Archer

Regarding the question of leaving "dead" units on the field - I think people may be forgetting that units (say groups of 50 people or so) don't all of a sudden croak in one large clump, as if they'd all shot themselves in the head all at once in one spot. They "drool" over the field - one guy dies here, two more over there, thirteen by the wall, another stubs his toe and is shot in the head when he yells "Damn!" - you get the idea. So from a single unit of 50 men you have, potentially, fifty "dead man" dots. That's A LOT of polygons when you have twenty units down - thus potentially 1000 additional dead man markers. Regarding the overview display concept. As I pointed out in another topic, I'm a horrible wargamer. One of the worst you'll ever see. But I don't miss the overview display, for reasons already mentioned. They scare me. I don't like them. If I don't know what I'm missing because I can't get at it, then I sleep better at night. And as a kind of alternative for the overview map, I've taken to swooping out to view 7, rotating the map and then checking out the field from above. And even *there* I feel like I'm cheating. I really try to stay down below view 4, to stay with the feel of the game, but since I suck I can't do it without being slaughtered. So I switch to 4 and 7, and with that view 7 I've got the overview I want. Not in terms of what the units are doing or what their statuses are, but position and so forth. Plus, I can always +/- through the units and get a general feel that way. So to answer the underlying question ("What does the 'non-military' gamer want? Screen or no screen?") I can definitively say, from the perspective of a clueless wargamer, I don't miss the screen. I don't *want* the screen. It would give me way too much to think about, and already I'm "too nervous on the battlefield." Ignorance is bliss!

All right - here's what I think about the targetting deal. First off, let me point out that I'm probably the world's worst wargamer. I'm horrible. I'm really, really horrible. I jump the gun, I have bad planning skills, I really and truly suck. I always have, and I don't expect it will ever change. When I first started playing the CM Demo, the AI retargeted pretty much every single thing I did. There wasn't a single command I'd give that wouldn't be countermanded somewhere along the way, usually less than 20 seconds into a phase. It was horrible. But the thing is, I actually started to WIN. Or at least, come close to it. In all my previous computer wargaming experience (mostly Close Combat), I never learned. I'm an anxious player, and I *do* try to do too many things at once, every time. I give stupid orders. Really, really stupid orders. If the AI were more heavily weighted to paying attention to my targets, I'd never win, or even be able to walk away from the field without bleeding from a thousand holes. Now, though, I just don't bother targeting at all unless I'm REALLY REALLY interested and SURE that what I want to target is a good and valuable target. Otherwise, I pretty much let the AI do what it wants - because it's SO MUCH BETTER THAN I AM at this sort of thing. I would be in favor of a kind of sliding scale, perhaps, where on one end you have something close to mandatory targeting (or at least VERY heavily weighted toward the player) and on the other hand you have the AI as it stands now - where it makes up for my boneheaded targeting mistakes. I will admit to not usually understanding why the AI retargets the way it does, but I'm sure that's just because my "situational awareness" is poor. If I understood what was going on, maybe I'd do a better job and the AI wouldn't retarget so much. In fact, I'd like to see how thrashed I'd get if the AI *did* listen to me...