Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kim White

Hi All,
I don't think of myself as a stupid man but after several hours of trying to get to grips with this game I feel lost and confused. I've tried playing the "tutorial". It shows you two moves then sort of says "you are on your own, have a play around".

I don't know what to do or where to go.

I tried loading the campaign game. I cannot even find the main British Fleet and have no idea on how to set anything up. I think the designers are so close to this game that they are assuming WE will just "know" what to do.

If I could, I would let the computer play BOTH sides and just watch, but that choice is not available.

It would even have been good if I could just play the British and let the AI play everything else, until I learned more, but I cannot do that.

So, until AGEOD publishes a PROPER tutorial, if anyone does have a good AAR, please treat us like total idiots and tell us EXACTLY what you did, and how, to play the game.

I don't mind if you do treat me like that, I'm not proud. Just so long as it helps me UNDERSTAND.
Cheers
Kim

quote:

ORIGINAL: henri51
Another one: the tutorial shows how to recon with the air unit by moving it to a nearly enemy unit, but the manual says that air reconnaissance is carried out automatically. When I tried to recon by moving the air unit onto an enemy unit later in the tutorial, it was captured by the enemy...

quote:

ORIGINAL: henri51

The game ( I have it) clearly supposes that the player has played Civil War II (I have not, but I have played Alea jacta est, another AGEOD game and watched some CWII videos). Some critical parts of the manual are more or less unclear, in particular the parts about organizing armies, synchronizing attacks and other things, and the tutorial is much too short(at the end of the tutorial it says that there are more tutorial hints in the campaigns, but this is no excuse), and the manual was written by someone with a limited knowledge of English (my first language is French too, but that is another story). There is a lot to learn by reading the manual anyway.Knowing something about WW1 helps a bit too, but don't expect most new players to be familiar with the Schlieffen Plan or the abilities of the Austro-Hungarians vs the Serbians (they will have to find out the hard way...).

This is really too bad, because it looks like a very good game. There are a few very good video AARs on Youtube, one by The Historical Gamer and one by Pewpewchewchew, but they are not tutorials, and sometimes the players clearly don't know what they are doing, which is fun for a video, but not for learning the game.

There is an urgent need for a series of tutorial videos and/or AARs explaining the mechanics of the game.

What I did (and recommend) is to keep playing after the end of the tutorial, since the area of operations and forces are limited, just to learn some new angles. Beginners should avoid starting with the Central Forces, since they will have to fight a 3-front war against multiple enemies right from the start.

As far as complexity goes, it is my impression that this game is harder to get into than the most complex wargames(WiTE, WitPAE and HOI3), but that is just my own impression.

Henri

quote:

ORIGINAL: henri51

It IS possible (Charles Cummings[spelling?] did a tutorial series for Civil War II on Youtube): for example, videos on the menus, and creating armies and corps, videos on combat, videos on recruitment, and so on. It is "simply" a matter of breaking up the game into pieces. When you begin to learn Physics, even at the University level, you don't begin with General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

And BTW, the manual clearly says that there will (or should) be more scenarios and tutorials, which is a tacit admission that there are not enough. And also, after looking through the manual again, it is not so bad. Although there may be a few required improvements, it is well-organized and has over 150 pages. As an example of fuzzy explanation, in the section on organizing armies it says that armies can be spread out to improve defence or attack, and on the same page it warns that if an army is split into different areas, it loses its army status. It probably means that DIFFERENT armies can be spread out to improve attack or defence, but I understood that the sentence applied to a SINGLE army, which is wrong.Fortunately spotting a clear contradiction on the same page warned me that something was wrong, and after reading the section a couple of times, I finally caught the intended meaning (I think).In any case, the question of army , corps and GHQ organization is so subtle that it needs to be explained with examples.

One thing that I find particularly confusing is synchronization:does one have to press the synchronize button for each unit, or do all units in the same army synchronize if the button is pressed and an attack is launched. How about other armies and units in the same stack? Another one: the tutorial shows how to recon with the air unit by moving it to a nearly enemy unit, but the manual says that air reconnaissance is carried out automatically. When I tried to recon by moving the air unit onto an enemy unit later in the tutorial, it was captured by the enemy...

Henri