Coming Soon: The Hills Have Eyes

[Bimmer]

A small battle at dusk set around a tiny nameless hilltop village. Best as H2H, but reasonably good as US vs. AI; playable as German vs. AI (there are AI plans for both sides), but not recommended.

[Broadsword56]

All we need are some ambient cricket chirps! Looks suspenseful.

[ZPB II]

Sweet, I am liking night battles with the new artificial brightness toggle. But a night battle in a built-up area like that? People will die in there!

If I am not mistaken there is by default ambient cricket chirps at night. That, or there are crickets in my home. Maybe I need to do some cleaning.

[sburke]

One suggestion, you may want to take a look at the chateau ruins in the Shadow of the Hill map from Pete Wenman. I have a battle going on there now and what Pete came up with for the ruins has turned out to be some of the most wicked terrain for close in infantry combat I have run into. It definitely presents some ideas on how to create a tough urban battleground that is extremely dangerous for armor. I found I could even make use of PF 30's in it. Hell it is dangerous for infantry too with a few of our encounters taking place at point blank range. Toss in a few ruined buildings based on his design and I think you may find the whole flavor of the battle becoming a lot more brutal.

It has given me some thought on trying to recreate Monte Cassino.

[Bimmer]

Thanks for the comments and the suggestion. I looked at that map but I didn't see any ruins. In any case, this is not a map with any pre-existing battle damage, and the buildings are so tight that armor movement of any sort would be impossible, as one would expect in many of the small Sicilian villages constructed before cars. I think it's plenty brutal enough at this point.

[sburke]

LOL fair enough. Only mentioning it as this current fight is giving me some ideas for creating a pretty good urban combat environment that will hopefully help with the whole issue of Infantry AT capability.

[LongLeftFlank]

Just one suggestion from the Lorax here (I speak for the trees!).... That dense vineyard could use a windbreak of trees (poplars, maybe?) along their western edge -- maybe the other side of the road -- if you don't have one already (I assume we're looking North and the vines have a southern exposure). Sicily does get the Scirocco and other seasonal winds, and they can be severe. [/vinicultural groggery]. That close to town you'd at least want a wall to keep livestock (goats and donkeys) out, which you do have.

[Bimmer]

Much of the map is covered in small adjoining vineyards. It's quite a small map (and utterly fictional, BTW), so a windbreak might be presumed to be off-map somewhere, though your point is well-taken.

As to walls, I tried to build in as many as possible, but the issue is that the way CM deals with roads and walls (you can have one or the other on a given tile, but not both), I had to make some choices. Ideally most of the roads would be bounded on at least some side by walls, as would the small olive groves, but doing so just leaves too much open ground.

[Bimmer]

FYI, there's going to be a quick v1.01 update to this immediately after it is released. As soon as it shows up in the Repository I'll send up the revised version. I suggest waiting for it. Sorry for any confusion or delay.

[Bimmer]

I've submitted the v1.01 update. The advantage of it having taken a few days to get approved means that I had a chance to test more and make some substantial adjustments to the map; it's really quite a bit better, I think. Hopefully it will be up soon.