karonagames
Posts: 4712
Joined: 7/10/2006
From: The Duchy of Cornwall, nr England
Status: offline
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There is no doubt WITE2 is, and plays, very differently to WITE1. Here are 10 changes that I have struggled to adjust to. This assessment is based on Playing a 1941 H2H campaign as Axis and achieving a 68 turn decisive victory. A 52 turn defeat in H2H Stalingrad to Berlin, and 2 ongoing 1941 H2H campaigns at T10 and T40 plus various games against the AI.
1:The Map.. The new map projection has added about 4 hexes to the distance between Smolensk and Moscow, and reduced the distance between Kiev and Rostov by 2 hexes, consequently I have found it harder to get to the gates of Moscow, but easier to get Rostov by December. Heavy woods are now a much bigger deal than they were in WITE1.
2: The Victory Conditions: By far the best change/addition to WITE2. However, the new meta of gaining/losing bonus VPs leads to having to make some strange decisions about whether you should capture a city if you don’t believe you can hold it until beyond the historical recapture date. Being able to hold Orel. Kursk, Kharkhov and Stalino through the first winter becomes very important.
3: The Air War AI. The air war AI management clearly needs fine tuning. The increase in operational losses, particularly for the Axis is excessive, and not being able to turn off unescorted transport flights when giving AI full control, leads to excessive losses of transport planes and pilots.
4: Logistics. The new logistics system is clearly a huge improvement compared to WITE1, but the need to be able to boost logistics to enable players to meet the VP deadlines has led to having to make some really tough decisions. HQ buildup in WITE1 clearly didn’t work. It’s replacement in WITE2: “Super Depots”, may be as problematic. Overall I think that the logistics dial needs to be moved up from the famine of freight you get when not using super depots and down from the feast of freight you get when you do use them. This is a tricky problem to be solved.
5: Entrenchment. The changes to entrenchment make defensive planning much harder than WITE1. I lost the game of Stalingrad to Berlin in 52 turns because it was totally impossible to build strong enough fortified lines on traditional defense lines such as the Dneiper and the Vistula. Can someone please tell me what the new meta is for Axis defense from 1943 onwards, because I don't know how to do it with the current ruleset.
6: Fatigue: I need to do more direct comparisons with WITE1, but my gut is telling me that you gain more, and lose less, fatigue in WITE2 compared to WITE1. I have definitely shown Joel that units in the Reserve TBs do not recover from fatigue at anything like a reasonable rate, but on map too you can sit inactive, neither attacking or being attacked, for months and have a ton of fatigue still sitting around.
7: CV Variance. Again I need to do more direct comparisons with WITE1, but again my gut is telling me average CV Variance from initial CV is much more extreme in WITE2 compared to WITE1. This has always been the aspect of the game that has caused me to ragequit from WITE1, but I have seen that it is not asymmetrical. I can’t imagine how my opponent reacted when Sevastopol’s initial CV of 1200+ got reduced to less than 100, particularly when we are never shown why - other than to be told “oh- you must have missed some die rolls. I think this much RNG is bad for the game. Either the initial CV figure needs to be made more accurate and/or there needs to be less variance.
8: Delay points. Why? It is hard enough to meet VP deadlines without having something else to prevent me gaining hexes. I can understand having a mechanic like this in Ardennes Offensive games where traffic jams had a significant influence, but not in a game with weekly turns and 10 miles per hex.
9: The Weather. The new Weather system will probably be my rage quit trigger, like CV variance, too much RNG is too much for me. I have experienced 9 turns of rain in row in July and August which has strangled my advance on Leningrad, 14 turns of Blizzard starting in November that prevented Operation Typhoon and being able to create any form of winter defense. In the game I won in 68 turns the Blizzard missed the frontlines in December, so I only had to survive about 6 turns of Blizzard. The extra 8 turns of blizzard in my current game will take much longer to recover from and give a worse 1942 jump off point. In my Stalingrad to Berlin campaign I had 2 turns of heavy mud in 52 turns compared to the 8 turns that are guaranteed in WITE1. The 6 turns difference allowed my opponent to advance about 18 hex rows than he would not have been able to in WITE1.
10: Balance. It may be too early in the games's evolution to form an opinion on balance, but I think that the weather is having too much influence on the balance of the game. Although the weather system in WITE1 was too black and white, every player on each side knew what to expect and what to plan for. I am not saying that there should be no variance from the historical weather patterns, but that the extreme variance I have seen so far is making the difference between winning a game and losing a game, enjoying a game and not enjoying a game. From my Stalingrad to Berlin experience I also have a concern that the Red Army gets much stronger much sooner in WITE2 compared to WITE1, but I do not yet know if this is true of the 1941 campaign game. My gut is telling me that I will lose in 1944 in my current 1941 game based on the number of guards units I am seeing compared to the game I won.
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