ORIGINAL: rkr1958
ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58
Does MWiF have a working AI?
No. An AI is on the promise list but my bet, and it's only me bet, is that we're talking 5 (very optimistic) to 10 years (optimistic to realistic) if ever.
However, MWiF is the best wargame by far that I've ever played. I just love the scope and magnitude of it. My play up until recently has been solo. I really don't play it as a game but as an "historical" experience of realistic alternate WW2 realities.
I will say that MWiF has given me insights into why certain things happened the way they did. For example, Japan's surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. MWiF starts off in Sep/Oct 1939 with Germany's DOW on Poland. Japan is at war with China and controls Manchuria and Korea. The USA wants no part of any of this; i.e., the War in Europe and in the Pacific. As the game progresses the USA gets more interested and when certain conditions are met passes embargo's on strategic material and then oil sent to Japan. Also, the USA begins ramping up its war industry and moves their Pacific fleet from the West Coast to Hawaii. Japan feels the squeeze of all this but especially the lack of oil. There sits raw resources and oil to Japan's south in CW and Dutch controlled possessions in the South China Sea. So, Japan decides to hit the USA and CW before they hit them so that they can grab these needed resources and expand their Pacific defensive perimeter west into the Bay of Bengal and East into the Solomons and Marianas as a shield to maintain their flow of oil and raw resources necessary to fed their war machine.
Now, none of this is scripted and all games play differently. But this is usually how my games play out in the Pacific.
I knew it doesn't have an AI. I posed that more to be polite than anything. I go by the MWiF forum every once in awhile. Less now than a year ago. It's pretty dead. The launch of that game . . . not going there on a forum paid for by the publisher. Just, "things that make you go hmmmm."
AE is different. It "only" covers the world from Karachi to NYC, but it's very detailed in that space. It has a lot less politics and political decision ramifications. It's about fighting and logistics pretty much. Training and other things, but war-fighting. You're not a politician.
My current PBEM with Lokasenna started three years ago this month. We're in June 1944. So, yeah. Not six months.
AE doesn't use counters. I hate counters. Some people love them. I don't.
MWIF was, as far as I know from the forum, developed by one guy in his apartment in Honolulu. Right? It's still not close to finished. I understand he's not in great health, so it might never be finished. AE is finished. You can play AI, PBEM, head-to-head. You have scenarios and GC. You can play either side, which is like checkers versus chess. Two completely different games for the price of one.
This forum is the most active on the big board. Dozens of posts a day. When I look at the master forum list often only 4-5 games get even one post a day. The forum comes at no extra charge.
So, your call. But playing myself with no AI--that alone--makes it a no-brainer for AE. And PBEM is better.
