Just a quick note that I have finally begun designing and posting up (relatively) simple tutorial entries for the Matrix/Ageod game World War One Gold, down in our AAR section (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg159777#msg159777).
My theory on tutorial design, and on trying to learn the game myself, is to start with the fundamental units of the game (the chits) and slowly work outward to develop an understanding of how the portions of the game fit and work together. The official WW1G tutorials which come with the game sort-of attempt something similar, but front-load it with a ton of information scattershot all over the place because they thought they ought to provide some idea of what the map buttons and details meant first. I've tried to learn the game several times over the years and have just been overwhelmed and distracted by everything-else-going-on in the instructions and the official tutorials.
So, if anyone actually has (positive and competent ;) ) experience playing the game, please feel free to add comments and corrections to the tutorial as I go along! Our member Kushan (who also wants to re-learn how to play the game) has volunteered to help this way already, but I have no problem with anyone else pitching in: just understand I'm trying to focus down as much as possible and then slowly widen out as we come to topics.
I don't own the game so I won't be using your tutorial but I commend you for doing this. I own other Ageod titles (i.e. American Civil War) that I just have never been able to grasp and play intelligently.
I have the same feeling as above poster. I've looked at and tried ageod games but never really got the system. I'll be tuning in to your aar maybe something will click. Thanks for doing it.
^Me too. Thanks Jason, I will check out your stuff.
Thanks, Jason I will be looking forward to this as well!
My impression, incidentally, is that WW1G plays quite differently from other AGEOD games, and doesn't even use the AGE engine per se.
However, some kind of effort was made to translate the rules of the board game on which this was based to an engine designed to be kind of like the AGE engine.
Which is one reason why this game has had so many patches (including a near ground-up rebuild for the Gold edition): it wasn't really an AGE engine game.
Anyway, there are similarities (or so I understand) but I don't know that I can recommend this as a tutorial for playing most AGEOD titles. So I don't want to accidentally mislead people.
If this format works out well, though, I am definitely interested in setting up a tutorial along the same lines for, say, Birth of America 2, which really is an AGE engine game (and which I own and would like to learn to play). In other words, start small with the basic playable unit information and slowly expand out to learn how to use the units.
(Although if someone beats me to that, I won't complain! :D )
Be sure to leave feedback in the tutorial thread, to let me know if I'm going too fast or if I'm not being clear enough as I go, or if there are other problems. (Or, alternately, if my approach is working and you feel like you're getting a grasp on things as I go.)
How would you compare WWI Gold to Commander: The Great War? It's the only game I am currently playing that may be comparable.
Quote from: Gusington on July 05, 2013, 04:14:41 PM
How would you compare WWI Gold to Commander: The Great War? It's the only game I am currently playing that may be comparable.
I hadn't really dived into it yet Gus, but I think it is way more complicated than Comander.. I hear a lot of high praise for this game for the people who 'do' get into it! I have also heard it is not really like the other AGEOD games, probably why I haven't attempted it yet.. But any help out there that cuts down the amount of time breaking that learning curve is welcome!.. As every one always says, we have soooo many games and so little time!!!.. That's why some times the tough ones are hard to devote the time to. But in the end quite a few of those are really rewarding once you start to 'understand' them.
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 05, 2013, 11:54:53 AM
Just a quick note that I have finally begun designing and posting up (relatively) simple tutorial entries for the Matrix/Ageod game World War One Gold, down in our AAR section (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg159777#msg159777).
Very nice & many thanks. WW1 Gold is a bloody brilliant game. It's also still the most complex game I've ever encountered, so kudos and gracias for taking the time to put a tutorial together.
Quote from: Gusington on July 05, 2013, 04:14:41 PM
How would you compare WWI Gold to Commander: The Great War? It's the only game I am currently playing that may be comparable.
WWI Gold is a good deal more difficult to learn but it's also portrayed on a larger scale.
The real issue with WWIG is the learning curve, which probably scares most away. Also.. while it has big tooltips for most everything in the interface, much of the pop-ups are dedicated to flavor text instead of actual game-related mechanics so that was something that would've eased the learning curve if it had been done properly.
Fortunately the "Big" Manual is pretty detailed and.. well.. big. So if you're not averse to reading them, it's a passable primer compared to in-game info.
I think it's wonderful that Jason is going to the trouble of making tutorials for this monster of a game. It's great once you finger it out, and vid tutorials are something that it greatly needs! I'll happily watch these, too! 8)
Quote from: Gusington on July 05, 2013, 04:14:41 PM
How would you compare WWI Gold to Commander: The Great War? It's the only game I am currently playing that may be comparable.
