markshot

Folks,
I am not here for a debate.  I have seen computers from the very first degree programs and NYC having 3 IBM 360s with RJEs, punched cards, and assembly through today.  For those who are in the CS field, then you are the first to know that AI ~ 2015 and beyond is not CS.  It is an entirely a new field.  Only, the general public erroneously conflates CS and AI.  AI is modern alchemy where emergent properties has truly shown that the reductionist top down engineering thinking that many of us were trained in is but a single way to approach things.  Alchemists they may be; short on the formalism of Shannon, Turing, and Goddel long on guess work, but they are getting results.  And these results are having a huge impact.  * Mathematicians kindly call them "experimentalists".
CMBO was breaking new ground.  Taking our once BG hobby (I never was one) from the early isometric maps in SMG by Sid Meier and the early psychological states of CC by Atomic to break new ground.
CM has largely been CPU bound and single threaded.  Thus, in 2024, most of us are seeing CM hit the single threaded clock speed/RAM speed wall while other cores sit idle.  With regards to videos cards ... GPU/VRAM is largely idle.  Getting CM and many games to multi-threading load balanced is a hard problem.  But post processing using the AI abilities of graphic cards is mainly another step on the rendering pipeline which is quite doable without tearing apart the existing game engine.
How is AI fundamentally changing our world?  Productivity is sky rocketing.  There is a race to leverage it.  This is just one of many tech cycles I have lived through.  We are in the frontier gold rush phase.  The other day I counted more than 100 ventures doing RAG and TALK WITH YOUR DOCS using variants of LangChain, Semantic Embeddings, and Vector databases.  In 3-5 years, like any tech cycle, only handful of those 100+ firms will exist and be among the standardized recognized solutions.
The console/PC game industry is going to be pulled along into the same cycle.  Those with IP and a market position are ideally suited to be the survivors.  Or if they let momentum and sloth make them feel secure, then be among the shake out victims.
I like CM and the innovation that BTS/BFC brought.  I would like to see it weather the AI storm.
Well, I am going to drop off the discussion now.  Time is limited and I retired to play games and not debate on forums.  Implied here is that I might be old.  Yes, I am old.  The view that age is a handicap is not a global view among all cultures.  Some cultures actual recognize that seniors bring something to the conversation.  Tik-Tok on, folks!  I am going to play myself some CM!

Folks,
I am not here for a debate.  I have seen computers from the very first degree programs and NYC having 3 IBM 360s with RJEs, punched cards, and assembly through today.  For those who are in the CS field, then you are the first to know that AI ~ 2015 and beyond is not CS.  It is an entirely a new field.  Only, the general public erroneously conflates CS and AI.  AI is modern alchemy where emergent properties has truly shown that the reductionist top down engineering thinking that many of us were trained in is but a single way to approach things.  Alchemists they may be; short on the formalism of Shannon, Turing, and Goddel long on guess work, but they are getting results.  And these results are having a huge impact.  * Mathematicians kindly call them "experimentalists".
CMBO was breaking new ground.  Taking our once BG hobby (I never was one) from the early isometric maps in SMG by Sid Meier and the early psychological states of CC by Atomic to break new ground.
CM has largely been CPU bound and single threaded.  Thus, in 2024, most of us are seeing CM hit the single threaded clock speed/RAM speed wall while other cores sit idle.  With regards to videos cards ... GPU/VRAM is largely idle.  Getting CM and many games to multi-threading load balanced is a hard problem.  But post processing using the AI abilities of graphic cards is mainly another step on the rendering pipeline which is quite doable without tearing apart the existing game engine.
How is AI fundamentally changing our world?  Productivity is sky rocketing.  There is a race to leverage it.  This is just one of many tech cycles I have lived through.  We are in the frontier gold rush phase.  The other day I counted more than 100 ventures doing RAG and TALK WITH YOUR DOCS using variants of LangChain, Semantic Embeddings, and Vector databases.  In 3-5 years, like any tech cycle, only handful of those 100+ firms will exist and be among the standardized recognized solutions.
The console/PC game industry is going to be pulled along into the same cycle.  Those with IP and a market position are ideally suited to be the survivors.  Or if they let momentum and sloth make them feel secure, then be among the shake out victims.
I like CM and the innovation that BTS/BFC brought.  I would like to see it weather the AI storm.
Well, I am going to drop off the discussion now.  Time is limited and I retired to play games and not debate on forums.  Implied here is that I might be old.  Yes, I am old.  The view that age is a handicap is not a global view among all cultures.  Some cultures actual recognize that seniors bring something to the conversation.  Tik-Tok on, folks!  I am going to play myself some CM!

