HolzemFrumFloppen

Hmmmm... You shouldn't have to look for it, JJ. It should be the rule, not the exception. I'm with Leopard on this one. I haven't seen a single post on the Battlefront forums that doesn't bring out all the American, cliche'd cheerleaders whenever someone dares to praise the Soviet Union's significant -- perhaps penultimate -- contribution to the destruction of Nazism. I'm not sure I understand your point here. That encouragement of objectivity, untainted by McCarthy-ish rhetoric, should be everyone's goal, not just the waning handful of dissenters. If anything, Leopard was the 'voice-in-the-thread' that managed to accurately point out the obvious: this forum is -- more often than not -- the bastion of 1950-ish Red Baiters. And, if I may be blunt, you ought to encourage the aforementioned behavior in some of the other posters in this thread, most notably Seawolf; the two of you have an enjoyable mutual admiration society going on, but his own posts reek of Red baiting. Anthony Beevor would be proud; like Seawolf, he doesn't write a page/post without the requisite condemnation of Communism nor the more subtle softness towards Fascism as -- incomprehensibly -- the lesser of two evils. I don't know why truth, in and of itself, is becoming too radical in various online wargaming forums. But I can tell you this, it doesn't bode well for this genre as a whole, much less the entire country.

Mayhaps it wasn't as evil as it is reported to be; after all, prior to the war, Soviet media often referred to FDR as a capitalist warmonger who wanted nothing more in life than to seize every kopek out of everyone's pocket and then enslave all working men. The comments -- almost daily in the ten years prior to WWII -- would lead you to believe that every white American still had African slaves underfoot, serving their every whim. And this was downright kind in comparison to the stuff they said about Churchill. Winston was a stone-cold killer who would stop at nothing to wring every working man's neck. Were they correct? Ummm...obviously not. But it did serve their interests, eh? You bet it did. Mayhap our own characterization of alternative economic systems serves our own interests. I mean,... what if?

No brainer. I was just finishing up Rick Atkinson's excellent An Army at Dawn (about the Allies' North African Campaign.... a fantastic and objective appraisal about that theatre; I can't recommend it enough). He cites a report from Gen. George C. Marshall who pointed out that, as of 1943, the Soviet forces accounted for about 93% of all German casualties, despite the Allies' bombing campaigns and all other Allied military expeditions. Marshall (as well as FDR) made it a priority to show the Soviets that the United States "meant business" and was dedicated to ripping as big a chunk out of the German war machine soon as possible. Marshall was an honest leader and pointed out in the clearest of terms that -- were the USSR to fail in its crusade against the "enemy of mankind" -- Germany would be unstoppable. Duh. Unfortunately, the last 50-60 years of Cold War rhetoric has done its best to obscure that simple fact. Sometimes I feel that -- on this forum as well as many others -- it's practically treason to point that out. Nevertheless, it's the truth. But so what? The U.S.A., Britain, Canada and countless other nations did enter the war against the greatest "enemy of mankind" the world has ever seen, and they did play a gallant and important part. But the Soviets did too, and every serious student of WWII needs to come to grips with that. Here's a point I've been wanting to make since I finished Atkinson's Army At Dawn. If you get a chance to read this marvelous account of the North African campaign -- a historical work that delivers to the reader a sense of "being there" both at the lofty heights of Eisenhower as well as down on the ground with Pvt. John Smith -- you'll note somewhat sardonically that the Allied campaign was riddled with such embarassing blunders that it's difficult for the American reader to come to grips with it. It's like reading about a newbie wargamer trying to play CMBB, rushing tanks in suicidal cavalry charges, throwing infantry away like confetti... and then repeating it dozens and dozens of times. Logistically? The Americans and their British counterparts were completely and utterly outclassed by the Germans in every conceivable way. And yet the former outnumbered the latter by over three-to-one (and later, even more) in men and materiél. So if you're one of those folks who like to say that the Soviets won by pure numbers and had the tactical savvy of a five year old on Ridalin... well... remember, it cuts both ways. And yet..... I found that the Allies were still heroic; that the campaign in North Africa, while literally bursting with the most ludicrous military blunders in history, was still was a truly heroic crusade. Men pulled together. Leaders pulled together. And it happened. The enemy of mankind was driven back by a force so disorganized and motley in character that we should all thank our lucky stars that reason prevailed and that the Allies finally began learning from their mistakes. Did the Soviets make mistakes? Hell yes, they did. Huge mistakes, especially at the outset of Barbarossa and, yes, even when they had the numbers to finally drive the "Hun" back where he came from. Yet they, too, were tremendously heroic and deserving of praise. And yes, the trucks, metals, supplies and canned "Spam" we sent them were important.... but it doesn't hold a candle to the lone Russian soldier who still had to pull the trigger. They did their job well and -- as terrible as it may be to our own fragile egos -- so did the Soviet leadership. The truth is the truth. I, for one, continue to hope that the truth hasn't become "anti-American" just yet. At times, from the tone of these forums, I oft think that it has. Let us all hope that I'm wrong, for never has a man wanted to be more wrong in his life.

