War in the West

[Rayfer]

My guess would be that the practical defense is, "If you're trying to stack more than three regiments together you should damn well reorganize them anyway, duh." Assuming that's possible, as I seem to recall from reading about WITE. (I have it but have never played it, because I love donating money to charitable causes like Matrix. ;) )

JP...I think you got it right with your comment about regiment reorganization. Makes sense to me.

[panzerde]

How well a particular system controls this (I think the DC system is an elegant one), is part of how we'll judge the game.  For me, WiTW, like it's predecessor, is some kind of grognard Ur-porn.  It's something our lizard brain craves irrespective of need or time to play.  The Tiller WWI games are like this for me, too...

Yeah, but we actually played several of those! I've yet to stir myself to play more than a single WitE scenario and I shake and swallow my tongue every time I launch WitP.

I still think we need to play an entire Tiller WWI campaign...

[Bletchley_Geek]

WitW addresses a number of "limitations" in the original WitE.

Which was and is a very fine game, especially for the shorter scenarios. These limitations became more important in campaign games (in my opinion). I don't think there's a better Eastern game at the divisional level at the scenario level (scenarios can be indeed almost as big as the Grand Campaign). I never quite understood why people obviated the excellent scenarios: some of the ones featured in the expansions by Trey Marshall (the poster Great Ajax in this thread, I presume) are excellent and I duly recommend them to everyone.

Where WitE design kind of broke down a bit was in the Grand Campaign - which probably is the modality that most people played. Over the years it has become apparent that there were a number of major bugs plaguing the engine, and that, for whatever the reason, some systems and mechanics were devised as "workarounds" on those bugs. That's my reading of the extensive and very detailed patch notes that Morvael has been putting out since he took charge of WitE development. This latest "community patch" - see the humongous patch notes below

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3717730

That features a number of items that is obvious have been hanging out in the engine since December 2010. It is interesting to see that it has taken the participation of core group of expert players (like Pelton and MichaelT, renowned for knowing how to use the quite broken logistics mechanics to great effect), former beta testers (Flaviusx), along with someone working on his spare time on the code, to set the monumental game that WitE was into perhaps the best Eastern Front game ever (until the advent of WitE 2.0 built on top of the WitW engine, an upgrade and extension of WitE engine).

Regarding stacking - actually it makes a lot of sense. I think that people miss the following fundamental point: there's a difference between the amount of people and vehicles you can cram in a given area, and the area a unit occupies when conducting normal operations. The stacking limit makes all the sense in the world when units are divisions. But it is very hard to justify convincingly, with units smaller than that, more so when an ancient engine like TOAW solved "high density troop concentrations" in a very elegant and functional way. It is funny though, that in early versions of WITE the AI waved through the stacking limitation quite often to the dismay and chagrin of people playing against the computer...

I am not sure if will get into WitW right away, but here's my list of stuff that quite never worked in WitE and WitW seems to be setting straight:

• Road network abstraction - In WitE roads were abstracted away, and in such away that the Soviet road network was rated in equal terms as the Polish or the German. In WitW there's at least country-based modifiers that address the difference between a road network relying on all-weather roads and one that doesn't.


• "HQ Buildup mechanics" - This was totally broken in WitE up to the soon to be released 1.08 patch. It was meant to model the capacity - at the operational level - of prioritizing resupply and refitting of forces earmarked for major offensives. Unfortunately, it rather was a massive hole in the supply system that allowed to keep units deep in enemy territory supplied at a level that defied reason. It seems that the implementation of the mechanic basically teleported supply over hundreds or thousands of kilometers, walking over the modeled limitations in lift capacity - both rail and "truck" based. In WitW this is going to be modeled by a player controlled system based on setting up depots, so units nearby these depots have higher chances of getting fully resupplied, introducing the necessity to actually "plan" your offensives carefully.


