newlife

I like armor in this roll as well. If you have a good spot on the map that allows an armored unit to bounce between several overwatch positions you can engage briefly then pop back into cover before he moves his armor up. Attackers are less likely to have hidden ATGs so in this particular game you have a slight advantage because he WILL be worried about yours. While you are revealing that you have it, as a mobile asset it keeps a level of uncertainty for the opponent with regards to possible positions.

If he spent it all on Shermans, take out his infantry to leave the tanks blind. Uh, good luck with that. (you probably knew this anyway but you did ask)

I play CM only for the PBEM, so I personally don't care about the Strategic AI and much more about the game interface. When I do play solo it's mostly campaign or scenarios where the computer is on defense and a human set up the game to be balanced. QB AI is already so bad that arguments based on limiting the player so the AI can compete is like worrying about strict enforcement of pass interference when a high school team plays versus an NFL team. We know who is winning, let's not extend things with needless hang ups. Just give me a good interface that reduces frustration, not one that limits me for balance against something I overmatch anyway.

Thanks sburke. That's dedication womble! I'll sometimes use my own tanks for sighting if the LOS I'm interested in is inside my setup zone. Sometimes I'll take things as obvious and occasionally get burned for it. I'm still learning the newer CM2 conditions and terrain so on occasion I'll fire up a separate QB on the map and conditions in question if its new to me. e.g. I was surprised when I was able to spot tanks from long distance at night. Of course intel tells me my friend and opponent has 2 companies of tanks so even at low odds of spotting one, I have good odds of spotting something!

Funny, when I did some fan-made scenarios back in CM1 I got comments against parade setup. Personally I love it as I need to know what I'm working with. A nice (but rarely seen) middle ground are setups with troops deployed in slightly reasonable defensive positions but tightly grouped enough to see the OOB. Platoon 1 is all grouped on the town, platoon 2 is the crossroads and the heavies and specialists are near the back. I like this as it resembles my own defense setup pattern. 1) study the map. Look from the air, definitely walk around on the ground. Look from the attackers perspective. Identify key locations. 2) study your troops. Oh, I have two inf companies and a pltn of tanks plus some trps and non-FO artillery. if there is a weak spot (few AT assets) this gets priority attention. 3) place troops by large groupings as if I were the commander one level above. Company A takes the western ridge, Company B guards the pass and road of more likely advance. Then I put myself into the lower commanding positions. As Company CO I need to guard the ridge, where do I put my platoons? As lt of 1st pltn, where do I put my squads? And so on. I find this helps in the big battles to not be bogged down trying to coordinate every last team in a Btln as if I were the Btln CO. This often results in extra units which is fine as these become natural local reserves. (say two squads are enough to cover an ambush, so the third waits in the second position) 4). Place the support units. So in the ongoing example the tanks would now be placed on the map as either a mobile reserve or shoring up the weak points. This can all get interrupted when I realize a selected position is untenable due to LOS issues. Oh, that ridge doesn't overlook the whole valley. And then I back up or adjust as needed.

Or do what I do. Choose one and go with it. My friend and I are having a grand old time with FI and by the time it has gotten old for us, we can decide to buy a new one to keep going or call it done. As a tactical game it doesn't really need a huge time frame. Not being a huge grog I wouldnt be able to tell the time of war the game simulates if I wasnt told Now if Hearts of Iron as a grand strategy game only covered two months of the war something would be horribly wrong.

To be fair to the pixeltruppen, I'd probably be looking for excuses to go wander off elsewhere too if I was asked to do some of the things portrayed in the game.

The screams came earlier than the building collapsing. My guess is they were killed by a round(s) and then the building collapsed. Either way you get to the same end.

Happens with mortars and ATG crews as well. Be glad it was "just" an MG crew.

So I really liked the CMFI scenario "catch a tiger..." as it was creative and out of the box. It got me thinking about other cool ways to use the game engine. It then occurred to me... Is there a way to do a heist? Imagine a town map big enough to get lost in guarded by a German (They always seem to have the good loot) platoon or company. The force size is not enough to watch everything and guard everything. Instead the scenario has some forced roadblock positions and then the German player has a few descretionary forces to patrol. The allied troops will be a small but skilled force with a touch objective somewhere in town. They need to get in then back out. Ideally there would be a requirement to get a truck into the touch objective and then out of town. Or maybe there are multiple trucks "hidden" in town already and one of them has the goods. (in this case the German player would be on their honor not to destroy the trucks beforehand). Or, is it possible to have the truck arrive as a reinforcement at a predetermined time in the middle of the map? Anyone have a map this might work with? Thoughts?

Natch. I missed meeting engangment on your screen shot. The text was fuzzy.

Are we sure the problem is with the maps and not the random map selector? I've been noticing when I put in some requirements for the map while selecting random that I don't always get back what I was looking for. Either I selected town and it gave me a rough, or I selected huge and it gave me medium. I'll assume you have, but just in case you haven't double check that the map is named with ME and not attack, or probe, or whatever. I'm guessing we might be seeing the computer attempting to meet our criteria, not being able to, and randomly grabs a close approximation. While an attack vs a probe map might work, ME is in a league of its own.