Hehe... the only "historical" thing in your post is your historically-common response to defining any quasi-positive opinion on Soviet performance as heresy. As they say in California, 'chill dude'. And, for the record -- regardless of anyone's opinion of Stalin, the Soviet Army or communism in general -- like Konstantin, I'm still grateful that the former did the world a great service: contributing the most towards ridding the earth of Nazis. I can only hope that someone steps forward to do the same the next time around. As for SC's focus on the Eastern Front as just about the most critical to winning/losing the game, I'm glad Hubert didn't take the politically-correct way out and make the USA the absolute colossus it is in some other games. SC is... how should I put it... just right.

He was also the leader of the only nation in the list who -- somewhat ironically -- didn't have to worry a smidgen about (a) hundreds of thousands of enemy soldiers closing in on his capital, ( daily bombing raids against his own cities and © a constant lack of natural resources. As much as I am a complete and utter fan of FDR, methinks things would have been quite different if had to deal with the crises that other leaders weathered. He might have butted in a lot more if the enemy was at his gates, to coin an oft-hackneyed phrase. However, I will say that he had the most foresight and intelligence to slap down the "red-baiters" in his own country (and, quite often, at the highest levels of the British government), treat the USSR with kid gloves, and supply them as much as possible since they were -- as he readily admitted both in public and private correspondence -- shouldering the burden of the war. In my mind, it took a bigger man to do THAT in the face of criticism than anything else. Roosevelt had a knack for facing the truth, no matter how unsavory; and that rare ability will take any "commander" very far. A 4-termer... imagine that.

I beg to disagree on this. Pop Rocks® was the most exciting technological development of the twentieth century, not just the 90's. Sheesh. Next to the PEZ® dispenser, of course.

Hmmm... So will this mod help framerates on slower PC-based systems? Anyone had any experience?

Man, I loved that game back-in-the-day. I'm dying to get my hands on CC2; where in heaven's name did you find it???? I still have CC3 (Russian Front) as well as CC4 (Bulge), but for the life of me, I can't find where to buy #2! Lemme know! Holzem

Still watching you like a hawk, Les... I take it you've purchased the game, then, and played it through? Good to hear! Oh, wait.... or are you still sitting on the sidelines? Patch 1.03 was released today (1/23/03) for HOI; just for sh*ts and giggles, lemme tell you that it's really rockin' now. The guys (there's only two of them, actually) at Paradox have been as attentive to fixes as Hubert was for SC. Trust me, you really oughta check it out. Really... do check that last link out. Very truly yours, Holzem

Reducing the visible horizon does, indeed, give the scroll rate a boost; but you should note that it doesn't really do this on any tiny/small maps. The "horizon" is not far off enough on these size maps to really make a difference. On large/huge maps it does help, but you'll end up scrolling around to find units lost beyond the horizon limit. Hope this helps.

