Matrix Games Forums

I read on another thread that AE is a Historical based game and not Historically accurate. What is this? Why is this? I want to be able to play against the Japanese to see how I would have faired in comparison to how the real Admirals won.

According to the Post I read, the game is designed to allow the Japanese to win. Shouldn't that just be a scenario. Shouldn't the base campaign be designed to represent the actual units, production, morale, and strategy and tactics? Yes, the Japanese will lose, but maybe they lose a whole year earlier, or maybe they lose two years later? Why is the game not representative of the WAR IN THE PACIFIC?

This issue came up with respect to the AI behavior (i.e. it cheats big time). Do we have to play PBEM games to get any realistic play out of the game. Is there a way to modify the base scenarios so the AI doesn't cheat?

I think the game has been redesigned to give a Japanese player or the Japanese AI a better shot - but designed for them to "win?" I don't see that ... JMHO.

I'd like to know who wrote the thread you're referring to. Could you provide a link to it?

For the record, AE is as historically accurate as the combined knowledge of the AE development team was able to make it.

ORIGINAL: Swayin

I think the game has been redesigned to give a Japanese player or the Japanese AI a better shot - but designed for them to "win?" I don't see that ... JMHO.

The Japanese AI has certainly been improved, as has the Allied, but I've seen enough whining fanboys of both sides to be convinced that it's not favouring either.

And BTW, all AIs EVERYWHERE cheat.

ORIGINAL: bretg80

I read on another thread that AE is a Historical based game and not Historically accurate. What is this? Why is this? I want to be able to play against the Japanese to see how I would have faired in comparison to how the real Admirals won.

According to the Post I read, the game is designed to allow the Japanese to win. Shouldn't that just be a scenario. Shouldn't the base campaign be designed to represent the actual units, production, morale, and strategy and tactics? Yes, the Japanese will lose, but maybe they lose a whole year earlier, or maybe they lose two years later? Why is the game not representative of the WAR IN THE PACIFIC?

This issue came up with respect to the AI behavior (i.e. it cheats big time). Do we have to play PBEM games to get any realistic play out of the game. Is there a way to modify the base scenarios so the AI doesn't cheat?

1. Dont know where you read it - you will not find another game of this level so detailed and accurate as WITP:AE
2. Japanese can "win" by points. If they manage to have 4 times allied victory points in 1943 (3 times in 1944 and 2 times in 1945), they will be declared victors - but you can still continue the game (the same rule applies for Allies)
3. Main Campaign is designed exactly like you said - it depends on how lucky/skilled you are
4. There was big enhancement of AI capabilities to force human players off ballance and surprise them (So it will do tricky things not attempted in history - AI is built to represent moves the actual player could do). Of course AI is still AI so it needs certain help (like ALMOST unlimited airplanes) because if it havent had the help, the game will not be challenging (like having IJAAF/IJNAF without airplanes) [:D]

Will give you an example of how historically accurate this game is...

My grandfather was a Marine with the 3rd USMC defense battalion. He landed on Efate prior to Guadalcanal breaking loose. He sailed on the SS Crescent City at that time. He remembered the name of that ship (the only one of many that he sailed on during the war) because it was clean and the sailors treated the Marines well.

I just started playing the Guadalcanal scenario in PBEM game. I opened the 1st turn, saw the SS Crescent City in a TF headed for Guadalcanal with...you guessed it...the 3rd USMC Defense Battalion embarked on it.

Bretg80...when you find another game that manages that detail...let me know.

It seems to me that one of the unspoken "issues" here is that historically Japan had no real chance of winning the war. Yamamoto warned his government about this, and the historians I have read lately consider the Japanese attack on the US an act of national suicide. so, historically playing as the US would present not much of a challenge if the player simply followed history, and if the game simply modeled Japanese limitations and American resources. On the other hand, even the "historical" setting of AE gives the Japanese player more of an even chance than in real life. THe comments I have seen on this forum seem mostly favorable towards the fact that the Japanese side gives the allied player more of a challenge.

ORIGINAL: bretg80
Do we have to play PBEM games to get any realistic play out of the game. Is there a way to modify the base scenarios so the AI doesn't cheat?

Define realistic. PBEM is the most challenging way of playing this game, and the most fun IMO. It is the closest you will get to 're-living' the Pacific War.

ORIGINAL: bretg80

I read on another thread that AE is a Historical based game and not Historically accurate. What is this? Why is this? I want to be able to play against the Japanese to see how I would have faired in comparison to how the real Admirals won.

Problem with creating a historical game is that its not a simple matter of putting all the playing pieces that were there on the map. As for comparing how you'd play against the Japanese, you already have a big ahistorical advantage.....YOU are in total control of all Allied forces on Turn 2. no command issues, no multinational agenda issues....no "ABDA". Right away your in an ahistorical situation. oops! [:D]

In the end, your playing a game and inherantly there are going to be abstractions and distortions, many of which are created by players themselves, the more control they are given. Thats the double edge sword of GG games....lots of detail, lots of control.....great immersion, but also room for great distortion.

