Shearing the Sheep! - JocMeister(WA) vs. Meklore61(Ax)

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

If I´m completely wrong and the devs got everything right why is the game already fading from interest?

You seem to keep burring it in each of your posts. So far amount of new MP games on server is not getting down, dev forum activity is even higher when it was after WITE release. Yes, it has not "THE THREAD" activity of WITP, but it doesn't prove anything. Everyone and everything will die at the end.

I'd say game would be badly broken if you wouldn't loose to best beta testers. Unfortunately it can't be used as a conclusion base alone. I'm not the one who designed VP system, but I'm desperately trying to find something really constructive out of that and so far it is covered by thick layer of emotions. Tweaking and changing VP system is not a big deal from programming point of view, but it takes long time to balance it out so all changes should be properly weighted. Currently I provided a set of tools to set air campaign VPs, which is quite different from what it is now. Also we allow to change victory levels in campaign. Adding abilities to tweak other parts is also possible and it was done in WITE after release.

I was playing a lot UV and WITP, bought AE when it came out and it appeared completely unplayable for me. I'm not blaming devs, I think it is matter of my taste and current capabilities, which is always good to remember before going into bold statements and conclusions.

Thank you for responding Helpless!

Firstly, I´m not sure judging the health of the community by the activity on the dev forum is valid? I (and others) can only do that by looking at the activity in the main forum and the sub forums. After all this is where the actual players are. And considering this is THE major Matrix release of the year activity here is worryingly low already. Granted that is subjective but it has me worried at least.

I think you have misunderstood me if you think I´m saying the game is "badly broken". That is not what I have been getting at. The game is perfectly playable and might even be alright balance wise from a VP perspective although that remains to be seen.

What I have been trying to get across is HOW the VP system works. HOW penalties are applied and WHY they are applied. I have tried to be as constructive as possible and always suggesting what I think is a better way to do it. Yes, much of what I´m saying IS covered in a thick layer of emotion. That is my whole point. The current system doesn´t take the player(s) into any kind of consideration. Its just a mathematical formula. Its not a good recipe for a game. I have already written extensively on this so I´m not going to repeat myself. But I´ve given several suggestions on things that I think would make the VP system better both on the main forum and in my AARs. Most recently post #108 in this AAR regarding Garrisons and the No beachhead penalty:

Better solutions:
-Base it on numbers of hexes.
-Have a sliding scale staring with -X VPs and then increasing for each turn the 10 hexes arn´t met.
-Have a -X VP penalty each month the 10 hexes arn´t met.
-Or simply don´t have the penalties be so massively over exaggerated that even the most minute mistake can cost you the game. -0.25 CV = 28 VPs. Really? 9 hexes instead of 10. -1000 VPs. Really? Some TOE changes = -138 VPs. Really?

I´m sorry if you think I´m saying the game is broken. That is not my intention. I´m just saying (and have been from day one) that the VP system from a player perspective is a poor one. I´m glad to hear that its at least being looked at. This is the first time I heard it being mentioned since Joels post saying "we are not going to change it" a couple of months back.

[Helpless]

I've seen your post and believe me we are listening to all such feedback, which is very valuable. But if I remember correctly there was no consensus on this among players, so Joel's answer was that we would like to see more games to make final judgement.

Personally I agree on some of your points and in general I like open systems with no hard coded elements. So at least all of it should be available in editor. Unfortunately there is only 24 hours a day and it takes time. Hopefully we will release new public beta this week fixing night bombing/air combat issues.

[JocMeister]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

I've seen your post and believe me we are listening to all such feedback, which is very valuable. But if I remember correctly there was no consensus on this among players, so Joel's answer was that we would like to see more games to make final judgement.

Personally I agree on some of your points and in general I like open systems with no hard coded elements. So at least all of it should be available in editor. Unfortunately there is only 24 hours a day and it takes time. Hopefully we will release new public beta this week fixing night bombing/air combat issues.

Thanks Pavel. Good to know someone is listening! [:)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: JeffK

ORIGINAL: NotOneStepBack

So what if you decide to land later than history? You can't make up ground to win? Say you invade closer to Berlin. Does it matter because you don't need Berlin anyway? I'm not convinced the 1000 VP penalty is a good thing either. Why not just grab your 10 hexes and sit on a win?

Being a WITPAE addict, I've seen many an Allied Player come back from the jaws of an occupation of India, Australia & much of the Pacific. The WITPAE game doesnt make you occupy Guadalcanal by X Date or attack Midway by Y date. In WITW, should you have a setback on Sicily or in Italy which then delays a NW Europe invasion the game tells you you have lost. No matter if you have just pocketed all of the Wermacht in Italy and only bare garrison forces remain in NW Europe.

Also an AE addict; watching this AAR as a by-stander.

