is it just me (Full Version)

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robjw -> is it just me (2/15/2012 1:35:04 PM)

I have been playing this game for 2 or 3 months now. I started off thinking i was going to like it a lot but the more I played it the more tedious it became. I have won some games, lost others. But it seems to me that however you play it all the games come down to a simple war of attrition. I have to destroy your stuff faster than you can destroy mine and/or I have to produce stuff faster than you can ( AI always wins this one ) .
Also I find the amount of 'admin' gets very tedious . Every turn you have create new units, assign HQ, transfer troops or weapons to it etc. As the game progresses and you have several cities and a number of factories you may have to go through this procedure a dozen times or more each turn before you can proceed with anything else. In a long game you are doing it hundreds of times. I want to like this game as it has much going for it but I am beginning to lose interest/patience. Am I the only one who thinks like this ?



Tac2i -> RE: is it just me (2/15/2012 2:07:35 PM)

All I can say is that I've been playing AT/ATG since 2007 and I'm still not tired of it. The random game option is what keeps my interest level up. I play solitaire vs the AI and also usually have two or three PBEM games in progress. I'm looking forward to a future version of AT with even more refinements and fun.



Krafty -> RE: is it just me (2/15/2012 2:56:04 PM)

You can try less cities too. Might make things a little less daunting. I personally like the huge scenarios where the turns take a huge amount of time and mental investment. Makes things all the sweeter when you pull off a good encirclement, or ambush. But I know thats not for everyone. There are also a ton of scenarios available, search for the scenario bank and see what they have to offer. I believe theres some scenarios without production even.

Also try some of the huge world war two scenarios, or Bomburs global domination mod (or Ernies)  production is lessened as the scale has gone vertical compared to vanilla AT/G. Youll go from 100s of riflemen being built a turn, along with everything else, to say, 10 rifleman, a few hundred supplies, a tank, half a ship, and some synthetic raws a turn, as the scale for units is different. Not 10 men a squad, its a 1,000 men a regiment, so you can see how production figures would change.

Playing as the Ottomans, you can see my AAR in the AAR forum, turns are very short (its the AI processing that takes up teh time!) production is easy to control, as is deployment. But the choices one makes are much bigger and more important.



altipueri -> RE: is it just me (2/15/2012 5:16:29 PM)

Is it possible to turn off production during a game against the AI? I too sometimes get bored with the production and allocation. Particularly as I find if I don't beat the AI quickly then I'll lose because it's just cleverer than I am, and is not subject to boredom.



Krafty -> RE: is it just me (2/15/2012 5:33:08 PM)

No its not possible as an option. Perhaps thats a good suggestion for the next patch. I dont know if theres still a Supply Depot location type or not in ATG, but if there is, prolly can be done. It surely can be done if you make your own scenario. Generate a random map the size you want, with the least amount of towns, hit the Edit button, remove the towns (gotta delete the LocType not just paint over the hex with plains), add each side a supply depot to cover the supplies youll need to support an army, and have at it. If you want you can add some pre built divisions to each side, and live with what you got.

If you were more creative you could add events that give you units.

Any The Operational Art of War scenario you could think of, can be recreated in ATG if thats your cup of tea.

You then get the bonus of a great supply system, with the Operational aspect of wargames youre used to.

Personally I *LIKE* the production and research. Its what seperates this game from say War in the East, where only one side gets to choose its force composition, or TOAW3 where niether side does any production. And niether game has research, so youre stuck with what the real world scenario, or scenario designer decides you should have.

What irks me endlessly about games like War in the East, is that I dont want to waste my Armaments, supplies, and heavy industry, producing shat like teh Me-109E2 or, or Panzer III, that are totally useless and waste resources id rather be pumping into the 38(t) early war, and the panther late war.



budd -> RE: is it just me (2/16/2012 12:19:12 AM)

there does tend to be alot of clicking and admin at times, especially on larger maps. A game with this much user freedom probably will always have alot of upkeep. I think a building queue and maybe unit templates and auto pilot for placement of units would lessen this some. I fill out my lines and reserves and have some replacements waiting in an Hq for transfer, if i have enough troops i just turn the production sliders to zero, so you can turn off production on a city by city basis , factories the same way.I'd still like to see a queue where you could set production of whatever unit you want , what amount, and then move on to the next thing in the queue or have it stop and produce nothing until you submit another order. Expand the report at the beginning of the turn to give you the info. a few times i've forgotten to check production on one location or another and ended up with like 50 level bombers or something to that effect. Most of the time i enjoy all the logistic stuff, game reminds me of a more military civilization game. What helped me was just having a routine for my turn i.e. check supply in Hq's first adjust as needed, check production, engineering tasks, ect. ect. With the suggestions of the community, this game will only get better and will be on my harddrive a very long time.



robjw -> RE: is it just me (2/16/2012 4:03:27 PM)

Thanks everyone for your input. Perhaps I will persevere some more and try some of your suggestions.