The most accurate simulation on a level such as WitP would be the most boring and hence the most unsellable......you, in a room with a map and a teleprompter....you get reports, you issue orders based on what you see and your commander's carry it out to the best that they see fit.

It is also Ahistoric from the beggining due to simple hindsite. You know that Raubal is importaint and Port Moresby is vital. You also know how lightly defended a lot of theses areas are if you grab them early. you know Subs will eat your lunch if you are Japan and start making sub hunting a priority. You also know pilots are an issue. The other big thing is that you know the fate of your nation and the blood of your men need not be factored. You can always restart or reload. The digital dead don't haunt your dreams.

ORIGINAL: Knavey

Will give you an example of how historically accurate this game is...

My grandfather was a Marine with the 3rd USMC defense battalion. He landed on Efate prior to Guadalcanal breaking loose. He sailed on the SS Crescent City at that time. He remembered the name of that ship (the only one of many that he sailed on during the war) because it was clean and the sailors treated the Marines well.

I just started playing the Guadalcanal scenario in PBEM game. I opened the 1st turn, saw the SS Crescent City in a TF headed for Guadalcanal with...you guessed it...the 3rd USMC Defense Battalion embarked on it.

Bretg80...when you find another game that manages that detail...let me know.

Good to see they got that unit correct, but I dont see the game designed to help the japanese win. (Yes, the AI gives them a big helping hand especially in aircraft production.)

13 Australian Bde should start in Perth, its Bns have been spread around other locations in West Aust, Bde+ sized forces have been spread around other IRL ungarrisoned bases in Australia like Portland, Sale, Broken Hill & Wagga Wagga. I understand the reason, and dont like it, but dont claim the game is any where near as historically accurate as it could be.

IMHO, if the developers wanted to have an ahistorical setup to help the AI, they should have a Historical Scenario for PBEM, JFB Scenario with historical japanese but altered Allied & AFB Scenario with historical Allied but altered japanese.

This would have satisfied all, and kept to the advertised historical accuracy.

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

Problem with creating a historical game is that its not a simple matter of putting all the playing pieces that were there on the map. As for comparing how you'd play against the Japanese, you already have a big ahistorical advantage.....YOU are in total control of all Allied forces on Turn 2. no command issues, no multinational agenda issues....no "ABDA". Right away your in an ahistorical situation. oops! [:D]

As are the Japanese, with the IJN and the IJA living in perfect harmony and cooperation. Unfortunately, short of a multi-player, multi-faction game with individual victory conditions this is inevitable. Maybe with WITP IV in 2030...

Any game uses a model of reality.  And any model is going to have differences from the original.  A plastic model of an F-14 can get quite realistic looking, but it will never be capable of flying off a carrier or anything else.  A flying model of an F-14 will have major visual differences with the real thing because accuracy had to be sacrificed to get the thing to fly.

AE makes every attempt to be as accurate as possible.  You get the historic units on the time frame they really appeared.  We have done everything we can to model the unit composition as close as possible to historic reality.  We have also done everything we can to model the game engine to recreate the war as accurately as possible.

There are many, many things that aren't 100% accurate for many reasons:
1) The exact composition or location of a unit on a given date is unknown.  So we made an educated guess.
2) The exact composition of a unit was not possible within the game.  This is especially true for many air units.  At various times, different air units had mixes of aircraft, but the game engine is one aircraft type per unit, so a compromise had to be made.
3) The game engine couldn't handle something, so we needed to do a work around.
4) Finally, one of the biggest factors, 20/20 hindsight and player omnipotence.  As a player you have a degree of knowledge and control that no real world commander has ever had and you also have access to intel the real world commanders didn't have: history books.  That's going to skew things in many ways that we have difficulty controlling.  The AI does some things it may have been historically able to do, but didn't do to throw the human player a few curve balls.  If the AI stuck to the historical timeline, it would be much easier to beat since you'd know what's coming next and can prepare better than your side ever could historically.

All that said, I think this game is the most ambitious attempt to be tri-phibious (air, sea, and land) and be accurate in all three areas.  In that, I think we did a pretty good job.

If you only compare a game to the real war, it's going to come up short.  If you also factor in other games that have attempted to model the same thing, I think AE scores much higher than anyone else. 

Bill

Good discussion and thanks for the feedback. I guess my issue is the cheating AI and the unlimited air production. That will obviously skew battles and cause losses that would not be the case without this cheat. Why does the A/I need this kind of unrealistic help. Another thing I read is that the A/I knows where all of your units are (kind of an omnipresent radar). Very unrealistic if true, because one of the main reasons the Americans were so successful is that the Japanese had little or no knowledge of what the American's were up to during the war. If you are playing the Japanese, well then I'm fine with that.

