markshot

Thanks guys. I had a zip of 6000 CMBO/CMBB/CMAK battles. And use to play them. After 3 years is up (wrap around), you forget where all the ATGs and bunkers are hidden. Now, at my age, I think the full collection of CMv4 content might just be infinitely replayable even without the QB system. Haha.

Thanks for the tips! Is there a way to have the OPFOR forces picked or randomized among a number of options that you cannot know what you are facing?

Folks, I am not here for a debate. I have seen computers from the very first degree programs and NYC having 3 IBM 360s with RJEs, punched cards, and assembly through today. For those who are in the CS field, then you are the first to know that AI ~ 2015 and beyond is not CS. It is an entirely a new field. Only, the general public erroneously conflates CS and AI. AI is modern alchemy where emergent properties has truly shown that the reductionist top down engineering thinking that many of us were trained in is but a single way to approach things. Alchemists they may be; short on the formalism of Shannon, Turing, and Goddel long on guess work, but they are getting results. And these results are having a huge impact. * Mathematicians kindly call them "experimentalists". CMBO was breaking new ground. Taking our once BG hobby (I never was one) from the early isometric maps in SMG by Sid Meier and the early psychological states of CC by Atomic to break new ground. CM has largely been CPU bound and single threaded. Thus, in 2024, most of us are seeing CM hit the single threaded clock speed/RAM speed wall while other cores sit idle. With regards to videos cards ... GPU/VRAM is largely idle. Getting CM and many games to multi-threading load balanced is a hard problem. But post processing using the AI abilities of graphic cards is mainly another step on the rendering pipeline which is quite doable without tearing apart the existing game engine. How is AI fundamentally changing our world? Productivity is sky rocketing. There is a race to leverage it. This is just one of many tech cycles I have lived through. We are in the frontier gold rush phase. The other day I counted more than 100 ventures doing RAG and TALK WITH YOUR DOCS using variants of LangChain, Semantic Embeddings, and Vector databases. In 3-5 years, like any tech cycle, only handful of those 100+ firms will exist and be among the standardized recognized solutions. The console/PC game industry is going to be pulled along into the same cycle. Those with IP and a market position are ideally suited to be the survivors. Or if they let momentum and sloth make them feel secure, then be among the shake out victims. I like CM and the innovation that BTS/BFC brought. I would like to see it weather the AI storm. Well, I am going to drop off the discussion now. Time is limited and I retired to play games and not debate on forums. Implied here is that I might be old. Yes, I am old. The view that age is a handicap is not a global view among all cultures. Some cultures actual recognize that seniors bring something to the conversation. Tik-Tok on, folks! I am going to play myself some CM!

I was just using that as an example as that is what most people are familiar with. AI can add lot of detail to scenery without changing the resolution.