These games average a decade old.  And the graphics show it.
I think you have all seen what can be done via AI upscaling (not so much resolution, but detail, articulation, textures) ...  We are talking GPU's of the last few years whether NVidia RTX or AMD's FSR drivers.
So, imagine engine v5 adds an AI rendering post processor.  A HUGE CM battle at most is going to use 3Gb of VRAM leaving most gamers with 4Gb+ of VRAM free for post processing.  Imagine what could be done to put a brand new coat of paint on all of these games going 64Bit and AI image quality post processing.  Any of you who have high end machines and have played with open source AIs like Stable Diffusion know that photo realistic CM is possible.  In fact, there is a new SIMS-like game in development INZOI which is truly photo realistic.
Now, you may say, we want our compute doing game AI and physics ... not wasted on graphics.  Prior to 2020, this was a valid concern.  But all this is is being done with the GPU/VRAM via a fine tuned neural net for combat scene output.  These LLMs are getting smaller every day.  Microsoft has its PI series of 1/1.5/3 B.  There was open source Tiny LLAMA of 1B recently released, etc.  One of the trends we are seeing in AI is open source models is LESS IS MORE.  The foot prints are getting much smaller with fewer parameters and improved quantization (think of this as a form of compression; what it really is layer weight compression).  All of this just blew up in just 2023 alone.
NOTE:  BFC does not need a GPU Cluster to make a fine tuned LLM.  You can do this using the LORA technique which adapts matrix mathematics making such tuning totally possible with an RTX 4090 ($2000 USD) or an RTX 6000 ($10,000 USD with 48Gb VRAM).  A LORA recognizes that the entire neural net does not need to be retuned.  Just altering weights of some dimensions of one layer will give the same affect.  So, yes, building an LLM from scratch could run $50M USD, but a LORA for fine tuning we are looking at 5 figures USD.
I built last year a new PC with an RTX 4090 with an i-9 13900KS.  What does a heavy CM workload look like?  Basically, you have two Intel 6GHz Pcores handing CM back and forth as the other Pcores are capped at 5.6GHz.  (there is little point overclocking as Intel has done this in firmware already; so the only real tuning is to use software utilities which dynamically manage Pcore/Ecores affinities to get the most out of games; the only thing I touched in my BIOS/UEFI was to undervolt by 0.06v for a cooler CPU)  Most of you probably know that CM is CPU bound.  In terms of my GPU/VRAM clocks while CM is chugging through HUGE ... the 4090 is at 50W and yawning.
My point is using AI post processing to give photo realistic CM is going to give complete free graphic cards something useful to do.  Better graphics done via AI is not going to eat into physics, path finding, or AI.
I don't know if Charles and Steve read the forums.  But John as an Admin, I know you do.  AI is not just simply replacing jobs like programmers.  AI will be replacing products which fail to leverage it.  We are probably just a 2 years away from seeing a Crusader King like game which does not run with scripts, but instead is essentially an SP multi-player game where the rest of the NPCs are LLM personas.
So, just imagine our beloved CM post processed by AI capable GPUs.
Thank you!

