World War II: Time of Wrath - A Preview After Action Report

[dooya]

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World War II: Time of Wrath
A Preview After Action Report[/center:621b1297b1]

The forthcoming "World War II: Time of Wrath" is a revised version of the game "world War II: Road to Victory" that was published by Matrixgames about one year ago. This preview report will present the main features of the game and a report from a short scenario.

Time of Wrath depicts World War II at the European Theater. The game is played on a hex-field map at the level of divisions and corps. Many aspects of warfare (naval warfare, aerial warfare) and administration (economy, research, diplomacy) are handled at a very abstract level.

Since I did not play Road to Victory, I do not know which features are already known and which are not. Thus, please pardon me for writing things everybody already knows.
Comments, questions and criticism are welcome.

A German version of this report can be found at the Strategycon Interactive Forum at http://www.si-games.com/forums/showthread.php?t=17898


Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Cimek for fixing a lot of language mistakes.
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[dooya]

[center:0f09c8713b](1) Preferences[/center:0f09c8713b]

After starting the game, you should visit the preference menu first.




The game supports a large variety of screen resolutions, which, however, are not detected automatically. After changing the screen resolution, you have to restart the game to adopt the changes. Note that the list of resolutions includes netbook screens.



The "Map skin" menu gives the opportunity to choose between the normal (i.e., naturalistic textures, first figure) and the classic style (board game geek style, second figure)
.




With the menu "Units skins" an old wargamer discussion will come up again: sprites or counter? There are 5 options available, which are displayed in the next figure. The panels are from left to right:

- Counter: all units are represented by counters
- Counter 2: all units are represented by counters. Yellow dots on the counter indicate the tech-level of the unit.
- Mix: land units are reprented by counters; air and naval units are represented by sprites.
- Mix 2: same as "Mix", but with those yellow dots again
- Sprites: all Units are indicated by sprites.

There are separate sprites for each major nation in the game (USA, Great Britain, France, Russia, Germany, Italy, Poland). Poland? Yes, Poland! By the way, did I mention that the developer Wastelands Interactive is from Poland?

Moreover, the sprites for land and air units are different for each of the five tech levels that are in the game. The naval sprites do not change with tech level.




"Border color" lets you pick the color of the borders (there are about 20 colors and I did not even know about most of them ).

The next point is important. "Visibility range" determines how many hexes you can see, before the fog of war starts. Thus, the fog of war does not change with respect to unit stats or weather.

The right side of the panel in the first figure of this post is pretty self explanatory.


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[dooya]

[center:501fa25b0f](2) Scenarios[/center:501fa25b0f]
The game comes with 6 scenarios/campaigns.

Two short scenarios are included:
- Poland 1939 - Fall Weiss (10 turns)
- France 1944 - Operation Overlord (25 turns)

Both are played on smaller maps.

The following campaigns are available:

- Europe 1939 - 8 years campaign, ending in December 1948 (450 turns)
- Europe 1940 - starts with "Fall Gelb", ending in December 1948 (418 turns)
- Europe 1941 - Operation Barbarossa, ending in December 1948 (361 turns)
- Europe 1944 - from Overlord (April 1944) to December 1948 (226 turns)

After picking the scenario, players can choose the nation to control.



For each scenario, a different list of available nations is displayed. Each nation can be either controlled by AI or by a player and for each nation the difficulty (in terms of available production points) can be chosen individually.

If you pick more than one nation for human control, the nations are played sequentially. This makes joint operations nearly impossible. However, this mode offers the possibility to play hotseat games. What may seem a limitation, allows for a really great feature of this game:



PBEM-multiplayer with up to 6 players! This smells like a lot of fun, me thinks...


For easy browsing through the country selection list, three different filters are available:




For the ease of demonstration we picked the short Poland scenario, with the player controlling Germany. Poland gets the maximum advantage (+50% production points), although this might not really have an effect in such a short scenario.

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[Paszczak]

- Europe 1944 - from Overlord (April 1944) to December 1948 (226 turns)

There should be June, shouldn't it?

Or maybe you can just begin Operation Overlord earlier?

[John Madlock]

South America and Oceania on the last picture? :shock:

[Anz]

Some bugs and glitches as usual in gamedev - descriptions will be fixed.

[doomtrader]

There should be June, shouldn't it?

Or maybe you can just begin Operation Overlord earlier?

We decided to start it up a little bit earlier, as there is already Overlord Scenario included.


Actually in the release version scenarios are going to be named:

[dooya]

[center:252b61e819](3) The Game Interface[/center:252b61e819]

After starting the game we directly hit the main screen




(1) Amount of Production Points
- used for buying, repairing, and upgrading units and for research

(2) Amount of Diplomatic Points
- used for political actions

(3) Amount of Strategic Movement Points
- used for strategic movements of land and air units
- cannot be accumulated from turn to turn!

