Mikeathome

The Germans developed Sarin from an insecticide IIRC - one developed by one of hte allies, and assumed the allies had also developed it.

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by John Hough: Ah, but what would you consider a 'unit'? I'd say a unit is the smallest part of your force that can be independently controlled. In which case, the demo never gives you more than 6, and I'd guess the game proper never gives you more than 20-30, and that would be in a particularly large battle.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Threre's a patch available that lets you edit the game files. There's also a few scenarios created by fans with a lot more than the 6 units in the original demo. You can find them all at http://www.totalwar.org/index.htm They are mostly pretty tough, and those that aren't are interesting anyway! <BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Also, the people aren't ugly for the sake of putting lots of them in, they could just have easily put in good looking tiny sprites. The artists are just abusing crack cocaine. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE> There's an example of the final graphics at the page above - they are much better than the 6-view sprites used. Mike

Good God - you mean we gotr something in NZ before yuo got to see it in the cradle of democracy??!! That's got to be a first! FYI - the same programme started here last week. Mike

Good story - shame it ain't so! Roman stakes were only used once AFAIK - by Sulla against the scythed chariots of Mithradates of Pontus. Scythed chariots were alose earlier panzer material than Elephants, possibly having been used by Cyrus the Great (founder of the Persian Empire) circa 500-and-something BC, and most definitely by his heirs and successors, including Darius the Great, best known for losing to Alex the Great (lot of great men in those days!!) However Elephants were definitely panzer material - there was a Carthaginian victory in 250-ish BC (30-40 years prior to Hannibal's time) where the pachyderms litterally rolled over the top of hte Romans. However, like panzers, elephants and scythed chariots were fairly easily countered, particularly by light infantry. Mike, the fairly average

Steve I'm afraid I can't really accept your apology for the strength of yuor disagreement, because I find it insulting that you have made some pretty silly comments about me, misrepresented my point of view, provide evidence that agrees with me and then say I'm wrong. I'd happily accept an apology for all that. I do not think that any soldiers were mindless robots at all. Nor do I think that all Germans were Nazis or that all Americans are Democrats. The original post is a series of SOP's. It does not say "_think about_ retreating from an impassable obstacle", or "_think about_ charging straight at AT guns if at short range", etc.. It says DO IT. Certainly the German army taught these things to a lower level than other armies, and it's leaders knew that they were to use them, even at a low level. So of course they performed better!! I said as much - it's my whole point! You say yourself that the US army manuals of the same era were not as good, therefore the US army did not perform as well: "Many of their "drills" were based on false assumptions and some pretty bad tactical concepts. So the US soldiers had the same mindless drills, but they were less applicable and therefore found themselves befuddled quite a lot (especially early in the war)." According to your own post the quality of SOPs was a major reason for the better performance of the German army. Read my post again Steve - this is EXACTLY what I was saying. Mike

I think there's a couple of different levels of thought going on here. Fionn - AFAIK german low-level initiaitve consists of following a set of very good battle drills. It wouldn't matter if hte local commander was a colonel or lance-corporal - the drills were still the same and had to be followed. My example of an immediate counter attack is an example. There are otehr examples in the original post - always charge AT guns if at short range, never stop in front of a A/T ditch or minefield (retreat instead), always expect a counter attack. These are excellent drills, and were well known down to the lowest command levels. IMO they are NOT initiative. They are following SOP's. That the German SOP's were better than US ones does not mean that German's had more initiative at lower level - it means their SOP's were better. Berlichten - allied forces were pulled out becaue they COULD be. Germans had no such luxury, hence were contstrained to fight on with much reduced numbers. Mark IV - of course Germans are individuals. So were Soviet soldiers of the same time. That's not _my_ point. My point is that the German army (SS, whatever) did not have better lower level initiative than, say, the Americans. The German lower level commanders were using a better set of SOP's than their US equivalents. Hence the Germans were just as hide-bound as everyone else. Mike

Added to which some A27L Centaur's were converted to Cromwell configuration too - the difference was that hte Cromwell had a NMeteor engine, the Centaur a Liberty due to early shortages of Meteors. 950 A27L's were built. The most famous ones were the 80 fitted with 95mm howitzers and fielded by the Royal Marines or some other outfit not known for tank use. Mike

Here's one exciting way to approach the game: Send the PzGren platoon into the town on it's H/T's at "move fast" speed, and dismount it into the 2-story buildings on the right hand side of the road. Leave the lead H/T empty (the spare squad can be commanded by the Company HQ) and put it down the L/H side of the road, and the others down the RH side. However remember to give your infantry orders to debus - in my current game my H/T's got there so fast that I hadn't given the infantry move orders. The Amis' all turned to face & shot them to bits the enxt turn - had I debussed immediately I would probably have taken 0 casualties. However I still have 1 full squad in the middle of hte town having lots of fun with the Ami Bn HQ :0 But the main pay off from this isthat ALL the american infantry will start shooting - if your observers are in good positio then you know EXACTLY where to smoke and HE on T2! Mike

Y'know I'd be quite happy for a later release - say April I have exactly zero disposable income right now, and I'd hate to be reading all your posts about the wonderful features of the full game and not to have it myself!! Mike

As one a casual afficianado who has perceived the Germans to be automatons, I have to say there's nothing in this excelelnt article which changes my perception. AFAIK the individual german soldier was constrained to follw pretty strict battle drills. This post includes several simple drills - when to charge, when to back off, etc. What the German army did, IMO, was to make those battle drills highly relevant to actual battlefield conditions - things like counter attacking to recapture a lost position before hte other guy could organise a defence ASAP for example. This was not something that individual commanders dreamed up on the spot - it was one of their pre-programmed responses. Mike

