sand digger

For what its worth TOW 2 Kursk plays well and has some great features but is spoilt by a couple of fundamental flaws. Defensive earthworks are fixed and completely visible from the word go although their occupants are not, which does not matter anyway because you know from the work's appearance what equipment it will be sheltering eg AT gun, mortar. This has serious repurcussions. You can develop an attacking formula which basically involves shelling all AT gun positions in advance because you know where they all are, then send in tanks to clear out their infantry, then send in your infantry to occupy and hold. No surprises unless some defending tanks appear, play by numbers. Want to defend instead of attacking? Well the defences are all laid out for you, they may be poorly positioned etc but thats it, just follow the script. The above is not here to criticise TOW, its here to show that the fundamentals of a game must be right before it can begin to be a game you want to play again and again. As for command in a game, a little bit goes a long way for me, just the basics please. Supply? Limit ammo supply for the big stuff like tanks and artillery otherwise who cares. Its the gameplay, how does the game play, how flexible is it, can you try various tactics, how realistic do the results reflect what actually happened, what is the effect of the relevant influences on the casualty rate, does the infantry react realistically when under fire (the worst aspect of CMAK)......... And so on.

Sadly given up trying to play as the defending force, unless you play as scripted the game may stall eg if you don't follow orders which bear no relevance to the actual situation. Getting the basics like this wrong and having all defences fixed and visible really lets down the game, its many great features are negated by these fundamental flaws

1. No medics, you won't miss them though. 2. Think you can create your own scenarios with whatever size force you want, that info should be fairly readily available though in the promo material. 3. No replay, a current model computer could not process one. Most of your questions have been asked and answered before, the search facility is a useful tool

Yes, the German AI rush is the problem when defending, my experience with using the defensive positions provided is basically that the AT guns are caught by surprise and over run/destroyed due to the factors mentioned in the first post. So now I place some of the AT guns where I think they should be irrespective of the availability of protective earthworks. And that can work, you may lose a gun or two due to the lack of protection but the idea is to put them to effective use before they can be spotted and knocked out. One well sited AT gun can win a battle, it can be that crucial. Being able to build and locate your own defensive works would basically complete this great game, that and making such works invisible until they are realistically observed.

Simply limiting the amount of ammunition available works very well in Theatre of War 3, it really makes you think about its use and application. The problem there is that all the defensive works are immediately visible, even though any equipment therein may not be immediately visible you can identify what will be simply by the type of defensive works being used. So to make the use of artillery realistic, potential targets and their defensive works should remain invisible until they have been revealed by the usual means. Possibly taking into account the type of works and target and if they have been camoflaged or otherwise hidden. With all that in mind I don't see that there should be a problem with area fire and its use ie use it wherever you like but consider what will be the best use for the limited amount of ammo you have, now and further into the game.

Demo scenario is pretty much the same, in fact I'm there and trying to work out how and where to set the defensive forces up so the evil Nazi scourge will be defeated Not easy when your forces are divided and isolated from each other

Looked at the Syrtsev-Dubrova scenario too now I'm on a roll. Rule: if you expect a minefield or anti tank ditch to be effective then it must be able to be covered by suitable defensive action eg see the defence of Tobruk 2. Otherwise enemy combat engineers can simply roll up and lift the mines or fill in the ditch without effective opposition. So what have we here? More dinky little defensive positions located apparently without any plan in mind which means if I play for the Russians some of my fixed units will have to be located without the benefit of earthwork protection. Ah well, nothing like a challenge

Crossed over from the dark side to fight the Great Patriotic War but bugger me, own up, who 'designed' the Russian defensive earthworks layout because its off to the Gulag with you comrade. Trees blocking firing lanes, lots of uncovered dead ground which the Nazis can use to sneak up on you or manouver with impunity, no earthworks where you want them, greatly restricted fields of fire and so on, terrible bloody work comrade terrible I guess real maps of the original WWII defences would not be available, be interesting to see them if they were.

Great screenshots but I could not see any Centurian tanks, will look harder next time

Yeh I suspect it is due to very marginal targeting, trying to minimumise exposure while still being able to fire at the enemy. This game is so good it makes you work and think hard and in detail about things like that if you want to win well. Not that its perfect, I have some tweaking suggestions

Yeh that is what I usually do S, the results vary but often the target area shows the red 'locked on' marker which lasts for one shot but then you have to repeat the targeting procedure to fire another shot, and so on. It can happen when using other weapons against other targets too, there must be a reason but I have not been able to work it out.

If the AT gun is hidden but you know where it is and want your tank to keep firing at it's location, how do you instruct the tank to keep firing at that location? It seems like that if the target is not recognised the tank will fire at the location once only, to keep it firing you have to continually retarget it. It gets worse when there is a AT rifle in view, your tank wants to target that and ingore the hidden AT gun which is firing at it. On a picky note, hidden AT guns do not show any gun flash or smoke no matter how many times they fire.

