Joachim

I suggest you take some notes. Especially the key units like FOs, good CO HQs, guns or specialists like 'schrecks are noteworthy and easy to overlook. There's nothing like getting a mail stating that your opponent overlooked a FO in a trench until that trench got overrun in turn 30. Gruß Joachim

Sounds a bit extreme, doesn't it? </font>

Ahh... the first double post I don't regret. BV - kill one of the crew and it might work. Gruß Joachim

That's what his enemy did. The T34s did the tank cower dance of death. They retreated, blocked each others way, could not score many hits themselves and were driven back to the killing sack: "There wasn't enough room in the lee of the hill for side shots, and it wasn't helped by the T-34s ignoring my orders and reversing away from the STUGs out into view of the German ATGs!" Gruß Joachim

An 88 has even better optics thant the Tiger. This increase accuracy. But more importantly - the Tiger will stand almost any return fire in NA due to thick armor. The 88 won't. So for the 88, it is better to use 8 rounds than lose the gun. The Tiger can just wait that little longer if the target moves towards it o close the range himself. Do a scen StuGs vs Shermans in BO, BB and AK. You'll get different results. In BB the StuG rules. Not so in BO or AK. Gruß Joachim

What's the price of a PzIIIn? Or a IVf? Both are definitely inferior to Shermans in all aspects, AP, AT and armor. The Sherman outclasses the StuG in AP role, for AT the Sherman is the designated loser in open ground. In dense terrain or low viz, the Sherman is better due to its turret and slow vehicle rotation. Bad luck most cherry pickers don't use random weather and terrain, I guess. Gruß Joachim

Mortar team has 7 men, Scout car can only take 6? Gruß Joachim

Mortar team has 7 men, Scout car can only take 6? Gruß Joachim

You mean my opponents' squads have three men icons, too? Wow! With full and extreme fog of war, you only see one man, even if the unit is fifty meters away in open ground. </font>

Hehe... Stugs were built to support infantry. So much for the StugIIIb. But later they were improved cause - it was easier to fit the Pak40 into a hull than into a turret and thus an AFV mounting a "long" 75 could be made earlier - they were cheap - it made sense. They were impoved continually to match the threat they were facing. As the T34 was the workhorse of the Soviets, the workhorse of the Germans was improved to counter it. So the StuG was not designed to counter T34s - they were improved to counter them.

Look at the penetration values for your T34's 76mm guns. 80mm frontal armor may be just too much for them. Thoughts: a) Use smoke from the T34 (not sure if it exists). Use a short covered armor arc to ensure the tank fires smoke. Doubt that works at 50m as the lethal threat overrides smoking. Do not bunch up. If at a distance of 50m none of 10 T34 is on the flank of 3 StuGs, you must be pretty bunched up. One tank starts to reverse, gets in the way of another tank that makes room, itself moves into another tank etc... and the whole TacAI screws as you get lots of moving tanks that can't hit a barn at 50m. Target pracitce for the StuGs. c) If you meant 500m - StuGs are indestructible from the front at that range with 76mm. Take cover. d) Remember Oddball's words - as fast in reverse as forward to get out of trouble as quickly as you got in. Make sure thereis a covered route for a retreat e) You probably ignored flank security and paid for it. f) You bought nothing to deal with the ATGs. Thats what mortars, snipers and MGs are for. g) What are your tanks doing at the bottom of a hill? Why did you have to go there? Just because it is the only dead angle of the ATGs? This is a death trap! Kill the threats before doing fancy maneuvers. h) Tanks are long range weapons. Rushing the flags with all tanks is not necessary to control them. Try to concentrate on destroying the enemy or at least those units that can stop you from conveniently reaching the flags. i) Do some scouting j) Consider the options of the enemy and think of possible death traps and ambush locations. Gruß Joachim

You'd need a very good idea and lots of work to offer something special. Plus you've got to protect that idea. Cause If anybody has a great concept to make money in a (potential/hypothetical whatsoever) aftermarket, I guess some others would copy the idea and offer it for free. There are lots of people spending lots of times on CM add-ons. For everything that 1 person can do full-time, there would be some others doing it in a team as a pure hobby. As there are quite many willing to spend some time on good ideas, you'd soon face free competition if you can't protect your idea. So you gotta convince BFC not only to allow for an aftermarket but restrict that aftermarket so nobody is allowed to offer freeware in a certain part of that market. Nice dream. There are battles lost before you even begin. And this one is definitely not worth fighting. If you believe it works nevertheless: Hic Rhodos, hic salta - or in your words: don't pussy out, try it. Gruß Joachim

