Simplicity

[gollum]

Originally posted by HopAlongBunny
Face it, they all boil down (in the end) to a few "must-haves" and a layer of annoyance needed to get there.

heh, yes absolutely. The difference is that historical wargamers want complexity of choices but they often run off from complexity of interactions, which is why they don't prefer strategy games but historical "sandbox" simulators that allow a large margin of complexity in choices and so for potential reverie scenarios. In actuality complexity of choices is useless if the AI can't use them, and i can't remember when he could use a vast number of them from STW already, and if you are playing versus other people, they often boil down to few must haves indeed and then its a rush on rush who'll get them first.

Of course this did not need to be the case - but for TW its unavoidable.

Complex wargames that aim for good strategy undergo many many incarnations and usually they have groups of fans that refine the rules and mechanics (the engine and mechanics in terms of a pc game) throughout the years. One such game is A World at War, that you can play by email due to the excellent pc tool warplanner they have made for it. The game is designed by Bruce Harper and is an intellectual heir to "Rise and Decline of the Third reich" and a direct heir to "Advanced Third Reich" and "Empire of the Rising Sun". That game (and other old board games, like Empires of the Middle Ages, that seems the boardgame precursor of MTW) are very difficult to balance due to having very complex rules and lots of complexity - just like where TW went. However those games are often played by niche audiences that refine as said the rules over (litterally for AWAW) decades in order to have a better game.

TW on the other hand is like an amnesiac - CA forgets with every new release what they did right in the previous ones. They re-invent the game every time for 99.9% commercial purposes and little else, unfortunately. Screenshots and new mechanics/choices you are given are plasmatic if they are not integrated within a meaningful strategical interaction exchange with the opponent - be it human or AI. Unsurprisingly, Empire was the peak of weak AI and easy gameplay. And yes, they told us that it would have been so much better if only person x did not leave them in the cold of the shower, but other than that i think they went the wrong way is also part of it. S2 seems to remedy some of that - i cannot know how much as i haven;t bought yet the game, but its clear that this is the case.