RE: What did you do today in World in Flames?

RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (Full Version)

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Numdydar -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/11/2014 3:33:49 PM)
Good point. But again, having to pay someone else to transport your goods is unlikely when you need every penny to pay for your troops and war economy. This is another likely reason this did not occur in the real war. I did some research on Vancover and at the start of the war in 1939 it did not have that much capacity. However by the time the US gets involved, the port capacity had been built so Vancover was a major port by then. Of course with Seattle, San Fransico, etc. much closer to the major PTO theaters, it was not used as much. Although it did play a major part in the Alaskian Highway project. The 1,000 mile war.

Centuur -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/11/2014 5:29:09 PM)
What you are forgetting here is that a lot of countries did actually pay for railroad transportation in neutral countries. The Germans and Italians did pay the Swiss and the Spanish money, so trains with raw materials could be savely transported. The same happened in Turkey and Sweden even allowed war material being send through the country and the Swedish railroads got paid for this too... It all depends on the thought of what is cheaper at that moment. Running trains through your own country or having longer searoutes which might be intercepted by the enemy. And there are distances involved to... And here's another one: during 1941 CW controlled ships sailed in US territorial waters from the Caribbean to Canada...

Numdydar -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 3:56:52 PM)
Sure they did. But all shipping systems have a hard limit on how much can be transported without disruptioning the internal ecnomy. Any excess capacity is open for sale. However, no one is going to transport forgien goods at the expense of their internal wellbeing. So again it is likely that in 1939 that the US could have allowed the UK to buy some excess capacity to allow this, but would it have been enough and consistant? No way to really tell for sure. But since this did not happen, I suppect it was looked at and then discarded as an option for this and other reasons that are lost to history.

Orm -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 6:54:59 PM)
I doubt that Canada had enough rail capacity from Vancouver in order to transport such amounts of raw materials. And I suspect a shortage of freight wagons would occur as well.

paulderynck -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 6:55:47 PM)
The rules of the game allow resources to be transported through neutral countries. Wargamers are optimizers. If it is thought that sending two Aussie resources to Canada so that two Canadian resources can go to the UK (and save a grand total of 4 CPs for other uses), then prepare yourself for some horrible shocks in terms of other things that can happen in the game that indeed really are gamey.

paulderynck -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 6:57:22 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Orm I doubt that Canada had enough rail capacity from Vancouver in order to transport such amounts of raw materials. And I suspect a shortage of freight wagons would occur as well. It is the US rail net that gets the resources to Eastern Canada.

Numdydar -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 7:26:26 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: paulderynck The rules of the game allow resources to be transported through neutral countries. Wargamers are optimizers. If it is thought that sending two Aussie resources to Canada so that two Canadian resources can go to the UK (and save a grand total of 4 CPs for other uses), then prepare yourself for some horrible shocks in terms of other things that can happen in the game that indeed really are gamey. And this is how house rules are born [:D]

Orm -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 7:34:04 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: paulderynck quote: ORIGINAL: Orm I doubt that Canada had enough rail capacity from Vancouver in order to transport such amounts of raw materials. And I suspect a shortage of freight wagons would occur as well. It is the US rail net that gets the resources to Eastern Canada. Then I doubt that the US rail net had that capacity. How was the rail capacity across The Rocky Mountains?

paulderynck -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 10:07:31 PM)
Pick up a copy of "Rail Baron" sometime, if you can, it's a pretty good game in and of itself. (Edit - or check out the version on Vassal.) But from that game I recall there were 10 U.S. rail routes across the Rockies - the Great Northern (to both Seattle and Portland); the Northern Pacific; the Union Pacific (to both L.A. and Portland); the Southern Pacific (to both L.A. from the southwest and San Francisco from the west); the Western Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific. Canada has two transcontinental railroads that cross the Rockies. All these rail lines existed in the 1940s.