Is that Jagd Panther the one that used to be at IWM Duxford? I think I've got some photo's of that too. I'll see if I can find them & post them to you. That photo of a T-28 is also reporduced at http://www.history.enjoy.ru/index.html. Go to the "Soviet AFV's" page, then to the T-28 medium tank. The photo is about 60% of hte way down the T-28 page, in "T-28's in action". Grissly Mike

I have an old Signal book titled "Soviet Panzers", which is mainly German pics of knocked out Sov tankts from the early days of the war. It includes such gems as a T-28 with the left front mg turret removed with extrmem prejudice, the gunner protruding in a fairly horrible pose, burned black and with his right arm missing. Or a well dressed young woman posing n the barrel of a KV-2 which has a 20mm hole punched through it. Plus of course there's any number of BT's and T-26's with gaping holes in their armour Mike

I can't see either of the images posted or anything at the URL listed Mike

Civdiv wrote: First, the days of really simulating a squad of infantrymen, each controlled by a single person, are just not yet here, unless you are all running DSL. Depends whether you want to do it on-line or not! I'm sure have others have had similar experiences to me - the chief of the NZ army simulation section (it's not a big army!!) invited the local wargaming club around to have a play one Saturday. It's where I first met TacOps. Anyway - Delta force on 16 linked PC's with 19" screens. Need I say more?? They didn't actually break out the headsets & microphones for us, but they're there for "real" training. Mike

IRC the early Pz-IV's with the "short" 75's ewren't ther e for infantry support - they were there as either heavy tanks or as HE support for the 37mm armed mediums, much as the British used close support tanks with 3.7" or 3" howitzers to support their 2 pdr "gun" tanks of the same era. As a side note - much is made of the lack of HE for the 2 pdr, but if hte Germans felt the need to support their 37mm gun tanks with a 75mm howitzer, then the 2 pdr (40mm) HE probably wouldn't have been all that wonderful anyway! Mike

A bit off topic, but perhaps you shuold expect to see some of these shadows in CM2 (or is it 3,...or 4??)? From the USA: 2097 P-40's 2908 A-20's 4746 P-39's 2,400 P-63's 862 B-25's 30 O-52's 82 AT-6's (incl some British Harvards) 195 P-47's 48 PBY-6A's 137 PBN-1's (note that the PBY-5 was built under a licence sold in 1941) From the Brits: 270 Tommahawks & Kittyhawks (P-40's to the soulless Yanks! ) 2952 Hurricanes (one of which is nw flying in New Zealand) 14 Albemarles 46 Hampdens 1188 Spitfire Mk IX's 143 Spitfire Mk VB's 1 Mosquito B IV I don't have figures for the tanks, trucks and radios...perhaps someone else can supply them?

I too wonder aboout building damage. You often see photos or newsreel of bombed out cities from WW2 which have plenty of houses & factories with walls left standing. Presumably many of them are burned out instead of having taken direct hits, but photos of V-2 and V-1 hits in England invariably have the buildings at the edge of the crater still standing to some degree or other. Mike

Conningham's biography includes a cartoon of "the contractors" - Cunningham, Cunningham and Conningham with the caption: "Removal contractors - armies and navies removed with speed, distance no problem, also skies swept clean". Alan Cunningham was removed from command of hte 8th within a week of the appearance of the cartoon in the Daily Express on 21 Nov '42.

Rob - I see you're another "junior member" over 40 - 2nd childhood huh? Nik - I spent 31 years in Chch, including 12 getting a BA part time (History of course, mostly WW1 & 2 ), and would shift there tomorrow if they'd pay me what I get here! :-( Fionn - memory doesn't fail - your body finally learns to get immune to it! Mike

I suspect the "concrete" shell is probably a concrete-piercing shell, as opposed to HE. There was an empty 80cm shell at Duxford Airfield in England last tiem I was three, about 20 years ago. The shell stood about 6 feet tall IIRC. Mike

EVERYONE I know personally in NZ who is playing the demo is 40 or over - all 4 of us!! (I know there are a couple of other gamers about playing it, but I don't know htem personally) Mike

Auchinlek was Northern-Irish Protestant - the closest he came to the ANZAC's was as CinC of the Indian army at partition and of both Indian and Pakistani armies for a short time after partition (according to Keegan's "Who's Who in Military History) Mike

I have just finished (re-) reading a biography of Conningham, Commander of hte Desert Airforce and Allied Expeditionary Airforce (on Europe & preps from before D-Day). The man had a considerable amount of time working with Montgomery, and a bit with Patton. Somewhere in there he says that MontGomery's forte was attacking a stationary foe who he grossly outnumbered on land and air, who had inferior and less equipment, who couldn't/wouldn't run away and who gave him a couple of months to prepare! Severly paraphrased - I can't find the quote now :-( Now this was from a senior RAF officer (albeit a New Zealander), and hte biography is by a British-born New Zealander lecturing in Early 20th Century (ww1 & 2) history. Conningham also had the good fortune to fall foul of Patton in Tunis - Patton had left a HQ or OP in one place for 3 days, and the LW duely divebombed it and killed his favourite ADC. His next daily summary railed about the "heavy air attacks" his troops had suffered, despite 2/3rds of the CAP that day being over his corps and this being the only attack documented. Mike

"Arty" = artillery. Arty spotters are the people who call in hte artuillery for you. If you lose them then you also lose the ability to use their artillery. Mike

Kileld from the edge of the map huh? Remember that the map edge is probably only 6-700m away - not very far at all!! I'm looking ofrward to "real" sized maps. Also the random thing - in your encounter the Americans fired 4 shots to your 3, for an empirical hit rate was about 29% (2/7). My meagre stats trainig tells me that you had a 36% chance of getting 0 hits. Of course the actual percentages would be different, but you can see that there's probably a decent chance of you getting 0 hits. Mike