These games average a decade old. And the graphics show it. I think you have all seen what can be done via AI upscaling (not so much resolution, but detail, articulation, textures) ... We are talking GPU's of the last few years whether NVidia RTX or AMD's FSR drivers. So, imagine engine v5 adds an AI rendering post processor. A HUGE CM battle at most is going to use 3Gb of VRAM leaving most gamers with 4Gb+ of VRAM free for post processing. Imagine what could be done to put a brand new coat of paint on all of these games going 64Bit and AI image quality post processing. Any of you who have high end machines and have played with open source AIs like Stable Diffusion know that photo realistic CM is possible. In fact, there is a new SIMS-like game in development INZOI which is truly photo realistic. Now, you may say, we want our compute doing game AI and physics ... not wasted on graphics. Prior to 2020, this was a valid concern. But all this is is being done with the GPU/VRAM via a fine tuned neural net for combat scene output. These LLMs are getting smaller every day. Microsoft has its PI series of 1/1.5/3 B. There was open source Tiny LLAMA of 1B recently released, etc. One of the trends we are seeing in AI is open source models is LESS IS MORE. The foot prints are getting much smaller with fewer parameters and improved quantization (think of this as a form of compression; what it really is layer weight compression). All of this just blew up in just 2023 alone. NOTE: BFC does not need a GPU Cluster to make a fine tuned LLM. You can do this using the LORA technique which adapts matrix mathematics making such tuning totally possible with an RTX 4090 ($2000 USD) or an RTX 6000 ($10,000 USD with 48Gb VRAM). A LORA recognizes that the entire neural net does not need to be retuned. Just altering weights of some dimensions of one layer will give the same affect. So, yes, building an LLM from scratch could run $50M USD, but a LORA for fine tuning we are looking at 5 figures USD. I built last year a new PC with an RTX 4090 with an i-9 13900KS. What does a heavy CM workload look like? Basically, you have two Intel 6GHz Pcores handing CM back and forth as the other Pcores are capped at 5.6GHz. (there is little point overclocking as Intel has done this in firmware already; so the only real tuning is to use software utilities which dynamically manage Pcore/Ecores affinities to get the most out of games; the only thing I touched in my BIOS/UEFI was to undervolt by 0.06v for a cooler CPU) Most of you probably know that CM is CPU bound. In terms of my GPU/VRAM clocks while CM is chugging through HUGE ... the 4090 is at 50W and yawning. My point is using AI post processing to give photo realistic CM is going to give complete free graphic cards something useful to do. Better graphics done via AI is not going to eat into physics, path finding, or AI. I don't know if Charles and Steve read the forums. But John as an Admin, I know you do. AI is not just simply replacing jobs like programmers. AI will be replacing products which fail to leverage it. We are probably just a 2 years away from seeing a Crusader King like game which does not run with scripts, but instead is essentially an SP multi-player game where the rest of the NPCs are LLM personas. So, just imagine our beloved CM post processed by AI capable GPUs. Thank you!

Well, I have been playing since CMBO. I am back after a few years and own all current titles and packs. Yes, I know, I have years worth of content. But still I have a question regarding single player and quick battles. Has anyone written a guide/thread besides what appears in the v4.00 engine manual on how to get the best experience our of the QB battles for single player/WEGO/warrior? Or might someone have collection of links? Thank you!

Well, I can afford it. And the games just make me happy. If I was not buy another title and fully play what I have, then would live to 110. Show, this demonstrates positive attitude about old age. Having built a new system last year with a RTX 4090 (hard to find) and being a retired software engineer, I thought I would download some open source offline LLMs and give them a try.

Purchased. No time to play. But it is a step in the right direction!

The scenario in particular is ... CW Surrender Invites Death (CMBN). I just chose the largest scenario I could find ... I did both synthetic and real game benchmarks before switching from the 2015 to the 2023 build to measure the impact of the money I had spent. What I like best is turn computation speed, and redraws of the battlefield are blazing fast after flipping out to the desktop and back. Load times really improved from SATA3 SSD to 4 lanes to the i9-13900KS direct from the M.2 SSD on the mobo.

Can you recommend some? I got rid of all CM mods as with so many titles, it became more problematic than in the CMBO days. --- Actually, if I recall, from CRT days, such patterns were not the card, but the graphic and display device characteristics. After some testing, this turns out to very rare for CM titles. It was probably always there, and simply noticed. Further, I noticed that it can be avoided by changing the viewing angle. Back in the CRT days such was often not an option with games. As I am using a 1080p TV mainly to get large text in all games, the technical approach would be to look for settings that could be assigned to a user mode which eliminate this. For the moment, its not such an issue to play with display settings.

I recently upgraded hardware. I noticed a moire pattern; vibrating moving textured on one of my brown ground dirt textures. I thought such things only appeared on CRTs, and I have not seen one for 15 years. (using an LCD TV) It looks like undulating waves. Fortunately, it seems to be just that particular texture. Does anyone know of an NVidia (RTX 4090) that gets rid of this? Thanks!

Redwolf, Thank you for your clarification. I still have my CMBB/CMAK archives with mods and 6000 scenarios ... if maps get redrawn vis-a-vis Steam/e-License service.

Something was written about Engine 5 giving a performance boost. Although I usually don't play HUGE; I might one day. FPS is like money. There is no such thing as having too much. Thanks!

Did I understand this correctly? If I bought a CM2 game from BFC, then I will be able to get a Matrix key which requires no server activation to complete the install process; no elicense; no Steam. I ask, because one day I might find myself in an adversarial country (not that I moved, but borders do) where the Global Firewall might no longer allow BFC installers to phone home. So, will there be a no activation method to install? I don't care where I live as long as CM2 is with me. Thanks. PS: This is a concern I have with my Steam Library. I much prefer not needing global server continuous connectivity to play games I paid for. (I do know elicense only requires a connection during install/upgrade.)