So, not so historical if the A/I is playing as GOD. I also heard that the US production is crippled. Again, my question is, why not have a SUPER Japanese scenario that makes the game hard for those who want to play an unrealistic version of the war.

I noticed in WITP when I was playing the 1945 scenario that even when I was pounding the Japanese from the air, they were still building and deploying huge numbers of ships and fighters. Not realistic in the real war. Once and island or factory was destroyed, the Japanese were not able to rebuild it quickly. Not sure about AE, but in WITP, the GOD A/I was rebuilding everything overnight practically. Haven't gotten far in AE yet to see how this goes, but wanted to ask the question about the A/I.

Thanks for the insight.

P.S here is the link to the other thread that riled me up. [X(] tm.asp?m=2254776

I do agree that the units and availability are historical in the game and just so everyone knows, I'm a huge WITP and WITP/AE player and fan. Love the game and just want to know that it is a realistic as possible. Realizing that personalities in the real war played much more of a factor than unlimited planes used by the A/I. I'm sure it will be many years before AE is enhanced or another game comes along to handle the idiosyncratic behaviors of McArthur, Nimitz, and King, to name just a few. Oh and if you think the Americans were bad, the Japanese commanders actually inflated their battle results and successes much to the demise of their fellow commanders during significant battles.

Keep 'em dying.

ORIGINAL: Tomcat

It seems to me that one of the unspoken "issues" here is that historically Japan had no real chance of winning the war. Yamamoto warned his government about this, and the historians I have read lately consider the Japanese attack on the US an act of national suicide. so, historically playing as the US would present not much of a challenge if the player simply followed history, and if the game simply modeled Japanese limitations and American resources. On the other hand, even the "historical" setting of AE gives the Japanese player more of an even chance than in real life. THe comments I have seen on this forum seem mostly favorable towards the fact that the Japanese side gives the allied player more of a challenge.

and Japan has no real chance of winning the war in AE either (nor WITP). Of course if the Allied player (I´m speaking about PBEM) does enough wrong, then the Japanese still can take out more or less the whole map, therfore "winning" the game (not only points). If the Japanese player is "smart" enough and the Allied player does it wrong then you can sink all Allied CVs and BBs and CAs etc and the IJN is still in good shape. But that only depends on what the two players are doing. Not different to real life.

On turn one history is thrown overboard but there´s no game on the market that is closer to the historical setup than WITP and AE.

ORIGINAL: bretg80

Good discussion and thanks for the feedback. I guess my issue is the cheating AI and the unlimited air production. That will obviously skew battles and cause losses that would not be the case without this cheat. Why does the A/I need this kind of unrealistic help. Another thing I read is that the A/I knows where all of your units are (kind of an omnipresent radar). Very unrealistic if true, because one of the main reasons the Americans were so successful is that the Japanese had little or no knowledge of what the American's were up to during the war. If you are playing the Japanese, well then I'm fine with that.

So, not so historical if the A/I is playing as GOD. I also heard that the US production is crippled. Again, my question is, why not have a SUPER Japanese scenario that makes the game hard for those who want to play an unrealistic version of the war.

I noticed in WITP when I was playing the 1945 scenario that even when I was pounding the Japanese from the air, they were still building and deploying huge numbers of ships and fighters. Not realistic in the real war. Once and island or factory was destroyed, the Japanese were not able to rebuild it quickly. Not sure about AE, but in WITP, the GOD A/I was rebuilding everything overnight practically. Haven't gotten far in AE yet to see how this goes, but wanted to ask the question about the A/I.

Thanks for the insight.

P.S here is the link to the other thread that riled me up. [X(] tm.asp?m=2254776

I do agree that the units and availability are historical in the game and just so everyone knows, I'm a huge WITP and WITP/AE player and fan. Love the game and just want to know that it is a realistic as possible. Realizing that personalities in the real war played much more of a factor than unlimited planes used by the A/I. I'm sure it will be many years before AE is enhanced or another game comes along to handle the idiosyncratic behaviors of McArthur, Nimitz, and King, to name just a few. Oh and if you think the Americans were bad, the Japanese commanders actually inflated their battle results and successes much to the demise of their fellow commanders during significant battles.

Keep 'em dying.

I don't believe the AI has any omnipotent ability on easy or historical. I think it starts peeking at your stuff on harder settings. The problem with making an AI, especially for a game like this is that it has no strategic depth. A chess AI gets there by calculating all the possible moves and then picking the best option. It's a brute force approach that has only been possible as PCs have matured. A modern PC doesn't have the computing power to calculate all the possible strategic implications of an action out even more than a day or two. Something a human mind can do quite easily.

