|
Zovs -> RE: Why should I buy WITE2? (4/30/2021 11:52:33 AM)
|
You don't need a spreadsheet to run WitE2 (thank the stars, I hate spreadsheets). In fact you can start out by letting the AI run certain parts of the game, primarily the Air War, Supply Depot Management and Support Distribution.
The game has two main phases for each side which concludes one turn. Here is a board war game concept for the turn sequence, note that the Axis generally go first but not in all scenarios:
1 Player Turn representing 1 week of action consists of:
Axis Air Planning Phase
Axis Ground Phase
Soviet Air Planning Phase
Soviet Ground Phase
During the Air Planning Phase you can set your Air Directives and adjust how the air war is conducted for each mission type (ground attack, ground support, bomb city, recon, air superiority and naval) which includes details like altitude, escorts and for ground attack which types of targets and their priority to set them to (ignore, low, normal, medium and high). For each Air Directive Mission you can assign one or more to each Air Group (for example for AGN that would be Luftflotte 1) each Air Group can have up to 10 Air Missions assigned to it. This is a very basic run down and there are many more details but as your just starting out you can just simply ignore all those details because the scenario designers have implemented a basic and effective set of Air Doctrines for each mission for the start of each scenario. In effect you review what has been set and just simply press the end turn to execute the Air Phase with all the default Air Directives. These work reasonable well and are safe in that generally the you will see between 1800 to 2800 Soviet aircraft destroyed with the loss of 75-175 of your own losses (IIRC). Much later on you can read up on how to adjust things and setup your own Air Directives and Missions but you can ignore all that and trust that the automated Air Assist is working correctly. This is a nice way to ease into the ground war and learn the air war as you go along, for example during testing since I was not used to WitW air war I had to learn things in chunks, slowly incorporating things like how to target ground attacks or adjust the ground support to follow various HQs.
For the land warfare system and phase it's much easier in general.
Essentially each ground combat unit has two methods of attack available to it, hasty attack and deliberate attack. A hasty attack consumes less movement, combat prep and fatigue points but at the risk of not being able to dislodge (retreat, route or shatter) a enemy unit. Deliberate attacks consume more of your combat prep, movement and fatigue but generally have a high chance of success. To use a hasty attack you just right click on a unit with your active unit and it automatically attacks. When you do this (right hover over a hex a dialog pops up showing you the estimated combat value of both sides, depending on fog of war, the hex and road type, climate, ground and air conditions, fort level and control and the name and combat value, again depending on fog of war of the enemy hex. To perform a deliberate attack you simply hold the shift key down and it displays the same info on hover and it is the only type of attack where you can select multiple hexes to attack with.
For land movement you just simply select a unit and point the mouse to where you want to move it to and it shows you the movement point costs for each hex on that path and to move to that hex you just right click. Built is is admin and normal land movement, zoc, terrain, weather and the like.
Supply is key in this version of the game, but you can spend 5 admin points and let the AI manage your depots until you get the hang of how to setup them up and use the supply network. Essentially each Depot moves freight from the national supply source to your front line units and in that process trains (freight) and trucks move that supply (ammo, fuel and I suppose food) for your units to consume.
In general each combat maneuver unit is a division, with both brigades, regiments and corps (Soviet) being available, each HQ can be a Corps, Army, Army Group or Front or Higher HQ. Each combat unit should be within 5 hexes of its Corps or 15 if attached to an Army to receive support units from that HQ or you can directly attach support units to divisions and brigades, for example engineer battalions, or anti air or tank companies or battalions. You can lock each HQ in its support units so you can manage it your self or you can unlock them and set a value (say 3 for example) and the AI will attempt to fill those HQs with the number set (3 in this example) for each type of support units, engineers, AAA, artillery, etc.
So in a nutshell, you can automate the Air War, automate Supply Depot Management and automate Support unit distribution to learn the basics of the game. And later on learn these systems at your fancy and have both fun and an enriching experience.
Its all really fun and learning to master the tactical nuances and operational strategies takes a life time. You can get good results against the AI as a learning tool, but playing against others is really a challenge.
Hands down WitE2 is the best of the best, the USMC or Royal Marines or Commando's and Para's all rolled into one of all Eastern Front wargames.
I can provide screenshots if you would like.
|
|
|
|