(4) Amount of See Transport points
- used for transporting land units from port to port

(5) Amount of Amphibic Movement Points
- are used to perform amphibic landings
- cannot be accumulated from turn to turn!

(6) Number of Nukes
- BOOM!

(7) Minimap with buttons for toggling border mode and political map painting
- 4 modes are available for both: no painting/borders, mark countries, mark current frontlines, mark countries and current frontlines mode

(8) Terrain information
- with buttons for strategic bombing, recon mission, amphibic landing and airborne landing
- buttons are not displayed now because no hex is selected.

(9) Unit information
- displays stats of selected unit or battle odds if an attack is planned.


At the center of the screen you also see a counter:



The information displayed on the counter are as follows:

(1) Unit type


from left to right: infantry, airborne, motorized infantry, tanks, air unit

(2) Tech level
(3) a blinking dot indicates whether a unit has already taken part in a coordinated attack this turn
(4) indicates that a leader is attached to this unit
(5) nationality
(6) Tech level
(7) left number: effective strength (current unit strength multiplied by its current effectiveness); right number: Action points left
(8) "XX" means division, "XXX" means corps
(9) three dots in the lower right corner:
- Top one: unit has got some AP to spend
- Middle one: unit has got low supply level
- Bottom one: the manpower of the unit is decreased and can be reinforced


This concludes the technical prelude. In the next post we might finally smell some battlefield smoke...



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[dooya]

[center:c5074d4148](4) Poland - Turn 1[/center:c5074d4148]

In the following screen you can see the situation at the beginning of Turn 1.



The German forces are more or less divided in three groups: Heeresgruppe Nord (HG Nord), Heeresgruppe Mitte (HG Mitte) and Heeresgruppe Süd (HG Süd). (Heeresgruppe is German for Army Group).


The heart of HG Nord are 3 tank divisions and 1 motorized corps; the rest is infantry and one Air wing. There are also naval units in the Baltic Sea which can perform coastal bombardment to soften Danzig.



HG Mitte is the strongest group with 5 tank divisions and 1 motorized division. Additionally there are plenty of infantry divisions and two air wings at Breslau. Another air wing is at Berlin.



HG Süd includes only one tank division and some infantry.



The tech level of the German troops is 2, whereas Polish units only have tech level 1.

And here is the operation plan.

Phase 1 (red arrows)
- Air wings will fly a recon mission to Lodz.

HG Nord:
- Tank and motorized units will make a breach in the Polish front
- infantry will move to the frontline but will not attack
- Naval bombardment at Danzig

HG Mitte:
- Air wings will soften the Polish units in the west of Lodz
- Tank units and motorized units will take out two Polish infantries in the west of Lodz and then bypass Lodz in the North
- Infantry will follow as quickly as possible to save the tank spearhead from encirclement

HG Süd:
- The tank unit will go north, one or two infantries will save its back.

Phase 2 (blue arrows)

HG Nord:
- the tanks and the motorized units will advance toward Warsaw
- some of the infantry will advance through the breach and move in the back of the polish front towards Poznan

HG Mitte:
- advances towards Warsaw with all that can move
- air wings take softens Warsaw and all units nearby


HG Süd:
- tank advances towards Warsaw and unites with HG Mitte





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[dooya]

[center:c68a1da022](5) Poland - Turn 1 (continued)[/center:c68a1da022]

In the wee hours, in the morning of September 1st, 1939, multiple German air wings take off and head towards Lodz. One recon mission in the north of Lodz reveals a garrison in the city, one infantry to the east, and motorized corps to the North of the city.




Other air wings attack infantry divisions in the west of Lodz.



Although being intercepted by Polish fighters, the German wreaked havoc within the Polish soldiers, whiping out a whole division.



A second attack aimed at the second infantry division which blocked the path of HG Mitte to Warsaw.



This attack also caused high casualities.



Immediately after the air attack, a motorized division and an infantry division crossed the border and attacked. In the next picture it is demonstrated how attacking from multiple directions effects the attack odds.



Once again a Polish unit is shattered.



This clears the way for the German tank spearhead.



In the south, a lonely tank division starts its march to Warsaw.



In the North, tanks are rushing south.



One infantry division near Danzig is attacked by another air wing and takes medium damage.



Afterwards a combinded assault of a motorized and a tank division take it out.



A recon mission to Danzig revealed a garrison in the city. Since strong naval forces are within range, a coastal bombardement is conducted.



This attack resulted in a decrease in effectivity.




One air wing in the North has action points left, which are spent to perform some air attacks against Polish ships in the Baltic sea.



One ship is sunk, the other damaged.



This concludes our actions in the first turn.

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