• Killer TOE upgrades and refitting mechanics - WitE features a very detailed TOE system that does give a lot character to units. Unfortunately, there lots of bugs in the upgrade mechanics - which is understandable, given the massive number of 'elements' contemplated - and weapons sometime "upgraded" downwards. Also important is that the logistical and combat echelon of units were modeled explicitly, and both had equal priority when receiving replacements. For nations which are hard pressed to cover 'gaps' - as Germany from 1943 onwards - the lack of control - or intelligence by the AI controlling this - contributed to a great degree to the Wehrmacht disintegrating at a faster way than historical.


• Irrelevance of the Air game - to be honest, the air war system in WitE was totally broken (Soviets organizing large scale air offensives involving hundreds of planes). This made attacking with Axis panzer forces all but suicidal from 1943 onwards. This improved significantly with constant patching, but I always found a mystery why sometimes aircraft flew on support of ground ops and when it didn't. Interdiction never felt right and had no effect on the supply system.


• Excessive abstraction of the "other" front - the shifting requirements of the OKW were modeled as a system of inflexible reinforcements and withdrawals. For instance, it could well happen that key panzer formations "disappeared" from the order of battle without player intervention in the middle of a major operation. This is kind of historical, but since the schedule of operations isn't - the players' dictate that - these fixed schedules could well spoil a very successful offensive. I doubt that if the Kursk offensive would actually managed to break into the Soviet operational depths, Hitler would have been so retarded as to withdraw those units in the middle of a success with major strategic implications. Now the player has the chance to control the trade-off between the necessities of both active fronts.


• Meaningless Campaign Victory Conditions -  For reasons I can't really understand (according to 2by3, limitations in the AI) the scenarios featured victory conditions more flexible than those of the campaign. For instance, taking into account casualties rather than just physically occupying certain locations on the map. The campaign VC's were such that an Axis player more successful than his historical counterparts would be damned to an ignominous defeat if the Soviet player could turn the tables as the playing field got rigged by the - hardcoded - increasingly favourable strategic elements. Much worse, it didn't reward the Soviet player trying to actually defend his territory - the standard way of playing the 1941 GC campaign for the Soviets was to minimize losses due to encirclement, abandoning huge tracts of the Soviet Union for the Axis to conquer, until the Axis was stopped by the logistic limitations (the build up mechanic above couldn't eventually be used, but that requiring the motorized spearheads to be already operating hundreds of kilometers away from the railheads). This resulted in games being right at the "macro" level - that is, frontlines resembling somewhat historical lines by September 1941, but a complete dog and pony show at the micro level (the Red Army abandoning Kiev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov or Smolensk without virtually trying to defend those key cities). In WITW there's a very satisfying number of "soft" victory conditions that should mould player's behavior into more "plausible" behavior.


• A more detailed (and logical) weather system - The weather in WitE was very binary, huge swathes of land were rendered "inoperable" - or "lethal" in the case of the Blizzard during the First Winter -  for extended periods of time with no variability.


• "The Winner Takes it All" and the "Middle Earth" vibe in Ground Combat - Ground combat in WitE was resolved in two stages. In the first one, elements composing attacking and defending units fire at each other. After all the "firing" is resolved, then combat strength factors are derived for attacker and defender. If the attacker/defender "final" odds ratio goes above 2:1, the defender retreats, incurring possibly in much more losses than during the "firing phase". This sounds quite good, but 1) practical limitations of frontage and density were taken half-heartedly taken into account, so if you attack with say, 9 divisions a given hex it is basically the case that the elements of the 9 divisions fire "simultaneously" at the defender's and 2) if the attack fails, the attacker incurs in similar casualty rates as it retreats. It beggars belief that 9 divisions (or 27 divisions, with the Soviets ability to stack up to 9 division equivalents per hex) can effectively apply their firepower over such a limited area. And in the latter, it also was very questionable that an infantry division was as effective as a panzer division in pursuit, or that a panzer division retreating from a failed attack incurred in massive losses due to a pursuing Soviet Rifle division. Most aggravating was that this "Retreat Casualties" depended - alone - on the level of Experience of the units, in such a way that a difference in 5 points experience could result in a 50% variability in casualty rates, and that above certain Experience levels, retreat casualties were close to nil. I am not sure to what degree Gary has addressed the aberrations on this aspect of the engine.

