THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

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aaatoysandmore
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by aaatoysandmore »

ORIGINAL: balto

HOI 4 is mega great and it keeps getting better thanks to the awesome gaming powerhouse called Paradox (aka, heaven). The UI takes a lot of time to understand because most of it's finer points are vague. Takes about 200 hours to get good at the UI, which is a lot of time, but with a Paradox product, you know the investment in time will pay off. With mods and the DLC, it is an incredible game. If you love HOI 2 and 3, you will super love HOI 4. I am up to over 500 hours and I do not plan on stopping. The comment about not using the PAUSE feature, I do not understand that.., you PAUSE when you need it, and you speed up when you do not. PS - get all the DLC and do not worry about the CONVERSION feature, presently it is useless despite what a lot of the forum people claim.

PS - The mention of Advanced Tactics, I am sure that is another way to go. I love that game, but never played the World War mod..,

Most sad thing about the whole HOI series is the lacking AI as it's just not good enough for the size and scale of this war. Even Crusader Kings II as much as I enjoy it doesn't have any kind of quality AI as one can just roam the map and take pretty much anything he/she wants when they want. It's just more of a roleplay game than any kind of wargame.

At least Making History gives me some challenge on the hard or hardest settings. I want more challenge than I want pretty interface or pictures. Making History is the turn based HOI game with a much better AI.
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RodyMetal
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by RodyMetal »

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

ORIGINAL: balto

HOI 4 is mega great and it keeps getting better thanks to the awesome gaming powerhouse called Paradox (aka, heaven). The UI takes a lot of time to understand because most of it's finer points are vague. Takes about 200 hours to get good at the UI, which is a lot of time, but with a Paradox product, you know the investment in time will pay off. With mods and the DLC, it is an incredible game. If you love HOI 2 and 3, you will super love HOI 4. I am up to over 500 hours and I do not plan on stopping. The comment about not using the PAUSE feature, I do not understand that.., you PAUSE when you need it, and you speed up when you do not. PS - get all the DLC and do not worry about the CONVERSION feature, presently it is useless despite what a lot of the forum people claim.

PS - The mention of Advanced Tactics, I am sure that is another way to go. I love that game, but never played the World War mod..,

Most sad thing about the whole HOI series is the lacking AI as it's just not good enough for the size and scale of this war. Even Crusader Kings II as much as I enjoy it doesn't have any kind of quality AI as one can just roam the map and take pretty much anything he/she wants when they want. It's just more of a roleplay game than any kind of wargame.

At least Making History gives me some challenge on the hard or hardest settings. I want more challenge than I want pretty interface or pictures. Making History is the turn based HOI game with a much better AI.

Hmmm, you mean all of Making history or just the first one?
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by pzgndr »

ORIGINAL: Neilster
In MWiF, corps can be broken down into divisions but no further. WW2 entirely modelled at divisional scale means a lot of units. Matrix World in Flames is an almost exact port of the paper and dice wargame, and the designers of said game opted for a basically corps/army level of granularity. Divisional scale is more manageable in a computer game but probably not worth all the extra effort.

MWiF scale is good, and the game has evolved over the years with a good reputation. I'm still curious how WiF-Blitz will fare, but its high level scale with Fronts/Armies has its appeal as a simpler and shorter game. It may need some breakdowns into Armies/Corps if it doesn't already, and it definitely needs the ugly map redone. But I do like the high level scale and would like to see a computer adaptation someday, in addition to MWiF.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by rico21 »

Wif a counters catalog, witp reminds me of my childhood, naval battle and touched-cast.
An ultimate wwii strategic game, inevitably a game for adults.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by aaatoysandmore »

ORIGINAL: RodyMetal

ORIGINAL: aaatoysandmore

ORIGINAL: balto

HOI 4 is mega great and it keeps getting better thanks to the awesome gaming powerhouse called Paradox (aka, heaven). The UI takes a lot of time to understand because most of it's finer points are vague. Takes about 200 hours to get good at the UI, which is a lot of time, but with a Paradox product, you know the investment in time will pay off. With mods and the DLC, it is an incredible game. If you love HOI 2 and 3, you will super love HOI 4. I am up to over 500 hours and I do not plan on stopping. The comment about not using the PAUSE feature, I do not understand that.., you PAUSE when you need it, and you speed up when you do not. PS - get all the DLC and do not worry about the CONVERSION feature, presently it is useless despite what a lot of the forum people claim.

