Pak40

Has anyone considered the possibility that SirReal works for Paradox? :eek: Come on, SirReal, confess.

Shrapnal's All American still wins the award for longest game in development. They were developing it way before CMBO was in development. I think I was still in college at the time and I graduated in 1994! Well, maybe not that long ago but it was well before the turn of the century.

My guess is that your Windows firewall is on.

Well, ther is one small river in Syria call the Euphrates . You may have heard of it

Before the game came out I pretty much assumed that not all units could possibly be modeled. When you release a game that covers both East and West fronts from 1939-1945 it is an almost impossible task to model every unit available. IMO they should have concentrated the first ToW to at least a single front or even a single battle such as Stalingrad or Market Garden. Other notable units that are missing that I wish were in the game: M18 Hellcat US 75mm AT gun British 17 lb AT gun Many British tanks Also, I hate the lack of modeling of certain types of rounds. For example, the canister rounds for the US 37mm gun which is very deadly vs infantry in the open at close range. This would make the US M5 something to be feared by enemy infantry.

I need to ask: Do you really expect to "put a scratch" on a tank with a Vickers machinegun? As for the Mk I's and II's not scratcing yours, well there may be some bug in this but I bet if you keep playing the game, you will see many tanks meet there end. Mk I's wont hurt your tank at all and Mk IIs are very weak. It may take mutliple penetrations with a 20mm to knock out a tank. However, I have seen a situation similar to what you're describing where a tank just would not die for anything. So, there may be some bug in this but this is an extremely RARE case. I think the armor modeling is damn good, it may need some tweaks but it's damn good. I suggest you play more than two battles and then come back and post.

The real problem is that the developers were too ambitious. They wanted to include every year of the war on several fronts and nationalities and have only 5 default campaigns to spread across these fronts. Therefore they had to combine the US and British units into 1 campaign. It would have been much better to concentrate on 1 front or 1 major campaign like Stalingrad 1942/43. This game probably could have been released 2 years ago if they had done this and would have more continuity in their campaigns.

If the card was bought with the Dell then I suggest downloading the drivers from Dell's support website. It is probably an OEM version of the 5.1 and possibly needs specific drivers from Dell.

Yea, I have those too but am wondering about the new drivers, just released. I don't remember the version.

Fungophag, I initially had crashes or freezes almost every battle that I played. You, I and a few others are a minority of players that have experienced these. There have not been that many posts about freezes and CTDs compared to the whole that have purchased this game. And it is completely plausible that testers did not experience these since there are few of them and the public as a whole has many many more combinations of hardware, software and drivers-making it hard as hell to test for everything. Remember, Battlefron and 1C don't have near the budget as Ubisoft who is, as of this moment, probably not providing a sorely needed 1.3 patch for a very bugged Silent Hunter IV. Yet Battlefront and 1C seem to be committed to patching ToW. I and others that have had these freezes have been helped by Battlefront (see the Troubleshooting Guide near the top of this forum.) For me the culprit was the shadows. Turning these off in the Video options cut down on freezes drastically. I have had a couple of freezes since then but I've been able to play many battles without a problem.

increase your swap file to 3000 MB for min and max. See if that does anything.

I wonder if these will help? Has anyone loaded them yet and tried ToW?

I had the exact same symptoms and followed Battlefront's recommendations in the troubleshooting guide sticky. They recommend turning off music, EAX, and shadows, they also recommend increasing your swap file size to 3000MB for min and max. Try each one of these one by one until your freezes stop. Shadows were my main culprit. It only froze once after the shadows were turned off then MadMatt suggested I try increasing the swap file. I played a couple more games without a freeze after that.

Mat, After changing page file to 3000 for min and max, I played 2 consecutive battles in the French Campaign with no CTD or freeze. I will play some more when I get some time later this week.

My laptop is older and slower than yours (2 years old) and ToW runs beautifully as far as FPS goes. Very smooth. The problems you see on this Tech board are not from high requirements of the game, they're from some small incompatibility or wrong setting on some people's systems(in fact, very fast systems). It's probably one small setting or configurement with the processor or video card and once that is discovered it should fix everyone's problems.

