dugfromthearth

there is a reason that armies tended to field mg's instead of snipers in large numbers.

tanks don't even support infantry. infantry moves forward, engages, and kills what it can. If infantry can't kill it think about using artillery. if you have something that you can't otherwise kill you bring armor forward to kill it, then move the armor back to hiding. unless you have heavy armor and know the enemy cannot kill it (king tiger, T34 early in the war, etc). Then keep it well back to avoid close range shots by enemy anti-tank weapons and use it to keep their tanks at bay.

88 has a big advantage that it is much harder to spot then a tank. sso at very long ranges it may not kill with the first shot, but the tank probably won't even have a target to shoot back at.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20040117/ap_on_re_eu/britain_wwii_photos A huge British archive of World War II aerial reconnaissance photos, including pictures of the D-Day landings in Normandy, is to go on the Internet on Monday. Under the digitalization project announced Saturday, some 5 million Royal Air Force photos of Western Europe will be available to the public on the Web site www.evidenceincamera.co.uk., archivists said. The site did not appear to be accessible on Saturday

ah, sorry. I do cliffs by the sea. I think the water forcing flat makes the difference. I am pleased, I can now make my inland mesas look more jagged

they may be referring to the text of what they say and not their voices. he does refer to slang. It is possible that the phrases sounded American.

a few things significant elevation changes in a single square get ignored. Put a plain of level 1 and then a level 20, and it will all be level 1. So putting in the 19's doesn't do anything. a straight line of height differences doesn't make a nice cliff. The computer can nicely make rounds for 1 or 2 squares, but when you get to 3 it makes weird spikes sticking out. If you look close at a cliff of straight 9's it looks like it has a series of spikes sticking from it at regular intervals. The solution to that is either throw in the occassional 8 and 10 or round the cliff face a bit. Note that sticking out a projection of 1 square will not show up, due to the issue above. The map just doesn't like 1 square changes. for your cliffs you might always end up with slopes that can be climbed, I'm not sure.

the only real problem with the review (unless I missed it) was that he doesn't mention playing against another person - which makes up a lot for the AI.

the only real problem with the review (unless I missed it) was that he doesn't mention playing against another person - which makes up a lot for the AI.

have any of you played Age of Rifles? The game itself was flawed but fun. But what really set it apart was unit creation which was insanely great. You set the number of troops in a unit and the number of weapons. So you could have 143 men, equipped with 12 spears, 47 pistols, 10 muskets, 13 rifles, and the rest unarmed if you wanted to be so bizarre. It seems ideal for designing WWII era squads where you could have some smg's, lmg's, and rifles. Then you designed their look. You chose their heads, upper body, lower body, boots, and skin color. So you could creat black troops for U.S. Buffalo Soldiers, or Zulu warriors, Prussian infantry or hussars, etc. It would be fantastic to see such a thing for CM. To be able to create your own little armies and have fights between imaginary Balkan states, etc.

"Making it appear that one player is weaker than the other is but using reinforcement to switch the situation half way through is a valid and original design technique." The problem is it isn't very original. It seems quite common for the enemy to be described as having "no tanks" or "no anti-tank guns" and then either starting with a dozen tanks or getting them as re-inforcements on turn 5. I must say I have zero interest in historic scenarios as such. Only in scenarios. My goal is to have fun. But I do want some overview in the briefing. Not just "it is another hill to be taken, go take it." how about some giudelines for listing units and reinforcements. for instance (as suggestions): Only the top two levels of infantry units, unless a specific unit is important to the scenario: ie: 2 companies of rifles, 1 platoon of engineers. No mention of the extra machine gun teams, piat teams, etc. Only the top level of armored vehicles, unless a specific unit is important to the scenario: ie: 2 platoons of Shermans and a platoon of Wolverines, no mention of the extra Stuart All artillery spotters (I would assume the commander would know of these). etc. any thoughts?

no, when a gun takes out 2 of my tanks I sulk and think of excuses.

this reminds me of discussions on the World War II Online forum awhile back (I haven't played it, just looked into it). One side was complaining that their tanks were supposed to be heavily armored, nigh invulnerable except for one weak spot - and that the kept getting hit and killed with the first shot to the weak spot. The other side replied of course. They knew they had to hit that to kill the tank so they always aimed for it. It wasn't random chance or coincidence. It was deliberate enemy action. If at 100m the TD can aim at a near invulnerable section, a semi-vulnerable section, or a vulnerable section, of course you would expect them to aim at the vulnerable section. So in actual results you would expect few shots at the semi-vulnerable area and almost no successful hits.

the main one of those I want is having all of the terrain and units available to use with any other. meaning buy CM. buy BB and BO and AK, but not have them be discrete games. Instead let me field Russians vs. Italians in Greece, or Russians vs. Americans in France, etc.

Not only am I always wrong, but I always get it reversed. I'll figure it will defend at such and such a place on one side with a big open gap and so put my mg's and mortars over there. And then it will defend at a narrow gap on the other side so I put my smg's and flamethrowers there. And then it defends someplace slightly different and my flamethrowers face a wide gap and my mortars are stuck in the woods. and finally I realized I'm just being stupid. I shouldn't be attacking on such a wide front in the first place, I should be concentrating my forces on one flank.

lies, damn lies, and statistics if you want to know what players prefer, don't look at the number of campaigns, long battles, and short battles. look at the download numbers for campaigns, long battles, and short battles. the Brecourt Manor campaign on Scenario Depot has 257 dl's. That is as much as any 30-40 turn scenario I looked at for CMAK.

[To have such a great game system (and an even better one in the works) and not use it to cover a full half of the worlds most important conflict for no better reason than "they have little intrest", is very sad indeed.] The thing is that the reason it is a great system is because the devs are working on something in which they have tremendous interest. Even if you could order them to do a Pacific War version, if they have little interest in it, they probably won't do the same high quality job they've done with the first three. In short, the devs have come up with a fantastic game. I would rather trust them to keep coming up with great games, then to try and get them to produce the game I wanted and not the game they wanted and hope that it was still great.

okay so the real problem seems to be that they unbutton when faced with the threat.

time? they take out your tank crew in 1 shot? or over a couple of turns they take out your tank crew? remember a marksman is not a soldier split off from a squad and told to go shoot things. They are expertly trained marksman. They should be good at picking people off. You don't counter a marksman with a tank, you counter them with infantry. Do you order your tanks to button up, or are you just relying upon them doing it on their own?

in general if your units are not under fire but could be at any moment and you don't know when, you are doing something wrong. as Jason noted you should have point units on mtc. They should be a turn ahead of the rest of your infantry, so you know when/if you are going to engage enemy units with your main infantry forces. I usually use move for my regular infantry, and mtc for special units like flamethrowers and piats that I do want to stop moving when any enemy is spotted because I want to keep them from engaging.

"He made the statement that he thought the claim was - whenever they could make T-34s they could, and they only made other things in factories that couldn't make them." Right, no-one had commented on it so I assumed it was a given. Thanks for clarifying.

I would think that 1,000 of some type of gun in WWII would qualify as extremely rare, yes.

and what about a background mod? it would be nice for scenarios duplicating CMBO to have a france background instead of the italian mountains.

so quick? you've posted 7 times since any of the others have. it's over.

AI will not disembark troops from vehicles. I have never seen the AI move a gun with a vehicle. I don't think it can do it.