TaoJah

IMHO history is a slippery slope. Where do you end it and where does balance begins ? The US, USSR, Germany, UK made x armies, y tanks z airplanes, so why bother give the player a choice ? Let's be historical and just put all the units in the production queue at start-up... Rommel lost in Africa, so why don't we make it impossible for a player to take Egypt ? Hey, it would be historical ! To take it further : historically Germany lost, so now what... Germany has to loose every time because else it's "not historical" ? They did a D-Day in Normandy, so let's be historical all the time... The Germans didn't react well to D-Day at the start, so let's be historical all the time... Malta stayed Allied, so... In short : this is a game so you have to put in balance. To put it a bit more provovative : "If you want it to be historical, read a book".

Hmmm, that makes it harder indeed. A Battlefront server would be nice indeed. At 1MB bandwidth per save game, that can not cost alot, but still. It's a purely economical decision, really. How many people play PBEM and how big of a percentage stops playing because the cheating (or perhaps even more important, how many players don't buy the game or won't buy SCIII because of it). I don't think you'll break even, even with a low cost server...

I always start with it, so I get it over with. If you look at the map, it's every general's dream : undisputed port, perfect defences for the city itself AND for the surroundings, link to Finland... I don't have alot of experience in HvH so I don't know how other people do it, but unless someone can give some GOOD arguments, I'd take it every time.

Well, I don't know how many people actually cheat, but it's possible to stop it by the developer only. Something like a counter and a game-identifier (based on the registration key and timestamp of the starting game) where the counter would be stored somewhere outside the save games and highered by 1 everytime it that game get's loaded. But I don't know if it's easy to do and Cater never said anything about it. Perhaps the title of your post (which is a little bit exagerated, hehe) will draw his attention.

With Jolly, I took Egypt (with a maximum of plane experience won, I may add). But there is alot of Russia left, so I don't really have a change I think. And I don't have big fast tanks, not even big slow tanks or fast small tanks, I only got slow smalle tanks, due to some VERY lazy researchers. And I decided against a Sealion : it's true that he has his three UK planes in Africa, but it's easy to defend against a Sealion with just the Royal Marine. I am just calculating where his HQ is exactly so I can see if there is a chance that I can take out a plane or two before he has enough supply to operate them. It seems to me that he moved his HQ and planes a bit far east, but I still got to do the exact numbers.

Please remove the "best AI player" from the title, I never claimed that tilte ! I just post alot, that's all. No, this wasn't the game were Norway was contested. I just took one city back with a landing, I wanted to make sure the English didn't think I'm a softy ! Leningrad fell, that's always a goal of mine. I don't know if it's worth it HvH, but it's a good city to land some units and attack the Russians in the back later on, when I am retreating. You haven't sent your latest move back, so I can't see how your retreat in Africa is going, but I'm gonne have some fun there, because clearly there is not alot of fun to be had in Russia :-(

I didn't keep alot of turns, but I did keep the one with me playing April 9th 1940 and I had 3 chits in Spain then.

IT's a bit difficult, yes. First of all, you can only do it at the start of your turn. You got to set the HQ on manual, then select the HQ again with a left-click. All units will turn either green (the ones attached to that HQ) or blue (the ones not attached to it). You can then right-click the units and and either select "detach" or "attach". (obviously, the first time you do this, you should probably start with detaching some units, before you can attach others, since their will be the maxed number of units attached to the HQ) Note that this will only take affect at the END of your turn, so during the opponent's turn and your following turn.

Four Germans, that's not alot (HvH)... How many of those go to Russia ?

Under what conditions can a unit operate (provided it didn't move yet and there is plenty of money) ? Is it supply ? Is it HQ attachement ? Is it one or the other ? Is weather a factor ?

Well, as I was saying, I'll see how the butchering goes. The good news is that since I didn't get tech hits, I had alot of money, so I could buy all tanks, all corps, almost all armies, almost all HQs. I am soooo gonne get butchered, but it will take alot of butchering, hehe. On a side note... Instead of trying a hopeless attack on Russia, is it a viable strategy to just take a few Russian cities and then stick at defending instead of pushing further ?

