First turns are evil. I really wish there was a script the program could read in for issuing commands to units. Then you really could save your first turn orders and reuse most of them game to game.

[Sardaukar]

ORIGINAL: qgaliana

First turns are evil. I really wish there was a script the program could read in for issuing commands to units. Then you really could save your first turn orders and reuse most of them game to game.

Yep. I usually save Allied and IJ first turn after completing orders so I can start another game vs. AI bit faster... PBEM is bit different in that sense, tho.