Erwin

Graphics are ok. But wish we had better UI and more useful "auto-commands" to reduce the click-fest eg: Hide in place in ambush, then shoot, then scoot to a safer location. Road convoy command. ACQUIRE or SWOP ammo and weapons with adjacent units including vehicles without the cumbersome need to split squads, mount vehicles, resupply, then disembark and join up with original squad... (Yes, there would be a suitable time delay and limitations of what or how much could be swapped or loaded.) We used to have a very useful "one-click" 180 degree covered arc in CM1. Bring it back to CM2.

Good. Seems more realistic to have some intelligence of where enemy positions are. Otherwise it seems that we're playing recon missions with main force units. And yes, the scouts are for finding out routes where the enemy is absent or weak for movement (esp on a large map), but also for locating main defensive asset positions when one has to overcome them to gain an objective. While it's always better to not let units get tired, running scouts ahead may require them to get tired. In most scenarios there is a time crunch so it's better to have some scouts get hit, then run out of time at the end and suffer heavier casualties cos one is rushing. In CM2 HIDING units are literally putting their faces in the ground to hide. So poor spotters.

Have to admit that probably common sense by the crew. I found that keeping my tanks buttoned up unless I really want them to look around is good for survival.

It sounds like one scenario... and then any others would be very similar. A trench is a trench. And then rest would be hard to traverse mud with huge holes. There are quite a few strategic or operational WW1 game - at least cardboard games. That may be a more appropriate scale.

I wouldn't sacrifice for no reason deliberately. But, in the vast majority of scenarios one doesn't have time to have guys with binocs sit around for 5+ minutes to spot things. My experience is that it's faster to send out numerous 2-man teams all over the map to quickly get a sense of enemy locations. However, it's very very hard to keep em alive. I always move em with numerous waypoints with 5-20 second pauses and HIDE commands. However, usually, if they spot an enemy, they are already quite close and tend to get shot up even when hiding.

If an onboard mortar has smoke rounds it should be able to fire them. It's the offboard artillery that has the strange thing that if you use up all your HE, you also have no smoke left either.

Have often commented that the C2 system does not work "as advertised". Have experienced mortars surrounded by units with radios with no C2 - ie no HQ can contact them - cos the "right" HQ is not present. Other times, it seems easy to contact the mortars even when there does not see m to be any radios nearby. In a multiple Battalion scenario, have seen squads having contact to other higher level HQ's, before their own HQ etc. Have offered to send savegames, but no one was interested. Get the impression that if one spots too many bugs, you become persona non grata.

Looks brilliant, Phil!

Those are good reasons to split them, yes. The main reason is to have more (micromanaging) control.

I wouldn't argue with that. I was thinking of the HQ Support, XO's, Co CO's. Some battery commanders are required to be close to their mortars to enable C2. Not sure why since other units with radios should be able to keep the mortars in C2.

Scouting in CM2 is dicey. Yes, there are usually a lot of apparently extraneous HQ's. However, for "realism" sake I try to avoid sending out 2IC's and extra HQ's etc as I figured that in RL they would not be used like that. In RL one would send out the FO's as well. But, I find that whoever gets sent up front/scouts have a short life, no matter how careful one is (unless one has enuff time to SLOW move them and let them sit and watch for several minutes when getting close to a possible enemy). A few designers (looking at you GeorgeMC) are wonderful in creating 2.5 hour missions where once has enuff time to do very careful scouting. Most designers put time pressure on one, and in those cases, one has to run the scouts as (dangerously) far forward as quickly as possible so that one does not run out of time at the end. Also, as previously noted, the more scouts, the more info gathered asap the better. I often will break 2/3 of my inf into two-man scouts to "saturate" the map. The problem with CM2 is that one is generally left with a bunch of 7-man teams which cannot be broken down.

No. It's useful to split squads so that one can manually do assaults, one team assaulting while supported by other teams MG's. However... Casualties to one team or squad are felt/suffered by the whole platoon no matter how far away on the map they may be. Heavy casualties to a squad will cause all the other squads in the platoon to immediately get "cautious" or "mentally disturbed" whatever the term is these days no matter how far away they are on the map. Brille pointed this out but it was buried in the middle of his post. It's another of those CM2 weirdness/oddities/bugs that I listed elsewhere.