Listen to Nefaro, btw. Nefaro is wise...
I haven't played Com:Great yet, so I can't directly compare it, but based on AARs and other information I'd say Com:Great is much easier to learn and to play but lacks some of the detail and color of WW1G.
Putting it another way, Com:Great and Strategic Command's WW1 are computer games from inception, designed that way and intended to be played that way. WW1G is (in effect) an adaptation of a monstrous boardgame, using an engine that sort of resembles the AGE engine but is also significantly different. This makes things unwieldy (kind of like the attempt to convert Empires At Arms to computer, also a Matrix project though not AGEOD), but I get a much stronger boardgame vibe thereby. The basic unit is the chit, for example, and you aren't really expected to keep track of manpower for the corps: the chits are either damaged or undamaged, and get flipped over accordingly.
How the game handles stacks of chits is the topic of Part 3, which I'm about to post, and Part 4 next time. It adds more complexity than, for example, how Guns of August, an older Matrix WW1 game, handles its chits, but that older game is also very boardgamey -- and might be a conversion, I forget -- so the two compare more directly than either does to the newer StratCom and Com:Great games.
Putting it another way, Com:Great (and to some extent StratComWW1) is a large scale Panzer General game at the strategic level. WW1Gold is very much not. It isn't like... oh, War in the East, or War in the Pacific (Admirals Edition or original either one) -- I mean it doesn't play like them at all -- but it has the same feel of information overload as those games do (despite being somewhat simpler than them).
I don't know I would get the feeling from StratCom or Com:Great that I was managing a side in World War 1, but I feel like I'd get that feeling from WW1G. It's hard to explain. ??? You have the option of rotating the map and playing it thus the way actual generals and national leaders looked at the map in WW1, with Russia to the top and France at the bottom and the Med to the right. That was widely complained about (because the game FORCED YOU TO PLAY THAT WAY originally), but it's also brilliant in a crazy sort of you-have-never-played-a-game-like-this way.
Okay, check out this screenshot from the opening of the (quite limited) Tannenburg scenario, with Russia about to launch a preliminary invasion of German's northeast corner to distract it from helping Austria-Hungary or dealing with France.
(I've also posted a larger version below, courtesy of imageshack.)
I prefer using the NATO symbol 'standees' option, regarding army unit graphics. It makes the units stand out from the WWIG map background more, which is very helpful in the big scenarios.
The pictures look nice, but those little white-washed backgrounds behind them still doesn't help them pop.
Nefaro, true, but I'm going for the feel of the game right now. The way the game handles stacks is unusual; in effect you (usually unless the option Nef mentioned is activated) move statuettes around the map, and the statuettes represent piles of chits you have off map.
Here it is again from imageshack, assuming I've done this right.
(https://imageshack.com/a/img600/9499/tqh.png)
Thank God, finally got it...
That's just a small part of the map. There are five Russian stacks on the map, with little statuettes backlit in white a bit by the game to make them easier to see -- if one is chosen then it's redlit.
I'm not even going to begin explaining what the map shows. But that's what I mean by information saturation. Every tooltip explains something about the game board, and while it might be something like what infantry or cavalry is (duh), usually it's something like that important little county (or whatever it is) of Wilna. (The lighter areas of the map show what isn't fog of war, although the darker areas in some cases are portions outside the scenario, like pretty much all the east of what's shown.)
Have I mentioned that under some circumstances portions of the map slowly glow and recede back and forth? ;)
This is why I am ABSOLUTELY NOT STARTING WITH THE MAP or any of its related controls, in my tutorials.
Because, damn.
Attached below are pngs showing a closeup of the farthest northern stack in three different available forms: as a statuette (the default form, and what's shown on the map above); as a flag; and as a chit sort-of. I say "sort-of" because it doesn't look like the other chits in the game -- the flag is closer.
Nefaro, yes if I could figure out how to send signals from my TV to record on my computer, I'd set up a YT tutorial series, too. I have a Hauppage unit, but... oy, trying to get it to work is like playing this game, and while there are somewhat simpler units that have been developed since the one I bought, I feel like I paid good money for this dang thing and I don't want to rebuy to accomplish what I ought to be able to do with it.
Which is kind of irrational I know.
Interesting stuff above Jason. It's kinda making my brain hurt, though.
