Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: WIF_Killzone

I hear ya. It took a while to play a game. I had my game suspended from the ceiling on a pulley system, balsa wood to make it light weight, it never got disturbed, just lowered it down onto table when we played. Many a good time!!! I'm really looking forward to its release.

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..forget full AI. I just don't think you'll ever get it good enough the game is just too complex.

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: WIF_Killzone

I hear ya. It took a while to play a game. I had my game suspended from the ceiling on a pulley system, balsa wood to make it light weight, it never got disturbed, just lowered it down onto table when we played. Many a good time!!! I'm really looking forward to its release.

I am pretty sure that MWIF will play faster than WIF over-the-board. It will be more difficult to review the map as a whole, simply because monitors aren't as big as the printed WIF FE maps.

But setup will be drastically reduced, from hours to minutes - yeah, I think divide by 60 works for that reduction.

During game play all the arguing about the rules will disappear (or be even more pointless than usual). But the fastest increase will be in the calculations and determining which units can move. Odd bits like out-of-supply naval units having 1 less movement point, damaged naval units having their defense factor increased by one, intercepting fighters having only half their range, bombers flying at extended range having half their bombing factors, all the effects of weather and terrain on combat, units having to cooperate in order to participate in an air mission, and on and on. Then the actual calculations for land, naval, and air combats will evaporate, since the program works that all out for you.

But two of the biggest time savers will be having the sequence of play rigidly enforced (and visible for inspection at a mouse click), and finding which air units can move during all the 8 air missions, naval air phase, and air rebase phase. Zero time will be spent examining stacks of units looking for air units that are capable of flying in the current phase/subphase.

There is also a ton of information available that relieves the players of the burden of remembering and/or figuring things out. For example, how many land units have you moved in this Combined action? Is this unit in supply now that the weather is Snow?

When playing over the board, a lot of time was spent making sure the rules were being followed and that everyone agreed that all the moves and combats were done correctly/accurately.

Unless I miss my guess, players will be playing the game more and looking up rules less.

quote:

ORIGINAL: pzgndr

quote:

..forget full AI. I just don't think you'll ever get it good enough the game is just too complex.

Hell, I doubt if I'll ever get myself good enough to play this monster. Even a poor AI is likely to keep me scrambling for quite a while as I get up to speed.

Unlike some, I remain optimistic that full AI can and will be challenging and competitive for most casual players. And frankly I don't want to be tied to some other player's schedule for 6-9 months. A computer opponent can be on MY schedule whenever I want it to be so I can actually finish games within a decent time period, and that's why folks buy and play computer games. And I don't mind waiting for the AI to be released later. It's all good.