Elmar Bijlsma

The word is sieges are much rarer. How battles are initiated is way different. Armies have Zones Of Control now, and if an enemy moves within that ZOC, you get a chance to intercept them. And with you now no longer merely having to defend the captial of a province but all resources, harbours, etc within the province, that should draw you and the AI out to fight in the fields more. Thank goodness, the sieg-a-thon was getting rather old. Don't be fooled by my underwhelmed response. TW would have to be royally screwed up for it not to get a sale from me.

I would expect it's the simulated effect of WP. Have you ever tried popping vehicle smoke with friendly infantry in front of the launchers? Not a good way to win friends among the ground pounders, as it turns out. It can even damage vehicles!

Hehe, here's me thinking it's too consistent to be unintentional.

How often does this occur to people? I have had it happen but for me it is so rare (1-5%) I assumed it was WAD. Admittedly, I tend to place my Jav teams on elevations if possible so I might not have seen it as much as others. The most curious thing is the consistency of the 43m.

More interestingly, why don't all tanks sport 30mm cannon?

While it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that ETW is arcadish, the naval aspect is more lightweight then the land battles. Certainly ducked under my expectations. That having been said, it's starting to grow on me. That's probably partly indicative of the dearth of good Age of Sail games.

I would have to agree. It's good to have some 'oomph' behind the noises of battle. Really does wonders for immersion. Thanks!

You are very much mistaken about the advantages of tracked vehicles. In close terrain such as villages, narrow roads or vegetation they can be very much at a disadvantage. Nor are they necessarily faster. The rocky terrain of Afghanistan is VERY bad for tracks. Barrel trough that on a warrior and you'll be spending your time fixing the tracks. Wear and tear is a big, big issue. A tracked APC you use today is one that is probabbly sitting in the repairshop tomorrow. That will cut in to a units ability to operate. It's not like it's only the UK that fields wheeled vehicles. Just about everyone uses them widely, including the Dutch.

Attacking the tax man? Boy, they must be hard up for support!

Completely uninformed 1st impression Land combat: 7/10 Dunno, but they seem to have changed some controls. Didn't do much looking around but I had difficulty even lining up my uniys, as well as rotating them in place. No doubt further investigation is required. No more giving orders when paused. WTF?!? The Unit cards are very hard to read. I set the unit size to the largest possible setting but unit size are smaller then ever before. Naval Combat: 3/10 The auto resolve naval combat of earlier titles suddenly doesn't look so bad. The French squadron moved at speed up wind while my ships sailing at what should be ideal angle to the wind seemed to be slower. Ships are way, waaay too manoeuvrable. They can more or less turn on the spot and do so VERY quickly. I knew it was going to be arcadish, but this just plain sucks. I'll try it out some more, fiddle around with the new controls and such, but at this point I'm very much let down. The chase for the dumbed down market has seemingly continued.

Demo is up for download at Steam. I promised myself I wouldn't get excited, but I am. A Total War geared towards musketry opens so many possibilities. Hope the AI is a step forwards. RTW and M2TW AI was a big disappointment. Looking forward to the new Naval addition too, though the early word is that it's too dumbed down to convince. Ship handling is reported to be very unconvincing, including the ability to slowly sail up wind. Modders to the rescue?

The correct answer is: C) Or something. If the mortar animations and code were there ready to go I don't doubt BFC would put them in. But sadly, they aren't. And since it's true that small mortars are nowadays more a form of artillery rather then the glorified grenade launchers of WW2 they got treated as artillery. So the modelling of on map mortars was streamlined out to give poor old Charles (the lone coder) a chance of some sleep because it could be rationalized that it wouldn't detract from the simulation. Or BFC did it to make us angry and/or sad. This seems to be a surprisingly large school of thought in regards to CMSF shortcomings. The sucky type of light mortars are back for the Normandy game, where they can't be treated as regular artillery due to their range limitations. And with the rationalization not being valid this time, we get them on map in that title. Poor old Charles probably gets Red Bull poured into his brain jar* already. *The commonly held belief here is that Charles is in fact a brain in a jar. There are photographs on the BFC website that show Charles Moylan being a genuine human, but these are believed to be fake.

It was almost wholly political. Greece was an ally an in 1941 those were pretty thin on the ground and helping them out was seen as giving a positive impulse to those on the fence. At this point, most of the Balkans was still up for grabs. Politically it was not just desirable but necessary. Besides, bagging the Italians in Albania was rather tempting and would've seriously undermined Mussolini. The Dodecanese islands were also very political. Capturing was thought to bring the Turks closer to war. Though I doubt they would have, not acting would have seen them back off. Then again, the ultimate failure put the Turkish DoW even further in to the future. But the big prize was access to the Black Sea. Considering the trouble of the Artic convoys it was a worthwhile attempt. And keep in mind that when Churchill suggested it the Dodecanese were low hanging fruits and had it been acted on promptly and in force, as suggested by Churchill, it could've been a great success. The biggest blame that can be attributed to Churchill was that he didn't call the whole thing off when the operation was being actively undermined. Yes, I'm a bit of a Churchill fanboi.

pkjsmith, What does the soldier status say they are doing? It might be they are taking more time to deploy then you expected.