I played WitE pretty much 8 or 10 hours a week all over 2011... maybe I played it too much, but I know the thing as the lines in the palms of my hands. I have great hopes for WitW, as it seems that most of the feedback generated by the community has been considered and actioned upon. My only concern is about how the Italian front is going to play out.

[BigBlueFleet]

WitW addresses a number of "limitations" in the original WitE.

Which was and is a very fine game, especially for the shorter scenarios. These limitations became more important in campaign games (in my opinion). I don't think there's a better Eastern game at the divisional level at the scenario level (scenarios can be indeed almost as big as the Grand Campaign). I never quite understood why people obviated the excellent scenarios: some of the ones featured in the expansions by Trey Marshall (the poster Great Ajax in this thread, I presume) are excellent and I duly recommend them to everyone.

Where WitE design kind of broke down a bit was in the Grand Campaign - which probably is the modality that most people played. Over the years it has become apparent that there were a number of major bugs plaguing the engine, and that, for whatever the reason, some systems and mechanics were devised as "workarounds" on those bugs. That's my reading of the extensive and very detailed patch notes that Morvael has been putting out since he took charge of WitE development. This latest "community patch" - see the humongous patch notes below

http://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=3717730

That features a number of items that is obvious have been hanging out in the engine since December 2010. It is interesting to see that it has taken the participation of core group of expert players (like Pelton and MichaelT, renowned for knowing how to use the quite broken logistics mechanics to great effect), former beta testers (Flaviusx), along with someone working on his spare time on the code, to set the monumental game that WitE was into perhaps the best Eastern Front game ever (until the advent of WitE 2.0 built on top of the WitW engine, an upgrade and extension of WitE engine).

Regarding stacking - actually it makes a lot of sense. I think that people miss the following fundamental point: there's a difference between the amount of people and vehicles you can cram in a given area, and the area a unit occupies when conducting normal operations. The stacking limit makes all the sense in the world when units are divisions. But it is very hard to justify convincingly, with units smaller than that, more so when an ancient engine like TOAW solved "high density troop concentrations" in a very elegant and functional way. It is funny though, that in early versions of WITE the AI waved through the stacking limitation quite often to the dismay and chagrin of people playing against the computer...

I am not sure if will get into WitW right away, but here's my list of stuff that quite never worked in WitE and WitW seems to be setting straight:

• Road network abstraction - In WitE roads were abstracted away, and in such away that the Soviet road network was rated in equal terms as the Polish or the German. In WitW there's at least country-based modifiers that address the difference between a road network relying on all-weather roads and one that doesn't.


• "HQ Buildup mechanics" - This was totally broken in WitE up to the soon to be released 1.08 patch. It was meant to model the capacity - at the operational level - of prioritizing resupply and refitting of forces earmarked for major offensives. Unfortunately, it rather was a massive hole in the supply system that allowed to keep units deep in enemy territory supplied at a level that defied reason. It seems that the implementation of the mechanic basically teleported supply over hundreds or thousands of kilometers, walking over the modeled limitations in lift capacity - both rail and "truck" based. In WitW this is going to be modeled by a player controlled system based on setting up depots, so units nearby these depots have higher chances of getting fully resupplied, introducing the necessity to actually "plan" your offensives carefully.


• Killer TOE upgrades and refitting mechanics - WitE features a very detailed TOE system that does give a lot character to units. Unfortunately, there lots of bugs in the upgrade mechanics - which is understandable, given the massive number of 'elements' contemplated - and weapons sometime "upgraded" downwards. Also important is that the logistical and combat echelon of units were modeled explicitly, and both had equal priority when receiving replacements. For nations which are hard pressed to cover 'gaps' - as Germany from 1943 onwards - the lack of control - or intelligence by the AI controlling this - contributed to a great degree to the Wehrmacht disintegrating at a faster way than historical.