I suspect that engineers are the only ones who can clear some obstacles although its a bit difficult to tell what can be cleared and what is permanent.

Here are a couple of mine, the infantry gun is indespensible given the mortars are so inaccurate. 75mm Infantry Gun: plenty of ammo, usually pretty accurate, high trajectory means you can drop shells just about anywhere. They are my trouble shooters, great for checking out possible anti tank gun positions rather than risking a AFV. Locate them in a safe back area under cover and with AA protection because Russian aircraft seem to seek them out. Pz III Aus N: Yep the 'obsolete' short barelled 75mm gun is the mobile equivalent of the IG. Lots of HE ammo with some AT ammo too, usually the crews are good so accurate shooting, two MG's, side protection, I often use them as trench sweepers concentrating particularly on eliminating AT rifles before bringing in light AFV's and infantry to do the final clean out. Keep them out of the action until the Panthers have done a sweep to locate any enemy tanks, Panthers then can act as an overwatch before moving on to the next objective. Great thing about this game is the micromanaging necessary when using the above can be interesting and certainly challenging.

Give them the 'stay put' order. Bottom left of the control panel there is a soldier outline, left click on it so a diagonal red line shows. That order may be applied to any unit, mechanical or human. Without it yeh, chaos reins

My main interest at the time was the historical aspect of the NA conflict up until the end of 1942. So I always tried to play 'historically', that aspect appeals to me much more than the actual gaming side so it was sort of a make believe factually based adventure if that makes sense. In my first job there were Tobruk veterans still working then so there was that aspect too. The TOW Kursk game works quite well at the micro management level against the AI if that is of interest to anyone.

Prior to playing the tutorial against the AI I had played lots of games against human opponents so had a fair idea how everything worked. Playing the tutorial against the AI was a bit of a fun attempt to recreate the sort of attack the LRDG would have done in the way they may have done it. That attempt failed as reported, thats all, no big deal, I did the reoprt because I thought it may have been of interest to or resonated with others. Instead I got the mostly 'you are a dickhead' type response. In another game, think there was a human opponent that time, it was a while ago of course, I tried to recreate an attack tactic developed by the 9th Div around El Alamein. Basically it involved shelling the crap out of a well defended but compact position then rushing in with the infantry mounted in Bren Gun Carriers right on top of the objective, the infantry then dismounting and doing it hand to hand as necessary. That did not work out too bad but the same problems to a lesser degree as in the tutorial surfaced. The ride to the objective was great fun on replay though I was going to report in detail on that one too but after the above responses could not be bothered.

Forgot about this, the usual 'you are a dickhead' type comments I see. Which really translate into a 'I am smarter than you' game warrior type comment, no problem This quote from my post is really what I was getting at 'There is more but that will do, I guess it shows just how difficult it is to do a game that enables real infantry combat, particularly that which involves an element of surprise and initiative, both of which are vital to successfully playing out a particular scenario that is not methodical and deliberate by nature, like a game of chess.' And still think is a valid comment. Oh well, superficiality ruled as usual.

I too think that the latest patch has helped overall game performance, it plays fine on my all purpose XP PC.

Change my mind and vote for Italy too, CMAK was great in its day but this franchise has moved the genre way ahead so a bit of duplication of theater does not matter. As far as changing game details, only the wild inaccuracy of German gunnery really bothers me. That combined with a Russian AT gun hitting a tank moving at speed obliquely across its front 1000 meters away, one, two, three, your'e out

Lost two out of three flak wagons in Cherkasskoe to air attack but yeh, being aware of an air threat does make a difference and you become more careful. Knokke is right, I noticed that if the aircraft can line a flak wagon up and strafe it at ground level then its usually done for. A hidden bonus was that one gunner survived and he later did great work using captured artillery against the former owners.

Post D day battle for France would be good, well maybe not with Shermans -v- proper tanks and guns

Are engineers better than ordinary infantry at clearing mines though? Sneaking any advantage?

Well I still think that the IL2's are overly effective in a historical sense but of course I'm going on Western Allies historical information. Even the German's overestimated the actual battlefield impact, a lot of it concerned morale and supply etc delay. Actual battlefield damage, as distinct from rear support damage, was quite low compared with that inflicted by artillery. Which is not the situation here, infantry are vulnerable enough without getting knocked in bulk before you get the chance to send them to their maker human wave style

Great screen shot Stimo, my flak wagon was on that hill too. I viewed the attack from low down behind the wagon so the aircraft flew in line towards me and shot the wagon and all the crew to pieces, will have to learn how to take screen shots, some great ones come up in this game.