Fighting near Odessa in WW2: Time of Wrath

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Leszek Lisowski, the Project Leader on the upcoming World War II grand strategy wargame WW2: Time of Wrath, shares his thoughts on the creation of a historical wargame in an ArmchairGeneral.com exclusive. WW2: Time of Wrath is scheduled for a July 2009 release by Matrix Games.

Many, many hours
There is much more behind creating a historical wargame like WW2: Time of Wrath than just designing and programming and being creative. There are hundreds of hours spent on researching data to make the game reflect reality. This includes searching through maps, books, comparing sources when one author states something opposite to the other. There are whole days spent in libraries looking through materials only available on site or under supervision. This is the real story of researching and creating a wargame.

Finding every division and corps that should be included in the game isn’t an easy task. You not only need to find their names and locations, but also an exact composition. Only then you can determine what technological level and strength a unit should have in game terms.

Apart from that you need to consider what to do with the smaller and understrength units, should they be combined into one unit? Perhaps separate them but give them lower strength so they are thus more susceptible to quick destruction? We spent a lot of our design time focused on the other fronts of warfare: the air and naval war. Air forces are grouped into air divisions and air armies, and placed on the terrain where they operated. The navy was divided into fleets and placed where they were at the specific start time of each scenario.

Overall, I really think that this amount of work is worth the effort. Unit names now are in accordance with the national pronunciation and real Order of Battle. Soviet riflemen units are now called Strelkovaja Divizija with correct numbers instead of some name like XX Infantry division. Units are now placed on the map in the same region as they were stationed in reality, so if you print out a historical map and cover your monitor, you should have similar data visible. Thanks to this policy, there are now more units on the map. Put the greatly improved and expanded Order of Battle together with the smarter AI, which now knows how to properly create front lines and exploit them, and the game shows it’s real depth and value.

The map

Hexes
The first thing to catch your eye is the hexes. Lots and lots of hexes. Why have we decided on them? The answer is simple: firstly, the distance from one hex to the other is always the same. Secondly, we grew up on hexes. In the distant times of our youth, when computers weren’t so popular, we used to set up giant boards on the floor or a table and carefully put counters on them (who else had his dog run through the board?). Luckily gaming on this scale is now much easier. Any game can be started in a couple of minutes and it doesn’t disturb other residents and family life.

Size
The map comprises Europe, North Africa, and a part of Middle East. On the west edge of the map there is a small area representing the United States.The map of course might be smaller or bigger but we wanted to to cover the whole European and Mediterranean Theater without a gigantic map or, on the other end, without limiting the player’s options. Farther to the east and south was nothing really important for the situation in Europe. The United States had a huge influence on the war in Europe so we also decided that it should be represented on-map.

Cities
There are over two hundred fifty cities on the map. They can be divided into a few oftypes. There are main supply sources which are generally capitals, ordinary cities, ports, andfinally resources. Cities are very important because the whole management of your militaryand economy is based on cities.

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