PS - The mention of Advanced Tactics, I am sure that is another way to go. I love that game, but never played the World War mod..,

Most sad thing about the whole HOI series is the lacking AI as it's just not good enough for the size and scale of this war. Even Crusader Kings II as much as I enjoy it doesn't have any kind of quality AI as one can just roam the map and take pretty much anything he/she wants when they want. It's just more of a roleplay game than any kind of wargame.

At least Making History gives me some challenge on the hard or hardest settings. I want more challenge than I want pretty interface or pictures. Making History is the turn based HOI game with a much better AI.

Hmmm, you mean all of Making history or just the first one?

Mostly the 1st one. I have II but I play the 1st one more.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by ncc1701e »

ORIGINAL: balto

HOI 4 is mega great and it keeps getting better thanks to the awesome gaming powerhouse called Paradox (aka, heaven). The UI takes a lot of time to understand because most of it's finer points are vague. Takes about 200 hours to get good at the UI, which is a lot of time, but with a Paradox product, you know the investment in time will pay off. With mods and the DLC, it is an incredible game. If you love HOI 2 and 3, you will super love HOI 4. I am up to over 500 hours and I do not plan on stopping. The comment about not using the PAUSE feature, I do not understand that.., you PAUSE when you need it, and you speed up when you do not. PS - get all the DLC and do not worry about the CONVERSION feature, presently it is useless despite what a lot of the forum people claim.

The problem for me is not the pause. The problem is that the real time thing makes me focus on one particular battle while I am losing focus of the big picture. For a strategic game, I need to think. Turn based help me for this but this is my personal taste.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by ncc1701e »

ORIGINAL: Neilster
People often forget how vast the Pacific Theatre is is comparison to the European Theatre, so if you want a unified global scale, the hexes can't be too small without having a bajillion of them, especially in the Pacific. Also, the rules of MWiF provide a kind of artificial increase in detail. It's hard to explain but, especially in Europe, what can look like a chunky map ends up being more subtle during play. It's a tried and tested design.

Fully agree with you, a lot of WW2 strategy games are Europe centric only because their system are not adapted to Pacific. The naval aspect is often abstract whereas it is the key for Pacific.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by ncc1701e »

ORIGINAL: warspite1

ORIGINAL: ncc1701e

All right, thus if we want consistency in term of scale all over the map, do I summarize correctly that division level is then the best compromise?

I wonder if such game could implement the same thing than in TOAW. I mean there is the ability to divide or recombine one unit into 2 or 3 sub units. Depending on its OOB, a corps could be splitted at player request into two or three divisions. Same thing for the division. Would that help for rico21's kampfgruppe?

Now, what would be the scale for the world map? I have no idea of the frontage that a WW2 division was supposed to defend or to attack. I am reading some contradictory information about this. Anyone knows?

Thanks already for your above replies
warspite1

If I remember correctly the (seemingly aborted?) divisional level game of World In Flames was going to use the same maps as the standard game.

Thus, 90km per hex?

I have found those numbers:
http://balagan.info/infantry-unit-frontages-during-ww2

Glantz (1998) mentions the average frontages for the Soviet 9th and 57th Armies defending the southern front of the Barvenkovo salient in May 1942. 57th Army had one division per 16km of frontage. 9th Army had one division per 10km, with most of the forces in defence but also conducting a small offensive operation. The divisions of both armies had no reserves, and were not echeloned, so were deployed only 3-4 km in depth


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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by Neilster »

A divisional scale WiF would need the potential for quite heavy stacking. In MWiF, it's 2 land units and a division or HQ unit per hex (of about 90km across). A divisional WiF would need something like 10 divisions per hex.