At the moment, I am playing City Skylines.  I am only an average player, but use a long list of mods.  But I am always amazed what the truly gifted can create in this game.  I am doing my first Winter city.  I moved from some place where it always snows to never snows.  So, now it is is quite scenic! 
I have some older rail games.  RTD/RT2/RT3 but I have not played for a while.
Also, I like VP4 (Virtual Pool 4) ... talk about physics modeling!  Pool is great.  You don't have to study the table an hour before taking your shot.

Maybe English has changed since my birth in NYC.
Battle Pack 1 is available for pre-order.  Which I just purchased.
Now, I get an activation code back saying "There is no download for this product. Use the Activate New Products utility and enter the license key to activate the Pack".
The activation says:
* Base Game
* Engine v4
* Fire & Rubble
(but it was successful; that sounded promising)
I have v4 p2.11.
I launch the game.  I cannot find anything that wasn't there before my purchase.
How exactly is this going to arrive on my PC?  Thanks.
Sorry.  If I am failing basic English Comprehension.  (you will get old one day too)
Thank you!

Rather than trying to mod 8 titles + expansions on the same engine with the mods that I think all should have; I gave up.  You may not have noticed, but the CMBO/CMBB/CMAK community was larger and more prolific.
It is too hard to find something essential like a grid for all.  Like trees and smoke, it should have just been a player aid in the UI.  I am a retired software engineer and understand limited resources.  But I think this should have been an engine feature, and not a mod.  The action square and lack of a topo map view; make a grid an essential feature.  Can you play without?  No choice really.
I've purchased everything they have self developed here.  I feel entitled to express an opinion by virtue of my investment, and continued investment.  CM is excellent with no directly rival.  But that does not mean it couldn't be better.

(Two questions in one day!  I have my CM hat on.)
There are tree options, smoke options ...
Wouldn't it have been simple for BFC to provide an engine based terrain grid?  Of all the possible mods, I think gridded has the greatest game play utility.  But as it must be done for each tile type, and games updates and expansions break it ... it is not really feasible to have gridded for all my games ... so I gave up.
But still, I don't understand why such wasn't an engine option?
Thanks.

(Two questions in one day!  I have my CM hat on.)
There are tree options, smoke options ...
Wouldn't it have been simple for BFC to provide an engine based terrain grid?  Of all the possible mods, I think gridded has the greatest game play utility.  But as it must be done for each tile type, and games updates and expansions break it ... it is not really feasible to have gridded for all my games ... so I gave up.
But still, I don't understand why such wasn't an engine option?
Thanks.