Will do but it was already set to 1500 for min and over 3000 for max. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time to play test this week. Thanks

I had previously reported that my freezes had stopped once turning off the Shadows (played 3 full battles without a freeze in the Polish Campaign and 1 battle). I have now twice started the French Campaign and so far have had 1 CTD and 1 freeze in the first map. I'm using the same settings as when I did not have any freezes: No shadows, no EAX, no music. Specs are: Pentium M 2.0 Ghtz. 2 gigs ram nvidia 6800 go audigy 2 XP prof latest nvidia drivers & direct x 9c hope this helps

In regards to the AI automatically rotating AT gun crews. It is my experience that the AI should NOT rotate AT gun crews for one simple reason: Ambushes. If you set guns up to face a certain direction for an ambush then you don't want it turning 90 degrees to face a halftrack that it sees at 1000 meters to it's left - this will ruin a good ambush. It's best to leave it up to the human player to determine when to turn the gun. Obviously there comes a time when the AT gun crew must override your command, like if enemy units are within 100 meters or so. Also, it may be possible that the developers could add a toggle to override your commands. That would give players like me the option to either stick with my commands strictly or allow the AI to override when the unit is severly threatened. For now I recommend using the spacebar (pause) every once in a while to check your units, even if you think everything is going smoothly.

I do not agree, although I thought they were very hard at first. First let me say that I have only played one of the campaigns(polish) and 1 battle so far, I have a busy schedule that does not allow me to play often. I learned a lot during the Polish campaign that changed my mind about how hard the game is. Sure, it can seem undaunting because the AI keeps throwing waves of reinforcements at you but, at the same time you get lots of reinforcements yourself. But the real key to success is two things I think: 1. Setup - using the terrain to your advantage during the setup phase. 2. The right mix of units for the job at hand. A good example of #1 is the first battle of the Polish campaign. Do not take the default setup, move all of your troops and guns back behind the crest of the hill into the town. Maybe leave an AT gunner that servers as a scout before the crest. The enemy tanks, as they crest the hill at that short range will be cut down by your 4 AT guns, even with their crappy gunnery skills. A good example of #2 is the third battle of the Polish campaign. At first I took the default AT guns and a few light tanks. But the AT guns were the lighter less effective caliber. I got clobbered by the enemy armor. The second time I traded my tanks and crappy AT guns in for the two 75mm AT guns. I put my best gunners on those guns with capable gunners nearby to reinforce should the AT gun crews experience losses. I had no trouble knocking out the enemy tanks at that point. Point is: there is a way to win every game - just find out what it is - don't settle for the default. [ May 09, 2007, 03:48 PM: Message edited by: Pak40 ]

Did you read the first post?

FYI, while waiting for the patch, I've turned of shadows in the Video Options. So far I've played three battles without any freezes which was not possible to play even one battle before turn them off. Wish I could test it more but I've been busy with other things.

Madmatt, I've had the random freezes since I first installed the game. So, I tried your 3 recommendations: turn off music - still had freezes Turn off EAX - still had freezes Turn off Shadows - I have played two games through so far without a freeze, over an hour of gameplay. This is a first for me. Crossing my fingers and I'll keep you all informed.

Well, I've been pouring over the forums with anything regarding freezes and haven't seen either of the suggestions that you just postsed. In fact, I haven't seen any posts where someone resolved freezing problems, only increased FPS. I will try them, especially the one about the music. I think I'm already in my default resolution.

Posted this in another thread about random freezes: Specs: Inspiron 9300 2 ghtz Pentium M 2 GB RAM Nvidia 6800go with 256RAM Audigy 2 sound card I have the latest Direct X and Nvidia drivers When I say random, I mean it happens at various times for no rhyme or reason. I could play for 45 minutes without a problem then screeeech! Or I could have just started and be in the forces setup mode. There seems to be no single thing that causes it to freeze. Sometimes I have to power down but sometimes I can Ctrl-Alt-Del and get back to desktop.

Well, processor speeds don't mean what they used to mean. I have a 2.0 Ghz Pentium M which is about equivelent to a 3 Ghz Pentium 4. And, of course the new duo core Pentiums are faster than my M processor at the same Ghz, even with one core. When they say minimum of 2.6 ghz, I assume they mean 2.6 Pentium 4 speed, which is quite old by now. Also, those RTS games don't have nearly the CPU requirements that these more "realistic" wargames have. after all those RTS don't simulate ballistics and track the shot of each buttet, or track the LOS of every unit etc... The RTS games are much more simplified. All that makes a big differece in CPU power.