I/O Error

I'm not at ALL certain how you can be so against playing other humans when you say you've never tried it. Even the AI in SC or CMBO/BB, excellent as it may be, will never give you as good a game as that which a human can provide. To be quite frank, this is probably something you should trust us on, because we have tried both AI and human players.

The best part about playing humans is that humans can make totally illogical decisions. The AI can't.

I was fairly satisfied with this peace settlement. (For one thing, I discovered that TCP/IP games bore the crap out of me, heh heh.) *puts on historicity cap* Germany has basically "only" gained Poland and the undying enmity of all its neighbors. In 5-10 years when this conflict brew up again, it's probable that Germany will be in trouble. Its former allies are now being confronted by a stronger and more unifed Russia, at the same time that they realize that their alliance with Hitler gained them nothing but dead men. (and lost land in the case of Romania, which lost Moldavia) Russia's "paltry" territorial gains will actually give them close proximity to the Romanian oil fields, critical in case war breaks out again. Italy has gained the tiny island of Malta but they've been chucked out of North Africa. It's highly unlikely they could hold onto Ethiopia for very long. More importantly, such a collapse of Il Duce's imperialist goals will almost certainly mean the downfall of his government. Among other things, the slaughter of the Italian invasion force in Turkey will mean that the Italian public's most recent memories of the war will consist of an image of dead soldiers brought about because Der Fuhrer wanted support in his poorly planned Turkish adventure. (Sorry Carl, no offense. He had dropped an HQ and several armies on the Turkish coast. When I operated half a dozen Russian armies to Turkey's capital, I bagged the HQ and in another turn or two would have destroyed all of the Italians.) Even Turkey, historically staunchly neutral, got a taste of the German jackboot, and they will stand ready to pounce on Germany the next go around. And will you please tell me why you let me surround and kill that Panzer unit on the Dardanelles?

To be honest it's really kind of unavoidable, even when people are careful, once you start talking about multiple pages of densely packed information. Heh heh... can't say I miss EB that much, except in his role as the "lunatic fringe". You might want to check out this link about German cavalry. http://www.feldgrau.com/heerkav.html It's not much, but at least it will tell you about the units involved and I believe you could do a unit history search of those units from the main site. A really great site, introduced to me from this very forum.

No no, it's still here, look in the English Opponent Finder forum. They consolidated all of the forums that were game specific and made one big forum for people to challenge each other. Hell, I managed to get three people willing to play SC via e-mail within two days of each other.

Just to quote from the link about Dmitriy Loza: Stuff like that actually kind of makes me feel proud. That's pretty danged cool. Were I wearing my skeptic hat I might think the story more than slightly apocryphal, but either way that's a good story. Wow. Darwin Award, almost. Can't blame them there! What a cracking good link, thank you! [ November 22, 2002, 05:46 PM: Message edited by: I/O Error ]

Nice, another FNG to play with. (joke, joke!) mkctanker: The only trick to ordering with M.O. is that you need to factor in the time it takes for the postal service to deliver the check. Once that's done, the order just goes out... I think using UPS, could be FedEx. Anyway, 2-5 days like 82ndReady said. Not too long. Forgive me, but I'm not certain what you mean by playing with the historical icons on. The AI does tend to follow history fairly well, but not so strictly as to be pointless. It will stick with basic ideas, like "attack Poland and then France", but how it GETS to the next step it seems to have some flexibility in. There's a fair chunk of unpredictability thrown in, seems like. Quite nice, SC's AI really does well compared to similar games. About difficulty, I really tend to stick with the default settings. However, I would firmly recommend (if you don't already) enabling "Fog of War". Makes for a FAR more enjoyable experience! (Correct me if I'm wrong folks, but the AI also sees everything if FOW is off, that right?) P.S. 82nd, do you think you could reduce your signature length any?! lol!

I like zappsweden's ideas. A lot. Well, except the consumption ideas, think that's getting a little too much into the "nitty gritty", if you will. The REST of the ideas are spot on. And dammit, Dorothy STILL looks hot to me no matter how much older I get.

Perhaps adding AA defense based on technology to infantry units, but then throwing in the ability to let units move AFTER they attack? My basic problem with combat in this game is that you really can't get anywhere if you don't have aircraft. It almost seems like the infantry and other units act more as tokens to deny the hexes to the enemy, while the aircraft do the lion's share of the fighting. Kind of annoying. I'm just rambling.

I certainly think that terrain bonuses and entrenchment should have no effect on aircraft. In a micro look at an air unit, you can dig in and prepare defenses. In a macro point of view like SC presents, it just doesn't make sense.

Not gamey. If true it's really a flaw in how the game handles air combat in general.

