Quote:
Originally Posted by Tribesman
Eddie, on scale, time per turn, learning and micromanagement how does it compare with War in the Pacific for example?
For comparison I mean I recently started my first attempt at Japan in WitP, over two weeks it took about 30 hours on the initial setup before hitting end turn button for turn 1.
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Compared to War in the Pacific, War in the East is greatly streamlined. There is no managing the training of thousands of individual pilots. No setting of air squadron altitudes. No tweaking of individual heavy industry and armament centers. No airframe or engine research (for Japan) of which mediocre bomber you want to have in six months. The naval aspect of the game is very abstract. No ships or convoys, full stop. Supply is taken care of for you. No need to pull it from one point to another (although you can set certain HQs to build up a reserve). No setting of objectives or preparation points for HQs. The turns are one week as opposed to one to three days as in WitP.
Most mercifully, there is no shared 'execution phase'. No hours spent setting up a turn and hitting the button, just to groan because you overlooked the CAP on a task force and it gets plastered. Units move as you order them to. Attacks take place in the order you wish them to. The user interface is a vast improvement. War in the East makes it very easy to perform the basic actions necessary to play the game.
That being said, the game does present some management challenges. By the time the Soviet colossus reaches full strength there can be up to 400 divisions and brigades you have to figure out a use for. Happily, at some point you can start consolidating these into corps and tank armies. The movement of support units is another challenge. Unless you attach them directly to combat units, you are at the mercy of the programming gods as to how many and what type you receive in each battle. The Russians can't start attaching support units until they start forming proper corps in 1942, so it makes matters dicey for them in the first part of the game.
Air doctrine is another aspect of the game that is a head scratcher for me as it takes complete control of the air war out of your hands, but maybe that's a good thing. Generally I would leave air missions up to the AI, which, as far as I can tell, performed competently. Unlike the ground combat, I found control of air units to be unintuitive. This resulted in me relying on my HQs to assign the air force to close air support missions, which seemed effective enough.