Chuck,
Have you checked out Panther Games (an Australian Company)?  The first title in the series RDOA (Red Devils Over Arnhem) began here, BTS.  I joined as a beta/team member.
We then moved to Matrix (before the sale to Slitherine), and did HTTR, COTA, and BFTB.
HTTR - Highway to the Reich
COTA - Conquest of the Agean
BFTB - Battles from the Bulge
These titles are no longer available.  Maybe on Ebay.  I believe old CD/DVDs installers should work as we did not use Window drivers, but simply serial number.  But you would need an optical drive (less common today) ... also I am not sure where you can get patches.  I probably have the official Matrix patches if you ask.
After the demise of Matrix; former owner David Heath began LnL Publishing.  Lock and load publishing and we moved there.  The current offering is CO2 (Command Ops 2) available on Steam.  The basic engine and a few scenarios are free.  The above and more are available as DLC scenario packs.
It is not 3D, but counters and pseudo topographical and terrain texture map.  Not unlike GG's WITW/WITE-2 but without the hexes.  Continuous movement and continuous (pausable; and you can give orders) time.
It is the most scalable war game in existence.  Both CM and MIUS have a natural scale.  Go outside of that and play becomes awkward.
For Panther, command and map is represented like an OOB.  Really three OOBs.  You have organic, dynamic, and transitional.  You are the senior commander on map.  You generally command those would would logically be your subordinates; although you can micromanage specific units.  So, you strike your balance between broad strokes and micro.  All AI HQs behave as intelligent agents.  That is why it scales so well.
Further, the game is very much based on the OODA loop.  No games implements time and delays better.  Battle is continuous:
* Normally an attack will reach the objective, exploit, and secure.  But if the enemy is on the run, you may want to issue new orders to not permit them the time to withdraw and dig in at the next blocking position.  So, much of the game is to discern when, it is time to change the plan.  To change orders in the middle of an attack can be the biggest disaster you will ever make as advance begins to fall apart as some get the command and others don't leaving flanks exposed.
* Suppose ... You have 3 battalions.  Do you order each into independent uncoordinated attacks?  Faster.  Or do you order the brigade or division, coordinated but taking much longer to kick off.  So, you can have action in 4 hours or better action in 10 hours.  What do you do?
* Night/day considerations are very important.  Grab the enemy by the shirt at sunrise if you are facing heavy arty.
* The famous OODA loop is at the very core level of the game model.
Except for the lack of 3D, I think this game might be very suited to you.
With each title we added features ... better tools, mixed mode movement, supply lines ...  But I think even RDOA holds up well today.
Now, with regards to the latest offering:
* The big change has been pre-CO2 all games was fixed screen layout of child windows.  CO2 introduce floating non-child windows.  If you only have a single display, you may find the earlier titles cleaner.  But if you have 2 or more displays, CO2 gives you better SA.  In fact, if you have 4 displays, you have the War Room.
* Unlike BFC we didn't do engine upgrades for earlier titles, but as the business model changed and the engine is free ... all the DLC representing former content is upgraded to the latest features.  I do believe to some extent the scenarios have been reworked.  So, if you loved HTTR, but supply was way too simplistic.  Well, now it is is not anymore.
Scenarios range by two orders of magnitude in unit count with no great curve in player complexity, because AI agents.  Time ranges from 1-30 days.  Roughly.  Game performance is relative to unit count.  Don't assume unit count increases per title ... I once did an analysis of this.  Also, all titles offer variable size scenarios.  The engine offers difficulty parameters in the form of:  order delays from instant action to realistic chain of command delay, historical reserves to non-historic, historic weather or better or worse, and supply historic or better or worse.  Victory is based on point based flag system with VLs scoring for time and/or at end, and they may only be active for part of the scenario.  Some scenarios too much give you a plan by sequencing VLs, and others are more wide open letting you decide how to get the job done.
 
Chuck, I hope that helps ... if you or willing to forgo 3D.

Nathan,
I created a lot of tutorial materials for games back in the day.  I don't think there is much of a chance in selling training videos.  Why?
* Niche market
* Outdated game
* People still regard knowledge via the Internet as free unless it has been produced by a real production company with qualified instructors
* CM never was mass market or held the global and historical stature of chess
* Bad economy
Chess is about the only game people will spend lots of money on learning, and even those who create and sell courses must be highly ranked and known.  So ...
* I would just focus on the pleasure of promoting your favorite game
or
* If it is money you want, then pick a mass market game like a few of the Paradox titles or TW titles.  Then, you should spend time learning about marketing and promotion via social media.  Also, how you can make money?  YouTube affiliate, sponsors, selling merchandise, being and influencer.
---
Back to CMx1.  I think there are 2 distinct learning curves.  Ground combat concepts and game UI and mechanics.  I think it might be best to do 30 minute episodes and split them at the 15 minute mark; so people could focus and what they want.  The first 15 minutes should cover what combat tactics or strategy is to be illustrated in todays episode.  Then, you break at the 15 minute mark (or you could do 10&20 minutes) and the remainder you illustrate via the game teaching the UI and control.
Lastly, I think your pitch regarding the fictional Miller and the real Winters misses the mark.  Both characters are memorable for who they were, and only in part due to their expertise.  I have forgotten Band of Brothers, but Miller has a nutty mission, is overqualified, and loses half of his men.  Both might be good characters for an RPG, but their personas are totally irrelevant with regards to CM proficiency or most war games.  And after making the pitch, you don't really plan to teach the psychology of team management and command.  Your pitch should align with your product or content.
---
No offense regarding my comments, but I thought you wanted critical feedback.  I don't regret not charging for any of my game materials I circulated.  I became a better player for it.  Teaching always forces your skills to improve; and that is worth your time especially if you MP, because you will have more fun.  First, you must break it down, and then put it back together so that it can be analyzed and improved.  So, I gained by giving away freely, and I had fun interacting with those who were interested.
Money and having fun are two different things.  There are plenty of cases of YouTuber's who enjoyed something like a game, but became a slave to it, and stopped enjoying it or worse went into a panic as the community moved on to the next hot title and new content producers.  Some really crashed and burned, others just felt burned out.  Read up on the case of Arumba, CK2 and EU4 and his history with Paradox.  Whenever, you listen career YouTubers, they live in constant anxiety about THE ALGORITHM and being demonitized.  Make the wrong observation about COVID or Ukraine, and you too will be history.
Good luck.