I think the thing that's a must to touch upon is how much power they had and how secure their grip on it was and how much they managed to do with it. For the Big Four at least, it seems that their leadership qualities was inversely proportional to their power. Churchill was on paper the weakest of the four, with a coalition government that could force him out of office at any moment they wished. Yet he somehow managed to exert more effective control over his nations war effort then any other. FDR OTOH was a weak leader (not ineffectual) very weary of doing anything that might be unpopular. He lead by laying a trail of breadcrums on the desired path. Stalin was probably the least limited in his power but was at his most effective as a leader when he loosened his control in order to recover from the early war disasters. Hitler had only one threat to his power, and that was the Wehrmacht. This resulted in him being very distrustful of his generals, stiffling them.

I reckon the bulk of the work would be hooking up the thing to existing code. Ah, but it isn't always gamey. I feel that while there there are good ideas out there to fix the issue, not enough attention is spend on the problems caused by the solution. And here we come to what I feel is the crux of the matter. Not the game mechanics but how you experience the game. For many people the god view causes problems. And while my brain says that they have a valid point, for me the god view and the advantage I can get from that are kinda the point of playing. Interacting with the game, influencing the battle is what I enjoy most. In this instance i would be slowed down from reacting and influencing the battle at points. And sometimes there will be a good realistic reason for me to be slowed down, but sometimes not. In balance, I'd rather be allowed to get unrealistic advantage in some instances then be unrealistically duisadvantaged in others. Compare it to the huge command delays for early war soviets in CMBB. On first glance defensible but in the end it got on my tits because it prevented squads moving in situations where it should have been obvious they would have moved out of their own volition without delay. Instead they sit there waiting for a delay that simulates faulty CnC.

Drusus, They wouldn't see the enemy, and wouldn't care that they didn't. What many term as unrealistic area fire can be explained as sympathetic fire. Sure, I myself have hideously stretched this excuse to maximize firepower on a vital area. But severly limiting area fire is IMHO as bad if not worse then allowing unhindered area fire. And, I'll admit, I do kinda enjoy using area fire to gain an advantage over the AI. It's fun to use/abuse the possibilities. I'd hate to be completely straight jacketed by command delays for every action. As a gamer, it's just not good for a game to tell me "you can't do that (yet)". While your suggestion sounds good, it seems to me to be a whole lot of work for very little reward. Giving "a good chance of getting a question mark" sounds very good indeed, but will most like force Charles to completely overhaul the spotting mechanism. Given the gains of the system, I just doubt it's worth doing. I mean, the "to do" list is already very long, and filled with stuff I would rather see.

Steiner, how would you allow for fire being given off when an enemy drops out of sight in a known location? It would be unrealistic to prevent the unit from immidiately opening fire on the bushes where the enemy just went to ground in. Another example. Squad A returns aimed fire on the enemy inside building X. Squad B doesn't see that enemy but observes squad A shooting at house X. My expectation would be that squad B opens up on house X immediately without asking what the fuss is about. I feel the suggestion is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Depends on what version you purchased. The following recent thread has the info you want. http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=86193

Unless half the worlds press is filming what you are doing. Then the M825 round, in combination with an army spokesman who can keep a straight face, is pretty much perfect. Not saying that the Israelis are firing WP to set fires, but I reckon they don't mind it at all. JK, Haven't seen the "explosions" you saw in footage but I would expect incandescent pieces of WP deployed from an artillery shell and falling from a considerable height to look pretty spectacular on impact.

Yup, airburst WP http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/munitions/m825.htm SO, Because in this fashion the WP falls to earth scattered all over the place, where it will continue to burn for a good five minutes spreading smoke. This method distributes the smoke more evenly and spreads incendiary fragments over a larger area.

Time ticks along during any order/deployment phase but resets back to the proper time again when the turn gets processed. So it doesn't affect gameplay.

None of the weapons carried by that squad should reach out to that 911m range, neither rockets or small arms. None except the Javelin, which however works better if the launcher is carried. Expected your grunts to throw the Javelin, did you?

I'm going to get slagged off for asking, but why are you here Adam? If it's really all so terrible can't you just move on? You've been quite unhappy from day one. Understandable then. But you are still as angry now as when you were playing with 1.01. Frankly, the list of things that you mention is mostly pretty minor stuff. Yet it seems to ruin your game entirely. Try to mellow out a little, I believe you are throwing out the baby with the bathwater here.