I find Jocke's arguments solid from what I can see of the game without owning it. Too much "on history's rails" for me. AE has auto-victory mechanisms, but you can see you're in trouble a year out and do something with your risk profile. And there's no negative VPs. That would drive me nuts. There's positive VPs for doing positive things, on each side.

This team designed the original WITP victory system which is solid, logical, and rewarding of good play. The AE team at Henderson Field didn't muck with it. Why they went this way with WitW is beyond me.

[Helpless]

And there's no negative VPs. That would drive me nuts.

Single scale VP system with negative values is very common in many games, including board games, such as TS - #1 on BGG list.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Helpless

And there's no negative VPs. That would drive me nuts.

Single scale VP system with negative values is very common in many games, including board games, such as TS - #1 on BGG list.

OK. I don't play those. And I don't consider -1000VPs trivial in the VP scale here.

I'm with Jocke. Reward me for what I do. Don't punish me for what I don't. Especially don't punish me for not paralleling history.

[Seminole]

I don't consider -1000VPs trivial in the VP scale here.

I didn't intend to imply the point total is trivial, but given the range of 4000 points it is 'the game' only if the game is worth playing by one side to decisive victory.
I'm not going to judge the difficulty of obtaining 10 hexes by July based on how Joc fared againt Pelton. In terms of experience and skill level with the underlying game engine they're not on the same level. Not saying Joc can't get there, but he didn't start that game there.

Reward me for what I do. Don't punish me for what I don't.

The German player is rewarded for killing allied soldiers and preventing/containing beachheads beyond two milestones. Some more factors are judged at a final milestone. Because there is a single vp counter there is a perceptual hang up on this by some.
If the allies capture Berlin is the German player 'punished' in your eyes for not defending it? Every accomplishment that rewards one side can be perceived as 'punishing' the other. It's a zero sum game. Both side can't win

Especially don't punish me for not paralleling history.

If you're not judged in the outcome of a historical war game by how you performed in relation to the actual outcome, what do you judge by?
I disagree with the comment about 'history on rails'. None of my games have gone that way.
If they tried to handle garrison requirements by freezing all German (or Allied) units until certain dates or triggers I'd agree with that view.
The scenarios are more on rails with uncontrolled withdrawal and reinforcement schedules, but they're intended to mimic particular situations with those considerations in place.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Seminole

I don't consider -1000VPs trivial in the VP scale here.

I didn't intend to imply the point total is trivial, but given the range of 4000 points it is 'the game' only if the game is worth playing by one side to decisive victory.
I'm not going to judge the difficulty of obtaining 10 hexes by July based on how Joc fared againt Pelton. In terms of experience and skill level with the underlying game engine they're not on the same level. Not saying Joc can't get there, but he didn't start that game there.

Reward me for what I do. Don't punish me for what I don't.

The German player is rewarded for killing allied soldiers and preventing/containing beachheads beyond two milestones. Some more factors are judged at a final milestone. Because there is a single vp counter there is a perceptual hang up on this by some.
If the allies capture Berlin is the German player 'punished' in your eyes for not defending it? Every accomplishment that rewards one side can be perceived as 'punishing' the other. It's a zero sum game. Both side can't win

Especially don't punish me for not paralleling history.

If you're not judged in the outcome of a historical war game by how you performed in relation to the actual outcome, what do you judge by?
I disagree with the comment about 'history on rails'. None of my games have gone that way.
If they tried to handle garrison requirements by freezing all German (or Allied) units until certain dates or triggers I'd agree with that view.
The scenarios are more on rails with uncontrolled withdrawal and reinforcement schedules, but they're intended to mimic particular situations with those considerations in place.

I'm hampered by not having the game. I come here somewhat to see if I ever want to own it. So far, no. The air models intrigue me, but the points Jocke has made are compelling to me. For the price I expect a polished game as well. The devs are discussing a scenario pack and moving back to the East already while this game seems still half-baked.

I don't play a lot of wargames. I used to, but now I just play AE.

To answer your question, no, I don't consider the German player to be "punished" for failing to defend Berlin. In my current AE PBEM I recently lost Chungking and all its garrison. Combined with the Japan player building the infrastructure post-takedown I lost circa 6000 VPs. He earned them, I lost them. Fair enough.

What I'm talking about is negative VPs for NOT doing something. The analogy would be the Japan player being penalized, say, 3000 VPs if he DIDN'T take Chungking. (Re U-boat bombing, etc., here.) Taking Chungking might not be in his best interests, but that system would require him to drive on it nevertheless. Here, if I don't want to invade Normandy, what happens to me? What if I want to only enter through southern France. Can I? I don't know, but it seems not.

In my AE game I am behind the historical real estate curve. But I know exactly how much each hex is worth to me and worth to him (the amounts vary, and the differences are sometimes quite dramatic.) I know how much each lost ship will cost, each plane, each land-combat device, for every nation. If I like spreadsheets I can play that way. But I can also look years ahead and figure what I can lose and what I can risk.