joshuamnave -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 10:25:30 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: paulderynck Pick up a copy of "Rail Baron" sometime, if you can, it's a pretty good game in and of itself. (Edit - or check out the version on Vassal.) But from that game I recall there were 10 U.S. rail routes across the Rockies - the Great Northern (to both Seattle and Portland); the Northern Pacific; the Union Pacific (to both L.A. and Portland); the Southern Pacific (to both L.A. from the southwest and San Francisco from the west); the Western Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific. Canada has two transcontinental railroads that cross the Rockies. All these rail lines existed in the 1940s. Rail Baron isn't bad, for a beer and pretzels game. Not the kind of game that's going to satisfy the kind of player that enjoys games on the scale of WiF, for the most part, but fun to play with friends who can't get into strategically complex games. Unfortunately my own copy has been lost and it's out of print. Hard to find at a reasonable cost now. Try the 18xx games for a Rail game that satisfies on a WiF level. The US rail network was in fact quite well developed by 1940. But that's not the point. The convoy system is an abstraction, not a realistic simulation of logistics. As an abstraction, it does a good job of forcing players to make the types of strategic decisions that the main players faced during the war. How much of our navy do we devote to convoy protection? How much production needs to be funneled back into the merchant marine? Do we use shorter convoys through more dangerous waters, or longer convoy routes that are safer? How much of our war effort should focus on disrupting any convoys and supply lines? How much do we invest in ASW/sub production and technology? If you think it's unrealistic that Australian resources are sent to Canada and Canadian resources are transported to the UK, or that the US rail net would be used to ship them, ask yourself how realistic it is that Canadian and Indian factories build ships that appear in British drydocks on the other side of the world. It's an abstraction - the only two important questions are "does this abstraction do a good job simulating the strategic level decision making during the war, and is this fun to play?"

Orm -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 10:30:06 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: paulderynck Pick up a copy of "Rail Baron" sometime, if you can, it's a pretty good game in and of itself. (Edit - or check out the version on Vassal.) But from that game I recall there were 10 U.S. rail routes across the Rockies - the Great Northern (to both Seattle and Portland); the Northern Pacific; the Union Pacific (to both L.A. and Portland); the Southern Pacific (to both L.A. from the southwest and San Francisco from the west); the Western Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific. Canada has two transcontinental railroads that cross the Rockies. All these rail lines existed in the 1940s. I did not doubt that there were several rail routes across the Rockies. But that in itself is not the same as there is a capacity for a lot of raw materials. Depending on the raw materials that arrived from Australia the railroad would have been reinforced if the loads were heavy. Was there enough places for the trains to meet? Where the meeting places long enough to handle long cargo trains or would the trains have to be short? I know that Sweden had some trouble with railing ore and I know that most of the railroad that existed, in Sweden, at that time were not strong enough to handle ore shipments. And because so much effort were put into building the canal and its importance for US after it was built I somehow doubt that the US railroad had that much extra capacity. With this said I have no trouble on how WIF and MWIF handles resource transportation. Do you have a book to recommend about the US railroads creation and early history? I would love to play Rail Baron sometimes. I'll keep an eye out for it. Thank you for the recommendation. [:)]

Courtenay -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/12/2014 10:42:30 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Orm Do you have a book to recommend about the US railroads creation and early history? George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860 (New York, 1951)

Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/14/2014 12:06:59 AM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Zartacla quote: ORIGINAL: paulderynck Pick up a copy of "Rail Baron" sometime, if you can, it's a pretty good game in and of itself. (Edit - or check out the version on Vassal.) But from that game I recall there were 10 U.S. rail routes across the Rockies - the Great Northern (to both Seattle and Portland); the Northern Pacific; the Union Pacific (to both L.A. and Portland); the Southern Pacific (to both L.A. from the southwest and San Francisco from the west); the Western Pacific; the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe; and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific. Canada has two transcontinental railroads that cross the Rockies. All these rail lines existed in the 1940s. Rail Baron isn't bad, for a beer and pretzels game. Not the kind of game that's going to satisfy the kind of player that enjoys games on the scale of WiF, for the most part, but fun to play with friends who can't get into strategically complex games. Unfortunately my own copy has been lost and it's out of print. Hard to find at a reasonable cost now. Try the 18xx games for a Rail game that satisfies on a WiF level. The US rail network was in fact quite well developed by 1940. But that's not the point. The convoy system is an abstraction, not a realistic simulation of logistics. As an abstraction, it does a good job of forcing players to make the types of strategic decisions that the main players faced during the war. How much of our navy do we devote to convoy protection? How much production needs to be funneled back into the merchant marine? Do we use shorter convoys through more dangerous waters, or longer convoy routes that are safer? How much of our war effort should focus on disrupting any convoys and supply lines? How much do we invest in ASW/sub production and technology? If you think it's unrealistic that Australian resources are sent to Canada and Canadian resources are transported to the UK, or that the US rail net would be used to ship them, ask yourself how realistic it is that Canadian and Indian factories build ships that appear in British drydocks on the other side of the world. It's an abstraction - the only two important questions are "does this abstraction do a good job simulating the strategic level decision making during the war, and is this fun to play?" Actually, the US had a lot of trouble with their rail lines when they entered the war, but the railroad industry came through splendidly when needed. Because the German subs were sinking the oil tankers along the eastern seaboard in 1942, getting oil from the south to the northeast (e.g., gasoline and heating oil) was a tremendous problem. Congress had blocked building oil pipelines in the years leading up to the US entry (1939, 1940, 1941) and although they were eventually built, there was a major oil shortfall in the interim. But the railroad industry dredged up every oil car they could find, and with unexpected cooperation between railroad companies, were able to keep the NE in gas and oil until the pipelines could be built. The US got better at protecting the oil tankers too. I just finished reading (in November) A Call to Arms by Maury Klein which covered a lot of this.