Nathan,
I created a lot of tutorial materials for games back in the day.  I don't think there is much of a chance in selling training videos.  Why?
* Niche market
* Outdated game
* People still regard knowledge via the Internet as free unless it has been produced by a real production company with qualified instructors
* CM never was mass market or held the global and historical stature of chess
* Bad economy
Chess is about the only game people will spend lots of money on learning, and even those who create and sell courses must be highly ranked and known.  So ...
* I would just focus on the pleasure of promoting your favorite game
or
* If it is money you want, then pick a mass market game like a few of the Paradox titles or TW titles.  Then, you should spend time learning about marketing and promotion via social media.  Also, how you can make money?  YouTube affiliate, sponsors, selling merchandise, being and influencer.
---
Back to CMx1.  I think there are 2 distinct learning curves.  Ground combat concepts and game UI and mechanics.  I think it might be best to do 30 minute episodes and split them at the 15 minute mark; so people could focus and what they want.  The first 15 minutes should cover what combat tactics or strategy is to be illustrated in todays episode.  Then, you break at the 15 minute mark (or you could do 10&20 minutes) and the remainder you illustrate via the game teaching the UI and control.
Lastly, I think your pitch regarding the fictional Miller and the real Winters misses the mark.  Both characters are memorable for who they were, and only in part due to their expertise.  I have forgotten Band of Brothers, but Miller has a nutty mission, is overqualified, and loses half of his men.  Both might be good characters for an RPG, but their personas are totally irrelevant with regards to CM proficiency or most war games.  And after making the pitch, you don't really plan to teach the psychology of team management and command.  Your pitch should align with your product or content.
---
No offense regarding my comments, but I thought you wanted critical feedback.  I don't regret not charging for any of my game materials I circulated.  I became a better player for it.  Teaching always forces your skills to improve; and that is worth your time especially if you MP, because you will have more fun.  First, you must break it down, and then put it back together so that it can be analyzed and improved.  So, I gained by giving away freely, and I had fun interacting with those who were interested.
Money and having fun are two different things.  There are plenty of cases of YouTuber's who enjoyed something like a game, but became a slave to it, and stopped enjoying it or worse went into a panic as the community moved on to the next hot title and new content producers.  Some really crashed and burned, others just felt burned out.  Read up on the case of Arumba, CK2 and EU4 and his history with Paradox.  Whenever, you listen career YouTubers, they live in constant anxiety about THE ALGORITHM and being demonitized.  Make the wrong observation about COVID or Ukraine, and you too will be history.
Good luck.