The victory point system and the auto-win system are linked. Each year it gets easier for each player to get an auto-win in VP terms. And the victory design is such that the Allies CANNOT win the game if they do not get an auto-win. The best they can do is a draw. The pressure of time is relentless to the Allied player. Buying time is essential to the Japan player. The two sides play very differently. It's a great, great system and it would work in this game as well. But they didn't copy it.

AE has a much longer calendar and a much bigger map, granted. But part of the appeal of it and why it is still the strongest game in the portfolio on a forum basis is there are many ways to skin the enemy. Japan doesn't know if I'm coming through the DEI, or across CentPac. Through the Aleutians, or into Sumatra. This game starts every time in the Med and if the Allied player doesn't play well there (history on rails), oh well. If he doesn't have 10 hexes by an arbitrary date, oh well. I think you're missing the point when you question why would a player quit if decisive victory wasn't going to happen. That's not the point. In my AE game I'm playing for a draw right now in mid-1943. Things are not good. But it's still fun.

Being ordered to invade and take Saipan by August 1944. . . OR ELSE?! Not fun.

[NotOneStepBack]

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Seminole

I don't consider -1000VPs trivial in the VP scale here.

I didn't intend to imply the point total is trivial, but given the range of 4000 points it is 'the game' only if the game is worth playing by one side to decisive victory.
I'm not going to judge the difficulty of obtaining 10 hexes by July based on how Joc fared againt Pelton. In terms of experience and skill level with the underlying game engine they're not on the same level. Not saying Joc can't get there, but he didn't start that game there.

Reward me for what I do. Don't punish me for what I don't.

The German player is rewarded for killing allied soldiers and preventing/containing beachheads beyond two milestones. Some more factors are judged at a final milestone. Because there is a single vp counter there is a perceptual hang up on this by some.
If the allies capture Berlin is the German player 'punished' in your eyes for not defending it? Every accomplishment that rewards one side can be perceived as 'punishing' the other. It's a zero sum game. Both side can't win

Especially don't punish me for not paralleling history.

If you're not judged in the outcome of a historical war game by how you performed in relation to the actual outcome, what do you judge by?
I disagree with the comment about 'history on rails'. None of my games have gone that way.
If they tried to handle garrison requirements by freezing all German (or Allied) units until certain dates or triggers I'd agree with that view.
The scenarios are more on rails with uncontrolled withdrawal and reinforcement schedules, but they're intended to mimic particular situations with those considerations in place.

I'm hampered by not having the game. I come here somewhat to see if I ever want to own it. So far, no. The air models intrigue me, but the points Jocke has made are compelling to me. For the price I expect a polished game as well. The devs are discussing a scenario pack and moving back to the East already while this game seems still half-baked.

I don't play a lot of wargames. I used to, but now I just play AE.

To answer your question, no, I don't consider the German player to be "punished" for failing to defend Berlin. In my current AE PBEM I recently lost Chungking and all its garrison. Combined with the Japan player building the infrastructure post-takedown I lost circa 6000 VPs. He earned them, I lost them. Fair enough.

What I'm talking about is negative VPs for NOT doing something. The analogy would be the Japan player being penalized, say, 3000 VPs if he DIDN'T take Chungking. (Re U-boat bombing, etc., here.) Taking Chungking might not be in his best interests, but that system would require him to drive on it nevertheless. Here, if I don't want to invade Normandy, what happens to me? What if I want to only enter through southern France. Can I? I don't know, but it seems not.

In my AE game I am behind the historical real estate curve. But I know exactly how much each hex is worth to me and worth to him (the amounts vary, and the differences are sometimes quite dramatic.) I know how much each lost ship will cost, each plane, each land-combat device, for every nation. If I like spreadsheets I can play that way. But I can also look years ahead and figure what I can lose and what I can risk.

The victory point system and the auto-win system are linked. Each year it gets easier for each player to get an auto-win in VP terms. And the victory design is such that the Allies CANNOT win the game if they do not get an auto-win. The best they can do is a draw. The pressure of time is relentless to the Allied player. Buying time is essential to the Japan player. The two sides play very differently. It's a great, great system and it would work in this game as well. But they didn't copy it.

AE has a much longer calendar and a much bigger map, granted. But part of the appeal of it and why it is still the strongest game in the portfolio on a forum basis is there are many ways to skin the enemy. Japan doesn't know if I'm coming through the DEI, or across CentPac. Through the Aleutians, or into Sumatra. This game starts every time in the Med and if the Allied player doesn't play well there (history on rails), oh well. If he doesn't have 10 hexes by an arbitrary date, oh well. I think you're missing the point when you question why would a player quit if decisive victory wasn't going to happen. That's not the point. In my AE game I'm playing for a draw right now in mid-1943. Things are not good. But it's still fun.

Being ordered to invade and take Saipan by August 1944. . . OR ELSE?! Not fun.