Easy: Man... you and I have got to get into a support group for this illness. I've got the same symptoms.... First, that sense of "mission"; the brave and early wake-up on a Saturday morning; the big fdisk/format routine; the hopes and dreams of a PC tweaker climbing and climbing as the Windows Install gauge ticks closer and closer to "100%"....and then... Then the driver problems, the faulty migration of Outlook settings, the graphics card maladies... that's assuming that the actual installation even GETS to 100% without a problem.... Man I feel better. I apparently go through the same process as you do when the "tech bug" hits me, except that I'd have to add an additional step to my own process: 6. Begin asking for advice from forum members I respect and avoid/ignore any good advice I get. THEN repeat steps 1-5. Seriously... thanks for following up on this and identifying what just might be the real problem: the "Tech Bug". I think I'll just enjoy CMBB this weekend and not worry about anything else. I owe you a beer.

Easy: Yeah, good point. I seem to be sold on the idea, too, just from my exposure to -- and use of -- WinXP. Truth be told, that Win98 machine has ZERO problems with anything and rarely experiences a crash; the WinME system is a different story, although it's the one I use as a "testbed" of sorts for every piece of software I can think of. Thus, crashes are all too common on it. I'll take the above advice to heart; I have to agree with your surmise that changing an OS without having any serious stability issues raises the question of "how much time on my hands" do I really have. Guess I'll think on it; maybe it turns out that I only upgrade the WinME desktop and leave the other Win98 machine as is. Thanks again for the response! Regards, Holzem

WWB: Thanks for the info. When you say "256mb", did you mean in addition to the 512mb already present? I know RAM is cheap and the more the merrier... but I'm just curious as to whether that is what you meant. If it is what you meant, do you find that 512MB of SDRAM won't be good enough to get some "ummmph" out of XP on these PIII machines? Thanks again for listening to my ramblings.

Greets, all: I've been running CMBB fine on my newest PC (P4,1.4) that has XP-Pro. It runs just about everything fine. However, I have two other PCs in my house (a PIII-450 and PIII-500) that are running Win98 and WinME, respectively. I'd kind of like to upgrade them (and when I say "upgrade", I mean completely re-format both drives so that it's a clean XP-installation). However, I'm concerned about whether or not they have the horsepower to deal with XP. 1st PC: ------ PIII-500 Current OS: WinME VidCard: Asus7700 GF2-GTS, 32meg RAM: 512MB SDR HD: 80 gig 2nd PC: ------- PIII-450 Current OS: Win98SE VidCard: Voodoo3 3000, 16 meg RAM: 512MB SDR HD: 40 gig I've been running CMBO on the PIII-500 (1st PC) and CMBB on my new rig. But I wouldn't mind being able to run CMBB on the PIII-500 as well (which I've already done and it runs fine, actually, especially when I use Capt. Wacky's downsampled grasses). My questions are, put simply, these: 1. Will I have a serious degradation in performance on those two PIIIs if I load XP-Pro? Will they run slower than they would on their current OS's? 2. If the answer to #1 is a general "no", then can I expect any advantage to having those two PCs upgraded to XP, especially when it comes to games (FPShooters included)? Will I be better off? NOTE: I'm not overly concerned about the compatibility issue of XP and games since I don't run many.... except CMBO/CMBB/AirbAsslt. Equally, I know better than to expect any REAL boost in game performance. I just want to know if they'll SLoooooow down. 3. My neighbor has an older (read: P3) machine with XP loaded on it and it just seems to run much more smoothly than my equivalent PIII-machines, despite routine maintenance (defragging, etc.). Can I expect similar smoothness? Thanks for any help on this stuff. I really don't mind having 3 different Windows OS's in the house, but I also wouldn't mind having them all on the "same page" either. Any and all information is welcomed. Thanks! - Holzem

