Fall Weiss from Wasteland Interactive.... yay?

[JasonPratt]

Now released up for preorder, 5 days out from release; here's the GG link: http://www.gamersgate.com/DD-FAW/fall-weiss

This is from the company which produced "Time of Wrath" (European WW2) and "Storm over the Pacific" (duh). So take that for what you will.

The basic concept seems good: upgraded supply-heavy Panzer Generalish fight for Poland (and some surrounding territories, almost 20 thousand hexes worth) at regimental level and above, with Poland defending against both the Nazis and the treacherous Russians, all three being playable factions with some neutral countries involved as well.

From the official description, slightly abbreviated and grammar fixed:

On September 1st 1939, German forces attacked Poland along the whole border. Thousands of tanks and planes, and more than a million soldiers, marched into Poland. The Polish army fought bravely and with tenacity, but on September 17th the Soviets stabbed Poland in the back, the allies withdrew, and the country was left alone against the two most powerful armies in the world.

When there are no guns, no tanks, no hope, honor is the only thing that's left.


Fall Weiss is a turn based strategy game which takes place during the Invasion of Poland during World War 2. Players can take control over Germany (and its Slovakian ally), Poland or the Soviet Union. Other countries in the region which might join in the conflict are Hungary, Romania and Lithuania.

Poland will try to defend itself for as long as possible, or until the French start their offensive in the West. Germany's goal is to defeat Poland faster than one month and the Soviet Union will try to increase their historical gains.

Fall Weiss is played with daily turns. Units are divided to regimental and brigade sizes, and each of them is assigned Action Points (AP), which can be spent to move, attack, reinforce or redeploy. Depending on the country there are various types of armored land units, non-armored land units, airborne unit, fighters, tactical and strategic bombers. There are also naval vessels divided into subtypes, and transport vessels.

Units on the map are represented by figurines with information about the Strength, Action Points and nationality displayed, but NATO designation chits are also available.

Strength of the units depends on the many factors, such as basic strength, experience, war doctrine, commanders, HQs, adjacent units, terrain, weather, fortifications, and entrenchments, but what is most important the supply. An unsupplied unit even with best support from all other factors and modifiers is doomed. Basic supply lines are provided by the cities and railroads network, but can be affected by the tactical bombers and fleets. Supplies delivered that way can only provide about 75% of the supplies needed by the units to be fully operational, both in battles and movement.

The only way to deliver full level supply to the units is to deploy Supply Depots near them. Those are specialized types of units able to deliver 100% supplies even for units being couple of hexes from them. As the number of Supply Depots is limited for each country, and the whole map is almost 20000 hexes, the player must plan ahead where to deploy them, to provide support as efficient as possible.

In Fall Weiss many aspects of the gameplay can be set up to fulfill preferences of the player: hiding values of enemy units, adjustable Fog of War radius, customizable battle reports, adjusting how fast the specific actions of the player and AI should be displayed, and setting the difficulty for each country separately. Also it is very easy to exchange the map and units graphics to make the game completely fit requirements of the player.

Features List:

• Realistic presentation of the campaign's events,

• Supply Depots which are crucial to execute successful offensives,

• HQ units and Chain of Command boosting the efficiency of units,

• Historical types of units, like Ulhans, Panzers, Stukas, etc.,

• Major rivers which can really slow down the offensive,

• Over 700 of historical units, with a unique photos,

• 20000 hexes map of Poland and surroundings.

[tgb]

Meh.  Yet another WWII game doesn't excite me.

[sandman2575]

Anyone interested in Fall Weiss really should check out Decisive Campaigns Warsaw to Paris.  Just a terrific game all around.  Spelk has an excellent AAR on his Sugarfreegamer blog.

Personally I really disliked Time of Wrath, so I'll take a pass on this one.  but wasn't Wasteland working on a big WW2 grand strategy title for a while?  Vaporware by now?

[agathosdaimon]

Do you mean "Strategic War in Europe" which they did?
Fall Weiss looks nice enough but did Poland have any actual chance of staving off German and Russian forces? Being that Wastelands is a polish company Its not too surprising i guess that they would do a game specifically on the invasion of Poland.