PzIVg (early) vs AMX: More armor Bigger silhouette Weaker gun The Sherman will cut thru 50mm at extreme ranges anyway - almost the same as thru 10mm. So the bigger armor is not that important. The smaller size of the AMX offsets the bigger armor (in a pure AT role, I'd trade size for armor and take the AMX over the PzIV) Weaker gun - the PzIV needs some tungsten to simulate the AMX' gun Conclusion: Use IVg (early) and give the tungsten to them. Gruß Joachim

Nice post on the light brigade. Could the French replace their losses? In numbers - yes. In combat power - no. They would not have had enough time to fully mobilize the reserves and bring the divisions up to strength or even form new ones. They feared they would be completely overrun much faster (not sure the Germans could have achieved that - but the French probably thought so.) On my "attritionist" views: IMHO the debate about attritionist and maneuverist is crap. Read carefully: "Wars are not won by taking ground. They are won by inflicting more casualties to the enemy than he can replace while sustaining less casualties than you can replace" You read the attritionist part of the sentence: Inflicting casualties. Now read the maneuvrist part of the sentence: "more... than he can replace ... less casualties than you can replace" That "replace" part is very important. Cause this is where the maneuvrists want to beat the enemy: They want to reduce the replacement rate. Be it morally (shock), logistically (cutting of replacements) or both. If the enemy has 5 active and 10 reserve divisions, you can either destroy 8 - or destroy 5 and hinder the enemy to raise 5 of his reserve divisions (while keeping your initial strength). In both cases the enemy will see that resistance is futile. Gruß Joachim

There are occasions when you have to make a stand even if you'll get hurt. No game in CM is one of those occasions. Want to prove something with a QB??? What really counts is whether you would make your stand in a situation like that in RL. And that Finnish commander - a true hero. Risking death to save his men. Absolutely adorable. Gruß Joachim

I had a wide range from worst case to best case. As you state, TW is somewhere in the middle. But you state that TW only has 16 units. And this is the main point: TW does not calculate for every soldier but per unit. This drastically reduces amount of calcs necessary. Guess with max 16 units per side CM would run very quick. Next point is that it is not the amount of things you have to calc but how you calc them. Checking for weather to calculate speed or how fast you tire is each one calc per unit - thus linear. Calculating a distance is easy (still on calc. Just take the coordinates and ole Pythagoras). Checking if there is LOS between two points is more complex. One calc for every point between them. Checking if there is a unit in another ones rear is easy. Checking if there is a unit visible (or heard) in the rear is much more complex. (You have to calc all points with LOS to the unit then check those that are in the rear for the existence of units and then check whether the units are visual or sound contact due to cover/concealment etc. If you want to check those complexity issues - try counting every 2m*2m square in LOS and then those out of LOS) Command radius of HQ - but CM checks for several HQs and command distance depends on whether there is LOS ad 2&3: Tanks in the rear. Amount of enemy seen. Incoming from flank/rear Ditto in CM Ditto in CM Ditto in CM Ditto in CM Command bonus Nevertheless I'm looking forward to RTW. Their big advantage is that battles were fought in formations in the depicted times and thus their model is reasonable well. It just would not do for modern war.. Gruß Joachim (Technical addendum: I know you can set up battles with 16 units per side that do not run quickly. IMHO this is because CM has a huge limit on forces, thus not allowing to do the calcs as comparison of each two units. From my experience CM checks a units field of view and it's subsequent actions are based on what is in LOS. Slower in certain cases, but much quicker in many others. This is a design decision based on there's more than 16 units)

There are two types I like: The quickies for some fun and action (Still a reinforced inf company with some armor) or the really huge things. My current favourite has about a btn of infantry on each side, plenty of support like 105mm guns set up for DF and I guess there is a btn of tanks plus several other AFVs on both sides. Something in the 10000 pts range. Several minutes to compute a turn. Gruß Joachim

Hehe... Flamingknives "You can have all the pretty graphics in the world, but it's the gameplay that makes the CM series great. " Kobal2: "Gameplay is everything. Graphics...we don't need no stinkin' graphics !" IMHO graphics and model/engine can not be separated. Of course it is possible to have 10 men depicted per squad. But the little grog in me wants that only if each of them behaves at least as rational as the squad does now. To achieve this, you need the TacAI for every soldier, thus you get more objects. So you'd have 5 times as many of your troops interacting with 5 times as many enemy troops. (Assuming an average of 5 men/objects per unit). Same goes with accurate tres vs abstracted trees or any other feature. Once the graphics are exact, I would be rather disappointed in tanks driving straight thru a tree (or a single soldier just outside the trench.) Gruß Joachim