You hit the nail on the head. Every game in the campaign is on rails. The Axis player also knows that the 10 hex rule is game winning, so it makes sense to min / max your position and crush them for 1000 points.

The scale might go up to 4000 points, but I've never seen anyone come even near it.

[Seminole]

To answer your question, no, I don't consider the German player to be "punished" for failing to defend Berlin. In my current AE PBEM I recently lost Chungking and all its garrison. Combined with the Japan player building the infrastructure post-takedown I lost circa 6000 VPs. He earned them, I lost them. Fair enough.
What I'm talking about is negative VPs for NOT doing something. The analogy would be the Japan player being penalized, say, 3000 VPs if he DIDN'T take Chungking.

Would the Allied player in WitP get any victory points for holding Chungking? If so, is this a reward to the Allies for holding Chungking, or a penalty to Japan for not taking it?

In WitW the German player is rewarded for building U-boats in '43. The Allies can try to prevent the Germans from gaining these points with air power if they want to. If they'd rather use the bombers to reduce Panther production and toast railyards to prep southern France for an early invasion they can try that too. They even split things up and try to do some of all three and half a dozen other things.

Here, if I don't want to invade Normandy, what happens to me? What if I want to only enter through southern France. Can I? I don't know, but it seems not

.

You can try to send the entire Allied army up through Southern France, but I don't think it would be sound. Not a lot of ports down there to support a huge army.
Some of what you may be mistaking for the 'rails' of history are the underlying reasons that drove historical decision making. But WitW will let you do dumb things, I've read the AARs to prove it!

In my AE game I am behind the historical real estate curve. But I know exactly how much each hex is worth to me and worth to him (the amounts vary, and the differences are sometimes quite dramatic.) I know how much each lost ship will cost, each plane, each land-combat device, for every nation. If I like spreadsheets I can play that way. But I can also look years ahead and figure what I can lose and what I can risk.

There's more to the WitW grand campaign VP system as well. The Allies gain points each turn for cities and ports they control, with higher points awarded for controlling them in '43 instead of '44, and more in '44 than in '45. Thus both sides have an impetus to take terrain as early as possible, and to hold it as long as possible.
I do like that the VP screen separates these different VP sources. If people played games out we could see which things make the biggest impact.

The victory point system and the auto-win system are linked.

The only 'auto-win' in WitW is to kick your opponent's ass so hard early on that they quit. [8D]

Each year it gets easier for each player to get an auto-win in VP terms. And the victory design is such that the Allies CANNOT win the game if they do not get an auto-win. The best they can do is a draw. The pressure of time is relentless to the Allied player. Buying time is essential to the Japan player. The two sides play very differently. It's a great, great system and it would work in this game as well. But they didn't copy it.

The conquest milestones in WitW are intended to create time pressures as well. The Allied player is pressured to get the liberation of western Europe underway, while the German player is pressured to hem the Allies beyond that which their historical counterpart managed.

Japan doesn't know if I'm coming through the DEI, or across CentPac. Through the Aleutians, or into Sumatra. This game starts every time in the Med and if the Allied player doesn't play well there (history on rails), oh well. If he doesn't have 10 hexes by an arbitrary date, oh well.

So in WitP can I decide to invade Okinawa in '42? WitW lets someone invade Brittany with the summer '43 OoB if they want, but I'm not sure it is a war winning strategy.
The Western Allies started with taking off small bites because they felt they didn't have a big enough army to do more. Smart? Cowardly? Think you could have done it better going into Denmark in '43 and driving straight for Berlin? Give it a shot! There are no 'rails' in that regard.

I think you're missing the point when you question why would a player quit if decisive victory wasn't going to happen. That's not the point. In my AE game I'm playing for a draw right now in mid-1943. Things are not good. But it's still fun.
Being ordered to invade and take Saipan by August 1944. . . OR ELSE?! Not fun.

I don't own WitP, would the Japanese gain points if you hadn't invaded anything west of Midway by July of '44? Is there any advantage derived by the Japanese if the Allies sit on their hands until halfway through '44? I'm not yet convinced the 'real estate curve' in WitW of capturing 10 hexes north of Italy by July of '44 is too high a hurdle. Why shouldn't the German player be rewarded if he can hold the Allied player to smaller gains than they achieved in real life? Besting history has always been the point of these historical war games to me.

BTW, the 'OR ELSE' is exaggeration, the points we're talking about are not even the difference between a major and decisive victory. Part of the shame of quitting over this VP award is we don't get to see how it fits in balance with everything else.
Someone else asked why can't the Allies try a later invasion that gets to Berlin faster. They can! Do it and let's see how things shake out!
Frankly, I'm in favor of getting to Anne Frank's family as fast as possible, so I'm not building a strategy around hanging back and letting the Soviets do all the hard work.

[Aurelian]

Just don't get the angst. You're bombing U-Boats because your political masters demanded it. You're bombing V-Weapon sites for the same reason.

So you have a choice. Do what the off map bosses tell you to do, or go your own way.

