ORIGINAL: Haplo_Patryn
Agreed. TEAW has wonderful artwork and loads of detailed units, but it doesn't really capture the feeling of WWI, at least at present.
WWI Gold does a much better job of modeling WWI - better diplomacy, better recreation of trench warfare, better simulation of combat across a front rather than just stacks, better simulation of the development of new combat doctrines and execution in ground offenses (via the Grand Offensive mechanism).
-1. Sorry guys but I've played both games and I can tell you that TEAW is far better game and far better simulation. Playing two PBEM games now, TEAW is like WWI in all aspects.
Doing an AAR here, you can see that the trench warfare is working fine and the fronts are similar to the historical ones. You should play PBEM games, your opinion about it would change.
http://www.puntadelanza.net/Foro/phpBB3 ... 41&t=16428
This is a very important point and it's easy to overlook its significance if you're not entirely happy with TEAW. If a game plays well when played against a human opponent that means that the underlying game mechanics are doing a spiffing job of simulating the conflict of the period. It simply means that AGEOD haven't had enough time to teach the AI how to play the game properly.
We know that there are some substantial issues with the release version. The WE AI doesn't do a proper blockade, the CP AI can't invade Belgium and is too ready to throw away its NM by sending its fleet out. It also appears that there is an issue with ammo for medium/heavy artillery. But I've read posts on AGEOD's boards suggesting that we're going to like the first patch. I'm a fairly positive person with no axes to grind here and see no reason to doubt that v1.01 is going to be a significant improvement over the release version. I trust the designers to put in the work to teach the AI to do a reasonable job of playing the game.
FWIW, WW1 Gold was my first ever AGEOD game. Wodin recommended it to me a while back and I picked it up. AGEOD games are quite difficult for a total newb to get into and WW1 Gold is about as difficult as it gets so I went and picked up Rise of Prussia (not yet Gold) to learn the game engine. I couldn't believe just how much better RoP was when compared to WW1 Gold. It was a beautiful game compared to WW1 Gold. It was so simple to shift units around within stacks and then move said stacks around the map without having to be over-cautious about dropping them in the wrong place.
After a bit of time with RoP, I returned to WW1 Gold to give it another go and the game experience wasn't much better. I'm sorry but for this wargamer, WW1 Gold was a great game in theory with some wonderful mechanics but it played like a dog and didn't live up to my expectations. Clearly, it lived up to some of yours and that's fine by me.
The only other AGEOD title that I own that I've played less that WW1 Gold is RUS and that's not because I was unhappy. It was just because in my first campaign as the Whites, I was overwhelmed by the size of the beast. It started nice and small in the Caucasus and expanded into the Crimea not too long after I had secured my base of operations there and I completely missed that other theatres had opened up and I'd left large armies sitting around doing nothing for several turns. I fully expect to play this one again as the Reds next time, maybe after it goes Gold?