From Balthagor
The Great War is the "little something" that is coming out of the current game engine. And from what I see in the next quote, it will definitely have a face lift and be more fast paced/contained...But the scope of the game is just that. Not much support beyond which I believe a lot of people enjoy (rather than just 4 years) this is confirmed here...Over Christmas I had some time to meet with the team and it didn't take us long to decide that we also wanted to get just a little more out of the current game engine. Design work has also already begun on something entirely new, but that's a bit of a ways out still, and we've got a bit of time for one more title in the Supreme Ruler franchise.
From Balthagor
So in conclusion... I definitely don't think there will be any significant updates aside from a face lift and a more "great war" experience. With that in mind I can tell that this particular game won't be for me. I'm more interested in the in the game that is to come after, as that appears to be the most promising and is apparently coming with changes to the engine itself. I believe this great war project is a way to create funding for the future project that that has yet to come. I know this because if you go look into the "suggestions" parts of the forum there aren't many requests for a Great War game, most people want significant changes/features/bug fixes to the game which may not be fixable/possible with the game engine. At times like this I wish BG would adopt a DLC policy. Supreme ruler is a good game but still needs more money/funds to get it to where it truly needs to go. If I decide to buy SRGW it won't be because I care for the timeline/game (because really I don't care about the great war all that much) it will be to support the company so they can move on and have money for the new engine that runs better, easier mode-able and can create new/better features that the players have been requesting for a long time.The scope for this project will be slightly different. The focus of this title will really be around creating the sandbox map and base campaign to fit the era. The chosen development timeline will present unique challenges around building the region equipment inventories. Data is limited for the map we wish to create and certain things will simply need to be extrapolated or set such as to create a good game balance. Many of the game mechanics will also remain unchanged as we try and make best use of the existing system, although there will be some updates and new features.
I will say once more that I actually do enjoy the series but there are some glaring bugs/developmental issues that make the current engine unplayable (Game Speed Number 1). I haven't truly been able to enjoy this game despite having a pretty high end potato as well as I should have. SRGW may fix that problem only because the game is designed to be played for 4 years. There may be a 100 years worth of technology but the game engine really isn't fundamentally able to play up into those years unless you want to wait 15 minutes for a single day to pass.
I will not be disappointed in SRGW now that I have a better understanding on what it's about, and I hope others won't either.