[Anguille]

Personally I really disliked Time of Wrath, so I'll take a pass on this one.  but wasn't Wasteland working on a big WW2 grand strategy title for a while?  Vaporware by now?

What WW2 grand strategy game do you mean?

They have released Time of Fury a while back and they are also working on Strategic War in Europe 2 but they announced it only a while ago.

Fall Weiss is on my computer since this weekend and i've only played a little so far. I am part of a "preview" team. I like the concept and the maps are really big. If you don't like micromanagement, it's not a game for you. There are soo many units, you need a lot of time for just turn and there's about 122 turns in a game. What i like about Wasteland is that they offer something for macromanager (Strategic War in Europe) and something for micromanager (this new Campaign series, Fall Weiss being the first one). All these games are based on the same engines but with improvements on various levels. From a technical point of view, i don't see many bugs in their games which is also good. Obvisously Fall Weiss is the first game of this new series as they are polish.

I'd like them to do something different or different time period. They are also working on Worlds of Magic though but i'd be happy if they could do less WWII games (with the exception of some Campaigns like North Africa which i would find interesting).

Cheers

[sandman2575]

After a little googling, I realized I meant "Bitter Glory", which sure does seem to have become vaporware, unless it got morphed into "Strat. War in Europe" (which I'd forgotten was a Wastelands game).

[Anguille]

Doomtrader said this in 2012 about Bitter Glory...

We have spent a lot of time on reviewing the progress of the game, and unfortunately the the only reasonable way to make this game ever happen, would be to dump away everything and eventually start from the very beginning.

[SgtRock]

The scope of Fall Weiss is just the invasion of Poland, a month or less time frame?

[Nefaro]

I'd much rather see their Fantasy 4X get finished up than yet another WW2 strategy game.  *le sigh*

[Anguille]

I'd much rather see their Fantasy 4X get finished up than yet another WW2 strategy game.  *le sigh*

I think it's two different teams...

[Anguille]

The scope of Fall Weiss is just the invasion of Poland, a month or less time frame?

Could be a day by day turn system....have to look at it.

[spelk]

Anyone interested in Fall Weiss really should check out Decisive Campaigns Warsaw to Paris.  Just a terrific game all around.  Spelk has an excellent AAR on his Sugarfreegamer blog.

Thanks for the kind words sandman!

Personally I really disliked Time of Wrath, so I'll take a pass on this one.  but wasn't Wasteland working on a big WW2 grand strategy title for a while?  Vaporware by now?

I really want to like WI's games, but ultimately the moddable interface they support, lets its down a bit. I think it's too rigid, ie. not moddable (read customisable) enough - the chrome and the busy dialogues just need sorting a bit better to make it flow like a game with some design and direction.

I think I've bought every title of theirs, and I've yet to find any love for them - other than my initial phase of being besotted with a boardgame chit mod by bongo for Time of Wrath. Good lord that seems a long time ago now.

I'm sure if I invested heavily in time and patience I'd soak up the WI way and would be able to get some good operational gaming out of them, perhaps even dabble with the strategic elements, its just titles like Decisive Campaigns, Unity of Command seem to be better choice to spend time on. They just "play" better, more natural, less homebrew'y.

No doubt I'll give this one a try at some point, but already I see the standard WI chrome and I start to feel like it will be another usb backup drive filler, and not necessarily a hard drive stayer.

I feel like I've judged them a bit harsh there, and I really want to support computer wargame devs who are still knocking out new ways to enjoy computer wargaming - so I'll pick this up for definite and will give it a good chance to shine. I do like the "early game" and the seemingly hopeless defence of Poland. 

[JasonPratt]

The scope of Fall Weiss is just the invasion of Poland, a month or less time frame?

That's what I gathered, but with 122 turns in the Grand Campaign it seems more extensive.

[HistoricalGamer]

Can anyone help me? I'm trying to get this game running and everytime it starts up it just freezes on a screen after the wasteland logo of a picture of a Polish fighter and German tanks but there are no menu options. I'm not sure why but I can't find out how to get this game working.

[Anguille]

its not frozen. Its the screen resolution. Go under my documents, my games, fall weiss and change the resolution in the settings .ini.

Cheers