Zovs
Posts: 6668
Joined: 2/23/2009
From: United States
Status: offline
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What's the game like to play?
To me it's pure joy, total emersion and is a gift that keeps on giving.
WITE2 is game that borders somewhat on the strategic but far more on the Army/Corps/Divisional operational level. What I mean by that is the strategic options are limited in scope, you decide where the main direction of attack is to go as the Axis (are your priorities Leningrad at all costs? Moscow or bust? or the Southern route), but as the Axis you can't strategic influence things too much. There is an advanced option to turn on Theater Boxes which gives you control of the forces that are off map, but if you muck it up you could see those theaters dramatically shift in VP towards the Soviets and likewise if you pour too many on map units into the theater boxes you'll not have enough units on the map. So strategically speaking you have a little wiggle room with TB on, but no an overwhelming amount. The Axis has no way to influence the strategic production and direction of things. The Soviet side can produce Rifle Corps, Tank and Mech Corps later on during the war, but the strategic decisions are minimal in my view. As a direct comparison WarPlan is a Strategic level Corps/Army level game, and you have tons of strategic options available (where and when to attack France, 1939 or May 1940 or wait till June 1940?) or how much if any to send assets to North Africa. WITE2 is not a strategic level war game, it's mainly operational in scope with some strategic elements.
WITE2 in my opinion puts you at basically the level of command as OKH and STAVKA, plus you also are playing the role of OKL and VVS commander and also the Army Group, Army, Corps and divisional commander as well.
All that may sound like a like (and it is) but the UI is pretty intuitive in my opinion. The game mechanics are pretty straight forward and simple, putting it all together takes some practice, but it's not out of reach. Knowing GG WITE or WITW is helpful but not necessary.
If your comfortable with moving divisions around the map and just making sure they are within command range of their assigned Corps HQ (5 hexes) and that Corps HQ is within command range of their assigned Army HQ (15 hexes) and then that Army HQ is within the command range of their Army Group HQ (45 hexes) and that Army Group HQ are then within command range of their Army HQs (90 hexes) then you'll be fine.
For example the 1st Infantry Division is assigned to the I Corps HQ and that command range is 5 hexes. The I Corps HQ is assigned to the 18th Army HQ and this range is 15 hexes. The 18th Army is assigned to the Army Group North HQ and this range is 45 hexes and lastly the Army Group North HQ is assigned to OKH and this range is 90 hexes.
Each game turn consists of 4 phases, 2 phases for each side (Axis and Soviets), and during the Axis turn he will perform his Air Execution phase followed by his Ground Execution phase, and then the Soviet player gets his Air Execution phase followed by his Ground Execution phase. During his Air Execution Phase, you plan out your air missions (this can be automated or run manually once you learn how to do it) such as, Ground Support, Ground Attack, Recon, City Bombing, Naval Patrol or Air Supremacy and execute them. Then each side gets a ground movement phase to move his units and perform combat. Combat is conducted during the movement phase, there are two types of attacks hasty and deliberate. Once the Air Phase and Ground Execution phase is complete the other player does his Air and Ground Phases.
Its really that simple. The complexity comes in managing your forces, supply, and other resources well. You can't attack non stop, there is a thing called Combat Prep and each unit also has Experience, Morale, Fatigue and a unit TOE. There is literally a lot of things going on under the hood but you don't know need to know them all to get started. You can learn as you go (or grow) and the manual (both the version release manual and the add on living manual) are great tools, plus you can learn from the community at large. Supply in its simplest form is where invisible freight is moved from your National Supply Source to Supply Depots, each on map Supply Depot has a range from 1-4 which indicates how much supply you want to move through or to that Depot. Generally you want your Depots repaired and at 4 near the front and 0 near your NSS so that the flow of supplies goes towards the front. Each division needs a certain amount of supply which is ammo, fuel or supplies and they divisions and HQ use trucks to get it from the Depot to the units. This is a simplistic version but the gist of it and you can let the AI manage your Depots until you get the hang of it. Railroads and roads are important here and you do get RR repair units.
Taking Operation Typhoon as an example...
The default Air Directives (i.e. the air missions) for the scenario are: three Recon missions and three Ground Support Missions, you don't even have to (if you don't want to, look at what or how these operate or were setup, you can come back to that on turn 2 by reading the manual and searching for AD or just let the AI run the air war for you as you go along). If you are completely new to the game I do recommending reading chapter 4 I think it is, which will give you an excellent overview of the game from top to bottom, then you can come back later and look stuff up.
So after clicking execute the Air Directives fly their missions, in my example I lost 7 aircraft and 14 were damaged from these three recon missions (all flak related).
Now its the ground phase and I zoomed out 2 levels to give a better view of the lower southern half of the map:
Just to the north of the map (you can just see it) is Orel which is a victory city, part of a strategy to to try is to encircle the units in the south.
I zoomed out one level more so you can see the VP hexes (the ones with the flags) that I'll try to drive towards from the south.
Zooming back in all the way in (I have Fog of War (FOW) turned off for this demo), you can see a in close view.
Selected the XXXIV Corps (outlined in Purple) shows the two division's that are assigned to it (outlined in both blue and red on the map). To the right you can see the gold outlined selected Corps HQ and that little flag there on the right showing 4:10 is the number of units assigned and command points this HQ can command. In this case 4 command points are being used out of 10, or roughly speaking each division costs 2 CP and theoretically this HQ could command up to 5 divisions, but each time a division splits into its regimental portions (3 for divisions) the CP which switch from 2 to 3, so the general idea is to not overload your HQ if at all possible. You can also see the Supply priority is set to 1, and you can see how much supply, fuel the HQ has (as well as the number of men in both the HQ and the 45th ID.
Select its sister division the 134th ID we can now see how far this unit could move:
But before doing that lets demo breaking the division down and moving it instead. Now here is the division broken down:
So this is what it looks like after quickly moving those regiments into position:
As you can see reselecting the parent HQ those regiment are out of command range. But before moving the Corps HQ, lets move the 45th ID in place and then move the HQ to get all units back in command.
As you can see now, all is well (all are outlined in blue).
So now your probably asking why I moved those regiments into those hexes, well that was so I move the rest of the infantry into these positions:
And your probably asking why I did that, well that is so I could do these moves and then this HA (hasty attack):
So here is the finally moves for 2nd Panzer Group, not perfect but good enough I think.
Hopefully that gives you a little idea of how the game plays.
...
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 Beta Tester for: Flashpoint Campaigns: Sudden Storm War in the East 1 & 2 WarPlan & WarPlan Pacific Valor & Victory DG CWIE 2 SPWW2 & SPMBT scenario creator
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