Henri

Anywhere from 3 days to 3 weeks, depending on Customs. sometimes they just let it through and sometimes put it on a pile to make believe they are worried about terrorist threats. Henri

I ain't no noob, check out my member number... And what does 133t mean? Henri

First time I played the Jaegermeister tutorial, my 20 or so tanks got a total of 2 hits on the German tanks, both of which bounced off!Of course I don't know what was the number for any specific tank -mostly zero or one, I guess... the next time around, I wiped out the German tanks and had 12 of my own left when the smoke cleared, leading to a total victory. (AAR for the latter available in the scenario talk forum). Henri

Norse, from the 1.5 manual, one cannot salvage (disband)naval units any more. So the old strategy is dead anyway... Henri

Europa Universalis? Henri

Wow, this thread is really taking off. I might as well put in my two cents. Actually everyone is right. CMBB IS more realistic than CMBO, and it does require more management. One problem that is impossible to avoid is that the player is simultaneously playing the role of Battalion commander, company commander (for more than one company sometimes), platoon and squad leader and individual soldier (FOs and snipers). That IS a bit much, and it wuold be nice if one had the possibility of delegating orders to some of these people. Personally I would prefer to do that (yes I have Airborne Assault) with a game of this level. But anyway CMBB does grow on you as you play more and more. And some of the complaints that we make initially become less important as we gain experience -on my first play, I complained about Soviet Armor bveing too weak and lost all my tanks in the Jaegermeister tutorial without killing a single German tank; the next time around, I had twelve Russian tanks left when the scenario finished! I'll get back to playing CMBB right after I have my fill of Srategic Command that I received on Wednesday... Henri

Why don't they allow blockading? If an enemy ship were adjacent to one of your ports, no replacements and supplies would be allowed to come in through that port. This would probably only affect malta and North Africa so it might not be worth it, but... Henri

I totally agree, and my view is that if the game allows it, it is OK to do it. Once a trapped Rommel put a white flag on his car and drove his column right through an allied-occupied town. Was that gamey? He used to drag branches behind a truck on roads to make the British think that a big colymn of tanks was moving there. Game? Sure! So what? The Germans dropped some paratroopers on a supposedly unpregnable Belgian fort and dropped gas through the ventilation vents. "No fair!, cried the Belgians, you are supposed to attack us with tanks!" Unfortunately there are people who do not like the unextected, so they yell "gamey" when they are caught with their pants down. Having said this, I have nothng against players who mutually agree on "house rules", for instance to take into account weapon availability. But I have not much sympathy for those who yell "foul" when one attacks a column with MG-equipped jeeps, which is exactly what the British did with the Desert Rats. Henri

The scenario depot for CMBO and CMBB is nice: with a couple of clicks you can get information on a bunch of scenarios, download them or read reviews of them. But two things missing are that there is no way to send a message to whomever is running the site (or it is well hidden), and there is no way to edit one's comments (or at least i can't find it) once they have been sent.There should be a button to send a message to the webmaster, an like other forums, one should be able to idit one's own comments. So if after more experience I decide to change my comment or rating on a scenario, how can I do it? Congrats on a nice site. Henri

But the manual (patch 1.05) says that fleets CANNOT be disbanded.... Henri

I just got the game yesterday, so excuse me if this has been discussed before. How the hell can the Axis take Malta in 1941-42? The Italian fleet and an Italian air unit were devastated trying to knock out the British air unit there, despite the help of a German air unit and a German and an Intalian HQ in Sicily. It can't be invaded by a land unit, so is it impregnable? Once I knocked it down to 2 points with the two air units, then hit it with three fleets with no results. Does the AI cheat to keep this unit alive? Henri

Hmm, well yesterday I tried a campaign as the Axis with the initial German sub values at +3. The British ships killed all 3 subs in the first 3 moves, and not a single one of them dived when attacked. As soon as I moved them, WHACK! This was with FOW and the difficulty at easy! Henri

well dn't lose hope. I got CMBB last week a couple of weeks after ordering, but I got Strategic command today after less than a week! And I had to go to the post office to pay customs on CMBB, but SC was just dropped in my mailbox. Now from this small sample and making a few assumptions about the probability distribution that are best left unsaid, I would estimate that the rms time of arrival is about two weeks, so there IS a small non-negligible probability that the game could take 25 months to arrive... Henri