Do the latter, and you pay a penalty. Why? Because those U-Boat factories churn out U-Boats that attack the convoys. Far better to destroy them in the yards rather than try and find them at sea.

Same with the V-Weps. Don't bomb them, and they continue to strike England. Again, going your own way is a penalty.

You're not on "rails". You have to deal with the political reality.

[Wuffer]

I think Aurelian has made a valid point: Losing by points did not meant the Western allies have lost the war, but you are simply fired as CiC.

@ Bullwinkle
some valid points, too.
But let us keep following im mind:
(1.) How many attempts (read: full releases) had WitP AE before? At least two: UV, WitP, now Witp AE, not including the mods. At least some 9 years in open 'testing'.
It's only small company with very limited manpower, let's not forget this. It took some four years alone to polish the Eastern theatre (thx Morveal).

(2.) I would not taking Chungking as an example: A strategy/operational game about the Pacific War, where Japan could nearly allways conquer complete China??
please, WitP AE is a great abstraction, but let us find better arguments.
German production, daily turns in a WEGO system etc. might have been the preferred choice by a lot of hardcore gamers, but a happy customer is easily a lost customer... two fully campaigns for example could cost quickly four years commitment in real time - without investing in new stuff? You would never see anything new, because the developers had been starved in the meantime.

(3.) WitP AE is too easy in some ways... Not on the tactical side or the operational planing of course - these are superb! -, but on political aspects. The biggest concern in the Pacific? Simply avoiding unnecessary expenses of (allied) lives. There was allways the big pressure of bringing home as many boys as possible. There was never serious doubt about the outcome, just the question how costly it would become. And then have a look at the average casualities of the British and US in a typical WitP game: Way too high! I doubt if you could have survived as a supreme commandre by simply racing to Japan, it was much more complicated in RL.
The whole Eastern theatre was a minor one in comparision to Europe: Germany first, or the danger of central Europe becoming liberated by Stalin, as even a egomanic McArthur formulated.

As you said, there is a lot of room to improve things, so let us try to find 'easy' and broadly accepted solutions, while not neclecting the immense political pressure: You had to open a second front in central Europe by summer '44, period. Italy doesn't count here. You had to stop the subs and the VGs. You had simply not the operational freedom of the Pacific war.

[JocMeister]

Sorry for the lack of updates. Maklore needed a breather. We got a turn done yesterday.

As I usually do I agree with the Bull. It is interesting though that people are so different. Some people like me despise the VP system while others are fine with it. The cause of that is probably many different reasons. But it is a controversial system and that is almost always bad when it comes to designing games. The gaming industry have put a lot of research into the interaction between games and the human psyche. While I´m no expert I think it would be pretty safe to say that this system goes against pretty much everything. You sell games when people enjoy them. And much of that process is linked to the risk/reward system. And the current VP system is colliding with that. All the time too which irks me something fierce.

For some reason some players don´t seemed to be bothered by it. For me its devastating. Perhaps its because I´m so competitive or simply because my brain isn´t really wired for numbers. I suck at math, hate spreadsheets and think programming is the most boring thing in the world. I don´t see the VP system as just numbers as some may do.

Anyway what I´m trying to get across is that the devs might (being programmers) not see this the same way some of us do. That is why having a professional game designer at least to some degree involved in the process might have been a good idea. Too late for that now though. Now people who feel the same way as I do will simply leave this game behind us and find something else. Perhaps will be just me and NOSB and no one will miss us. [:D]

I would probably have been quite satisfied with the game if it hadn´t been so fiercely priced. If I had payed 40 Euro for it I can live with some issues. But when I pay almost 100 Euro I demand a perfect product. Not unreasonable IMO. I guess that is a different discussion though but setting such an immensely high price the devs place enormous expectations and demands on themselves.

[Wuffer]

That is why having a professional game designer at least to some degree involved in the process might have been a good idea.

It's never too late.


I think your critic is justified: Gaming is being entertained - where's the fun...

[Helpless]

That is why having a professional game designer at least to some degree involved in the process might have been a good idea.

Let's involve Gary Grigsby he has some game design experience and lives out of that.

Game designs

Guadalcanal Campaign (1982)
Bomb Alley (1982)
North Atlantic '86 (1983)
Carrier Force (1983)
Objective: Kursk (1984)
War in Russia (1984)
Reforger '88 (1984)
Kampfgruppe (1985)
Mech Brigade (1985)
USAAF (1985)
Battlegroup (1986)
Warship (1986)
War in the South Pacific (1986)
Battlecruiser (1987)
Panzer Strike! (1987)
Typhoon of Steel (1988)
Overrun! (1989)
Second Front (1990)
Western Front (1991)
Carrier Strike (1992)
Gary Grigsby's Pacific War (1992)
Gary Grigsby's War in Russia (1993)
Steel Panthers (1995)
Steel Panthers II (1996)
Steel Panthers III (1997)
Battle of Britain (1999)
12 O'clock High (1999)
Uncommon Valor: Campaign for the South Pacific (2002)
War in the Pacific: The Struggle Against Japan 1941-1945 (2004)
Gary Grigsby's World at War (2005)
Gary Grigsby's World at War A World Divided (2006)
Gary Grigsby's War Between the States (2008)
Gary Grigsby's War in the East (2010)
Gary Grigsby's War in the West (2014)

Wait.. he was already involved and designed VP system.. hmm. [8|]

[RedLancer]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

This is the first time I heard it being mentioned since Joels post saying "we are not going to change it" a couple of months back.

