kgsan

Yep, in anticipation of CMAK, I dug out my old game when I was home visiting the parents this summer. It was a detailed design, but to be honest I played Squad Leader a lot more. SL's abstractions made for an easier faster paced game and of course it covered the entire ETO. Still, I enjoyed Tobruk, particularly the much more detailed representation of armor combat. Like another poster, Avalon Hill's Afrika Korps was my first wargame and ever since I've always been interested in games covering the North Africa campaigns.

Personally I hope they don't use the whole face, portraits, at least unless they can provide varying portraits for each unit type. In CMBO each type of unit (e.g. german pioneers squad, british paratrooper squad, U.S. infantry squad, SS platoon HQ etc.)had its own portrait, but every unit of that particular type shared the same picture. With each US infantry squad showing the same face gazing back at you it felt a bit like a war of the clones to me and didn't really help with the immersion factor.

A product update at the Wargamer.com site provides some suggestive information about the likely CMAK arrival date. Talking about the repricing of the CMBO-CMBB game bundle, the Wargamer.com site states that: "The game bundle is now priced at $55, down from $75. . . However, the bundle will disappear on November 15th, when the two games will be sold seperately. Battlefront then plans on selling its upcoming Combat Mission: Afrika Korps (AAR) with Barbarossa to Berlin in a new bundle with a new price. It is currently unclear if Combat Mission: Afrika Korps is confirmed for release on November 15th or remains subject to development delays."

I've been reading Rick Atkinson's book "Army at Dawn" and his description of some of the early battles as the Allied forces marched west into Tunisia (Nov-January 1943) describes quite a few battles which seem to be perfect scale for CMAK. Many are relatively small, company up to batallion sized battles.

Ah, so, just out of curiosity, is the retail release of CMBB planned to coincide with, precede, or follow the release of CMAK? Not that I'm fishing for a release date or anything.

Wow, that was quick. I receive my copy yesterday in the mail only 2 days after ordering. I have hardly had a chance to read it yet but I really like the charts. FYI I did notice one mistake which may have slipped through into the 2nd Edition. On page 1/19 & 1/20 it says that the lightening bolt represnets an HQ's command ability and a star represents the combat bonus. I think it's actually the other way around. A minor point however.

Allright, might this be a subtle hint about the subject of the mysterious CMX2! I would assume that here in the States, as well as in a good portion of Western Europe, the Western front has the widest marketing appeal and would make sense for the first game with the new engine. If so, I hope they include the early war campaigns on the West Front as well.

I second this suggestion. I had never bothered using the shoot & scoot until a recent PBEM. I just assumed that the initial move order was a hunt (I should have paid more attention) and my poor Stug went down in flames. It would agree that hunt movement seems a much more logical choice for this command since the goal is get the quick shot in as soon as the target is available and then get the heck out of there.

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Guys, Thanks for the replies. I am aware of the fact that currently when you pick medium experienced troops and let the computer automatically purchase your forces it will choose from a base of either green or regular experienced troops. My beef has been that the computer seems to be picking green troops relatively often. I have done several admittedly of unscientific runs during the summer of 1942 in the South region for the Germans and seem to be getting green troops about 75% of the time, which seems kind of high. Now this may just accurately reflect the actual manpower situation for the Germans at that time, I'll defer to the grogs and BFC on that . Upon thinking about it, I guess I have more of systemic complaint. I suppose my real beef is that if I choose medium experienced troops, I want the computer to provide me a selection of regular experienced troops. Perhaps because I got used to this in CMBO and perhaps because I just prefer to have "plain brown vanilla" experience and restrict my variables to other areas (i.e. the computers force choice, terrain etc.) I grant this is just a matter of taste and probably rather historically inaccurate. But I miss this option from CMBO. Is there any chance we can get it back?

Thanks for the response Steve. I did not realize that what constituted medium experience changed based on the time period. However, even so, I think the results seem a bit odd. Most of the QBs I've set up have been in 1941 and 1942 with medium experience, and the computer is choosing German forces that are overwhelmingly Green rather than Regulars which seems a bit odd to me. Now I get similar results with the Soviets which may make more sense during this time period (but even then, I would have expected some difference in the Soviets between 1941 and 1942). But at least in the 1941-1942 period, both Germans and Soviets seem to get mostly Greens when experience is set to Medium. That doesn't seem quite right to me. With regard to whether this occurred in the 1.0 version, to be honest I don't think I set up any QBs in which I let the computer automatically pick my forces until after the patch came out, so I'm not in a position to say whether this is only a post patch issue.

I thought I would bring this up again on the board to see what the general experience is. I tried rasing this issue the other day and it sank beneath the waves without response. Since the 1.01 patch I have noticed that in quickbattles when I set experience level to Medium, and allow the computer to select the forces, the computer seems to almost always choose green troops (I seem to get regulars maybe 1 out of 6 tries or so). Is anyone else noticing this? Is it a new quirk since the patch? I know green and regular troops are both available at medium experience. However, the computer seems to overwhelmingly favor picking green troops. I for one would prfer the opposite when the medium experience setting is chosen. After all, isn't the low experince setting for those who want the green/conscript challenge?

