Danielos said:
For those of you who have tried WAW:
Is it any point to buy it if you already has and like HoI2?
Yes. The games are totally different.
What are the main strengths of WAW?
WaW is a conceptually simpler game and is turn-based. The earliest scenario is 1940 with 4 turns per year. You can finish the game in a night and it can be quite challenging (at least for me). There are fewer options all around (fewer unit types, upgrades are automatic, no leaders, no diplo, etc, just a basic focus on combat and logistics).
What features in WAW is better/new compared to HoI2?
Not sure this is a good way to compare cause the games are so different. So far, WaW seems "logical" to me. There are some unit balance issues, but the AI seems to respond a whole lot better to what you are actually doing. For example, Scotland starts with a fighter unit. I moved the fighter to England leaving Scotland without air cover. Next turn, Germany sends a bunch of Strat bombers to Scotland
Keeping convoys up and running and building the right ship types (light fleets) and researching the correct techs to deal with u-boats is a hell of a lot of fun and the AI will punish you if you don't do it.
What are the main weaknesses of WAW?
It has a huge memory leak and I get a lot of CTDs if I play for more than a few hours. Basically every hour or so I quit out and then start it again. Unit balance probably needs some work. Air power is huge. You can literally wipe out everything on the ground with air. On the other hand, you can build lots of counters for air. Basically, everything has a decent counter to it, you just can't focus on building one thing alone.
Another weakness is that the UI is kind of arcadish and the text is hard to read on a lot of the screens. Sometimes info is really hard to find. Unit production is a serious pain in the ass. Units are built in specific provinces that have factories, so you have to scroll through your lists to build stuff. It is more accurate I guess and leads to some strategy (if you want carriers in the Pacific, you better be building them there, for example).
What features in WAW is worse/missing in WAW compared to HoI2?
None really. The games are built around different underlying concepts (i.e., what each game chooses to abstract, the other generally focuses on, so hard to compare side by side). WaW is really much more "grand strategy" than is HOI. HOI is much more "what if" and latitude and more detailed at a lot of levels. There are far fewer provinces and stuff in WaW and it is closer to looking like a Risk map or other games like that (the UK is 2 provinces, for example). WaW is also much more "streamlined" along a historical path as far as events and DoWs go.