That is incorrect. I made a post directed to you on precisely this point on 25 Feb and you acknowledged it. (Just in case you need reminding: tm.asp?m=3809224&mpage=2&key=). Further to that and in the same thread Joel posted on 4 Mar "We're perfectly willing to tweak the VP formulas, including those for Allied casualties. We just need data, so AAR's or game results would be very useful."

I take offence at the implication that we are ignoring the points you raise. I think I have shown on more than one occasion that I am willing to engage in healthy debate about the game and I still am. I know WitW is not perfect but I believe that it is the very best that we could deliver to date with all the factors involved. I understand you hate the VP system and I respect your opinion but if it is going to be changed then the way ahead is data and constructive criticism. Implying that people are put off the game because you are right and the Devs wrong does carry some level of threat that we should do what you say. So in response to that position and in deference to your knowledge of game design when you post:

ORIGINAL: JocMeister

Give me a couple of hours and I can probably come up with 30 more.

...then let me hold you to your word. You've had a 3 week headstart and come up with a sliding penalty on VPs per invasion held - 30 more to go then.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Seminole

To answer your question, no, I don't consider the German player to be "punished" for failing to defend Berlin. In my current AE PBEM I recently lost Chungking and all its garrison. Combined with the Japan player building the infrastructure post-takedown I lost circa 6000 VPs. He earned them, I lost them. Fair enough.
What I'm talking about is negative VPs for NOT doing something. The analogy would be the Japan player being penalized, say, 3000 VPs if he DIDN'T take Chungking.

Would the Allied player in WitP get any victory points for holding Chungking? If so, is this a reward to the Allies for holding Chungking, or a penalty to Japan for not taking it?

The whole VP "philosophy" is different. Every base/airfield/dotbase has a VP total. The VPs are assigned to SOMEBODY every turn. They are modified by level of port/AF construction and by in-supply or not-in status. But the VP awards vary by side. Chungking is worth 800 VPs to the Allies at start and they get +100 for each AF level they build. But it's worth 1600(200) to Japan. Tokyo is 30(1) for Japan but 7500(250) for the Allies. CONUS bases have similar gaps the other way should Japan throw the kitchen sink at them in the first months (not a good move, but available.)

In WitW the German player is rewarded for building U-boats in '43. The Allies can try to prevent the Germans from gaining these points with air power if they want to. If they'd rather use the bombers to reduce Panther production and toast railyards to prep southern France for an early invasion they can try that too. They even split things up and try to do some of all three and half a dozen other things.

Same as AE, but the production system and underlying economy make those choices more interesting IMO. Bombing Oil doesn't even get the Allied player VPs except in certain very small regions. But it does prevent construction of assets and hamper naval operations. Perhaps that's a big reason Jocke has trouble with the system as an old AE Allied hand. Choosing to attack national strategic targets in AE flows down to the tactical level due to the production system. And it shows why perhaps starting the West in mid-1943, while understandable in development terms, was a mistake for playability. If bombing those U-boats really affected an in-game Battle of the Atlantic and that affected D-Day I think Jocke would happily bomb U-boats.

But negative VPs for not bombing U-boats rubs me wrong. The penalty for not bombing them ought to be I don't get VPs for bombing them. I went elsewhere with the assets and bet on more VPs there. I wasn't channeled into bombing an asset I think is less valuable to my progress.

Here, if I don't want to invade Normandy, what happens to me? What if I want to only enter through southern France. Can I? I don't know, but it seems not

.

You can try to send the entire Allied army up through Southern France, but I don't think it would be sound. Not a lot of ports down there to support a huge army.
Some of what you may be mistaking for the 'rails' of history are the underlying reasons that drove historical decision making. But WitW will let you do dumb things, I've read the AARs to prove it!

I agree it would be unwise. And perhaps I misunderstand the -1000 penalty. I thought it required a northern France invasion by July. If it's anywhere north of Italy that's better. But still not what I want if there's a penalty at all. Let my loss of time to win be the penalty. If I wait to October to invade anywhere that should be my choice and my problem.

In my AE game I am behind the historical real estate curve. But I know exactly how much each hex is worth to me and worth to him (the amounts vary, and the differences are sometimes quite dramatic.) I know how much each lost ship will cost, each plane, each land-combat device, for every nation. If I like spreadsheets I can play that way. But I can also look years ahead and figure what I can lose and what I can risk.