brian brian -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/15/2014 2:40:06 PM)
I haven't looked at the numbers but my change to using the Australian resources in Canada feels like it frees up more than 4 convoy points, but that is probably because I am now simply using the Venezuelan and Port-of-Spain oil resources in the UK factories. I know I have never played a game where I could use the New Caledonia resource in France before. The stronger the French are, the better. Moving the resources this ways just flows from the abstractions of the game. In Real Life�, there would be trade between Australia and Canada based on the economies of those countries and what each needed. Froonp did a lot of great work sorting out what each resource hex on the map represents. I don't know the results for Australia, but I would imagine it would mostly be coal. I know that today Australia is a major coal exporter. Would Canada need Australian coal in WWII? Probably not. Plenty of coal in Canada and the USA that would be far cheaper to get to Canada if they needed it. I think one of the Australian resource hexes might simply represent agricultural production, as the one in Holland does. Using that is somewhat modeled by the Food in Flames optional rule which has always been interesting, but too powerful to give the Allies, who don't really need any help in the game. But with generic resources, you will see results like this and I don't think a few House Rules could really fix much, nor are really needed. The other way to go would be to increase the detail of the resource hexes. So then the Finnish resource hex up near Petsamo would be a Nickel mine. This was very important for the Germans, and Hitler issued military directives accordingly. But it is a level of detail that would turn off many potential players. Without X amount of Nickel coming in, you can only produce so much armor plate and then only build so many tanks and thus only place so many ARM/MECH counters on the board. I think in Real Life�, by the time the Finnish Nickel supplies could no longer reach Germany it was all a moot point in terms of German production. And that kind of stuff can go on in far too much detail for most. Germany got some supplies of the mineral compound Wolfram, which was also very important for various weapons, from occasional Japanese blockade runners docking at Bordeaux, iirc, as well as rubber supplies. Do you want to game individual merchant ships? I did see a magazine article on a computer game of WWII that did model the individual mineral supplies of various countries. I forget the name of the game. The article detailed how the best USA strategy was to invade Mexico in September 1939 to optimize their mineral supplies. This was coming from the publisher of the game I believe, and the article turned me off from the very idea of the game. It seemed like they were very interested in the economics of WWII but had no concern for the political realities.

Shannon V. OKeets -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/15/2014 5:17:05 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: brian brian I haven't looked at the numbers but my change to using the Australian resources in Canada feels like it frees up more than 4 convoy points, but that is probably because I am now simply using the Venezuelan and Port-of-Spain oil resources in the UK factories. I know I have never played a game where I could use the New Caledonia resource in France before. The stronger the French are, the better. Moving the resources this ways just flows from the abstractions of the game. In Real Life�, there would be trade between Australia and Canada based on the economies of those countries and what each needed. Froonp did a lot of great work sorting out what each resource hex on the map represents. I don't know the results for Australia, but I would imagine it would mostly be coal. I know that today Australia is a major coal exporter. Would Canada need Australian coal in WWII? Probably not. Plenty of coal in Canada and the USA that would be far cheaper to get to Canada if they needed it. I think one of the Australian resource hexes might simply represent agricultural production, as the one in Holland does. Using that is somewhat modeled by the Food in Flames optional rule which has always been interesting, but too powerful to give the Allies, who don't really need any help in the game. But with generic resources, you will see results like this and I don't think a few House Rules could really fix much, nor are really needed. The other way to go would be to increase the detail of the resource hexes. So then the Finnish resource hex up near Petsamo would be a Nickel mine. This was very important for the Germans, and Hitler issued military directives accordingly. But it is a level of detail that would turn off many potential players. Without X amount of Nickel coming in, you can only produce so much armor plate and then only build so many tanks and thus only place so many ARM/MECH counters on the board. I think in Real Life�, by the time the Finnish Nickel supplies could no longer reach Germany it was all a moot point in terms of German production. And that kind of stuff can go on in far too much detail for most. Germany got some supplies of the mineral compound Wolfram, which was also very important for various weapons, from occasional Japanese blockade runners docking at Bordeaux, iirc, as well as rubber supplies. Do you want to game individual merchant ships? I did see a magazine article on a computer game of WWII that did model the individual mineral supplies of various countries. I forget the name of the game. The article detailed how the best USA strategy was to invade Mexico in September 1939 to optimize their mineral supplies. This was coming from the publisher of the game I believe, and the article turned me off from the very idea of the game. It seemed like they were very interested in the economics of WWII but had no concern for the political realities. You would need to model stockpiles too. And throughout the war countries created replacements when they couldn't get a raw material. Synthetic oil from coal and nylon tires from oil are the two best known. Also, in the US, the lack of a critical resource saw a new "gold rush" in the western US when prospectors and mining interests jumped in as the prices paid for raw minerals rose in response to shortages. Modeling the whole manufacturing side of the war would be a major project. Once the US solved its shortages of raw materials, there was another major bottleneck with the distribution of those resources. Gearing limits in WIF is a good system for dealing with a lot of that.