Just dropped to say that Steam finally pushed it out. John, if you worked some mojo voodoo, thanks!

Well, in my case it was a gracious gesture by BFC as I had had E-license problems. They have migrated servers/tech and having bought other games, I will say e-license is now smoother than it was. I will buy only from BFC in the future, but I am not going to repurchase SF2/DLC over a minor patch. @John, is there anything you can do to motivate Steam or get Slitherine to do it as they are selling BFC Steam keys? Thanks.

Steam shows 2.04. I didn't install the Slitherine EXE to check the file.

John, Still no patch on Steam? Why was it possible for Slitherine to release a bugged Field of Glory 1.66, correct a critical bug, and have the game updated to 1.67 on Steam in two days? Care to explain what the difference is here? Thanks. Furthermore, you never answered the question whether this Slitherine version is analogous to BFC v2.06. The dates seem to work out. Thanks ... I might just switch versions. [PC] Installer v02.04.00.01 CombatMissionShockForce2-MultiSetup-v02.04.00.01.zip 02.04.00.01 Feb 06, 2023

John, I created a ticket for the Steam question (as above). So, it will show up auto-magically? Thanks.

Now, for gamers the new generation of eCores and pCores with Intel TurboBoost 3.0 (effectively Windows overclocks two cores for gamers dynamically; keeping the heat down; and avoiding the need for permanent over clocks). The word was you need WIN11 for the scheduler to manage this, but I will worry about it if and when I am ready to replace my current PC.

Microsoft has gone a different route for money from the OS. Although they don't tell you, the servers will still except WIN7 keys for 10 & 11 upgrades. Also, there are many sites selling OEM keys for about $15 USD. I don't worry about security and Windows Update as a major issue; you security software should be enough. I froze WIN10 a long time ago as the closer you get to end of life the more suspiciously your systems become unstable; like Apple where the batteries seem to start dying very quickly. The only issue that will come up unless you really want to get technical with old OS' will be drivers as tech is changing all the time for buses, storage, blue tooth, WiFi, etc... Most software will run on old Windows as they just want the biggest customer base. Also, the US military is still on WIN XP. And they pay MSFT lots to stay with it.

My Windows history has been hop scotch; I try to jump over the bad. So. MS DOS 3, MS DOS 6, WIN 95, WIN98SE, WINXP, WIN7, WIN10 ... It really began with the release of WIN8 when they tried to turn my desktop into f--ing iPad. They want to compete with Goggle and Apple for data and customer ownership. What I always like about Windows was its openness and much of the unacceptable stuff; you could kill yourself. But WIN11 is by far the worst. It required SECURE BOOT (UEFI). In theory TRUST is a good idea. But who owned the rights to issue CERTIFICATES? Dah, Microsoft. They now owned your HW once WIN11 was installed. You could no longer dual boot LINUX or some other release of WINDOWS. No, we are never going to WIN11; the world of LINUX is only growing. --- Also, since they all offer Cloud storage now. As one YT tech channel put it. "What's the cloud? It is just someone else's computer." When the story broke about DHS and DNC having direct or indirect back doors to Facebook, Twitter, and Google. We were reminded that Apple went to federal court not to unlock an iPhone for the FBI. But here is the back door, iCloud on Apple's servers is not encrypted. So, if you use it. I LOVE COMPUTERS. I GOT INTO THE FIELD IN THE 60/70s, AND WAS INSTANTLY IN LOVE. I STILL LOVE THEM, BUT I HATE WHAT BECAME OF MY LOVE. IT HAS BECOME THE EMBODIMENT OF EVIL IN MANY CASES.

I was accepting cookies as a default and this happened both with Firefox and Chrome, but disappeared in 30 minutes. It could be as simple as a piece of hardware resetting (for an OS upgrade) or temporary lock while creating backup images. It is amazing how many moving parts there are between this keyboard and my game vendor BFC.

I think a hosting server was down or not configured correctly, since the account you were being asked for wasn't yours, but BFC's.

I think they were having a server problem.