Nathan,
I created a lot of tutorial materials for games back in the day.  I don't think there is much of a chance in selling training videos.  Why?
* Niche market
* Outdated game
* People still regard knowledge via the Internet as free unless it has been produced by a real production company with qualified instructors
* CM never was mass market or held the global and historical stature of chess
* Bad economy
Chess is about the only game people will spend lots of money on learning, and even those who create and sell courses must be highly ranked and known.  So ...
* I would just focus on the pleasure of promoting your favorite game
or
* If it is money you want, then pick a mass market game like a few of the Paradox titles or TW titles.  Then, you should spend time learning about marketing and promotion via social media.  Also, how you can make money?  YouTube affiliate, sponsors, selling merchandise, being and influencer.
---
Back to CMx1.  I think there are 2 distinct learning curves.  Ground combat concepts and game UI and mechanics.  I think it might be best to do 30 minute episodes and split them at the 15 minute mark; so people could focus and what they want.  The first 15 minutes should cover what combat tactics or strategy is to be illustrated in todays episode.  Then, you break at the 15 minute mark (or you could do 10&20 minutes) and the remainder you illustrate via the game teaching the UI and control.
Lastly, I think your pitch regarding the fictional Miller and the real Winters misses the mark.  Both characters are memorable for who they were, and only in part due to their expertise.  I have forgotten Band of Brothers, but Miller has a nutty mission, is overqualified, and loses half of his men.  Both might be good characters for an RPG, but their personas are totally irrelevant with regards to CM proficiency or most war games.  And after making the pitch, you don't really plan to teach the psychology of team management and command.  Your pitch should align with your product or content.
---
No offense regarding my comments, but I thought you wanted critical feedback.  I don't regret not charging for any of my game materials I circulated.  I became a better player for it.  Teaching always forces your skills to improve; and that is worth your time especially if you MP, because you will have more fun.  First, you must break it down, and then put it back together so that it can be analyzed and improved.  So, I gained by giving away freely, and I had fun interacting with those who were interested.
Money and having fun are two different things.  There are plenty of cases of YouTuber's who enjoyed something like a game, but became a slave to it, and stopped enjoying it or worse went into a panic as the community moved on to the next hot title and new content producers.  Some really crashed and burned, others just felt burned out.  Read up on the case of Arumba, CK2 and EU4 and his history with Paradox.  Whenever, you listen career YouTubers, they live in constant anxiety about THE ALGORITHM and being demonitized.  Make the wrong observation about COVID or Ukraine, and you too will be history.
Good luck.

I own all titles, but have yet to play post WWII.  No bias, just it is what I am most familiar with.
When I play MIUS I often chose Axis, not any preference, but I am familiar with the NAZI arms unlike the Red Army.
Knowing your weapons is a key part of success in CM.  (simply classing them into categories is not satisfactory)

I found you do get to enjoy the graphics after you reach a certain familiarity.  This is because of the broad stroke nature of the game; you are not issuing orders to every unit, every minute.  So, once you are competent, you can loiter at ground level and enjoy the intensity while keeping an eye on the side bar for new arty or contacts.
Although you can record play via an NVidia card with no performance hit, this pales compared to CM's any point of view replay.
Finally, any campaign battle may be saved as a custom battle (I think CTRL-S) ... so you can have multiple wacks at it.  Also, any realtime battle can be saved and checkpointed, if you understand file structure.  So, you can pick up the battle at a particular point.  But I am not sure if the OPFOR AI is a static or variable.  (and you can go into games options to turn off FOW to better understand the engine, but for me, I don't want to have such exact knowledge.)
* Do the CTRL-S before entering the next campaign battle; once you enter it (deployment), it is too late to save.

