Cary

I can't imagine they'd be foolish enough to bother -- the veto's been mainland China's since the mid '70s. A Japanese or Korean intervention to save Taiwan is about as likely as a European intervention to save Cuba or Puerto Rico from the United States. For us, it's the same problem of extended deterrence that we had in Europe, except that we don't have forces stationed in Taiwan. In the end, though, the big question is why China would feel the need to retake its "breakaway province" -- especially as Taiwan seems to laying golden eggs profusely on the Chinese mainland. The Middle Kingdom's been around a very long time; one suspects they figure Taiwan will recohere sooner or later. In general, I'd think Flashpoints: China are Korea, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia (and Kazakhstan, etc.) more than Taiwan. Funny issue... I suspect at some point we might learn that feeling the "need to maintain credibility" is a very good symptom of having few interests (and, in the end, very limited credibility) to begin with. If it is "how much you can take," the problem is that that quantity is dependent on real threat to interests. The USSR in WWII will "take" a lot more than the USSR in Cuba (as Castro found out). [ November 16, 2006, 08:30 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Look on the bright side - if a war starts, you don't have to pay a penny of that debt! </font>

Of course this raises the "what if" of the coup against Hitler. It'd be a pretty different world now if in 1944 Stauffenberg had been a suicide bomber, or if Hitler had been closer to Stauffenberg's bomb when it went off. It'd be even more different if the German military had done the smart thing and deposed Hitler in April 1940 or May 1941 -- the former being the "nearer run thing."

Same reason you can't "tech up" units that are adjacent to the enemy: to make qualitative upgrades to unit strength more difficult. At some point, I guess, the idea is that units have to be pulled out of the line to rest, reequip and retrain. At this game's level of focus or abstraction, I doubt that arguments about how reinforcements reach the front make much sense.

Isn't that what they tried in Vietnam? </font>

He later indicated that he would share the solution that they ultimately implemented. Maybe we can pester him into posting it. I think it will be one of the more interesting aspects of CMx2 - reconcilling 1:1 graphical representation of units with LOS/LOF that is not 1:1. </font>

No idea but what I happen to know is that they are not only used to transport supplies but also as a very powerful weapon : they spit at enemies. Khane </font>

The downside, of course, is that this further encourages the "evacuate to Egypt" strategy.

If you are talking about mech heavy forces vs. light infantry, in depends entirely on territory. If engagement distances are only a few hundred meters at max, and usually much shorter, the mech heavy force will suffer considerable casualties, even if we wouldn't be talking about any FDF Jaeger Battalion v. A2-yellow scenario. </font>

Always dangerous to confuse correlation and causation, particularly with soldiers' lives at stake. The biggest problem the Western Allies faced in Germany in 1945 was deciding which German surrender was the official one.

Grozny? Kabul? I'll grant you, the Israelis may be in that treacherous middle zone: just enough to be ineffective. </font>

Grozny? Kabul? I'll grant you, the Israelis may be in that treacherous middle zone: just restrained enough to be ineffective. But the purest of hearts and the loftiest of goals does not excuse one's guilt for starting an unsuccessful war. [ August 02, 2006, 08:45 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

In a world of absolutes, you'd be correct. Pretty much every nation on this planet today has some history of terrorism if you want to view it that way. The French attack on Greenpeace, British occupation of Northern Ireland, Switzerland's blind eye to money trails, Canada's problems in Somalia, UN having dictators represented in the Human Rights council, the US's wonderful trackrecord during the last 50 years of supporting pretty much any tyrant that sat on oil or stood in the way of the Soviets or Chinese gaining influence, etc., etc. In such a world view a few bad eggs means the whole hen house is a complete loss. .... snip.... BTW, I heard an interesting perspective on Hamas that explained a lot in a way I had not heard before. The political wing was just about to make a deal with Fatah and Israel. Hamas' military wing, controlled by Demascus, did not see that in their best interests so they ordered the fighters out into the streets to do battle with the PA's security forces. When that didn't derail things enough they captured the first Israeli soldier. Israel, unfortunately, took the bait. Hezbollah has been trying to get Israel to attack Lebanon for a while now, so seeing how easy it was to get Israel to overreact they did the same. The sad thing about this is that the Paletinians, Lebanese, and Israelis are all paying the price for this idiotic struggle that will never, ever end unless violence is abandoned by all sides. Steve </font>

ugh, dbl post

Kidnapping and selling children, tossing people out of heliocopters? Torture, rape, murder is not improved by a classy uniform or VTOL capabilities. It's just that some of these militaries have been a little shy about photography. [ August 01, 2006, 02:02 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

My experience of board wargames: the difference between Move-combat and Move-combat-move is huge. MoveA, MoveB,CombatA,MoveB may not be as big as allowing overruns, but it's still potentially significant. -- a playtester's nightmare of a sentence. Perhaps HC's response will be "sure, sounds great." Fine. But it seems worth realizing the extent of the change you propose. [ July 31, 2006, 02:54 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]