I don't think that's really the issue anyway. The most telling difference between, say, a Canadian and an American will not be the amount of information they have regarding the Eastern Front. Rather, the former will be less inclined to take offense at the fact that the USSR did the lion's share of the work and bore the penultimate burden of the Nazi onslaught than the latter will be. It's also the most telling sign of the effectiveness of American internal propaganda (we call it "marketing" here in the States since that word is something to be applied only to other countries) for the past 50 years. I watched Stephen Ambrose squirm a bit once when an interviewer pointed out that his historical treatises tended to glorify American participation whilst downplaying Soviet involvement; the interviewer asked whether or not this was because of pressure by American publishers to conform to "orthodoxy" in the genre. Ambrose says: "P-shaw. That's nonsense. I say what I like, when I like in my books." Hurray!, I thought. That really socked it to 'em. Then another panelist said: "Mr Ambrose... you always 'say what you like' because they already like what you say." I don't think Ambrose liked that very much. But suffice to say, it was the godawful truth.

Geez, chill out.. It was meant to be a witty response. If you're one of the many humor-challenged in the world, you're forgiven, of course. If your masculinity was offended and you're hypersensitive about those things, I recommend a quick re-read of Freud and some professional help. Then you'll feel a lot better and can join the rest of the sane people on this board

Ahhh, I do so love this Mutual Admiration Society that we've established here. Nicely... even sweetly... done.

Godspeed.

Mudfrost: Man, that's a tough choice; but if current finances dictate that such a choice must be made, then it must. I know the feeling. Here's some help for you, though. The comparison between the two is one between apples and oranges. Lots of folks will point out that one is "real-time" (AA) while the other is turn-based (SC); others will point out that one is strategic while the other is grand-tactical. However, I think the the most important factor in making a decision between these two admittedly different wargames is the amount of "command" that's required for each. In Strategic Command, you'll have total control over your forces. Not one single corps, army, battleship or air wing will move without your explicit order to do so. You are, quite simply, in the role(s) of national leader, front commander, and divisional general. You're it, baby. In Airborne Assault, however, while you don't have to worry about resources, long supply lines, million-man invasions or technological advances, you DO have to concern yourself a great deal about just how your orders are carried out by the officers under your command. I come from a counter-based PC-wargame background (HPS' Panzer Campaigns Series, Schwerpunkt's Russo-German War, et. al.) and I am very used to having complete control over my forces (as I do in SC). But Airborne Assault knocks me for a serious loop as I have to resist the urge to try and micromanage every single platoon the way I'm used to. I give my orders from on high and watch my subordinates carry them out; and many of those lower-echelon schmucks drive me insane with their choices of roads, their angles of attack, and at times, their blatant disregard for the very essence of my plans. I get so frustrated at times, I yell at the top of my lungs at the computer screen (much to my neighbors' chagrin, I would imagine). Yet... dare I say it... this is exactly what grabs me about AA. For the first time in a grand-tactical or brigade-level game, I feel as if I'm truly in command. I can step in once in a while, drive my jeep down to the front, scream at the company commander, and order the company's forces around myself, but most of the time I have to let those officers do their jobs. It's quite cool, really, and will -- at least I feel -- give you a better sense of battlefield command than most other counter-based games will. I know I talked more in this post about AA than SC, but the latter is a great game, too, and my "gushing" about the former should not be construed as a dimunition of the latter. I own both and can say that the absolute BEST part about both games is that a good solid game can be played in one sitting; you don't need to start a second career at it to have fun. Contrast that with a current Kharkov '42 (Panzer Campaigns) campaign I have going... 7 months and still going strong. It's fun, yes, but I sure wouldn't mind if some of the lower echelon officers did some of the work. Hope this helps.

<<<snore>>> Geez. A major, 'mainstream' gaming site gave CMBB a massive thumbs-up. That's great! Why quibble over a comma when it's the entire paragraph that's important? I say it's a long-time coming; cheers to the Battlefront crew and their fine efforts over the past years. And kudos to Gamespy to recognizing quality when they see it. Been under their collective noses all along. CMBB: One game to rule them all.