There's more to the WitW grand campaign VP system as well. The Allies gain points each turn for cities and ports they control, with higher points awarded for controlling them in '43 instead of '44, and more in '44 than in '45. Thus both sides have an impetus to take terrain as early as possible, and to hold it as long as possible.
I do like that the VP screen separates these different VP sources. If people played games out we could see which things make the biggest impact.

The victory point system and the auto-win system are linked.

The only 'auto-win' in WitW is to kick your opponent's ass so hard early on that they quit. [8D]

AE has a 4:1 ratio on 1/1/43, a 3:1 on 1/1/44, and a 2:1 on 1/1/45. Plus each day in those years at the same ratio. As before the Allies must get an auto-win to win the game. In my current game I'm about 2.4:1 against me in mid-1943. I have a lot of work to do.

Each year it gets easier for each player to get an auto-win in VP terms. And the victory design is such that the Allies CANNOT win the game if they do not get an auto-win. The best they can do is a draw. The pressure of time is relentless to the Allied player. Buying time is essential to the Japan player. The two sides play very differently. It's a great, great system and it would work in this game as well. But they didn't copy it.

The conquest milestones in WitW are intended to create time pressures as well. The Allied player is pressured to get the liberation of western Europe underway, while the German player is pressured to hem the Allies beyond that which their historical counterpart managed.

I get that. I just don't like being told I have to go by June or there is a huge negative penalty.

Japan doesn't know if I'm coming through the DEI, or across CentPac. Through the Aleutians, or into Sumatra. This game starts every time in the Med and if the Allied player doesn't play well there (history on rails), oh well. If he doesn't have 10 hexes by an arbitrary date, oh well.

So in WitP can I decide to invade Okinawa in '42?

Yes

WitW lets someone invade Brittany with the summer '43 OoB if they want, but I'm not sure it is a war winning strategy.
The Western Allies started with taking off small bites because they felt they didn't have a big enough army to do more. Smart? Cowardly? Think you could have done it better going into Denmark in '43 and driving straight for Berlin? Give it a shot! There are no 'rails' in that regard.

AE's VP award for every base makes the defend/run away decision very meaningful. Japan usually expands past historical borders, into Oz or India. Everything the Allied player gives up has to be earned back. But the VP cost in planes, ships, and men is a critical factor in the defend decision. A squad of British infantry has the same VP loss cost in December 1941 as in the summer of 1944 when it is much, much stronger after upgrading devices. Is it better to lose the base VPs now by running (they can be regained), or to incur the permanent VP cost of staying and being destroyed, but slowing Japan's advance? The choice is the player's, but there are no date triggers. The balance is in the VP cost schedule and the auto-win ratios.

I think you're missing the point when you question why would a player quit if decisive victory wasn't going to happen. That's not the point. In my AE game I'm playing for a draw right now in mid-1943. Things are not good. But it's still fun.
Being ordered to invade and take Saipan by August 1944. . . OR ELSE?! Not fun.

I don't own WitP, would the Japanese gain points if you hadn't invaded anything west of Midway by July of '44?

No. But if that were the case they'd almost certainly have an auto-win. The politics of the PTO are inherent in the auto-win system and in the Preparation Point system. Japan earns VPs the same way the Allies do, but in different amounts. They earn fewer for killing a Chinese squad than a USMC one for example.

Is there any advantage derived by the Japanese if the Allies sit on their hands until halfway through '44?

They win? The "Brave Sir Robin" strategy in the first six months whereby the Allies fall back to save assets at the cost of territory is probably the most discussed in AE World. But at some point earlier than 1944 the Allies have to fight, or lose the game.

I'm not yet convinced the 'real estate curve' in WitW of capturing 10 hexes north of Italy by July of '44 is too high a hurdle.

I question why it has to be a hurdle. Let the calendar drive the decision, but make it a decision, not a law.

Why shouldn't the German player be rewarded if he can hold the Allied player to smaller gains than they achieved in real life? Besting history has always been the point of these historical war games to me.

Same as AE. With matched players the Japan player never, ever wins the war. But Japan can win the game. The VP system allows that.

BTW, the 'OR ELSE' is exaggeration, the points we're talking about are not even the difference between a major and decisive victory. Part of the shame of quitting over this VP award is we don't get to see how it fits in balance with everything else.

I don't have the whole roster of negative VPs in WitW. I only know the U-boat bombing one and this one. I don't think there should be any, but that's apparent by now.

Someone else asked why can't the Allies try a later invasion that gets to Berlin faster. They can! Do it and let's see how things shake out!
Frankly, I'm in favor of getting to Anne Frank's family as fast as possible, so I'm not building a strategy around hanging back and letting the Soviets do all the hard work.

Take away the -1000 and I think more would try it.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Wuffer

I think Aurelian has made a valid point: Losing by points did not meant the Western allies have lost the war, but you are simply fired as CiC.