So all wargame AIs need some help and all cheat in one way or another. With WitP, it's easier to see the guy behind the curtain. I've been playing a campaign against the AI since just before release and the AI's over production of aircraft does make some things tougher, but the AI does tend to throw away planes in ways a human player wouldn't. We do a bit better than stock in this, but there are limits to what we can do. So the extra planes are there to keep the AI from strangling due to lack of aircraft. It's ahistorical, but you aren't playing against someone as good as Yammamoto or Nimitz (though Andy does have a lot of nasty tricks programmed into the AI).

As far as American production being broken. It isn't. We have found a few specific cases where the production numbers were a little off and we're fixing what we've found for patch 2. In a database this big, there are bound to be errors. You don't get the full output of American production because the bulk of production went to Europe and that portion isn't in the game. So no more B-17s after mid-1942 and B-26s end too. Some other types of aircraft show up later than their original production dates or in smaller numbers because of what was being diverted to Europe.

The Allies don't get the control over production the Japanese do. The situation for the Allies was very different, especially the US. The US had a few production bottlenecks, but far fewer than Japan. Japan had to always balance production against needs and some things got shorted because there weren't enough resources. That can be modeled in the game, but trying to model the US industry the same way it would be too easy to overwhelm Japan.

Bill

ORIGINAL: bretg80

Good discussion and thanks for the feedback. I guess my issue is the cheating AI and the unlimited air production. That will obviously skew battles and cause losses that would not be the case without this cheat. Why does the A/I need this kind of unrealistic help. Another thing I read is that the A/I knows where all of your units are (kind of an omnipresent radar). Very unrealistic if true, because one of the main reasons the Americans were so successful is that the Japanese had little or no knowledge of what the American's were up to during the war. If you are playing the Japanese, well then I'm fine with that.

So, not so historical if the A/I is playing as GOD. I also heard that the US production is crippled. Again, my question is, why not have a SUPER Japanese scenario that makes the game hard for those who want to play an unrealistic version of the war.

I noticed in WITP when I was playing the 1945 scenario that even when I was pounding the Japanese from the air, they were still building and deploying huge numbers of ships and fighters. Not realistic in the real war. Once and island or factory was destroyed, the Japanese were not able to rebuild it quickly. Not sure about AE, but in WITP, the GOD A/I was rebuilding everything overnight practically. Haven't gotten far in AE yet to see how this goes, but wanted to ask the question about the A/I.

Thanks for the insight.

P.S here is the link to the other thread that riled me up. [X(] tm.asp?m=2254776

I do agree that the units and availability are historical in the game and just so everyone knows, I'm a huge WITP and WITP/AE player and fan. Love the game and just want to know that it is a realistic as possible. Realizing that personalities in the real war played much more of a factor than unlimited planes used by the A/I. I'm sure it will be many years before AE is enhanced or another game comes along to handle the idiosyncratic behaviors of McArthur, Nimitz, and King, to name just a few. Oh and if you think the Americans were bad, the Japanese commanders actually inflated their battle results and successes much to the demise of their fellow commanders during significant battles.

Keep 'em dying.

You are reading it wrong, it is not Japanese who are getting help... it is the AI. Play as Japan and you will see that allied AI is getting exactly the same help - almost unlimited airplanes, easier movement, knowledge about your units and some other bonuses...

What I don't get it is why people look at AI's turn in thee first place, and as a consequence have problem with this. It is the end result that matters, not how AI does it, and end result is that games are much more fun and challenging this way. For exact ways things happened there are history books, everything else is simulation since the first time you do something different than it was in reality you are in unknown territory... And that usually happens on first turn you play.

You can't really expect AI to have same limited resources and rules as human player, and to perform at the same level as human does. You can bet that AI programmer that manages to make such AI would no longer make games, he would be in some top secret military facility working under 1 billion dollar contract for the army.

You cant be Historically accurate since
1) You use an AI .. all AIs are brain dead and don't learn.  eg In WITP Japan would  happily throw half her fleet piecemeal into some well defended point. Even still if you do weird things like as Japan leave the Phillipines and go for Ceylon and New Caladonia you are likely to have a broken AI. 
2) You have 20/20 historical vision and know tactics that worked and failed.
 
AIs are just too stupid.  You may feel good but its not historical .

If you want any sense of realism play PBEM its nerve  wrecking.

Just FYI, Japan does have a chance to win the game (on points), it just can't win the war.  Given enough time, the Allies can run the board and capture every single base.  Against a good player or with a weak Allied player, that may take longer than you have allotted in the game, but Japan never stood a chance in a protracted war against a determined enemy.

The game is structured so Japan can win by getting enough victory points.  They won't own the map, but they will have the Allies in a position where the war will run into the 1950s if it were a real situation.

Bill