Andreas

Well, you could stay if you promise to do the cleaning. I have a spare room going at the moment.

Yes. Would be my guess.

There was an American civil war? Was that when Newt was fighting Bill? :confused:

Soddy, you can always come over to my place on Saturday, 2pm. Email me if you are interested. Do you know if Simon is still interested in coming?

I wonder where I did file that photo of Holien... Hmmmm...

The Honey was the Stuart. The Grant was the Lee.

I doubt it was de-classified when Ryan wrote it. Could be the same situation as with Chester Willmot wrote 'The struggle for Europe' before ULTRA was declassified, there are some references to decoy stuff in there, as true history, IIRC. Firefly, good to hear that.

I think what Firefly is alluding to is the famous case of all agents landed by SOE in Holland being captured and either shot, or worse turned. There was a BBC docu about it a while back. The Germans, when they knew the game was up, said goodbye in the clear, just to add insult to injury. Not sure about times etc. This is all off memory. Been a while I have seen that programme, never read anything on it. So take it for what it is worth.

About a year ago. BFC does not have a habit of dropping price while sales are still strong, I guess.

That stuff did really put the fear of God into you, didn't it? I would trust an old sailor to appreciate it right, wouldn't you, Lou??

Okay, got the LCD today, and it looks just cracking. I noticed that CM seems to brighten up the system when started, and maybe overly bright if ALT-Tabbed out. Performance is very good, no text missing, and I do not like fog anyway. I am a very happy customer at the moment.

As the designer of 21st Army Counterattacks, I would like to comment on this. The scenario is probably not well playable against the AI, contrary to what I thought when I designed it for the CD. The reality is that when we designed scenarios for the CD, at least I was working with a lot of CMBO baggage in mind. It was also the first operation I had designed. It is therefore likely to be flawed. In the time since I first got a hold of the CMBB beta, April last year I think, I have experimented a lot with this, and I think that a lot of what I did for the CD then, I would no longer do like that again. Live and learn. If you want to get the measure of the AI, you need to pick up something that has been designed recently, by an experienced designer (not necessarily me, other people have done more work since CMBB release, and will have a better understanding). You should also pick up a game that was purposefully designed for single-player. Then you need to leave the forces as set up. If the designer has done the work properly, the forces will stay where they are. Like humans, the AI seems to sometimes have a 'bad day at the office'. But I have also seen it perform splendidly, in defense. If you play sloppily, it can hand you your rear end. It is not often that it happens, but happen it does. It will never be the measure of an even semi-competent opponent in multiplayer though. But that does not make it 'broken', or 'awful', or indeed 'embarassing'. The embarassing thing about 21st Army counterattacks are the design flaws by me. Got nothing to do with the AI.

but.. but.. we have a whole country full of cute Australian ladies down here! :eek: Mace </font>

Hi Rune If I manage to set up my new machine for TCP, we could have my previewers play the sorry losers over in Chicago, err, I mean your venerable guests.

Should be enough space Kip, so come along. Remember to bring the beer both for you, and for me.

If I had had to do a sneak peak in that week, I would probably have shot myself to escape general busyness. UPDATE The good news for Saturday is that the nitwits at www.Iwillneverbuyfromyouagainbecauseyourpostsalesserviceissh*te.com managed to deliver the LCD on time, and it works, and CMAK looks splendid on it. So there will be two computers working on Saturday. There is also ample space now that my lodger has moved out and all his crud is gone.

Yes please! If you ever manage to get to London (you should, we have a number of cute Australian ladies working in my office) I owe you a number of pints.

These are really two different issues, and I try to avoid deliberate misinformation. I think that had at some point taken over briefings, to the extent that the line 'don't expect enemy tanks' came to mean exactly the opposite. I prefer vagueness in those cases, instead of blatant misinformation.

Just a dash of milk would be fine, thanks.

No I wasn't! Lucas had a clear path off the beach. A week of hard charging and he would have been knocking on the door of the Fuhrer bunker! But he blew it!!!</font>

Thanks a lot all - ALT-G did it. The other tips will come in useful when I set it up on the LCD tomorrow. so far (knock on wood) nothing about missing text etc. Oh, and CMAK looks even better than CMBB

Do you want a cup of tea with your Kraut?

Andreas, I can't believe you'd write a thing like that. Such a gamble is justified only when there is a reasonable chance of winning something with it. I say that there is a great deal of difference between losing those battalions as part of a unified defence and simply throwing them into the fire. Besides, it really isn't an either/or propostion. There is a third course that Lucas might have pursued, and that is neither sitting tight on the beachhead nor haring off on some wild scheme beyond his capacity to pull off. And that is to expand the perimeter of the beachhead to capture the points from which it could be observed and brought under fire. This would have also have given him some room to maneuver as additional units were fed into the position. Michael </font>

Kingfish was joking, it was an allusion to our earlier discussion where he was the one who brought up the Rangers example as indication/proof that a rapid move off the bridgehead would have been disastrous, IIRC. I then (or before) brought up (mostly in jest) the point that the drive from Anzio to Rome is one hour today. That was however mostly aimed at making clear the distances involved. Why don't you shred my post instead Famine? WBR War

Ah, overlooked that. I think Lucas was far too cautious, and the failure to set up aggressive patrolling, especially in the face of German non-resistance, was just very poor generalship. Apparently there were no patrols sent out beyond the phase lines, and no attempt was made to push beyond them, even though no Germans were encountered. The Allies could have achieved more at Anzio, in the view of German analysts after the war. More aggressive allied commanders would probably have done so. As for the risk to having units cut off - the same units later bled out on the frontlines of the bridgehead for five months. Risk them quick, and hope for a quick return, or risk to lose them through attrition later. There were enough forces quickly available, and shipping to carry them, to make up for the odd battalion or two that are lost in such gambles. I know that the loss of the Rangers at Cisterna has been used as a proof that the cautious strategy paid off. I responded to it then, but just to reiterate: a) the situation was different, because it was a couple of days later, and the Germans had now had time to react they were still lost - would you rather lose them trying to achieve something, or on a bungled trip into a prepared enemy defense? In fairness to Lucas though, it seems that he was badly let down by the intel available to him. It seems that at this time of the war intel quality on the allied side was quite shoddy, despite aerial superiority and ULTRA. As an aside. Interestingly, we come back to one of the things claimed by those quenching their thirst from the Ra-Ra Kool Aid fountain of Allied air power. Aerial intel did not detect the absence of the Germans, and it did not interdict the movement of German forces or their supply towards the very restricted area of the bridgehead in any great way, shape or form.