TPM -> RE: is it just me (2/16/2012 4:55:34 PM)

I agree, the game does tend to "stretch" a bit as time goes on, and the admin time starts to really tax you. Of course, I would think most games are like this. Some ideas have been put forward elsewhere in the forum regarding templates, automatic reinforcements, etc. Hopefully these things can be implemented, but in any event, I feel the game is still heads and shoulders above most games of this type...



Jeffrey H. -> RE: is it just me (2/16/2012 7:36:47 PM)

The "click load' of the game admin tasks is too much really. It does get quite tedious. And unfortunately, most random games boil down to grinding the AI into dust. The way the game plays out almost always forces combat into narrow channels. The unit database doesn't really seem to make much difference, oddly enough.

Playing a human can really change all this, but that isn't always ideal. I wish the AI were improved and the UI were improved to reduce the click load.






Arditi -> RE: is it just me (2/19/2012 10:39:43 PM)

NEVER tedious for me.  I've been playing daily for many years now.  Try differing types of maps, personalties and various skill levels for newness and learning new things.  This is a near perfect wargame for me.



Krafty -> RE: is it just me (2/22/2012 8:32:10 PM)

Thats whats cool about this game, it can be different things for different people, for me its the premier 4x game, I hardly think of it as a wargame, though it definitly is and can be seen as such by people.

The tank pictures or infantry pictures are just pictures, you explore your surroundingbs, expand your empire, discover your enemies, find their weakness (they went for armored cars, ill go for light tanks!) and exploit them, then exterminate those enemies.



Ormand -> RE: is it just me (4/7/2012 2:32:10 AM)

I have to agree somewhat about your "admin" comment. Basically, every turn you have to figure out where some replacements should go and where to build new units. In addition, due to the readiness loss when transferring outside the command tree, it is best to assign production to an HQ. But, each turn you have to select an new HQ and transfer, etc. And, if you forget, you find an HQ with too many rifle, and difficulty getting rid of them. This is a bit tedious, but at the same time part of what is good about the game as you get to build your army your way.

On the first half of your comment, while I find the "end game" something of a letdown, I hate to admit it, but this is pretty much what war (from start to end) between nations boils down to. The letdown comes from having crushed the front and the other side tries to rebuild, but the units are weaker because their readiness and experience are low, and you keep pushing them back. But, this can take a long time because the distances might be fairly far (in large random games) and since they make a line, you have to attack to get through. So, it will take several turns to end it, which all seem the same, and are grinding to an inevitable conclusion. But, this is not far from reality. Think of the eastern front. After July '43 (and some may even say January '42) the Germans were essentially done, but it took another 1.75 years to get to Berlin and finish it. And if it wasn't for Hitler's stupidity, it might have taken as much as three years. The same in the Pacific. By early '44, the Japanese were hopelessly over matched in terms of equipment and the outcome was pretty much inevitable. The only question being in the U.S. could take the losses.

In the end, the grand encirclements and whatnot are really just a part of wearing down the opponent to the point that they can't fight.

I guess the best way to avoid this grind and letdown is play a scenario that has well defined objectives and endpoint. That is a nice feature of this game, you can play either type of game. Especially, with an economy. Some other games, like TOAW don't have this feature.



Krafty -> RE: is it just me (4/7/2012 5:03:38 PM)

Yeah I mean all wargames, and surely every 4x game, is going to simply be a war of, I have more stuff than you, or I need to get more stuff than you, or I have to kill more stuff than you kill of mine.

But when you take production, and expansion out of the game, what youre left with The Operational Art of War 3. While its fun sure, and definitly one of my top 10 games....it gets boring because of the limited scope. At the end of the day, im just moving counters with combat values.

While im not the biggest fan of the HOI series, HOI2 was great, and adds to the average operational war game, politics and production.

ATG goes a step farther and makes you manually replace losses, not just a reinforcement slide bar, and adds random games (the 4x element, and to me, the best part)


I find that the bigger the scenario, the less production makes an impact. When its a small 1 on 1 map, the map generator has more to do with if you win or lose than anything you could ever do. You just have to read it right and know what your "play" is on any given map like that.