Lots of good advice given. But just be aware that a sigle machinegun should have no trouble holding off a single platoon assaulting it over open terrain. So if you don't have other units to support the assault, forgitaboudit and do something else (such as using this platoon to suppress the MG, if it has nothing better to do). Another key point is that infantry in CMBB will hit the dirt much faster when shot at, and they will often break at the first burst from a heavy MG if conscript or green. You might try breaking up the squads into half squads and assaulting with the parts that have the light weapons while the other halves support, but against an entrenched MG, I doubt that this would be enough to get to the MG. I haven't tried it myself - in my one week experience with CMBB I have been advancing againt light opposition or backed up by suppressing tanks, MGs and mortars. Henri

Nice AAR. Cnsidering the quality of the troops, maybe there is not much more that you could have done. I am not sure that putting AT guns in mutually supporting positions with good fields of fire is a good idea - if you can see them tyey can see you. Could the guns have been more effective covering narro corridors of fire through which they could bounce the German tanks one at a time? After all, they can only shoot at one tank at a time... Henri

If you look at the boxes, you will see that they are not CMBB boxes (envelopes I should say...). And IIRC CMBB is not sent by Federal Express. Anyhoo I have my game, so... :cool: Henri

Oops you're right, MY math is off by a factor of two! Gawd, I hope none of my students are reading this thread... Henri

There will be others. [ October 29, 2002, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: Henri ]

While we're at it, aren't there too many gun hits? I remember reading that it had been toned down compared to CMBO, but it seems to me that there are still too many (I would guess one out of five "kills". Scuza me if this has been discussed before, but with a full page of new messages every hour... Henri

For CMBB, it is worth noting that artillery area fire is not designed for assaulting the area where the shells are falling (requires too much timing and accurate artillery), but to prevent enemy units from shooting at your men going elsewhere or to cover a wide area containing enemy units. To suppress the enemy in the woods where you are headed, best is to area fire with a machinegun and/or a tank. In CMBB, such area fire is very effecive in suppressing enemy fire. It also helps to soften up the enemy with direct fire before assaulting. Also note that in CMBB, moving infantry is MUCH more likely to go to ground when being fired at, depending on unit quality. Green units will hit the ground or run away almost at the first shot. So suppression of enemy units is more important in CMBB (and fortunaely also more effective). Henri

One comment that I agree with is why did they put the table of contents at the end and call it an index? There is no index, so if you are looking for a specific word not in the table of contents such as "Hull down", you have to guess where it is in the manual. Otherwise it is a fine manualand a fine game. Henri

well tom, your math are a bit off: if the relative area goes down from 30% to 25%, the hit probability goes from 33% down to 25%, which is a difference of 8% and not 5%... And I presume that when you speak of a 75mm gun, you mean a high-speed one? Is this the gun (the Panther gun) that the PZIV had? I don,t know, I'm just asking. henri [ October 29, 2002, 02:53 PM: Message edited by: Henri ]