Sergei, as a mathematician I state that RTS is kind of CM with millions of ultra-short turns, very little time allowed for orders and no replay. Now considering we have a really huge CM scen and each turn was 0.1 seconds instead of 1 minute. Time to compute a 1-minute turn can reach 5 minutes. So 0.1 seconds need 0.5 seconds of calcs. If a RTS would need the same calcs, it would not run smoothly. 2 frames per second - regardless of how fast your display is. Question: If TW runs smoothly with more units (ie calc time for a 0.1s turn is less than 0.1s) - why does CM need so much time to compute a 1 minute turn (and I don't talk about the graphics here) when it has less units than TW. Answer: There are many things lacking in TW that are in CM (cf. above). And those things missing are those really straining the CPU Gruß Joachim

- Mark the frontlines, - Tell the player the enemy is at certain landmarks. - Include the "yard lines" at the edge of the map and tell the player how long the map is. Gruß Joachim

I'm going to verge on impoliteness here and say, you are out of your freaking mind! In the majority of battles the highest rank you play is Captain. If you think a Captain could say "No sir, I have decided not to take that objective." your wrong. The history of war, not to mention WWII, is absolutely packed with stories of commanders being required to fight in utterly hopless situations. Charge of the light brigade? </font>

What takes up most time is tracking LOS. Remember that in every split second each unit has to check its full LOS for other units to decide on actions (fire, stop, ...). Use a huge map with large hills and lots of woods (or flat with every tile scattered trees) and a 5000 pts battle will run fast. Select a huge open ground map and do a 5000 pts battle. Hours later... If CM would ignore sighting etc of enemy units during turns and only follow given orders, it would run much faster. Guess if Total War would incorporate light infantrists individually panicking when seeing heavy cavalry in the distance, they would need much more cpu time. But if all units follow orders and only ignore them once panicked by massive losses, they need much less time for this. Example 1: You have 100 infantrists in tight formation. The unit spots a threat but marches on as threats are ignored. It takes losses. Based on the losses, the TacAI decides how many of the unit rout. Any action the individual does is based on the units perception. (Unit is the base for decisions though individuals are depicted. Only commands and events in the immediate vicinity influence unit behaviour) Little CPU time Example 2: 99 infantrists in command of an officer march forward in open formation. A few spot heavy cavalry or archers in the distance and start "falling back". Each soldier is tracked regarding spotting and its subsequent decisions. Communications between individual soldiers happens, so those around the spotters start to fall back, too. (Really individual soldiers. Commands and long range interaction influence soldiers actions). Lots of CPU time. Read: It is not important for the CPU how many units are displayed. The question is what influences their actions. (Display is rather a matter for the graphics card) Gruß Joachim

The scoring is identical to all. (Given a set date) you get as much credit for a destroyed Tiger and killed crew in all types of scenario. What matters is the amount of flags in relation to the amount of casualties. IF there are 20 huge flags and only 500 pts on each side casualties won't be a big factor regardless of scenario type. One small flag with 5000 pts on each side will mean the flag is worthless. A scenario designer is rather free to select the amount of flags and thus can stress holding ground or staying alive as more important goal. QBs follow certain rules regarding force ratio, flag placement and depth of setup zones depending on the battle type (cf. Folbec's post) My rule of thumb is that casualty points are twice the number of the cost. This may vary due to force type. IIRC Treeburst155 made a small utility to calculate the flags vs causalty points for different victroy levels in a scenario. BTW: If you import a map into a QB that has no flags and setup zone, CM will add these according to the battle type and points Gruß Joachim

Ah, a fellow cigar aficionado. "I love it when a plan comes together" and prefer to smoke the cigar after successful execution (of the plan or the person that screwed it). The plan to retreat off map is more often successful than attacking a force bigger than mine on terrain where even the AI can initiate a masterful defence. Hence even a retreat might result in a cigar. Por Larranaga in the morning, Bolivar, Punch or Partagas et al. cigars after I had some food. Gruß Joachim

IRL you don't attack in a place where your troops will get slaughtered when there are places better suited. I accept that you "sometimes" (always?) have to deal with what your given and can't cherrypick. But pressing an attack against the odds? Someone's gotta give me a good reason for that and a QB usually doesn't. Conditions in an attack are rarely fair - the attacker will try to get much more than just the CM 1.7:1 odds. Defense is another thing. I do fight QBs with 2 plts of tanks and a reinforced Infantry Coy vs 2000 regular ariborne troops (+100%) in a city. But I make sure I have a covered retreat route.