For exactly that reason, I have found my tutorial approach helps a lot: ignore the map. Start as small as possible and slowly work up and out.
I'm actually worried people will be put off (again) from looking at that map shot. It's really a gorgeous hand-drawn map, just beautiful -- no one else has maps like AGEOD.
But it's so... much of a muchness. I feel like the strength of the colors is all by itself one real cause why the map.... daunts. The topography shapes are another cause: realistic but the detail confuses the eye. In a weird sort of way it doesn't help that the map is not very far from being a standard hex map, but with hexes in odd wavy shapes: my brain is trying to process two different information styles at once. One part of my brain keeps saying there are six territories around that Russian army in the north, and around Wilna, and another part of my brain is saying there is no freaking way that could be true. One of the sides of my brain is wrong in trying to process that map.
And then that wouldn't be so bad -- it isn't all that different from other AGEOD maps in that sense -- except everything seems to mean so much. The human brain has to hyperthread multitask a lot looking at that map.
Thus my solution: don't look at the map for as long as possible while learning the game. :D
It is a hex map. Every province borders six others. ;)
I like how they adjusted the border lines to make it look more like provinces instead of perfectly uniform hexes. :D
Excellent, Jason! Thanks for doing this.
I have this game and like it a lot. I haven't played it for a while, but no doubt I will fire it up again some time soon.
Quote from: Gusington on July 05, 2013, 09:36:16 PM
Interesting stuff above Jason. It's kinda making my brain hurt, though.
i'm with him^ read the first parts and my brain hurts..in fact i read it twice,as much as i would like to play these type of games maybe it's just beyond me. Tried really hard to GET BOA 2 but alas....no joy...this one looks more complicated than BOA 2 . I'll keep reading and hoping something clicks. Thx again for doing these.
Quote from: Nefaro on July 05, 2013, 10:20:26 PM
It is a hex map. Every province borders six others. ;)
I like how they adjusted the border lines to make it look more like provinces instead of perfectly uniform hexes. :D
In theory I really really like it.
In practice my brain goes AAAUUGGHH THE 3D EFFECT IS GHOSTING!!!
Budd,
Don't feel bad, it is definitely more complex than BOA2. (Pride of Nations comes closest I expect.)
The first two parts come down to:
1.) The corps chits are what you'll be playing with mostly; the numbers show how strong they are on offense and defense and how fast they move, plus whether they're damaged and have some bonuses to fight with.
2.) The "container" chits (usually headquarters) show how far the containers will project power on the map, and how hard it is to get people moving, and how much they can keep back for throwing out later.
3.) The "general" chits show how annoying and/or helpful the generals are. Do they help armies move faster? Do they go home from a fight early or stay late? If you want to get rid of them politically how hard is it?
(I might be able to reduce some of the descriptions... I'm worried I'm making them too detailed even now.)
Part 3 == here's how the chits fit together in a "stack" or "container" on screen. IGNORE MOST OF THESE BUTTONS FOR NOW! This button allows you to look at more of your stack; this button sends a corps to the reserve window (and back); this button flips your chit over to "damaged" so you can use the men elsewhere. This button sends orders to sack your general, good luck with that. :)
I've now trimmed the first two Parts down by about a page and a half each, removing most of the references to how the details affect other parts of the game (and some of the humor, which might be too distracting).
Fixed a few errors in Part 3, too, but if you have the old version don't worry nothing important changed or was simplified further. (Most of Part 3 recaps Parts 1 and 2 showing how the chits compare with each other in the stack.)
Part 4 now up.
I love AGEOD games so I am not averse to playing complex games. I bought this the day it came out, bought gold the day it came out and patched it whenever a patch came out. Each time I started it, played through the tutorial, stared at the screen for a minute and then turned it off. It's not the complexity itself but the "order" that you do things and the UI. Also, I'm not a fan of the giant faces on the chits in combat but that's just me.
It's a game I want to like and that I think I will like if I can just make myself play for a few hours.
Thanks for doing this Jason...might be just what I need to finally get going!
Yeah, I don't know any way to turn off the giant chit faces. They don't bother me, I quite like them, I think it gives them more personality than the standard military designators. But those are on there, too, which seems needlessly redundant -- why did the designers even bother?? Seems like that means there ought to be a way to turn the chits to a big x in a rectangle for infantry etc.
Maybe someone else will come up with the answer for that.
Part 5 now up, where I finger vast tracks of land! -- or not so vast, just a couple of tracts really.
