Peaveyyyyyyyy

The scenarios are OK, but you don't get to choose your units, which is fun, and the winner is likely to be the one who has practised the scenario, rather than the best player. Sorry to be pissy to the one person who could be bothered to respond!

ME's are the best-balanced of the game type choices. The advantages given to the attacker in the other types of game are IMO too great (though what I really mean is that the bonus should depend on how hard the terrain is to attack, which would be hard to program). The trouble with MEs is that there isn't much incentive to get adventurous. The MEs I have fought fit one of two patterns: 1) Both sides sneak forward cautiously, and a game of cat and mouse develops, where unless one side gets lucky and destroys all the other side's armour, a draw results 2) One player gets adventurous, which, after 10 turns means he has either stolen a big march on the opponent or had a nasty accident as his opponent had that area well covered and decimated his troops as they advanced. This is too haphazard an approach for most. I do it a lot cos it's more fun and I don't mind getting myself kippered from time to time. I hate to criticise a truly superb game without being constructive, so how about this: For ME's, have more flags, all over the map. Have about 10 x 100 pointers in the middle third of the battlefield, and 6 x 300 pointers, 3 in each players home third. This will reward aggressive play (for aggressive read exciting), and make sure that it doesn't turn into a creep-fest aroung a couple of flags in the centre of the map. It may be that the value of each flag should be dropped so that losses still have the same effect on the victory points, but I'm not sure about this, as I think the high VP cost of losing your troops is one of the reasons people get so cautious. At this point, the simulation guys will point out that losing your men IS one of the worst things you can do in a real battle, so I'm not closed on this point. I don't want CM to become 'not a sim' either. What does everyone think of that lot?

Make him waste his arty, by hitting 'withdraw', and running the boys back aout of range, unless: 1) There is nowhere for them to go and 2) You're sure it's only 81mm Mortar. The 81's won't hurt too bad, especially if it's area fire. :cool: Treebursts can be nasty. I believe the allies have something called VT artillery??? :confused: which is designed to treeburst, so it may make a difference which side you play.

make a list of the terms you don't understand. I'm sure someone will respond then.....

Fine. I can see that they can be useful ambushing on defence, so long as you can find dead ground. ISTM, though, that the dead ground is usually found behind the flag areas on QB maps. I hide the little buggers for ages, but the attacker has no real need to get into my defensive areas with his armour in most cases. He can just stand off and pound me. Maybe I've been unlucky with maps. On the attack, I find that the Shreks get picked off first by the NME, and being slower doesn't help. Also, you'd be amazed how well 45 squads kill tanks if you just banzai them all around. All you need is numbers and a buttoned tank

It's the English buffs that know the answer. It's just spelled 'Defence' in English English. 'Defense' is the US English spelling. [ 08-30-2001: Message edited by: Peaveyyyyyyyy ]

I have to ask: Are shreks even worth it? Most German infantry have Fausts anyway, and a squad and a shrek are roughly the same money. The squad is better at nearly everything, and once it gets to 30m or so, is pretty good with the Faust. Also, you tend to have many squads, which can't all be neutralised. I ask you, 3 Shreks or 3 squads with PFausts? As you may have gathered, I'm rubbish at using Shreks, so I've given up. In fact, I can't remember ever getting one to hit an enemy tank against a human opponent. Most humans are too clever to drive their tanks up to within 100m of a wood they haven't scouted.

One nice trick is to use a completely armour-free force, especially in Attacks. The defender will certainly have bought AT guns or armour, and these assets may have little in the way of decent targets. The defender will likely wait till he can see your tanks before exposing these. By the time he realises you haven't any, your grunts are right amongst his front lines. Still pick some Arty, cos you'll need it to suppress or smoke his infantry while you rush his position. The Axis is best for this, cos the Panzerfaust is effective and organic to most squads. Once most of the defending grunts have been beaten up (You'll have overwhelming numbers due to attacker bonuses and no points spent on tanks), then you can hunt his tanks, if you need to.

I can't say I've bothered to check the figures or run any tests, but the above posts might be ignoring something: Surely, in addition to ROF and scatter, we should consider the increased effect of the larger cal stuff. I'm guessing here, but surely these puppies get a lot of 4:1 oddds happeneing when they make contact with the soft infantrymen. You can get a direct hit on a squad with an 81mm mortar, and it might kill 1 or 2, or just make them cower for a bit. Hit 'em with 150mm and you'll panic the squad, possibly rout it, in addition to the casualties (which may indeed be proportionate to the blast). Also, big blatters are MUCH more effective demolishing buildings. (They take less time)

managed to fix it with a reboot. Odd though

I've had 2 problems with PBEM movie files sent by my opponent. 1. I hit play, and all my units just carried on in a straight line forever, in the direction they were ORIGINALLY headed. The movie played without stopping until they had all headed off the map. :eek: I got no spotting advantage from this, worse luck. I solved it by hitting back several times, then it played properly. 2. The second time when I hit play, the counter goes straight to 60 secs, but the picture doesn't change. The I hit GoTo Start, and the picture changed to the scene at the END of the move. I can jump around in 10 second intervals from here, but as soon as I hit play, it goes to the end again. Please help, I'm enjoying my first PBEM We are both using v1.12. I'm on Win 2K, if it helps.