• Irrelevance of the Air game - to be honest, the air war system in WitE was totally broken (Soviets organizing large scale air offensives involving hundreds of planes). This made attacking with Axis panzer forces all but suicidal from 1943 onwards. This improved significantly with constant patching, but I always found a mystery why sometimes aircraft flew on support of ground ops and when it didn't. Interdiction never felt right and had no effect on the supply system.


• Excessive abstraction of the "other" front - the shifting requirements of the OKW were modeled as a system of inflexible reinforcements and withdrawals. For instance, it could well happen that key panzer formations "disappeared" from the order of battle without player intervention in the middle of a major operation. This is kind of historical, but since the schedule of operations isn't - the players' dictate that - these fixed schedules could well spoil a very successful offensive. I doubt that if the Kursk offensive would actually managed to break into the Soviet operational depths, Hitler would have been so retarded as to withdraw those units in the middle of a success with major strategic implications. Now the player has the chance to control the trade-off between the necessities of both active fronts.


• Meaningless Campaign Victory Conditions -  For reasons I can't really understand (according to 2by3, limitations in the AI) the scenarios featured victory conditions more flexible than those of the campaign. For instance, taking into account casualties rather than just physically occupying certain locations on the map. The campaign VC's were such that an Axis player more successful than his historical counterparts would be damned to an ignominous defeat if the Soviet player could turn the tables as the playing field got rigged by the - hardcoded - increasingly favourable strategic elements. Much worse, it didn't reward the Soviet player trying to actually defend his territory - the standard way of playing the 1941 GC campaign for the Soviets was to minimize losses due to encirclement, abandoning huge tracts of the Soviet Union for the Axis to conquer, until the Axis was stopped by the logistic limitations (the build up mechanic above couldn't eventually be used, but that requiring the motorized spearheads to be already operating hundreds of kilometers away from the railheads). This resulted in games being right at the "macro" level - that is, frontlines resembling somewhat historical lines by September 1941, but a complete dog and pony show at the micro level (the Red Army abandoning Kiev, Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov or Smolensk without virtually trying to defend those key cities). In WITW there's a very satisfying number of "soft" victory conditions that should mould player's behavior into more "plausible" behavior.


• A more detailed (and logical) weather system - The weather in WitE was very binary, huge swathes of land were rendered "inoperable" - or "lethal" in the case of the Blizzard during the First Winter -  for extended periods of time with no variability.


• "The Winner Takes it All" and the "Middle Earth" vibe in Ground Combat - Ground combat in WitE was resolved in two stages. In the first one, elements composing attacking and defending units fire at each other. After all the "firing" is resolved, then combat strength factors are derived for attacker and defender. If the attacker/defender "final" odds ratio goes above 2:1, the defender retreats, incurring possibly in much more losses than during the "firing phase". This sounds quite good, but 1) practical limitations of frontage and density were taken half-heartedly taken into account, so if you attack with say, 9 divisions a given hex it is basically the case that the elements of the 9 divisions fire "simultaneously" at the defender's and 2) if the attack fails, the attacker incurs in similar casualty rates as it retreats. It beggars belief that 9 divisions (or 27 divisions, with the Soviets ability to stack up to 9 division equivalents per hex) can effectively apply their firepower over such a limited area. And in the latter, it also was very questionable that an infantry division was as effective as a panzer division in pursuit, or that a panzer division retreating from a failed attack incurred in massive losses due to a pursuing Soviet Rifle division. Most aggravating was that this "Retreat Casualties" depended - alone - on the level of Experience of the units, in such a way that a difference in 5 points experience could result in a 50% variability in casualty rates, and that above certain Experience levels, retreat casualties were close to nil. I am not sure to what degree Gary has addressed the aberrations on this aspect of the engine.

I played WitE pretty much 8 or 10 hours a week all over 2011... maybe I played it too much, but I know the thing as the lines in the palms of my hands. I have great hopes for WitW, as it seems that most of the feedback generated by the community has been considered and actioned upon. My only concern is about how the Italian front is going to play out.