1) your proposal sounds different from the two other proposals out there -- nobody's been entirely clear about what they would like to change to: PzG's a good start, but the fact that SeaMonkey disagrees with Dougman4 over whether it changes game dynamics suggest that even the supporters of "later move or fire" disagree over exactly how to implement the change. (your proviso that "all your movement is gone once you move" suggests a similar internal confusion -- did you mean "all your movement is gone once you attack?" 2) As to your specific proposal, I move up to Rostov with unit A, I move behind Rostov with unit B, finding an air unit. Then I forego an attack with unit A because unit B has given me extra information. This appears a subtle change in game mechanics. But "Subtle" changes can ripple through the whole game. Bottom line, your proposal gives the moving player the opportunity to perform more recon before conducting his attacks. This leads to less "fog of war" and more effective turns on the part of the initiative player. The game's already offense dominant, your suggestion only increases the effectiveness of the offense. [ July 31, 2006, 11:22 AM: Message edited by: Cary ]

Here you are contradicting Dougman's long and impassioned argument that later move or fire wouldn't change the game dynamics. As to your second point... no.

John, Thank you, interesting stuff. The alignments these articles point out are quite significant, but I think we're too prone to forget that, even if we cling to alliances and rivalries, most other nations accept the aphorism: "no permanent allies, no permanent enemies, only interests." It is just a corollary to the even older aphorism: "the strong do what they will, the weak what they must." That said, many countries seem to be seeing it in their interest to rein in or deter the United States -- I remember it coming out in a discussion with a couple of Indian servicemen that their nuclear test in the early '90s had nothing to do with Pakistan, and everything to do with the lessons of GWI -- don't fight the U.S. without nukes, and consequently, don't believe that you can even be a regional power without nukes. The problem, of course, is that we, like Germany in 1900, may take these repeated alignments as systematic encirclement. At least in that case, the German belief that Russia, France, and Britain were conspiring against them did nothing but solidify the "conspiracy" -- certainly we know the story from the other side; the growing power of Germany simply made the defensive arrangements and cooperation necessary. Perhaps the neoconservative's scheme of the Global War on Terror is an attempt to slip this noose, if so they are subtler than I imagine. And certainly, I have to give the current administration credit for our recent accomodation with India over nuclear power and nuclear weapons (as well as hints of an accord with Russia over nuclear waste), though these moves can be criticized, they do help to synchronize our interests with these states to some degree. I think the bottom line, however, is that the United States likely confronts a choice: either a Bismarckian or a Wilhelmian foreign policy. You can probably see my preference.

Russia, India, China, and Venezuela? Huh? Russia's certainly doing the Russia thing, which is slowly and quietly returning to great power status, but I'm somewhat skeptical that you've got much of an alliance here. Agreed, Putin's a sharp operator, and certainly not to be trusted. But I suspect they have bigger fish to fry than Syria or Venezuela. And if they wanted to hurt the U.S., their best approach would be to attack the currency instead of pinpricking some MEU in Syria or, for that matter, Iraq or Afghanistan.

I'd imagine this is a difference between firefight and tactical scale.

Good points... I had a friend doing a doctorate on technology transfers -- how it failed or succeeded. Literacy, both literal and technical, seem to be huge variables... It is one of the impressive facts about the Soviet Union that they managed to maintain a reasonably competent military force as long as they did.

ok.. fair enough... This was the case in GWI(II) as well? Is OIF GWII or GWIII?

Just to clarify: Rolend and Dougman, you both seem to be arguing for this change as a U/I enhancement so you get fewer "Doh!" moments when you click off a unit. I guess the only reason I'm cautious is that where and how units move is a game mechanic as well as a U/I feature -- units' behavior changes when you make the whole move-fire routine more forgiving. Not least, it seems, such a mechanic would allow three or more units to attack from a single space where only two could previously. Such a change is significant.

I don't know MBT at all well -- you'll have to fill me in: do you think it had an "edge of the world problem" simulating company-scale engagements? Part of the problem, I might imagine, is that you should be getting battlefield effects from interactions occuring at beyond the front-line units- tactical range: counterbattery fire, "counter-C3I" fire, and the whole panoply of engagements that occur over the horizon but that might critically shape engagements of the company level or higher. I'm not sure if I've made clear what my concern might be, so I'll try to be more specific. I guess the question I might have is whether the 5km scale that you mention doesn't leave a significant amount out, basically because, arguably, there's a much tighter connection between the company and the division or corps in modern warfare than there was a half century ago. Because divisional assets can to the support of the company so much more easily now than 1/2 a century ago, essentially the battle area extends 20km back from the forward line of troops (in each direction....). Is this relevant? Perhaps not, but it may be difficult to achieve the "historical result" of an engagement between a company+ of M1A1s and a company of T84s without either a) accounting for whats going on 20 km back, or "fudging" the data. (One thing that suggests this might be in issue is the fact that the losses of Abrams and Bradleys in Desert Strom didn't seem to differ all that much: something else was going on than just good armor and good targeting). I may be misconceiving this fact, and perhaps this is a mis-guided concern, but it seems worth considering.... [ July 27, 2006, 02:44 PM: Message edited by: Cary ]