When I first played the Jaegermeister advanced tutorial, I got my butt kicked to the moon, losing all my 20 or so Russian tanks to the seven German tanks without even denting one of them. So I have been among the critics of this scenario as too difficult for a tutorial, even an advanced one. It didn?t help that the instructions are so confusing that I thought that I had to send my main force up to the plateau on the left instead of on the ridge straight ahead. Anyway after a week of reading forums and the manual (highly recommended), I tried it again last night. Here is how it went. As intended by the scenario, I sent a platoon mounted on tanks towards the woods on the right with the intention of disembarking the infantry at the woods so that they could continue to the next woods further on in order to later assault the side of the village. I sent two tanks and the two other platoons of infantry off to the left, intending for one to reach the woods far to the left before swinging towards the village far below, and the other about halfway, from where I hope they could sneak up on the village with the tanks. The other tanks and all arriving reinforcements were sent to the center, from where I intended to put them hull down to ping away at targets of opportunity until the German tanks arrived, at which point they would go into shoot and scoot mode. On the left, things went pretty well as planned and contrary to my previous experience, the infantry and tanks were not fired upon as they headed to the left. They eventually reached their positions and headed slowly for the village without incident, having to stop once in a while to restore from fatigue and a slug of vodka. On the right, it was a different story. My units were supposed to reach their destinations and hide until I was ready for the assault, but it turned out that contrary to the previous game, there was an AT gun and an infantry unit in the first woods and another AT gun and infantry in and near the shack on the ridge. As a result, my five tanks heading to the right were shot at almost as soon as they left their positions in the scattered trees. Fortunately the AT round from the woods bounced off the lead tank and knocked off the infantry riding on it, and the five tanks and their infantry soon had the AT gun and infantry running through the woods. Eventually the tanks reached the woods where one was suddenly hit in the side by the AT gun in the shack, penetrating without much damage. While my infantry hunted for the Germans in the woods, the tanks fired at the shack and collapsed it with the first or second shot, burying the AT gun. The accompanying infantry squad took to his heels, but not before panicking one of the two Maxim MGs that was headed for the woods to cover the village. All of this caused considerable delay, not to mention that more German infantry were covering the exit to the woods on the right, which made it impossible for my platoon to reach the second woods until much later when the tanks on the ridge could give supporting fire. The positive aspect of this was that two precious AT guns for the Germans were gone, and no one was covering my units approaching from the left. Another high price for me was the rattling of my 76 mm artillery spotter, who was trying to take a position in the woods from where he could spot the village when he was taken under fire and routed. I had to send an officer next to him, who finally rallied him after about ten minutes, just in time to give the command for artillery to fire their smoke rounds, but the FO was so cross-eyed from his ordeal that he gave the wrong coordinates and the smoke fell on the other side of the village, leaving my assault to go in without smoke cover. But I am getting ahead of myself. In the meantime, my tanks had reached the ridge facing the village, and the leading tanks had deployed in a hull down position. Before I read the manual I thought that one told the tanks where the hull down position was, but instead one must tell the tanks the location of the place from where the tanks appear to be hull down. This mistake had cost me dearly in the previous game, as well as a misunderstanding about how covered arcs work. Before the German tanks appeared far to the rear, my tanks had time to rout a few German units protecting the village. By now the rocket barrage had fallen, probably shaking up some unseen German defenders. Based on the previous game, I expected the Tigers to appear behind the village a bit to the right and the Panthers to appear on the road to the left of the village. Instead none of the German tanks appeared on the road, they all appeared lined up on the edge of the woods on the right. When the tanks appeared, I quickly ordered my tanks to back up of their hull down positions to cover behind the ridge; during the exchange of fire, the Germans killed two of my tanks, but I killed an AT gun alongside the tanks. I now put all of my tanks in the shoot and scoot mode, and had them lined up on the ridge all the way from the woods on the left end of the ridge to the woods on the right where I had my MG set up. The tanks would pop up more or less randomly (with the help of the ?pause? command), take one shot at the German tanks, then back away behind the ridge. This is particularly useful against AT guns, who take a long time to change their orientation, and even for tanks, who lose aiming accuracy when they have to swivel their turrets. So while the German AT guns were playing eenie meeny miney moe with my tanks, the latter played cat and mouse with the Germans. Now the Germans have a total of seven tanks, whereas the Soviets have 15 to 20, which means that losing a Russian tank is not a