I'm not understanding what your asking. Is this a request for AI retreating or planned scenario retreats? Is it a tac AI request for fighting withdrawal (and how is that different than quick move?) I retreat my guys all the time if I have to (hopefully before they panic).

I want a game where you are the company commander and that's it. You want to move your 1st pltn? Get em on the radio or send a runner. You want a better view of the battlefield than what your map tells you? You get to walk or drive over there FPS style. You get hit? Game over. Your side may still win if you left em good enough commands. Otherwise... This would all be in Real Time as well. I normally don't like RT click fests but getting an amount of time to set up and then RT once the bullets fly and giving orders like a CO would be cool. You click fest all you want, either your pltn Lt got the order or he didn't. You might not even see how he's doing until too late... THAT would be cool. Keep it company size to keep down on processor demands and AI demands. AI would need to be excellent, but we're wishing here, right?

Um. I've been playing the scenarios in PBEM and its herding cats with my troops, even when I'm wining, let alone losing. My guys get up and move all the time. In quick battles, the only units I fuss with are the very expensive armor. (I'm a little too desiring to win to leave Tigers under control of low motivation units). You want mobile battlefields, play green low to normal motivation units.

Ninja'd. Must be the heavy forest tiles. Its the very left edge of the allied setup zone looking towards the town. I'd be okay if it was just slow, but the whole area is surrounded by a big semi circle of impassible, some of which is outside the setup zone. Perhaps I missed a hole but I searched for quite a while.

Thanks for the clarification. I assume I'm trapped by heavy rock then. I guess the T30 teams will be used for holding the early objectives. They were going to be my main punch. I guess I should have moved them up the road. I got too tricky for myself and will chalk it up to the chaos of war.

Oh well. I loaded up a one player quick battle on the same map to test things out. The 75mm craters either were not large enough, or whatever is causing the impassible-to-vehicles is part of the grid itself. Oddly, even inside multiple overlapping craters the terrain was listed as impassible. Now I am out of ideas. I don't have larger calibre arty in the PBEM so trying out larger stuff won't be helpful.

This isn't a bug. Just a frustration with how the map was made and my own not putting enough time into reading the map. Map 027 is an allied attack over a big hill into an Axis held town. The allied side of the hill is rough terrain FILLED with that @$%$ annoying bush that prevents vehicular movement through it. There is a lot of it, particularly down around the set-up zone. I was on attack so during set-up I went a little faster with deployment. My guys would be moving immediately so I spent less time lining things up and more time looking at my avenues of approach and so on. Well I made one CRITICAL mistake. I placed 7 halftracks, including my T30 platoon in a part of the deployment zone which has 0 ways out. It wasn't immediately apparent upon setup as some the bushes were thick but patchy and I assumed there would be a way through. I'm six minutes into the hour and the HTs have barely moved as it has slowly dawned on me to do the painstaking process of mapping out every possible avenue out, and found none. This is not an easy process for me as I'm colorblind and I can't even tell which terrain feature is actually preventing movement. So its a matter of moving the mouse in slow patterns waiting to see if it changes from accessible to inaccessible. Total Frustration! Last turn I gave up on the vehicles and started dismounting everyone, turning my HT drivers into anti-tank teams in the process (its nice the drivers come with SMGs). However, just as I was writing this note it occurred to me that the T30s can area fire into the bushes and hopefully crater up enough of the map for my vehicles to get out. Boy will my opponent be confused if he has any eyes on those HTs. "Pete's gone mad. He's firing HE into the ground just meters away from his vehicles..." Now I just hope this works...

Corn field? This isn't CM:Iowa!

Thanks guys. Any thoughts on the other specialists? Attaching scout teams to tank units? I assume the breach teams are for those times you want some combat engineer capability without buying a whole platoon. How about stripping out units like the platoon 57mm ATG on offense? I relooked at the specialist teams and the rest seem to be mostly ATG, infantry guns, mgs, and mortars so buying them in formation (and eliminating what you have to to get the cost right) for larger battles seems to make the most sense.

So here's my desire. When I play quick battles I want relatively realistic TOE but then see all those cool specialist teams like snipers and so on. How do I include them in a realistic way? I haven't seen snipers appear in the standard infantry btns, so where do they come from and when and by how much is reasonable to include them. I joked with my CMFI opponent that one of these battles he's going to see a hoard of crack snipers coming over the hill led by the FO formation. Clearly not reality (and no clue on how effective) so that is one extreme. What does make sense for snipers? How about the other specialists? Does it make sense to attach scout teams to panzer pltns? What are your out of box purchases and how gamey do you consider yourself when you do them?

Thanks for the feedback Steve. I know while the text fix is possible, it still may be X hours of time instead of some other project. You guys have made a LOT of improvements so perhaps this one will have it's time. Keep up the good work.

And this isn't just immersion. I shouldn't just know who the FO is. More importantly my opponent shouldn't know who my FO is. Sure the guy standing next to the radio dude is often a good target, but I'll send serious ordinance on an FO that I wouldn't send for any other team and I'm sure my opponents will do the same. So while I can choose to not click on icons, how do I know my opponent isn't ?

I don't buy that. The game can't just paste over Infantry over every enemy unit name? I know these things can be tricky at times, but the inability to write code that replaces displayed text?