Is there anything at all you DO like at/by Battlefront? Besides me, of course.

Well... Two Towers completely sucked. Now hear me out. Although I haven't actually seen the film, I urge you to read on since I'm in a very unique position to issue this statement. Now I am more or less a fantasy book-reader, that doesn't mind watching a few fantasy films. For instance.... I think that Snow White & The Seven Dwarves has some production features I don't like, but the film as a film, where movies are concerned, is so far ahead of Two Towers, which as a movie is garbage. There is NO fun factor in a crummy film (unless a person is capable of fiddling with any film regardless of how good it might or might not be). Please note that I was really interested in Two Towers until I began to research it. It fails on any method by which it can be measured. It has no good points, not one. As for my seeming mood shift on Two Towers, yes it is true, I went from quite happy to quite unexcited, to completely uninterested to completely unsupportive to disgusted in rapid order. You may find these statements quite bold since I arrived at this very accurate opinion without ever watching the film. I did so on the word of my fellow film-goers, especially those on the myriad Lord of the Rings forums (and also other forums where people are predeterminedly hostile to Two Towers!). In short, I took the collective word of people I assume can be trusted; people that have seen the film, have watched it, and said it sucked. As such, I consider my opinion, even if one that was rapidly transformed, to be an accurately arrived at one. Here's some evidenciary forum headers I used in reaching my opinion (Clickable URLs provided at no cost to the reader): "No one Believed me when i said FOTR sucked..." "The Worst." "Bored of the Rings." "Too violent, too long, too...." "Mush." "UNHOLY. First HPotter, now this!" "Addition of crap." "I am sooo pissed at the writers!!!!!!!!" "THIS MOVIE IS MY S**T!" "The Two Towers is not Tolkein's work." "Did they [even] read the book?" "Sh*tty Movie." "The Two Towers is a major LETDOWN." "THIS MOVIE IS RACIST!!!!" "Is [sic] Frodo and Sam gay??" "LOTR Parallels the Bible!" (hehe... couldn't resist this one ) Now I know there are all those Two Towers sycophants that will complain about my rant despite the overwhelmingly trustworthy third-party information I've gathered in my research. As such, I guess the only alternative would be to tell everyone to shut up, never discuss a film ever again, and let us all pay to see oodles of more fantasy films each year, including the garbage ones. I haven't seen Two Towers and I am thankful for the myriad opinions of the fantasy film-watching community, that have allowed me to not purchase a ticket for this expensive waste of celluloid. I'm sure there are also those Two Towers apologists' who will say that a Director's Cut of it will cure many of the film's faults. Issuing a Director's Cut of TT is like putting a bandaid on a traumatic amputation. Regards, Holzem P.S.: Man, o man, Sarge... this movie sounds a lot like HOI, eh? BTW... and for the record, having seen the film this very evening, I thoroughly loved it, regardless of what my...ahem...fellow Yahoo movie reviewing friends think of it. Hope I didn't yank anyone's chain too hard with this post. :cool:

J: Well... don't just sit there.... go get it! It's up for download (both Scandinavian and North American versions). HOI v1.02 Upgrade Here's the list of changes if anyone's interested. Quite copious. HOI v1.02 Changes Rock on.