Suggest that the analogy is more apt to Russia as the hapless WW2 Italians and Mussolini's ambitions to recreate Rome's empire in the Med and then his disastrous invasion of Albania and Greece which required bailing out by Hitler. The Chinese would be akin to Hitler and the Nazis, who actually had world domination ambitions and who believed they had the ability to carry it out - starting in China. When the US started economic sanctions to slow down or stop the Japanese expansion and intent to form a "Greater SE Asia" empire, the Japanese thought it better to attack the US assets and allies in the East in order to force the US back across the Pacific.

I also see other similar-looking games next to CORVO Studios' Easy Red l on Steam: "A Front Too Far" and "Easy Red II - Stalingrad". Anyone played "A Front Too Far"? Looks like it's also by CORVO Studios. It seems very similar to Easy Red 2 and I wonder if it's worth getting both - assuming they both are good single-player vs AI.

For RL I's agree. For a game, it's a bit boring - all cookie cutter. What I like about playing the Germans is that there is a wide variety of quite different vehicles. But, obviously not good in RL.

Yes, it does look good. Am also curious if it's good for single-player or is it a MMOG?

It always feels like the US side has very few interesting armor units - nearly all various models of Shermans which are nearly identical, whereas the Soviets have a lot of different armor units - so there is more variety on the Eastern Front. Am not a fan of playing the Brits, but they do have a variety of armor as well - especially their large armored car (AC) garage. It's unfortunate that there are hardly any scenarios and no campaigns that I can recall that feature the large variety of Brit AC's.

Same here. So, all your hard work is safe on our HD's.

On most maps especially the larger ones, RECON/SCOUTING is a vital "tactic". It seems useful to split many of one's squads into two-man teams and send those forward on QUICK with maybe periodic 5 second waypoint pauses to prevent them getting fatigued or exhausted. The tactic that works well with all games, WW2 and modern, is 1) locate the enemy's prime/most dangerous assets - usually these are ATG's and ATGM's. (Then tanks and inf strongpoints.) Once the ATG's and ATGM's have been located they can 2) be killed with arty. 3) Once the ATG's and AGM's are gone, one's own tanks can mop up the enemy inf strongpoints (killing enemy tanks by "ganging up" on individual enemy tanks whose location you now know). The downside of splitting with most CM2 units is that one can only split 9-man squads once, so once a two-man scout is split, one is often left with an unwieldy 7-man team. For some reason the CMBS Ukrainian 7-man squads can be split into 2x2 man teams and one three-man team. Much better.

When I graduated from CM1 to CM2 in 2007 I also was horrified at how hard it was to keep the troops alive. CM2 is a very challenging game with steep learning curve. If you are a new player you have to expect that you need to gain experience.

Yes, thank you. Unfortunately, there are very very few mods (compared to the other titles) that improve the look of the CFI game - esp buildings etc. CMFI is the worst-looking of the series.

The current US carrier aircraft no longer have the range to keep the carrier safe from Chinese land-based AS missiles. Huge problem. The US seems to be relying on its superior submarine tech to thwart a seaborne invasion, or at least the logistics of supply. But no matter how stealthy, once a sub fires anything, everyone knows where it is. So, doubtful life expectancy.

Doing a great job keeping the flag flying, Phil. FYI: While am a big supporter to Early War and also DAK N Africa, I am one of those who rarely has time for PBEM. My schedule is too bizarre and vs AI is almost exclusively what I play.

Logistics has be to be biggest challenge. Look at how much supply had to transported to France for Overlord. If one can disrupt the Chinese resupply, they can have all the tanks on Taiwan they want - just no fuel, ammo or supplies to do anything. CM2 is not good for simulating the logistical tail of a military force for more than a day or two. IIRC it's roughly 90% of supply troops to 10% of combat units

While all the CM1 games, well certainly CMBB and CMAK. are still fun to play and if well-modded can look almost as good as CM2 from level 3 and higher, there are huge numbers of features in CM2 that CM1 does not have as one would expect since CMBO was released around 20 years ago.