Divisional frontages in WW2 varied widely, depending on the circumstances and the terrain. In out of the way places or quiet sectors they could be very long indeed, especially with cavalry or motorised units.

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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by Agathosdaimon »

Also - Schwerpunkt Games WW2 Europe, and its earlier Russo-German War 1941-1944
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by Neilster »

Further to my point about the relative sizes of the European and Pacific Theatres...

I like mucking around with maps, so I've added polar regions to the MWiF global map and then wrapped it around a sphere.

It helps to put things in perspective. Each square represents a hex.

Cheers, Neilster

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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by ncc1701e »

Nice pictures. This is already a big map. Thinking of it, perhaps the game should not be hex based for land warfare. Sea area works well for naval warfare. Anyone would disagree not to use hex for land warfare.

Why I tend to HOI model now? [&:]

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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by ncc1701e »

Just to add that I think the great force of WIF / MWIF is its naval warfare. At a better detailed scale, the best is WITP-AE or Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations but for a grand strategy game, is this playable?
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by warspite1 »

ORIGINAL: ncc1701e

Just to add that I think the great force of WIF / MWIF is its naval warfare. At a better detailed scale, the best is WITP-AE or Command: Modern Air / Naval Operations but for a grand strategy game, is this playable?
warspite1

I don't see how WITP-AE can be defined as a grand strategy game. The game is do detailed.

Whether Japanese or American, one is giving really detailed, operational orders to individual units / task forces such that I think this game better sits in the operational / tactical category.

I definitely think at a strategic level WIF works brilliantly, although as I said at the outset, there are things that I would have liked to have seen (and that I think is capable of happening with the game now on computer) to make it just a bit more realistic. But that is probably just me being a naval fan.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by Neilster »

ORIGINAL: ncc1701e

Nice pictures. This is already a big map. Thinking of it, perhaps the game should not be hex based for land warfare. Sea area works well for naval warfare. Anyone would disagree not to use hex for land warfare.

Why I tend to HOI model now? [&:]

Well, MWiF is a computer version of the the paper and dice game World in Flames, so it was always going to be hex-based. Hexes are a very useful abstraction, which is why they are still used in computer wargames that are clean-sheet designs.

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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by Chickenboy »

ORIGINAL: warspite1
I don't see how WITP-AE can be defined as a grand strategy game. The game is do detailed.

I see your point, but I firmly believe that WiTP:AE is both a strategy game as well as an operational wargame. The only one I can think of that encompasses both sides of this gulf.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by warspite1 »

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: warspite1
I don't see how WITP-AE can be defined as a grand strategy game. The game is do detailed.

I see your point, but I firmly believe that WiTP:AE is both a strategy game as well as an operational wargame. The only one I can think of that encompasses both sides of this gulf.
warspite1

Another thing I associate with a strategic game is building choices in the hands of the player. Iirc, only the Japanese get that in WITP-AE - so that, to me, would be another reason not to classify in that genre. But I don't even know if there are any set definitions - and at the end of the day I guess such attempts at delineation are of limited value. If the game is good and has the love of its followers, who cares what type of game it is? [:)]
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by philabos »

Warspite1 write up early in this thread inspired me to get back into MWIF again.Going through the tutorial videos.
Obviously a massive programming effort.
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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by Neilster »

For what it's worth, as WiTP:AE is concerned with the huge Pacific theatre, I think it can be considered a strategic game. That it has tactical elements is due to the game's incredible level of detail; and hence the life absorbing time required to complete a game [;)]

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RE: THE ultimate WW2 grand strategy game

Post by rico21 »

A good modern thread and topical[:)], forward-looking[&o], full of advertising from the past[:(]
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