It's not the IW that is the most important IMHO, it's the fact that he can basically take 4 tanks, 1 HQ and just kills everything in sight, lol. Oh, well, we'll see how bad it exactly goes, it should be a good leanring example of getting butchered, perhaps I'll learn a thing or two !

Pfffft... I am currently playing a HvH game, where I had to do Barbarossa with AT at 2, IW at 2 and no advanced tanks whatsoever. That means two weeks of e-mailing that are totally lost. I don't consider that as "part of the game", I consider that "why bother with the game anymore".

Yes, just the cities is enough.

I don't like the idea of the possibility to even MORE bad luck. The game is already too random as it is : the outcome of a game should depend on strategy and skill, not on the roll of a dice.

I'd support the idea, if they higher the soft building limits when you take Russia (and a few other countries like France, Turkey, Poland, Iraq, Egypt,...). One of the sources for German troops in WWII where so-called collaborateurs, people that helped the Germans after they conquered their country. the game should reflect this by letting you buy more units when you conquer big countries. Even from my little country (Belgium), there were alot of people that voloteered to fight together with the Germans, after the occupation of Belgium.

Yes, I place the line in front of Paris too and man them so that they can't be destroyed : one square manned, one square open, one sdquare manne, one square open and so on. It gives you an extra fall-back line to defend Paris.

Yes, I think it's very odd that they don't get a HQ. Perhpas because they fought so... disorganised in the war ? Anyway, if you use Italian ground troops, you REALLY need a HQ. But I usually only use their fleet and planes, so I don't really miss a HQ. HvH you probably need one later in the war, when you need to defend ITaly or use their units for more then partisan control / paradrop watch, but I never got to that part, hehe.

What I want is a game where I don't feel like quitting my first HvH game before even Barbarossa because of bad luck, that's what I want... Variability in HvH should come from the players, not from bad luck. But that's my last post about it, lol, I don't want to sound like a whiner (probably too late, hehe).

BTW what about Norway ? If the Allied take it, is it worth taking back ? Land a HQ, an army or two, put some planes in Denmark perhaps ? Or sneak in and take back one (or both) of the two coastal cities ?

Euh, say that again ? That's not how I understood it. From the manual : "Two chits in a particular category will result in a 10% chance per turn for getting from Level 0 to Level 1, an 8% chance for getting from Level 1 to Level 2, a 6% chance for getting from Level 2 to Level 3, and so on." So, the percentage per chit is determined by the level of the tech that you research, not by the number of chits, no ? Since I had 5 chits invested to go from level 1 to 2, I should have 5 * 4% chance to get it.

Pfffft, I don't know. Even if I was the beter player (and I am not saying that I am), I would loose this game due to bad luck. Surely, in a series of 10 games it evens out, but that does me no good now, does it ? What's the fun in playing a game, to carefully proceed, to think about the different options, to make strategic choises if you loose it anyway ? Or even the opposite, what's the fun of winning a game because you had IW 3 and AT 3 at the start of Barbarossa and the other person hasn't got one tech hit ? I'd like an option to have a linear tech advance : for instance it would take 20 chits for any level 1 tech, 30 for level 2... so that luck isn't a factor. And yes, a player that is -say- 20% better then the rest will always win, regardless bad luck. But games between players that aren't that far apart are apperently determined by pure luck. They might as well throw a dice in the beginning of the game and determine the winner then.

I think the Fortresses work fine as it is now. If you concentrate your attacks on one, you'll take it, but it takes some preparation and slows you down, of course. But I think that's a good thing. And you only get a few engineer, so it's not that you can build Fortresses all over the place.

They do that sometimes... It has a 50% chance or so... I like it when they do that, it's nice airplane practice before Barbarossa !

Okay, what's the deal with research in HvH ? I am playing my first game against ahuman, bought 5 chits in IW as soon as possible... We're now in november 1940 and I didn't get ONE SINGLE success... Before you say "well, bad luck", let me tell you the odds of this happening... Assuming he hasn't got level 2 IW, I got a 20% chance of getting level 2 every turn (5 * 4%). The chance of failing this 14 times in a row is exactly 4,398047%. Now, I may be called paranoid before in my life, but it's next to impossible to have so much bad luck. I had games against the AI where I attacked France with level 3 infantry ! Are the odds in HvH different then against the AI ???