I was playing around last night after installing the new patch and ran a few QBs allowing the AI to pick the troops. In all the QBs the troop quality was set to regular, and in all cases the AI chose basically all green troops (rather than regulars). I know green as well as regular troops may be picked at the regular setting, but I thought this was a bit odd and ran some more QBs. In the majority of these the computer also picked all green troops. I grant this is not a scientific sample and I was wondering what the Board's experience has been. I probably should note that this was not the case of the occasional green squad mixed in, which you get in CMBB with regular troops. In the majority of these QB the forces were basically all green units. Is this atypical or does the computer tend to pick green troops rather than regulars when regular experience is set and the computer picks the units? I for one would prefer generally prefer the computer to default to regular troops.

Like PiggDogg I live in the New Orleans area and although I never had a chance to take a class with Ambrose I very much enjoyed the taped lectures from his UNO WWII history class which were shown on the local cable TV as well as a number of his books. While did not necessarily agree with all his conclusions and agree that his writing was not above criticism, I enjoyed his books. I always felt that some of the vehemence directed at him recently reflected his sin (at least in the view of some academics) of writing popular history. It is certainly a loss. I'm sorry he never got the chance to write his book on the pacific war. May he rest in peace.

Interesting Tom. I've been having periodic problems as well since the demo. On the demo I had no problems with Ylena Stare or Tutorial scenarios but when playing Citadel scenario I got crash in movie and after restarded saved game it would always lock up if I selected one of two tank crews which had bailed, but otherwise ran OK. I got the following error message with this: "unhandled exception c0000005 at address 73787cfe." Today I finally got to play the full CMBB and, like you, was running A Deadly Affair (because of approaching hurricane Isidore and infant son I unfortunately haven't had much chance to play since it arrived on Monday). I got about 3 turns in and the game locked up when I hit GO. Everytime I reloaded my save gameit was the same. I finally just restarted the scenario from the beginning and I've gotten further into the game OK. I'm not sure what is going on. Interestingly, like you I have a Dell 2ghz computer. I recently added a Geoforce4 TI 4200 video card to replace the standard 64mb which came with the computer. I am running windows XP. I would be curious to hear if anyone else out there is experiencing this or has a sugegstion as to the cause Regards, Kevin

Hopefully that's the only thing that's arriving. Isadore looking nastier and nastier...read that article saying if Isadore hit New Orleans that the city would be covered in 30,000 feet of water. *Shudder*</font>

I tend to agree with Prinz Eugen on this one. At first I did not care for the new camera controls, always inadvetantly slipping sideways when I wanted to spin around, but as many of the commentators predicted, after a little while you do get used to it. On the unit pictures I really prefer BFC's non-face approach in CMBB. It always bothered me a little bit in CMBO that you had the same face showing up for each squad or tank which otherwise had its own individual identity, a bit like the attack of the clones.

Madmatt, thanks for the explanation. In any event, the effect is not that bad, and perhaps playing around with the mipmap settings will make it even less obvious.

Well, I got my new Geoforce 4 TI 4200 video card installed and I'm noticing a weird blue outline around some of the trees in CMBB. Has anybody seen something like this. Note, I am not using the new Nvidia beta drivers which I understand have had some problems. Wondering if anybody on the Board has any thoughts on what might be causing this or how to fix it? I've seen some refernce in other threads regarding tweak programs and I've downloaded the Geoforce Tweak utility but can't figure out which of the myriad variables might be worth changing here.

No particularly productive reason. Just would like to be able to save and/or watch later a particularly exciting turn and be able to see the whole battle unfold at the end, albeit with the poor man's substitute of seperately loading each turn file (as you can with PBEM games).

Unfortunately saving the file before the movie doesn't work in AI play because the computer move and combat calculations are made after the player hits go. As a result I think you would get a somewhat different result each time.

I understand why BFC was unable to include the much asked for "full game movie replay feature." But I was wondering if there was a way to save an individual turn movie other then when playing by e-mail. It would be nice to be able to save a turn movie from games against the AI. (Yes, yes, I know, real men only play human opponents. But some of us do enjoy a game against the AI who is always ready to play, not too merciless an opponent, and doesn't mind if a couple of days go by before you can get to the next turn.) Is this an included feature that I'm missing (i.e. I just read on the forum about a subtitles feature - is this for real?) or is it unavailable? I am no programmer so I may be totally off, but it seems like such a feature would be relaively easy to program since you already get playable movies with PBEM games.

I have to agree with Sarge and the others on this one. Having to watch one's curser location breaks the immersion factor a bit. Of course I don't know how difficult it would be to make this a toggable option. Regardless, I'd like to add my WOW!!! to the chorus and say thanks to BFC for what looks to be another phenomenal game. I really like the extreme FOW and the new suppression model feels a lot more accurate than the system in CMBO. So when can we start throwing our money at y'all and make our pre-orders?

Guys, I just wanted to say thanks for the recommendations. As always, this Board is helpful and informative (well, except for that Peng thread thing ) I found Natkiel's Atlas of WWII on sale at the Barnes and Noble which looks pretty good for only $13. They are also ordering the Pitt's Chronological Atlas so I can "eye ball" it, but apparently the Bishop and Warners German Campaigns Atlas is unavailable.

I have appreciated the threads which have appeared from time to time with recommendations for books on the eastern front. There were a lot of good suggestions and comments for books covering everything from broad histories of the entire front all the way down to personal accounts. Based on some of the recommendations I ordered Sajer's the Forgotten Soldier and Kershaw's War Without Garlands which have just arrived in the mail and look great. I am also interested in getting an historical atlas covering WWII and was wondering if anyone on the board could recommend a good one?