Catacol Highlander

OK - first image. Start of turn 3 looks like this. Not a remarkable image in itself - the 2 arrows show where I put most of my effort into destroying the Poles, but I would point you to what you DONT see. There are 2 armour units not present, an HQ less than there should be and no Tac Air either. Check back to my plan - I want to invade France before the Winter comes and so used up all available mpps at the end of turn 2 to move them west early as possible. The allies will not have a winter to prepare - if I get the weather I will hit them as hard as possible in late autumn!

Hello all. A privilege to be asked to do this AAR - I hope Marc and I can make it interesting and highlight how the game works. Both of us are historians in our real lives - added spice. It is also the first time I have played this new scenario, though I am well versed in the reality of WW2 and have played many games of SCGC. I have taken the axis; Marc the allies. Having mulled over the map, checked the victory conditions and looked at my own style of play my initial strategic plan looks like this: - London or Moscow are the key objectives for an axis victory. After thinking through my rather chequered history with naval warfare, and uncertain quite how the navy war is balanced in this new scenario, I decided to go for a long term priority of taking Moscow and obliterating the Red Army. - I will look to defend in the West using air power in the first place. Withdraw the U boats to start, wait for technology and then unleash them sometime in 1941 for a sustained naval campaign through 1941 - 42. This campaign will not win the war, but will be designed to occupy the RN and USN sufficiently to prevent any idea of an early D Day. - North Africa looks to me a potential drain on resources, so the Mediterranean will be put below Russia as a priority, and Italy tasked with a defensive role. - Defeat Russia by 1943 thereby putting me in control of the game - I hope!! As an extension of this my plan then is as follows: 1. Destroy Poland as quickly as possible and endeavour to engage France before Winter 1939. 2. Refuse the Nazi Soviet Pact to reduce the distance required to get to Moscow and the Caucasus. 3. Plan to invade the Soviet Union in April 1941, or March if the weather turns early. Strike first for the economic resources in the South in the belief that my opponent will have to defend the northern sector around Moscow properly leaving the south thinly defended, and look to take Moscow in a second stage assault in 1942. 4. Put maximum research attempts into industry, infantry and armour initially, with intelligence and air power as secondary priorities. U boat development will be brought on as a third stage in research should the Gods be with me and the first two successfully developed sufficiently. So there is the plan. Post 1 complete. Next post - some action... -

Japs are the key for him. He will either use Jap engineers to start fortifying france, or try to land in the U.S or take on the UK with them. I was amazed to find the Japanese Army invading Britain in my game with him in 1943. Germany just concentrated on Russia - Japan wreaked havoc. I tried to be clever and actually got the US navy right up to Tokyo while he was doing all this, to find every square occupied with infantry, HQs and air power all over the place. Couldnt hope to invade or knock Japan out even though I had 8 US carriers and total sea control. As I said I think he knows the game rather well. Good luck though. I am playing him again now and taking the allies again, just to see if I can come up with a way of neutralising the speed of his play.

You'll do well to do anything to stop Dragon when he plays as the axis Minty - he's the best I have encountered. I think he knows the game absolutely inside out and has come up with a formula that makes it nigh on impossible for the allies to win because he destroys their fighting capacity long before 1943 gets close. It's not a fixed strategy either - I know of at least 3 styles of play that he can use to decimate the allies, and there is nothing the allied player can do unless he gets outrageous luck. Last time I played him my Russkies got level 4 armour by the time he invaded Russia in 1941, and even that wasnt enough to stop him. Watch out especially for his use of paras. Actually I think the way he plays demonstrates that probably the game is slanted to the axis. The "friendly" league started by Amadeus has every game now an axis win bar one. Once a player knows how best to wield the axis forces the allied player is sunk. If I were Hubert I think I would be looking to patch GC at some point to try and reduce the potential speed of the axis advance early on. Personally I would make France a slightly harder nut to crack (currently it is far too easy to have France conquered before summer 1940 gets close), and then also make tac air in general less effective, as it is the tac air that makes the axis so dominant early on. By the time the allies get any form of air force that can resist, german/Jap tac air is often on 3 or 4 stars, and that destroys most of an armoured unit in one hit or makes fast work of enemy air units on the ground. It works in reverse too, becuase it is US tac air that can wipe out the axis player late in the game without any bother at all if the axis player has made a mess of things. Tac air is just the king of the battlefield in GC, and it shouldnt be so powerful. WW1 is much better balanced in that regard - air is important, but not that destructive and also cheaper as a result. I like the feel of it much better than the mad power of tac air in GC.