Part 6 (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg160742#msg160742), exquisitely simple movements yet complicated and kind of daunting, oooooo, yet gosh kind of addicting once I've done them a few times, oh yeah, more, more!
Silly humor aside, I can testify that coming at the game this way (STOP IT I SAID SILLY HUMOR ASIDE!!) has at least helped me significantly: I actually played the Tannenburg scenario tonight (while working on this part) all the way through; my very first time playing any number of actual turns in an actual scenario, much less finishing a scenario!
(Granted, the scenario only lasts two months plus an initial pre-phase. And I lost because I didn't take the objective. And I honestly don't know how any human being could take the objective in only two-and-a-half turns, much less why a ton of reinforcements would show up which have no chance at all affecting the scenario in the single turn remaining... BUT I FINISHED AN ACTUAL SCENARIO! WITH SOMETHING LIKE COMPETENCY!!)
Great job Jason.
Took me a good month to really grasp AGEOD WW1 Gold. Its a real gem of a game, but it does take time and effort to learn it.
Trust me on this people, if you cant grasp AGEODs other games which use the Athena engine, such as Birth of America 2, and The Civil War, than WWI is not for you. Its much more complex, and the UI is not user friendly in the least. These games all take a good amount of effort to learn being that they are very accurate representations of the conflicts they simulate.
BB,
So is it the Athena engine or the AGE engine? I don't want to call it the wrong thing. (WW1G doesn't use either, I know.) ???
Also, if you see any errors in the tutorials, please correct me pronto!!
Great idea for a thread and thanks for starting it Jason.
WW1G is unlike other AGEOD games and to be honest with you I found it much easier to learn and get into than any other AGEOD game. I believe this is due to very few abstract representations of what's going on compared to other AGEOD games. That plus the fact that a player turn is broken into several phases makes playing the game easier to digest.
When playing WW1G do not attempt to play it like a computer game, rather play it like you would a cardboard board game on your table. You will learn much faster and that's the method I used to learn this wonderful game.
I really have to dig the CD out of my closet and re-install this now on my PC thanks to this thread and the other AGEOD discussion. I'll chime in with some tips and tricks as well once I reaquaint myself with the game. WW1G is a game I've not played in a long time. A long time.
(https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fcdn.memegenerator.net%2Finstances%2F400x%2F29342221.jpg&hash=e54465aafc2b79b5a69395755ab990e912283033)
Quote from: bboyer66 on July 09, 2013, 07:36:01 AM
Great job Jason.
...Its a real gem of a game, but it does take time and effort to learn it.
I agree with you 100%. But if you love something or the subject matter enough the learning curve can be damned. You will pick up this game I guarantee it. Play it like you would a board game and you'll be all right. 8)
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 09, 2013, 07:59:55 AM
BB,
So is it the Athena engine or the AGE engine? I don't want to call it the wrong thing. (WW1G doesn't use either, I know.) ???
Also, if you see any errors in the tutorials, please correct me pronto!!
Actually I think Athena is the AIs nickname, so you are correct in calling it the AGEOD engine.
Looking forward to Civil War II coming out this year.
Keep scrolling down the thread; there's a limit to how many attachments I can make to any comment, so I'm attaching as I go.
However, I could make links to the posts with the proper parts, now that I think of it... will fix. Now fixed: the first post has links to the parts.
W8, my longterm goal is to get up to speed enough (and to get others interested/up to speed enough) to have a 4-player Grog PBEM game.
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 09, 2013, 12:11:01 PM
W8, my longterm goal is to get up to speed enough (and to get others interested/up to speed enough) to have a 4-player Grog PBEM game.
Nice! Definitely count me in for a PBEM. That would be a dream come true for me and this game.
Quote from: W8taminute on July 09, 2013, 12:17:50 PM
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 09, 2013, 12:11:01 PM
W8, my longterm goal is to get up to speed enough (and to get others interested/up to speed enough) to have a 4-player Grog PBEM game.
Nice! Definitely count me in for a PBEM. That would be a dream come true for me and this game.
Kushan makes player #3; the Opponent Wanted forum has a thread for it (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=5425.0).
If multiple games get going at once, that could be nifty. :)
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 09, 2013, 12:11:01 PM
Keep scrolling down the thread; there's a limit to how many attachments I can make to any comment, so I'm attaching as I go.
However, I could make links to the posts with the proper parts, now that I think of it... will fix. Now fixed: the first post has links to the parts.
W8, my longterm goal is to get up to speed enough (and to get others interested/up to speed enough) to have a 4-player Grog PBEM game.