Thanks for posting these little tips, Sir John, or I don't think I would have patched right.
You guys don't know the true fun you are actually missing.  In present parlance, to patch means to replace files.  But in the good old days, a patch utility would replace sections of bytes within files.  Why do it that way?  Well, you can see that some compressed resource files can be quite large and those things called MODEMs were slow.  So, replacing bytes was bandwidth efficient.
We actually wrote the programs that they looked like this.
----
CODE
CODE
CODE
CODE
EMPTY
EMPTY
EMPTY
EMPTY
-----
We would leave a patch area in the EXE which was just 00000000000000000000000000000s.
A patch of the EXE would look like this ...
-----
CODE
CODE
JUMP TO MORTARFIX
RETURNFROMMORTARFIX:
CODE
CODE
CODE
MORTARFIX:
FIXED INSTRUCTION 1
FIXED INSTRUCTION 2
FIXED INSTRUCTION 3
JUMP TO RETURNFROMMORTARFIX
-------------
This is what it really meant to PATCH.  Today, we semi-reinstall a program.

For those of you who have nothing to say about WITE2, GG series, or Games ... please withdraw from my thread and take it outside (John I am asking for you not to lock the thread but just do some admin stuff).
This happened to my last thread too.
* I am not without opinions, but I come here to share my hobby which is the intellectual challenge of games (and history); I am not a warmonger nor pacifist, but I come here to escape the 365/24/7 atmosphere of hate.
* I think this board is the property of BFC, and this behavior does nothing to further the sale of their games; which should, at least, be a concern for them if not for you.
Thank you.

There are two aging hard limits:
(1)  Cell replication.  Our genes cannot transcribe to the very end of the DNA strand.  Thus, we have telemeres.  Dead space at the end of the gene to allow transcription without error, but they keep getting shorter.  At some point, cell replication stops.  For humans this is at 50 replications.
(2)  It was thought we are unable to create new nerves cells.  The latest research shows this is not true.  But the factor that permits nerve growth is most present not just when playing games or working out problems.  It is actually a combination of aerobic exercise and brain activity.  A study comparing treadmill exercise and hikers, showed that the hikers generated much more new growth factor.  Why?  Because hiking is both aerobic, but very cognitive for maintaining balance.  So, bottom line is you need to do your PBEM on a cardiac cycle if you really want to stay sharp. 
(let me look up the name of the factor)
See BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor)

Chuck,
There are a few short scenarios.  When I say short I mean in terms of turns like 16.  Full Barbarossa is 215 (one week alternating sides).
I spent many years arguing strongly against TBS/IGOUGO games and developing with Panther Games.  I think it is worth looking into (but only after the next patch).  The game works via intelligent agents.  So, many units does not mean slow and plodding.  It's a great a unique system.
It looks complex, but really you only need a few days for the basics, and you can play with ATTACK/MOVE/DEFEND and taking the default parameters.  A good plans is far more important that lots of finesse of a poor plan.
Dave,
I too am finding long learning curves hard despite retirement and sheltering at home.  I don't think it is odd.  I also take MD classes, physics, and whatever in my spare time.
As we age we decline in 3 cognitive areas:
* Executive function - the ability to construct large elaborate plans.
* Calculation speed - I had joined a chess site, but could not compete.  I had the right solutions just too slow.  With me being 2X as old as most.  And it showed, because they compute metrics.
* The ability to form new memories.  It is easier to remember what you learned in high school than last week.  It ain't retirement; it's biology.

For those of you who have nothing to say about WITE2, GG series, or Games ... please withdraw from my thread and take it outside (John I am asking for you not to lock the thread but just do some admin stuff).
This happened to my last thread too.
* I am not without opinions, but I come here to share my hobby which is the intellectual challenge of games (and history); I am not a warmonger nor pacifist, but I come here to escape the 365/24/7 atmosphere of hate.
* I think this board is the property of BFC, and this behavior does nothing to further the sale of their games; which should, at least, be a concern for them if not for you.
Thank you.