But on single player I have no graphics problem, whereas on multiplayer the graphics are really struggling - including the one blow out through a 1Gb card running out of memory. So clearly there is a graphics related issue linked to internet speed as Jonny suggests? Yeah - my upload speed is clearly rubbish. Never bothered to check it before, but I am awaiting the arrival of a new superfast lease line into my work residence here and that may well put an end to any link problems. Jonny - I'll drop hamachi and see what happens. I'll post back later.

Thanks Mord. Pity. Never mind - pbem for now it is then.

Havent played the game enough yet to know - so can anyone else tell me if there is any way a tank can get ammo resupply during a game?

I know from reading various threads that this is in the wishlist, and having played 2 games online it is at the top of mine. I am a scenario builder as well as player, so forgive me for this drab question - - but can we expect a multiplayer pause in the first patch or will it probably be further away than that? The answer to this will impact fairly substantially on how I go about my scenario/campaign building... Apologies for asking a question that might force steam from Steve's ears as I sense the whole "where has WeGo" gone from online multiplayer is a bit of a sensitive issue! Thanks.

Did a speedtest. Ping was 15, d/l speed 5.8 and upload a surprisingly low 0.58. Would this account for bad graphics drawing in multiplayer? Thanks

Jonny - It is true that we were using hamachi, simply because I reside behind a proxy server that sometimes causes multi player issues. However I believe I can do a direct link up now so will turn off hamachi and go for a direct link tonight and see what happens. I am on an 8 d/l and 2 u/l connection, my partner being on something slightly slower in terms of the upload I think - maybe 1. I'll run the speedtest progs suggested tonight as we are supposed to be hooking up again, and let you know the results.

Morning all I played my first proper QB against a long time gaming pal of mine last night.We chose a map about 1k by 1k and played it "large" - in other words I had a couple of platoons of tanks, a range of HTs and some varous infantry assets. I think he had about the same. The game was frustrating. We both have fast internet but kept getting a pause message while the game waited for network data, and then in the end the game crashed and I got an error message on my GTS 250 1Gb card saying it was out of memory! I have a quad core system with 4Gb of ram. We started again with a slightly smaller map of about 1000m by 800m and I put all my graphics settings to fastest. The pause message only came up a couple of times in this game as there were fewer units on the map, but I kept getting multiple redraws of the map and the game resorting to a very low graphics quality - and I could tell my system was really on the edge. Next time I'll run Fraps alongside to check framerate. Is this to be expected? I was really surprised. Many of the bigger maps played against the AI had caused no such graphics problems/redraws and my system can handle the graphics hungry Crysis without too much of a hitch. Does this mean that until systems get even more powerful we are restricted to real time games of small size? Is anyone else getting this? Incidentally until we get a pause function in real time multiplayer I suspect the game is pretty much unplayable... unless you want to turn it into Company of Heroes.

Agreed in full.

Small point - but the small blue font on a black screen of the purchase selection is a nightmare to read: at least it is on my monitor. Any chance we could just go for simple white text and then use other colours for "greyed" out deleted units?