Fantastic post BG! 

[JudgeDredd]

Clearly they are limiting for another reason if my argument re number of troops in a hex doesn't hold water - which it doesn't if the limit is there for Regiments as well as Divisions (and Corps can have the same number as Divisions)

So yeah - the limit seems to be something else...and I thought I was being clever  :(

[RyanE]

As with WITP, I play WITE where its strongest...scenarios, not campaigns.

In scenarios, I find the complexity in WITP/WITE a plus.  In the campaigns, the complexity just seems to make the system collapse under its own weight.  There are just too many variables.  They fix one thing and another thing goes to pot.  Scenarios seem to reduce that issue somewhat.

Unfortunately, the game seems to be driven by rivet counters looking for the holy grail of replaying entire the war in Russia at the squad level.

[sandman2575]

I find it disappointing (although not too surprising) that WITW has done nothing, apparently, to improve on WITE's horrifically bad UI.  I understand a game of this complexity has a ton of information to keep track of and present, but WITE did next to nothing to make key information easily accessible or appealing to the eye.  WitP:AE's UI, while no great shakes, was still miles beyond what WITE gave you -- and now WITW following suit.

[JudgeDredd]

I agree about WitE and you could probably put WitP:AE in there too...walls of text to relay information which basically just gets lost as noise.

I have to be honest - given how little I played WitE and given the price tag, it's unlikely Matrix will get my money for this one...unlikely...never say never  :P

[sandman2575]

It's stuff like this that makes WITE unplayable to me -- I know 'visuals' are not meant to be a premium feature of these types of games, but FFS... couldn't they do something to make this a little more engaging? 

[MengJiao]

As with WITP, I play WITE where its strongest...scenarios, not campaigns.

In scenarios, I find the complexity in WITP/WITE a plus.  In the campaigns, the complexity just seems to make the system collapse under its own weight.  There are just too many variables.  They fix one thing and another thing goes to pot.  Scenarios seem to reduce that issue somewhat.

Unfortunately, the game seems to be driven by rivet counters looking for the holy grail of replaying entire the war in Russia at the squad level.

  I'd start counting rivets at the Army level for the Russians and the Corps level for the Germans.  Given my riveting needs, I just can't face the whole campaign in Russia these days.  There are nice operational games out there (the Roads series of GMT boardgames for example) and they tend to paint a very different war from what you usually get in East Front games.  For the Western Front, the rivet-counting has always been a good possibility and there are plenty of boardgames and the Operational games like Battles from the Bulge that do very well.
   Anyway, back to my rivets.

[Bletchley_Geek]

I find it disappointing (although not too surprising) that WITW has done nothing, apparently, to improve on WITE's horrifically bad UI.  I understand a game of this complexity has a ton of information to keep track of and present, but WITE did next to nothing to make key information easily accessible or appealing to the eye.  WitP:AE's UI, while no great shakes, was still miles beyond what WITE gave you -- and now WITW following suit.

This is a very valid concern about the series. When I was playing head-to-head (and keeping AAR's etc.) it was really, really hard to make sense and navigate the vast amount of data describing turn resolution. I eventually resorted to make my own spreadsheets and extract that data manually so I could then analyze it, transforming it into information. This allowed me to answer myself questions like "Am I setting refitting priorities right so the units I need to receive enough replacements and materiel", "Are my troops receiving enough supply", "Are my tactics working", etc.

GG's games basically provide you with a "data dump", no more no less. It's not something I like much, and requires one to be a bit of a masochist. Of that, I am guilty as charged  ;D

I eventually gave up on the GC - I play it hotseat and I have great fun.

Unfortunately, the game seems to be driven by rivet counters looking for the holy grail of replaying entire the war in Russia at the squad level.

More than rivet counters, the thing is the allure of the Grand Campaign, either playing with the Soviet Union and the Axis. There's a huge proportion of players who sought to be "smarter" than either side historically was - it's very much the same kind of reason that drives people playing with Japan in WITP even if the odds are outrageously uneven - the hope of changing history in some major or minor way.