ngcavscout -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/18/2014 5:42:43 AM)
Today I bought and downloaded the game. I have a group of me and 3 others that used to play the tabletop version back in the late 90's, but cats, kids, wives, and lack of table space have combined to stop us from playing in over a decade, hopefully hot seat play brings the magic back. I have been waiting for this release since before it began development at Matrix.

WarHunter -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/25/2014 1:24:25 AM)
Created Warhunter's Weather & Terrain Mod Visit Mod forum to download.

Dorb -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (1/28/2014 11:03:19 PM)
Downloaded v1.1.1

Dorb -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (2/20/2014 11:13:43 PM)
Had to dig this up. Updated to 1.1.3 finally. And must say have not been doing much with this game. Too many other great games coming out now. Figured when get closer to the AI release I will get back into it. - but still love it.

Sabre21 -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (2/21/2014 12:27:53 AM)
I have to agree that I haven't been doing anything lately either and think this will be one of those games that will stay on my computer till I croak. I'm hoping for a good AI too but in the meantime me and Bloodybill are waiting on Netplay to get working.

shaddock -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (2/21/2014 2:32:54 AM)
My partner and I stopped playing in December for the same reason - net play. Which is too bad really. Such a nice looking game. Oh well there are other games out there to play.

Zorachus99 -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (2/22/2014 1:20:59 AM)
Same...

ess1 -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (2/22/2014 8:27:44 AM)
Uninstalled.

Dr. Foo -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (2/25/2014 3:53:12 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Dorb Had to dig this up. Updated to 1.1.3 finally. And must say have not been doing much with this game. Too many other great games coming out now. Figured when get closer to the AI release I will get back into it. - but still love it. Yeah, I'm just going to let this one sit for six months to a year. By then I'm sure all the bugs will be gone. Too many bugs make the game too unstable and frequent crashes and freezes just make it no fun to play. I'll revisit later in 2014.

WarHunter -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (4/2/2014 2:49:15 PM)
Playing MWiF via Teamviewer and Ventrilo. While waiting for NetPlay. Note we are not using the hotseat mode. We are using the Solo mode. So USentry is not exactly "secret". Also we have a house rule for Russia/Japan to keep some units in the East. Just because there is no coded rule. 4 units each minimum by 1940.

WarHunter -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (4/11/2014 3:38:23 PM)
63 impulses played with Firmir, the Gentleman Gamer from Germany. I think he plans on invading the USSR today. Its currently impulse 4 of March/April 1941, bad weather.

Ingtar -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (4/14/2014 5:00:51 PM)
I watched a game fall apart after an odd set of circumstances. Japan DOW on Netherlands early. I goof and set France as the controller. When France goes Vichy, part of the fleet had been forced out of France, causing nothing to be Free French. Dutch government in exile turns over territory to Axis (Germany). Production chart shows 4 idle Japanese oil, but clicking cannot locate them. They no longer see accessible. Time to start again.

AxelNL -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (4/14/2014 5:19:16 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Ingtar I watched a game fall apart after an odd set of circumstances. Japan DOW on Netherlands early. I goof and set France as the controller. When France goes Vichy, part of the fleet had been forced out of France, causing nothing to be Free French. Dutch government in exile turns over territory to Axis (Germany). Production chart shows 4 idle Japanese oil, but clicking cannot locate them. They no longer see accessible. Time to start again. Although this probably doesn't happen that much, a savegame would help to see if there is an issue which could appear at other places.

Ingtar -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (4/14/2014 6:34:58 PM)
Notice. I am starting again soon. I was acting way out to test some things, not really playing. It got one abend and e-mailed itself. I'll look at the instructions for uploading another save...

AxelNL -> RE: What did you do today in World in Flames? (4/14/2014 6:56:02 PM)
quote: ORIGINAL: Ingtar Notice. I am starting again soon. I was acting way out to test some things, not really playing. It got one abend and e-mailed itself. I'll look at the instructions for uploading another save... You sound like you did what some of the beta team members are doing!

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