Nope - I can top that. In GC I got to 1945 in a game without getting a single Jap industry chit despite years of max investment. In a recent ww1 game amazingly I got to the summer of 1916 with 2 or 3 chits invested in industry across all 4 entente powers without a single hit to any of them. Was most crippling to Russia, as I then found that when a chit did arrive mpps went from 89 to 192. I'm still playing that game, and my Brits in 1917 are still without any industry at all. I have said actually that I think the industry boost is too high for the price paid, and too much of a game changer or loser.

"The Myriad Faces of War" by Trevor Wilson is a favourite of mine. Deals with the war solely from the British standpoint, but it is very well put together. Not a short read though! Having bought and read the book many years earlier I was gobsmacked to find that his niece turned up in my history class, even though he writes out of Adelaide in Australia and I am in the UK. It's a small world indeed...

Totally agree. I've got 88s and pak 40s opening up on squads and it's very annoying. Cant quite understand why a feature that was so good in CM1 was dropped for this version. Would have thought it would be a fundamental of the design. It puts loads more pressure on in real time too, not just annoying in WEGo, as it means having to manually keep the gun on hide until a tank walks into the intended area and then either maual target or just unhide. When the enemy is coming with several tanks and the defender has several AT guns this is really tough. As an extra AT guns are wasting AP on infantry targets once their HE runs out. That's annoying too.

Thanks Steve - so trust the AI. I can learn to do that - it's just part of that "getting CM1" out of my system I guess.

Apologies if this has been raised elsewhere or raised years ago in CMSF - I didnt play CMSF. I'm finding AI behaviour within a hex a bit annoying. A specific example will illustrate - I move a section of 3 guys into a hex which contains a shell hole. 1 of them immediately drops into the shell hole for cover - the other 2 think it would be a wise idea to kneel or lie out in the open. The shell hole, I'm certain, is big enough for more than 1. Why does this happen? Am I doing something wrong or is the AI still a factor under improvement? I'm getting similar moments of frustration watching grunts in buildings bunch up next to one window rather than spread out. What do the more experienced players out there do about this?

I am still hoping for tcp wego in the future - but after a solitary hour of playing real time in a company sized scenario with attached AT and artillery assets I am actually warming to the fuzzy "out of control" feeling that CMBN gave me last night. I am an armchair wargamer brought up on control - I love being able to plan down to the smallest detail. CMBN, however, doesnt allow me to do it in real time - and I am genuinely surprised to find that, waking up today, it hasnt annoyed me as much as I thought it would. I was convinced, in a dark recess of my mind, that I was going to hate it. I got whipped by the AI last night - becuase my deployment was wrong and my use of assets generally poor. In CM1 I probably could have got away with it as I could plan my mass murder of advancing Americans in infinite detail. But not realistic detail... and I like this feeling of having huge planning and execution responsibility but not quite the infinite god like power I am used to. This is actually more realistic - and that has to be a good thing. Roll on game 2 - and roll on my first tcp 2 player game, hopefully tomorrow evening. I'll post further thoughts on real time 2 player after I have done that. Count me as a potentially converted tcp sceptic.

I might have been mistaken, but I am pretty sure I watched a crewman of a pak40 lift his rifle, fire it at an M3 half track, penetrate and cause the half track to retreat. That one incident gave me goosebumps - it was like watching a hollywood movie... except it was on real time so I couldnt rewind and watch again!

Jeez - what an exhausting thread to keep pace with. So much feeling... I understand the market, so do BF - so they have it right. I just wish better MP was in because it would make it a better game. That is utterly removed from any talk of online numbers, and increased (or not) markets: just becuase it would make it a better game. If I understand the reply posts from BF I think they know that. So give it time - better MP facility will appear in the end during, what Rune describes, as "slow" time. I look forward to it. Until then I'll play it as it is, and perfect my speedy mouse clicking skills. That actually fills me with dread, but so be it.

Good enough for me too really - my previous post was a bit of a rant. Apologies for that. BF customer service has always been excellent.

