Matrix Games Forums

hello, I've previously played Commander: The Great War which seems similar to this. I am interested in this game and had some questions:

1) how will multiplayer work? I've heard it's PBEM (play by email) but are there any plans for synchronous/simlutaneous multiplayer options? will I be able to do play with friends as part of a joint session? how many friends can I play with? and will there be co-op?

2) are there any plans for a manpower mechanic to reflect the battle of attrition? I think in Commander the Great War as manpower dropped, it would hurt production and I think eventually the military performance. I liked the fundamentals of what they were trying to do but what I didn't like about how Commander implemented it was that convoys provided manpower, which sort of didn't make sense (maybe for British/French colonial troops, but made no sense for the Germans to gain manpower like that).


3) how dominant will air force be? What sort of agitated me about Commander for me was how dominant fighter/bomber spam could be, including the early stages of the war.

Thanks.

1) For play by email via the PBEM++ server it will still be only 2 players, but we've recently added the ability to play with more than one player via Hotseat mode.

This mode will now have a last turn replay (as well as last moves replay) which will allow players to share a save file amongst several friends and it will show all the relative recent moves. Each side will have its own password and so on, thereby essentially allowing you to play with as many friends as you prefer per side.

This will also soon be available for our WWII games, World at War and War in Europe.

2) There is no manpower mechanic at the moment, but our national morale mechanic will play a much larger role in our WWI release than it does in WWII. Naval blockades, combat losses and so on will essentially play a similar role in game play terms as what you've described via manpower, where excessive losses can be very damaging to a side including lowering the will to fight (much less effective combat results) and eventually leading to surrender when National Morale reaches zero.

3) Artillery will play a much larger and more important role than air power let's say relative to what you would expect from a later conflict such as WWII. Recon spotting will be much more important in this release with additional artillery effects for spotted units/positions, while fighters battle for control of the sky etc.

Hope this helps,
Hubert