Has any German player ever considered, or tried, invading the Baltic states before Russia annexes them? I have no idea what effect that would have on Russia's readiness later on, but I tested to see what happened if I attacked the place at the beginning of the game. Russian preparedness jumped from 30% to 64%. Not a small number, by any means! However, I'm curious as to whether anybody has really tried this in a game or if they think it might be a viable method of getting a jump start on the Russians and Operation Barbarossa. Russian readiness seems to jump again after the place falls, but maybe you could declare war on Russia in early 1940 and ignore France? Thoughts? This is just a harebrained scheme I "had" to share, just for kicks.

Daaaaaamn... if this is at all true (and it sounds right now that I think about it) this is a huge problem. Technically the air battles aren't fought in the air at all, are they? They're just fought between two ground units that happen to have strike ranges of six squares or more. Ouch.

*cue snare drum* Now cut that out!

After reading the replies in this thread, I'm going to have to mess around some more. I've played dozens of games against the AI and less than a dozen against humans, and I've never seen Spain or Turkey enter the war. Hell, I never knew it was even possible! Shows what I know, LOL!

I want to see how Rambo does with a situation that's actually a CHALLENGE, taking Russia. That's the real test. (Hell, everybody takes France eventually.) How the heck did you lost that airfleet in Malta? Was it understrength? Were there just that many airfleets/ships available to pound it, or what?

I claim they're much better than IGN, however.

That's certainly my opinion, yes. I use Italian troops ONLY for aiding in attacks, they are never the guys who capture cities and resource centers. Effectively I use them as cannon fodder, I just don't tell Il Duce that.

I have the full review. For the most part they praise the same things we do and berate the same things we do. "Strategic Command's level of detail strikes a perfect balance between getting bogged down in too much detail and glossing over important historical factors. In terms of complexity, Strategic Command is a notch or two above Hasbro's Axis & Allies board game and nowhere near the daunting challenge of Avalon Hill's intimidating Third Reich. Fans of SSI's Clash of Steel from 1993 will feel right at home." "The game's graphics are clear and simple and the interface keeps everything at your fingertips." " The hardships that the German army faced during winter in Russia are completely ignored. Instead, winter flies by in a few monthlong turns. Suddenly it's spring and no one is worse for the wear. For the most part, these concessions don't hurt the game so much as demonstrate the trade-offs that a wargame developer has to make in order to keep the gameplay simple. " "Probably the biggest appeal of Strategic Command is playing out various historical twists and "what if" scenarios. In this regard, the game is a great success." "Unless you can find a human opponent, Strategic Command is an interesting study in what the war would have been like if the enemy generals and politicians hadn't known what they were doing. " You get the basic idea. It's not perfect, but then it's not INTENDED to be "perfect", like truly horrifying games like A3R and such strive for. They say far more good things than bad things. [ November 18, 2002, 04:55 AM: Message edited by: I/O Error ]

Yup. The French said it was unbreakable, and Hitler agreed. So the Germans carefully didn't attack the line head-on as part of their main thrust...

The basic answer is that SC functions on a "zero sum" basis: There can be only one absolute winner, not one major and a few other guys who just managed to survive. Sadly there's no way to declare ourselves the victory and go home. There isn't (that I'm aware of, speaking as an amateur) any way for the game's engine to declare the game finished and won like that. One thing to consider is that for many people, it's a challenge worth playing through. Ahistorical it may be, but it would be rather annoying if the game ended as soon as Moscow feel and a Sealion was finally launched. The Allied player would probably scream, "Okay, what the HELL just happened?! I have a fleet all ready to go, c'mon!" [ November 16, 2002, 11:52 AM: Message edited by: I/O Error ]

To complement the previous points made by my esteemed forum colleagues: You've got to be f*cking kidding me "rambo". You're the "crowd favorite" around here because we're all having a BLAST proving you wrong. There's a huge ego trip deal involved. We were practically SHOVING EACH OTHER to be the first to say, "Well no Rambo you're absolutely wrong and have no grasp of history about WWII because of the following intelligent reasons." I mean Holy Christ, everybody from the grogs to the newbie wargamers enjoyed THAT thread. Try not to take yourself too seriously kid. You'll have a shorter drop back to reality that way, LOL.

Can't say I find too much to complain about there. Glad to see I'm not the ONLY one who doesn't think very highly of Montgomery, that git.

Good to see you made that decision, JerseyJohn. That rambo kid won't last long, I'll wager. A child with issues, but they fortunately burn out in fairly short order, leaving the rest of us free to post reasonably and enjoy ourselves.

You BUMPED this? Are you really that stupid or that bored? :confused: