Gary Tatro
Posts: 1213
Joined: 2/1/2002
From: MA, US
Status: offline
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[SIZE=3]GARY TATRO MOUNTS HIS SOAP BOX AHHM AHHM[/SIZE]
In an effort to educate not to infuriate I will now advise all the players of WC2003 of some of the weeknesses of SPWAW 7.1 and give my pledge!
SPWAW has many weeknesses as a game, but if you choose to play within a set of rules that are honorable and reasonable you can have the best and most enjoyable turn base strategy wargame playing of your life. In an effort to further this goal I will now talk about all the things I have learned by accident, fiddleing, testing, or had done to me over the last two years of playing. I am going to put them in two catagories ones that I do and ones that I never do.
[SIZE=3]Ones I Never do![/SIZE]
1) PRE-DEPLOYMENT BOMBARDMENT: During deployment if you are the first player and have purchased your units and have received back your opponets turn and you go into the deployment screen you can say done and exit out, the game will then run the pre-turn 1 bombardment. If you opponent has ploted for .0 you will see where all his artillary shots will land. Then you can reload the turn and place your units in spots where his artillary did not land.
.......Way to avoid this: As player two plot your artillary during deployment for 1.0 delay. Your artillary will land after player 1 has moved but before you move. You still get in that first round of devistating fire. You just have to judge where your opponet will be.
2) RELOADING: This is where you reload the turn after you have played it the first time because your sneaky opponent set up a great trap and you fell into it. Now on the second try you cleverly avoid the trap.
.......Way to avoid this: No way hope your opponent is honorable and can deal with losing a game or two. If your opponet is always avoiding your traps this might raise a concern.
3) FAST ARTILLERY ON: By turning your fast artillary on you make it imposible for your opponent to see where you artillary is landing. Thus he has no idea in determining which way to move his troops away from the deadly fire. Or if he is moving his troop right underneath the fire. Craters might give you an idea but not all artillary makes craters. The suppression of your troops will tell you but will not help you in the decision on where to move to avoid the fire.
......Way this can be avoided is by asking your opponent to turn fast artillary off.
4) MOVE AND SHOT HEAVY FLAK: This is where all heavy flak of all nations can be picked up, moved and shot in the same turn. This makes these units extreamly deadly (and in my opinion unfair). The reason I think this is unfair and unrealistic is that MG's and ATG can not do this.
......Way this can be avoided, make a house rule. Though in the future this is going to be corrected with an OOB change.
5) DIFFERENT VERSION: This is where your opponent is playing with a older version than 7.1. This can be a big problem because in some of the older versions you could do many things that are not allowed in 7.1.
.......Way to avoid this, ask your opponent what version they are playing with. There are many different OOB's for version 7.1 so do not be supprised if you are playing with the same version but still get OOB violation messages.
6) SAVED GAME FAILED TO LOAD: This is where your opponent fails to wait an appropriate amount of time before exciting from the game and the game fails to save correctly. Now this could be an accident, but if this is happening every 2 to 3 turns your opponent might be doing it on purpose to get a allowed replay.
......Way to avoid this, very simply inform your opponent that they need to count to 10 slowly after they end their turn before exciting from the game. I ussually get up and get a drink or go to the bathroom, kiss the wife, ect, ect.
7) REQUESTING REINFORCEMENTS ON TURN 1: This is where your opponent requests reinforcemtents on turn 1 then refuses engagment until his AUX units get to the front then overwelms you with superior numerical forces.
.......Ways to avoid this, suggest a designated time before reiforcements can be requested. My rule of thumb ussually is not to request reinforcements until I need them, but to lay a ground rule I have started asking for no reinforcements until turn 10.
8) GAMING: This is where you buy specific units that in mass quanities are unstopable and would be completely unrealistic in the real life during WWII. Now I am not talking about purchasing the best infantry unit, tank unit, and artillary available to you. Everyone does this. What I am talking about is purchasing 400 bycle units or MC units and then rolling over your opponent who just does not have enough opportunity fires to stop that kind of charge.
