Bill101

It's more of a fortified line than a fortress in the classical sense. Thus the more sides you give it, the better able it is to provide all round defence for the unit occupying it. I've used some in defending Russia and have learnt that one sided fortresses are useful but once the enemy have outflanked them they are worse than useless.

For multi-player I think that SC2 has amazing potential, and for re-creating WWII it's much better and more realistic than HOI or SC1. That's before we start modding. Great one Hubert!

Thanks Hubert.

I was playing the standard 1939 campaign last night as Axis and when it came to April 1940 and I wanted to DOW on Benelux, I couldn't. The declare war button wouldn't work. No matter which neutral country's flag I selected, when I pressed the declare war button nothing happened. As you can see, rather than be grey it was actually the same colour as the background. The strange thing is that I saved the game off and loaded it up this morning and it works. This is good news but I'm a bit worried as to what the cause was, and whether it could happen again.

I've read a cartoon version of the Art of War and enjoyed it, but my special favourite is Clausewitz's On War. Obviously both are of use in improving your military strategies and tactics, but Clausewitz's book has had a very strong and positive impact on my gameplay. I would heartily recommend it to everyone with an interest in military affairs. Some of the modern books on Manouevre Warfare are also pretty useful. For sea warfare there is Mahan's The Influence of Seapower Upon History and Corbett's Some Principles of Maritime Strategy. I don't know if there are more modern works covering 20th century naval strategies, but I'd be surprised if the principles have changed much from when these authors wrote.

Yes, Friendly Fire playtested this out at Suez and it happened there too, so it will happen in any hex which can be occupied by land and naval units. Something to watch out for.

I'm afraid that there's no way of telling without counting the hexes or sailing up next to his carriers (if he's got some) and seeing what strength they are. The thing is that if your opponent has it, he'll probably use it, so watch his air attacks carefully. Fortunately it will make repairing his aircraft more expensive, so it's not all bad news if he does get ahead of you.

Alexander and myself found a new bug this last week, after one of the Royal Navy's carriers went missing while protecting Denmark from a German invasion. You can try this yourselves by setting up a pbem game where the allies have Copenhagen while the Germans have a corps just south of the German-Danish border. You must have FOW on for this to work, and starting with an allied turn will make it quicker. In the allied turn, move an allied naval unit into the hex west of Copenhagen. In the Axis turn rush the German corps nearest to the Danish border for Copenhagen, et voila, the naval unit is not there! The report screen of strengths and losses will be updated to reflect the lost naval unit. It only takes a minute, and if you replay it you will see that if you move the corps anywhere else the battleship will still exist. Friendly Fire has tried this out and it also works at Suez, though the good news is that Hubert doesn't think that this will be a problem in SC2 as things will be coded differently. Here are some screen shots from the game where we discovered it. These are two versions of the same Axis turn. In the first picture my German corps has rushed for Copenhagen and as a result the allied player has lost their carrier (which the Axis player never even saw), while in the second picture the carrier remains because we moved our corps one hex less. There are slight dissimilarities in the numbers of German Corps sent to Denmark because I was confused and trying to find the carrier that Alex had reported missing. Fortunately (or unfortunately for me!) the result of this game is already clear, but I'd hate for anyone to lose a naval unit this way during a game where it's a close run thing. [ January 02, 2006, 03:46 AM: Message edited by: Bill101 ]

Will evacuations be possible without ports? I'm thinking Dunkirk style.

And in the long run it's the quality of the game that we'll remember, not the shipping date.

What other games? Aren't you getting confused with all the other games produced by Battlefront which are designed BY OTHER PEOPLE. I'm happy to wait because I want a good product. SC1 has given me several years of fun and I hope that SC2 will too. A good product takes time and I'd rather wait another year than get a shoddy game that I only play once and then throw away. In a way, the longer we have to wait the better!

Funny, I was only thinking the same thing the other day!

Hi Vveed, I'm fine thanks and hope you are too. I'm looking forward to the new game and if you want a game of it with me when it's out let me know.

Thanks for the AAR Blashy. It was very interesting and has definitely whetted my appetite for the new game. In SC1 the possession of Iraq plays a large part in determining the outcome. As the Axis will now be able to sway Iraq by diplomacy into joining them, do you feel that it will have the same significance as before or is it too early to tell? Another thing I'd like to know is how important is anti-aircraft research now? As we know it could also be a large factor in SC1 so I'd be interested to know how it works now. Thanks

Blashy, image numbers 33, 47 and 57 where a number of allied units appear to be carrying something which is very similar (although not perfectly identical) to the Polish airforce insignia. Here's a link to a web page where the aircraft have the insignia on their tails: http://www.polandinexile.com/airforce.htm If not Polish (and now I've seen more there seem to be too many to be free Polish) what does this insignia mean in SC2? [ November 12, 2005, 01:29 AM: Message edited by: Bill101 ]

I've noticed the Free Polish forces putting in a couple of appearances in the screen shots. A very nice touch!

Those long range German jets really are a pain, and if my Yanks didn't have level 2 AT I wouldn't be at the gates of Paris now. The Russian tanks have so far proven worse in combat compared to their inferior German counterparts because we didn't have HQs, but that situation is changing. Despite losing Rostov we are proud to have destroyed one Panzergruppe and badly damaged another, but we need some tech advances...

Blashy wrote: "You have to follow the OOB when the war start for both sides, if you don't then the game completly goes into unrealism". "The French sucked, there is NOTHING that could and can be done about it except form making a campaign that is from an alternate reality". The problem is that the Maginot line was so ingrained into French doctrine that they would never have abandoned without a fight something they had invested so much money into. That doesn't mean that I don't want players to have full freedom of movement, but acting so unhistorically needs to have both benefits and costs built into it otherwise if the default strategy for defending France becomes abandoning the Maginot then this game will look a bit silly. Good on you though for trying something different, that might even work! I'm enjoying the AAR and looking forward to playing the real thing.

Sounds like either Borodino or Leipzig then. Armies were getting bigger so losses were going up!

These long range jets the Germans have got might be rather annoying, but they couldn't stop some Italians getting a bashing near Beirut!

80,000? Are you sure you've remembered that correctly? As far as I am aware Russian casualties at Borodino were circa 45,000, unless of course new research gives a different figure, but as there were only 120,000 or so Russians present 80,000 would be a very high and very unlikely casualty figure.

The battle for the middle east is now underway, with allied units vacating Alexandria to concentrate on a defence of Iraq. Our reconaissance units had spotted that the eastern Mediterrenean was chock full of Italian transports and naval units, so trying a forward defence wasn't going to work.

There may be now, but were there in the 1940s?

Does that mean that during snowy periods we won't be able to move airfleets at all? Or can we just not use them to launch attacks? There is a difference in that if the enemy has broken through your front line it is going to be rather frustrating seeing someone chew up all your airfleets while you are unable to do anything about it. At least that would be fair enough for one turn, but if the snowy weather goes on for quite a few turns then it could be quite decisive (and depressing for the person losing their airforce).

It's been quite funny watching Italian transports flitting past near Malta every other turn, and is far more realistic than having the country totally non-active until it joins the war. Hopefully what we're doing is trying out something that we'll see more of in SC2...