In the Global Domination scenarios we have going currently, the one im Axis in, theres no clear winner. The axis has a chance at a world conquest in that one. In the game where im the united states and china, its developing very differently than the other game, and may see a triple war axis vs allies, usa vs soviets, soviets vs axis, and theres literally no telling who is gonna come out on top there, even with the variable production.

It comes down to the map settings, and the scenario really. Thats what I love about ATG. Its what I love about a PC over a Mac. I can chooooooooooose what I want. Choice is power.



Josh -> RE: is it just me (4/7/2012 7:59:21 PM)

Well said Kraftwerk, my thoughts *exactly*. I love TOAW, it's a masterpiece, but in the end... for me, it lacks something; choice, the freedom to choose, the "what-if" scenarios. In TOAW you can choose what units go where, but in ATG (or Time of Fury for that matter) you can choose which front will be the most important one, and which unit goes where, and how much you will or will not reinforce, etc etc.
It's this randomness that I really like. Very a-historic but so much fun.



Ormand -> RE: is it just me (4/8/2012 4:26:04 AM)

This thread was not really meant to go down this avenue, but I'd like to give some kudos to Vic for making an interesting and engaging game. It does have warts, and I he needs to get off his butt and fix them the best he can for a future release. Just kidding, sorta.

I've played TOAW and the HOI series. I was severely disappointed with HOI3, even HOI2 to some degree. It also had a LOT of promise, but the AI was really pretty scripted. It was disappointing to find that the Japanese AI wasn't really able to do anything in the Pacific. Unfortunately, this would be true of ATG as well. TOAW is/was really intended to model a particular operational engagement and is pretty good at this. It does not have the capability that AT/ATG has to give you and alternate reality by giving you control of the "economy". TOAW is probably better than ATG at modeling specific engagements, but I don't think significantly so. I haven't played TOF mostly because I have become more conservative in what I buy, and then just focus on those. In my youth I bought just about every SPI and GDW game there was, which was stupid since I hardly could play them all. The nice thing about computers is that one engine could essentially take the place of all those.

But, back to the thread, on the strategic scale, which is what ATG is actually best at (with an operational flavor for the basic turns), it is really about attrition by wiping out more of the other guys stuff, and destroying his capacity to fight. You capture and bomb is his cities/factories to make it so that he cannot fight. What ATG needs is an AI over haul so that its strength is really amplified. Right now, when playing against the AI I don't build level or strategic bombers, aircraft carriers, or fortifications because it is unfair to use them against a handicapped AI (unless it is AI+).



Krafty -> RE: is it just me (4/8/2012 9:13:07 PM)

Alot of that would be solved if the AI wouldnt make suicidal attacks. It consistently attacks you when it has low readiness, low supply, and uses infantry against armored cars and mgs in wooded hexes...

Though as said, throw an AI+ in there and im not winning every single game. With 3x the production, it can at least fill its front line with units. And itll usually be a tech level or so ahead of me.

AI++ I can generally only beat on archipelago type maps. Or on garguantuan sized maps, where it fails in a local area, and that area can be used to mine for 99 XP units. Im surely pulling out every gamey stop I can think of against AI++.

But ive come to terms with AI opponents. They suck. Or they have insane bonuses to make them challenging, which also sucks. I can either learn to roleplay my games a bit, and enjoy the logistical side of things, or play humans. Otherwise ill constantly be disapointed in wargames. As they get more and more complex, its more and more impossible to create an AI for them. Until theres a well developed AI that can adapt to the rules of any game, and that can be purchased like game engines and other tech is purchased and rolled into most games, you wont see a challenging AI that plays by the same rules. Dev cycles are too short, and theres little return for the effort.




robjw -> RE: is it just me (4/9/2012 4:03:53 PM)

Since starting this thread I have played a few more games and have found that I am enjoying them a lot more now. This is partly because to begin with I hadn't discovered how to set the AI level and was playing way above my skill. I am now playing at a level more suited, learning more about the game and ready to move up a level. Thanks for all your comments and encouragement.



Adam Rinkleff -> RE: is it just me (4/18/2012 3:33:29 AM)


quote:

Every turn you have create new units, assign HQ, transfer troops or weapons to it etc. As the game progresses and you have several cities and a number of factories you may have to go through this procedure a dozen times or more each turn before you can proceed with anything else. In a long game you are doing it hundreds of times.

If you want to play a 1v1, I've edited the .at2 so that you only have production in your capitol, and there is no production in cities. I find that simplifies the micromanagement a lot, and it also eliminates the typical problem posed by one side getting an extra city. Send me an email if you want: arinkleff@gmail.com



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