......Ways to avoid this: I have requested reinforcements to specifically counter my opponents one sided purchases, but ussually I just beg off playing with him again afte I lose.
[SIZE=3]Things i do do sometimes[/SIZE]
9) FOR ALL OF YOU RARITY THUMPERS OUT THERE: The object of rartity on is to try to keep your opponent from purchasing unbalanced forces. Like playing the British in 40's with all Matilda's. The way the system works is that you get to purchase cetain items if they are available. Once you make your purchase the game randomly determines if they are unavailable based on the rarity level. Well as player # 1 you can start a game and make your purchases, if you do not get what you want then you can restart the game and try your purchases again, you can keep doing this until you get the force composition you want.
Now as player 2 it is even eaiser. When you load the game and go into the purchase screen you make your purchases and if you don't get what you want you just hit the escape key. SPWAW goes back out ot the load game screen then you load the game again and try your purchases again and again until you get the force composition you want.
......Ways to avoid this just don't play with rarity(I hate the rarity setting I think that it is rediculous). Agree to purchase well balanced forces. If a certain time period give a certain country an unfair advantage adjust the points or agree to a limit to those specific units (Matilda's, PantherG UHU's, Rangers). Or agree to not do the previously mentioned things and stick with your original purchase.
10 TARGETING THE ARTILLARY PARK: This is where the artillary leaves a smoke residue, waving a flag saying here I am, here I am and then ploting counter artillary battery fire for that location. Poof you opponent is without his artillary for 3-4 turns. Now you just plot one or two mortors to hit it every turn and poof you have just nullified 10% of your opponents assets (extreamly valueable assets at that since it is almost imposible to perform combined arms actions without artillary)
.....Ways to avoid this: Have your opponet agree to not target the artillary park until he has a unit that is within line of sight of it. Yeah right (trust me no one every agrees to this). So here is what I do. I purchase extra small recon units and some MC units and during set up, then I review them during deployment. I then take them and place the ones with 4 smoke ammo around my backfield and have them lay smoke on turn 1. Also you can get trucks or mobil artillary(though much more expensive) and shoot and scoot. Problem is you need to break it up into two groups to get continuous per turn fire or you end up skiping every other turn. :( Big advantage to your opponent.
[SIZE=3]Things I do almost every game[/SIZE]
11) 10% ARTILLARY LIMIT: Talk about confusion and misunderstandings. Well this limit has to be the biggest one. What I believe this should be is a limit in points on mortors, howitzers, rockets, mobil artillary, and off board artillary. This does not include 50mm mortors, but does include everything 60mm and above and does include mortors that come with companies of infantry.
This does not include forward observers.
This does not include ammo depots.
This does not include the one infantry squad that comes with the battery of mortors.
This does not include AA or SPAA.
This does not include ATG or Infantry Guns.
JUST ARTILLARY.
......Ways to avoid this confusion. A good definition of what is and isn't included in the 10% limit.
12) DELETING UNITS OUT OF YOUR PURCHASE SCREEN: Many times while purchasing a company/army of units the company will have some of the units that I want and some units that I do not want. I will keep the units I want and delete the others from purchase que getting back valuable purchase points to buy other things. A prime example would be the purchases of a MECH SS Company(it comes with 2 mobil artillary pieces), well I have already purchased all the artillary I can per the 10% limit so now I go in and delete them out of the que. Anothe example would be the Purchase of a Russian Recon Company. Well I don't want though's terrible T70 Recon tanks they suck so I delete them out of my purchase que.
......Ways to avoid this: Tell me that you want to agree to no deleting out of the purchase que. Ok I will agree. No problem.
Well that is it and here is my pledge I will not do any of the tactics I mentioned in number 1-8 and if my opponets want me to I will agree to terms on number 9-12. I feel strongly that a game without honor is wasted hours of my life and torture for the soul.
I remember a not so good movie I watched about a year ago, it had one good line in it that I always remembered.
[SIZE=4]Honor is Man's Gift to Himself.[/SIZE]
Gary Tatro Steps off his Soap Box
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