Well, ahem... I think everyone's entitled to an opinion. However, I really do think it's difficult for anyone to make this sort of absolutist characterization (i.e., that HOI is "garbage", or that "it has no good points, not one.") without actually owning and/or playing the game. And that goes for any game, most especially when there's no demo version of it available. I often follow your posts on the Matrix forums; I watched you go from exhilarated about HOI to utterly repulsed by it in the space of a post. Yet you haven't bought the game (at least as of Dec. 10th, when you posted to this forum that you would NOT be buying it). I don't know why you've formed such a strong opinion of it (both ways) without trying it out a bit. BTW... if it's "stacking" you're looking for, you might want to look into John Tiller's Panzer Campaigns series... it's the stacker's dream. I play nearly all the games in the series and enjoy the engine quite a bit. It's a bit dated, to be sure, but it works very well. In essence, it's a grog's game; there are NO 'lightweight' players or Quake converts as far as PzC is concerned. Anyway, I enjoyed HOI out of the box. I read all the negative stuff in the forums (as well as all the sycophantry); but I bought it because I wanted to try it for myself. It's the only way to form a true opinion of a product. After all, you wouldn't trust a game reviewer who never played the game, would you? I'm like the man from Missouri. You see, the man from Texas says: "You've got to show me." The man from Missouri says: "You've got to put it in my hand."

Well I hate to sound like a sycophant, but I'm actually enjoying it. There's a few bugs and the A.I. isn't Sun Tzu or anything, but the earth shattering complaints that are being hurled at it are unjustified, in my opinion. The only REAL problem with these types of games (SC included, too) is that its most vocal userbase is composed of very serious amateur historians with their own detailed views on anything and everything WWII. It's impossible to cater this oft-verbose crowd (myself included!) since there are so many conflicting opinions on what a grand strategy game of this period should be. You also have to take into account that all these wargame forums go through a cycle of sorts when it comes to a new release. 1st Stage: everybody's screaming for the game's release and people go completely insane if the game is delayed by one day. 2nd Stage: the game is released. Tons of sycophantic "thank yous" are posted and the world seems happy for a few hours/days. 3rd Stage: bugs are discovered and the grogs start coming out of the woodwork. Claims of 'imbalanced', 'ahistorical', and of course, the requisite 'Finland isn't strong enough in this game!' are screamed out across forums worldwide. 4th Stage: The Crusade. Battle lines are drawn between the Critics and Sycophants. The Critics aren't satisfied with just returning the game with a refund and going on with their lives, and the sycophants aren't willing to listen to any of the critics. Flames abound at this stage. 5th Stage: The Critics begin to fade away, either because they've been purged or because they simply get bored and move on to another game to criticize. The Sycophants, of course, get smug. 6th Stage: relative calm. Developers respond to inquiries and bug reports. Patches are released. The world returns to some equilibrium. If you think this is outlandish, believe me that it isn't. This happens to just about every single wargame that's released. It happened with CMBO, CMBB, SC, Uncommon Valor, G.I.Combat, Close Combat, etc., and now it's Hearts of Iron. Go back and review the posts for any of these games and you'll see that cycle repeated. When SC was released, some Usenet forums were inundated with posts about it being 'ahistorical', 'simplistic', 'boring', and that the A.I. was 'weak', 'unplayable', et. al. But we who are left on these boards (as well as the unseen and lurking masses who play the game but never post here) know better. SC is a great game... on one condition: that you don't consider it to be the end-all answer to WWII Grand Strategy Games. Neither is HOI. Neither was Clash of Steel. NOTHING will ever be that since each and every wargame player has oft-diverging interests. It's the nature of the genre, I'm afraid. You watch... HOI will reach this point of equilibrium in the near future. Just as it was reached right here in this forum as it relates to SC. As in all things grog-related, my advice is to take it all with a grain of salt and don't get too involved with the crusade for any game. It is just a GAME, after all, and not the Second Coming or anything. Wargamers' expectations often get the worst of them; I think that the fundamental problem lies in the fact that we who play the games are unconsciously haunted by the fact that we'll NEVER be able to experience the Second World War at all since we weren't alive at the time; and this fact makes us all want to get as close to a 'simulated' experience as possible. But a tactical/operational/strategic simulation is only one (or a few) man's vision of what the event should be; but it will NEVER (and I stress this) satisfy all of the WWII fanatics out there due to the million or so opinions on minutiae that most 'non-WWII' citizens don't give a hoot about. C'est la guerre , I always say.