A great deal of the discussions - with varying degrees of civility - on the WITE forums didn't really revolve on whether the game got right or not German tanks' optics (that's a Combat Mission classic), but rather, whether the game mechanics enabled the Axis to achieve victory (until campaigns with "Sudden Death" victory conditions appeared, the short answer was "no, no way"), or for the Soviet player to ameliorate the almost unspeakable material and human disaster than the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union was (other than by having the Red Army running for the Urals, and also the short answer was "no").

Another thing to appreciate in WitW is that 2by3 have procured that the campaigns there go less "on rails", but still providing meaningful and plausible constraints, making "Wolfenstein: The New Order" kind of scenarios very unlikely.

[Bison]

I'm going to buy this game and WitE someday and then find the time to learn how to play them.

[Bletchley_Geek]

Clearly they are limiting for another reason if my argument re number of troops in a hex doesn't hold water - which it doesn't if the limit is there for Regiments as well as Divisions (and Corps can have the same number as Divisions)

So yeah - the limit seems to be something else...and I thought I was being clever  :(

You had a point JD: the stacking limitation wasn't very well explained, and under closer scrutiny, was somewhat inconsistent. I do remember very well the discussions regarding that, which raged for a few months, especially when it became apparent that the AI could do stuff the player's couldn't. That was one of the several tricks the AI had in its top hat, that became apparent over months, as people got to see more and more of the game.

Let's say that GG's games attract a level of attention - and yes, sometimes definitely anal attitudes by players - that very few war games out there receive. The community had a massive influence in the way the game engine evolved over the years until 2by3 switched full time to develop WitW, and also, indirectly, had a lot to do with some of the major features in WitW. You rarely see such a vibrant and generally speaking, civilized and constructive, community around a war game. WITP is another example of an outstanding community.

I do remember that I gave up on DC: Case Blue when I discovered that elite German formations - like GrossDeutschland - were rated as having the same training/experience as your average Soviet Rifle Division. I modded them, did some tests and approached the community there telling them 'hey guys, I found this digging into the game data, what do you reckon', and I was aghast to discover that nobody actually cared. That's not "rivet counting" is more like having tanks with square wheels, or planes modeled as bricks with wings.

[ArizonaTank]

Clearly they are limiting for another reason if my argument re number of troops in a hex doesn't hold water - which it doesn't if the limit is there for Regiments as well as Divisions (and Corps can have the same number as Divisions)

So yeah - the limit seems to be something else...and I thought I was being clever  :(

You had a point JD: the stacking limitation wasn't very well explained, and under closer scrutiny, was somewhat inconsistent. I do remember very well the discussions regarding that, which raged for a few months, especially when it became apparent that the AI could do stuff the player's couldn't. That was one of the several tricks the AI had in its top hat, that became apparent over months, as people got to see more and more of the game.

I could never get a good explanation of stacking either.  In the end, I figured it was some sort of playability issue....a UI issue...a system capacity issue..or maybe it is just something as simple as they could never get the AI to stack correctly, so they put an artificial limit on it.  Maybe a combination of all those things as well as others. 

But I hope they will implement something like TOAW's stacking limitations in the new game.

[sandman2575]

GG's games basically provide you with a "data dump", no more no less. It's not something I like much, and requires one to be a bit of a masochist. Of that, I am guilty as charged  ;D

To me, this is a fundamental failure in game design. It made WITP very difficult for me to play much beyond the initial months of the pacific war (in the GC) -- I found it simply impossible without the help of '3rd party' applications like WITP-Tracker, or good ol' pencil and paper. 

I've really come to believe that no game should force you to resort to pen and paper -- it's a red-flag that the UI is missing some very basic and necessary functionality. I find the GG "War in the X" games particularly bad when it comes to not building these basic elements into the UI.  It diminishes the enjoyment factor a lot. They become a chore to play.