There are two aging hard limits:
(1)  Cell replication.  Our genes cannot transcribe to the very end of the DNA strand.  Thus, we have telemeres.  Dead space at the end of the gene to allow transcription without error, but they keep getting shorter.  At some point, cell replication stops.  For humans this is at 50 replications.
(2)  It was thought we are unable to create new nerves cells.  The latest research shows this is not true.  But the factor that permits nerve growth is most present not just when playing games or working out problems.  It is actually a combination of aerobic exercise and brain activity.  A study comparing treadmill exercise and hikers, showed that the hikers generated much more new growth factor.  Why?  Because hiking is both aerobic, but very cognitive for maintaining balance.  So, bottom line is you need to do your PBEM on a cardiac cycle if you really want to stay sharp. 
(let me look up the name of the factor)
See BDNF (Brain Derived Neurotropic Factor)

Landser,
WITE2 ... it is quite clear that much thought went into the game, manual, and UI.  If it is slow to play, it is due to it's traditional nature of having push every counter around or at best small stacks.
With CO2, you might play the Germans by giving orders at the Corps or Army level.  But CO2 cannot handle so many units over more than about 1 month of battle over such large space.  I think that is why we never went East.  It is harder to find small battles, and players want to go East to play the big battles.  I did analysis for Panther and the engine more or less scales smoothly from 20 units to about 500 (Battle of Bulge Scenarios) on existing hardware.  So, it is less work, but all that AI simulation of commanding other officers, they, themselves, delegate orders burns lots of CPU.  (Like CM does not scale smoothly.  Big scenarios are a lot more work, because it is not an agent based model.)
Sadly Moore's Law is dead.  Processing speed is not doubling every 18 months.  It began to slow towards 2010.  Now, it is still true if you count cores, but few games except chess engines are truly multi-threaded using all cores and showing linear improvement on 16 cores.  So, gaming industry is somewhat constrained like wargames in adding ever greater scope for our battles.

For those of you who have nothing to say about WITE2, GG series, or Games ... please withdraw from my thread and take it outside (John I am asking for you not to lock the thread but just do some admin stuff).
This happened to my last thread too.
* I am not without opinions, but I come here to share my hobby which is the intellectual challenge of games (and history); I am not a warmonger nor pacifist, but I come here to escape the 365/24/7 atmosphere of hate.
* I think this board is the property of BFC, and this behavior does nothing to further the sale of their games; which should, at least, be a concern for them if not for you.
Thank you.

For those of you who have nothing to say about WITE2, GG series, or Games ... please withdraw from my thread and take it outside (John I am asking for you not to lock the thread but just do some admin stuff).
This happened to my last thread too.
* I am not without opinions, but I come here to share my hobby which is the intellectual challenge of games (and history); I am not a warmonger nor pacifist, but I come here to escape the 365/24/7 atmosphere of hate.
* I think this board is the property of BFC, and this behavior does nothing to further the sale of their games; which should, at least, be a concern for them if not for you.
Thank you.

If you want to understand optical camouflage a few courses in cognitive science is very useful.  The brain is quite slow at math, but a massive parallel computer of pattern recognition.
In general, most of what we think we are seeing is filled in (or in computer speak back filed by our brains) as our eyes have a very small field of regard.  There are a ton of great psych experiments on this.  So, it stands to reason that the brain can catch something out of place very fast.
A child shown monkey faces and human faces at right age will be able to differentiate individual monkey as well as people.  But skill will be lost if not reinforced over time.  The problem with adults is that we need to learn many things like foreign languages where as during certain periods during child cognitive development the brain is very plastic and does so naturally --- like age 3 for language and grammar acquisition.
Although it would be unethical having 5 year olds scanning for targets with your tank's periscope, it would probably be very effective. 

Army crews have 32 even, but rarely are they much good for indirect fire I felt. Too much complication for too little kaboom. My own preference-but I usually just order them to direct fire at targets they have visibility on. 
There were reports of the 60mm round it used landing right next to Germans and not killing them. 60mm produces very little fragmentation (less than a hand grenade in theory) and a lot of Armies ditched light mortars during the war. Sort of off topic in this case I know but the key to me is just that I don't rely much on them. I prefer to expend their ammunition at first opportunity and use the crews as line infantry.