@ Bullwinkle
some valid points, too.
But let us keep following im mind:
(1.) How many attempts (read: full releases) had WitP AE before? At least two: UV, WitP, now Witp AE, not including the mods. At least some 9 years in open 'testing'.
It's only small company with very limited manpower, let's not forget this. It took some four years alone to polish the Eastern theatre (thx Morveal).

For the record, AE was not designed by GG and 2x3. It was done by Henderson Field, on essentially a volunteer basis. It built on WITP, but it is massively more than WITP was.

I played WITP from late 2005 to AE's launch in mid-2009, and have played AE about daily since launch. Both games were "done" at launch. Yes, a lot of tweaks and improvements, but no wholesale re-balancing as WitE needed. I bought that one about 15 months in, expecting it was baked. It wasn't.

(2.) I would not taking Chungking as an example: A strategy/operational game about the Pacific War, where Japan could nearly allways conquer complete China??

Taking all of China is very difficult and costly. It means Japan can't do many, many other things. The Chungking siege in my game took a year, tens of thousands of sorties, about 1000 lost aircraft to Japan, massive piles of precious supply, and tied down over 500,000 IJA personnel. The payoff was commensurate.

That said, yes, continental warfare is not AE's strong suit. Naval and island warfare is. But the continental war is highly detailed and interesting.

please, WitP AE is a great abstraction, but let us find better arguments.

AE's job is much harder than WitW's. Just look at the map and the roster of nations. It has 4-D warfare with full naval and submarine models. It has a production system and economy. It starts at the start, so the player controls the full war. Nobody would play it if it started in mid-1043 with Midway baked into the IJN OOB. I think that's WitW's biggest error.

German production, daily turns in a WEGO system etc. might have been the preferred choice by a lot of hardcore gamers, but a happy customer is easily a lost customer... two fully campaigns for example could cost quickly four years commitment in real time - without investing in new stuff? You would never see anything new, because the developers had been starved in the meantime.

I'm sensitive to the economic arguments in WitW's development. But the mid-1943 start is a primary reason I won't be buying.

(3.) WitP AE is too easy in some ways... Not on the tactical side or the operational planing of course - these are superb! -, but on political aspects. The biggest concern in the Pacific? Simply avoiding unnecessary expenses of (allied) lives. There was allways the big pressure of bringing home as many boys as possible. There was never serious doubt about the outcome, just the question how costly it would become. And then have a look at the average casualities of the British and US in a typical WitP game: Way too high! I doubt if you could have survived as a supreme commandre by simply racing to Japan, it was much more complicated in RL.

Almost no PBEM game gets to Japan proper. The costs are balanced by the varying VP costs of the various nations' men and devices. Chinese are worth less than Japan's. Japan's are worth less than America's. Would more politics be better? Many AE players would agree. The colonialism argument is key, as well as others. But the only political date in the game really is the A-bomb arrival, and even that is variable by a couple of months. The rest is a blank sheet of paper.

The whole Eastern theatre was a minor one in comparision to Europe: Germany first, or the danger of central Europe becoming liberated by Stalin, as even a egomanic McArthur formulated.

As you said, there is a lot of room to improve things, so let us try to find 'easy' and broadly accepted solutions, while not neclecting the immense political pressure: You had to open a second front in central Europe by summer '44, period. Italy doesn't count here. You had to stop the subs and the VGs. You had simply not the operational freedom of the Pacific war.

If you accept politics driving mid-1944 then you have to accept all of them. Does WitW allow FDR to lose the 1944 election if the Med was a disaster? Of course not. The goal is to win the war and the game. Let the player do that. Don't shove him in the back at RL historical gates. Let his own results drive the victory, not the devs' selection of certain dates as key and not others.

[Sardaukar]

I agree with "moose" (Bullwinkle58)[8D]. As long-time WitP/WitP-AE player I like the VP system in those games better. In AE you don't have to do something if you don't want to do it, unlike WitW 10-hex rule and June invasion. Basically WitW kind of forces Allied player to do historical things compared to AE. In that sense it is way more limiting system. Same with U-boat and V-Weapon bombing. Being penalized quite heavily for concentrating on bombing something else is not that appealing for me, though it might have some merit considering V-Weapons.

[Helpless]

I don't have the whole roster of negative VPs in WitW. I only know the U-boat bombing one and this one. I don't think there should be any, but that's apparent by now.

They are positive if you play Axis.

Take away the -1000 and I think more would try it.

This can be done easily and personally I would like it to be more flexible, but it requires lots of testing and current focus is to address obvious bugs.

I'd be really happy that most complaints would be on VP system, which is extremely important, but sits on the top of core components and changing or tweaking it is not a big deal once you know the direction.

Personally for me it is very hard to believe that this kind of issue alone makes game boring. At least it never popped up during beta testing which wasn't without complaints.