Steve - agreed. BF has done more for wargaming than any other publisher out there. I am a supporter. But I quietly add my voice to those that see the sidelining of the MP dimension as a huge pity. Remember that the name BF made for itself back in the CM1 days was based on the fact that everything CM1 offered was better than the competition and catered for the armchair wargamer who loves to be in control and loves realism. It was unique. It was the best out there - it was way ahead of its time. A community of MP online gamers was created who could watch the action in 3D over and over again, and yet take time to plan the next move and get it right. It was wargaming MP bliss. I'm not sure CMBN, based upon what I have seen of the demo, is quite so far ahead any more. You guys wanted to make a better living, you know the market is centred around single player and real time so you bowed to market forces. Nothing wrong in that - sensible business. But I think the "unique selling point" of CM1 has now been lost. CMBN looks like a much better, realistic, detailed version of a host of other games out there. Online WeGo was your unique selling point and with its disappearance from CM2 as an online feature the guys who buttered your bread back in 2000 are frustrated. WeGo as an online MP feature should have been right on the front page of the long term strategy for CM, a feature that might be a pain to code but must be kept in because it keeps CM2 unique. Doing it for PBEM only was a half way house solution, and like so many half way solutions it is flawed. Make all the improvements, but keep what was unique. I'll still buy the game, I'll still play it. I'll pray that my realtime MP games dont turn into a "who can use the mouse fastest" competition, but I suspect they might. Your bank balances will grow - - - but something of the magic will have gone and that will taste bitter. If it is possible to recode it back in sometime in the future I would put it back on the front page of that long term strategy, not for the money it will make you (probably not much), but for the position of your product in the history books. CM caters to an audience that loves its history: make sure your place in that timeline is as secure as it can be and keeps its hold on greatness.

?? - you mean the CMSF vets do this? Acknowledge that the engine cant give the precision and find a manufactured route around it? I think that probably reinforces my point very nicely if that is the case. And Blackcat - you could place your abstracted units in CM1 very accurately indeed. I would measure my infantry squad placements while in cover to the exact metre sometimes, and the "look" command (which seems to have gone?) gave you the easy way to measure exactly how close to the edge of cover or how close to a road a section/squad/team deployed. I know that in itself is a bit abstract as 10 men take up space on the battlefield. Accepted - that is not realistic. But now do we have an engine that has actually made that any better? It is frustrating specifically in the Bocage Demo scenario not to be able to position an MG in exactly the spot you want, and in CM1 I could get an HMG right where I wanted it. Note than an MG is a single piece of equipment, not an abstract of 10 men. I hope noone at BF takes my words the wrong way - in all my years as a member I dont post often and read far more, and I love CM more than any game I have ever played in approx 30 years of gaming, but I'm just saying that this is going to take some getting used to and at present it feels as though I have lost some control. Maybe that was the point - to represent more realism and precise control is unrealistic - but in the world of gaming where players will push the limits of an engine or scenario to eek out the slightest advantage control is the core of the game. Maybe too it was the only way to make real time gaming work? I wonder which was the main priority - getting the game into real time, or maximising realism?

I have to agree with Claymore. I bypassed CMSF as I wasnt interested really in the modern setting. I intend to return to CMBN but my first experience with the demo is exactly that of Claymore. I cannot position my units precidely because they default to the centre of a square. Now I know that going to 1:1 scale has increased realism, and that the old CM1 method was an abstract so that a squad right on the crest of a rise was never quite a realistic thing, but it almost feels now as though we have become even less realistic because I cant tell a single soldier to go to a specific point of the bocage or map at all - and in the abstract form of CM1 I could. I am wrestling with it, but it feels to me as though part of the tactical skill element has now gone. With CM2 it is going to be about approximate positioning of the correct units in the correct place, laying down fire in the right place and timing everything right, but that was always the case with CM1 anyway and you had the ability for precise placement. A pity... maybe I will feel different in a couple of weeks.