serious loss, but losing a German one is a catastrophe. As it happened, I was a bit lucky and when the smoke cleared, I had 12 tanks left and the Germans had none. OORAH!!! Throughout the rest of the game, I occasionally spotted what appeared to be a Tiger and a Panther, so I kept 3 of my tanks hull down on the ridge with narrow armor covered arcs just in case. It turned out that these two tanks had suffered gun hits and were therefore useless except for making me hold back three of my own tanks. One of my anks also suffered a gun hit, and one conscript crew remaned panicked for the rest of the game after one of them was killed by a penetration. Now my remaining tanks had a field day supporting the infantry and rooting out German infantry. I was sure that the Germans would have a machinegun in the church, so I ordered a couple of my tanks to put a few shells in the church. Sure enough, a couple of German squads soon emerged and hoofed it to the rear. When I saw that the smoke had missed the village and that there were only 10 minutes left, I decided that it was time for the assault, and threw all of my infantry into the fray. It turned out that whatever German defenders were in the center had been routed or had moved to the flanks, and the infantry attacking from the ridge met no opposition and sailed right into the village, tired but happy. On the flanks, it was a different story: on my right, the platoon who had finally reached the far woods took fire as they crossed the clearing towards the cemetery and hiked back to the woods. Support from the tanks on the ridge eventually cleared the way, but they arrived at the church too late to have any effect on the battle. As mentioned above, the left flank had been pretty quiet, but as the platoon to the far left approached the town, they were met by a hail of fire from a fair number of German units in foxholes and in houses. The two tanks and the other platoon closer to the center made it into town without much incident and moved to the left to support the assault there, which remained stalled for a good while. My tanks on the ridge could not help because their vew was obstructed. The German platoon in the house furthest to the left at the end of the town was the toughest unit I have ever seen. Under fire from two tanks and a half-dozen infantry units, they fought on and on, even afer the building had collapsed on their heads, and when HE rounds were exploding on them. This must be what the manual refers to as units that go ?fanatical?. I worked my way through the village without too much trouble ? infantry supported by a half-dozen or more tanks, one of which is a flame tank, is very efficient in rooting out entrenched enemies. When one of them didn?t hoof it early enough, the flame tank crew would have a barbecue party and convince them to go play somewhere else, encouraged in this endeavor by being shot in the butt by tanks and infantry. Eventually I reached the end of the village and finally killed the stubborn Germans there and scattered the rest. Now there remained two last flags on the road and time was running out. Although I had a victory assured, I wanted all of the flags. The nearest flag had a house and a bunker near it, so I put some tank rounds and MG fire into the house as my tanks approached. The house collapsed ending resistance there, but the bunker bounced a shell off one of my tanks, but he had no chance against all of the suppressing fire and he was soon put out of action. Now the time was up and there only remained the possibility of bonus moves, so I decided to send a tank all by itself to the last flag; when it reached it, two infantry units in the woods nearby assaulted the tanks and killed it. I mounted whatever infantry was available on nearby tanks and raced them up the road past the woods, from where they could turn around hopefully before the infantry could assault them. I also ordered the flame tank to race through the village and up the road to give assistance. The tanks made it to the flag and were shooting it out with the Germans when the flame tank arrived and quickly convinced the Germans that it was a hot day and that they should go to the beach. The game ended with a major victory. Very satisfying after the humiliating defeat I got on my first try. The tank battle decided the game. The strong German flank defenses threw me off a bit, but it turned out to facilitate my assault on the town against the almost undefended center. Although I still think that this scenario may be a bit difficult for newbies, it is a good barometer of one?s grasp of the game. When you can get a major victory in this scenario as the Russians, you are ready for the major leagues. Of course I only believe this because I did it myself Henri [ October 29, 2002, 05:24 PM: Message edited by: Henri ]

I have posted an AAR up about the Jaegermeister scenario in the scenario forum today. Yes it's true, winning is more fun than losing... Henri [ October 29, 2002, 09:26 AM: Message edited by: Henri ]

I did say that it was "pure speculation", which does mean that I don,t have a shred of evidence except the frustration of losing 20 JS2's, SU-122's and SU-152's to a half-dozen tigers and Panthers while SU-122 shells bounced off the German tanks Well last night as the Soviets I got a total victory in the Jaegermeister scenario as the soviets and still had 12 tanks left when I finished, so I am forced to conclude that the above result on my second day of having the game was more incompetence on my part and less evidence of BTS favoring German tanks... I have posted an AAr on the scenario forum today explaining how I did it. Henri [ October 29, 2002, 09:25 AM: Message edited by: Henri ]