Thanks ao much!
Parts 7 and 8 now up at the bottom of the Tutorial/AAR thread (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg161985#msg161985). These will help set up the game with all its bells and whistles, and then get you into a particular scenario where you can check all the information from Parts 1-6 yourself within the game (including moving a couple of stacks yourself in simple ways).
Quote from: bboyer66 on July 09, 2013, 11:07:31 AM
Quote from: JasonPratt on July 09, 2013, 07:59:55 AM
BB,
So is it the Athena engine or the AGE engine? I don't want to call it the wrong thing. (WW1G doesn't use either, I know.) ???
Also, if you see any errors in the tutorials, please correct me pronto!!
Actually I think Athena is the AIs nickname, so you are correct in calling it the AGEOD engine.
Looking forward to Civil War II coming out this year.
Yes, I believe AGE stands for Athena Gaming Engine, and the OD is something like Online Distribution or some such nonsense. At any rate , the engine is "Athena" just like the EU3 engine is the "Clauswitz" engine. So saying "AGE engine" is a bit like saying "PIN number"
^^^ (https://www.grogheads.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wargamer.com%2Fforums%2Fsmiley%2Fbow.gif&hash=8a2d5d1ac5e4a22b632ffa7e10a8fbd9413a12c8) ^^^
Part 9 (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg162592#msg162592), on coordinated movements and some other basic strategic movement options. (Not rail yet, as those would require detachments, which are a whole other topic to themselves. Up next in Part 10! ;D )
Parts 10 (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg162781#msg162781) and 11, on the final basic strategic movements and detachments, plus PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER FOR SOME FIGHTING!
(Well, all together except detachments and reserves, I decided not to complexify things, especially since they would make practically no difference to the scenario per se.)
Doing a good job. I need to catch up on these. :)
DEAR GOD, LET THERE BE AN ENDING!
GRANTED!
Parts 12 and 13 (starting here (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=6547.msg163360#msg163360)), on the turn order, and the supply rules.
With this, any small or medium scenario should now be playable.
Or you may consider joining Guns Of Grogust Gold (http://grogheads.com/forums/index.php?topic=5425.msg129555#msg129555) (or setting up another mp game if that one fills, which it almost has), and learning the meaning of despair and horror and all those other things WW1 taught us.
(WW1, incidentally, was the final war in which pink was still considered the most masculine color, representing the honorable purity of white so stained by blood in battle that no amount of washing could remove its diffusion. Between the world wars, some American East Coast fashion designer literally created a trend for baby clothes out of thin air, to the effect that pink should be for girls and light blue for boys. And now we have today... but when Jesus Christ / the Messiah / YHWH wears pink, that's because He went out and slaughtered the world's largest army by Himself, hand to hand, according to various OT and NT prophecies. Thus the joke above. :D )
But pink is so..."girly"!
Awesome job Jason.. I bought this a few months ago, but haven't touched it yet, because I hear it's a bear. I can do the other AGEOD games, but this one is a different animal, so this will definitely help some of us take those baby steps to learning the game! ;D
Quote from: Tuna on July 17, 2013, 09:00:24 PM
Awesome job Jason.. I bought this a few months ago, but haven't touched it yet, because I hear it's a bear.
Like a Russian Bear! 8)
IN SOVIET RUSSIA, WORLD WAR ONE BEARS YOU!...that didn't entirely work, but I thought it worth the effort.
There is a mechanic in the game (one of many many many subtle/hidden mechanics) called "the Russian Bear", where the game chooses one battle on the eastern front (so long as it isn't by the main army) and negates any national morale damage from it; and never counts national morale damage from battles down along the Armenian region.
This leads me to wonder if a productive strategy would be to switch the Russian main army to a stack down there asap.
This also reminds me I ought to try putting together docs on the special rules for each of the major and (where applicable) minor nations.
Quote from: Tuna on July 17, 2013, 09:00:24 PMI can do the other AGEOD games, but this one is a different animal, so this will definitely help some of us take those baby steps to learning the game! ;D
True, this isn't even the AGEOD engine, it's a boardgame conversion (by the guy who made the boardgame) to something kind of like the AGEOD system.
There might be a WW1 scenario for Pride of Nations, though, as it runs until 1920 and does have a worldwide scope unlike other AGEOD games (even moreso than WW1G, the scope of which is much larger than a quick look at the map would imply).
On the other hand, Pr0n is notoriously vainglorious about having its own problems, largely thanks to that same scope.