WitE PBEM question

[Freyr Oakenshield]

Hi,

I'm thinking of buying War in the East, but first I wanted to do some research into this game so as not to buy a pig in a poke.

One thing I'm interested in is the PBEM mechanism in this game. I've read on various forums that you need to be connected to a server in order to PBEM - is that so? Could someone exaplain how it works in simple terms. For example, I play TOAW a lot and in TOAW, you simply play your turn, the game automatically saves it at the end, and then you manually send the saved file to you opponent (usually) via email. Of course, you don't have to be connected to a special TOAW server. How is it different from WitE?