Hubert Cater

The Mediterranean ============ The Med should have greater importance once the Suez loop becomes available, but the key will be hanging on to it until you can build the area up. Some interesting strategies include the taking of Iraq by both the Axis and Allied sides. For the Allies it can greatly increase your income and once the USSR is involved all connected Allied resources to Soviet soil will go up to a full 10 in strength or at least 8 for occupied territory. For the Axis just controlling this to deny the Allies is sometimes important enough. This is a tricky situation since the Allies start very weak as they did historically, infact the Italians marched on Egypt in 1940 with a 10 to 1 ratio in their favour but still managed to have defeat snatched from the jaws of victory It involves a bit of risk but confident with my Battle for France and defence of England tactics I usually send my Canadian army down to Alexandria as well as move the Valiant Battleship from Gibraltar to Alexandria to bolster the naval defences. Once Italy joins the war move the French Syrian Corps also, better to fight on as Free French than to surrender I usually end up with a situation as follows: By the time Italy tries to take on Alexandria you should be well entrenched and make things very difficult for them, you may lose the bulk of your navy but if you can delay them or even waste their time there the better it is. Keeping the carrier in port is key as the port gives a great defence to the carrier position and helps from air attacks on Allied Alexandrian positions as well. With the two units stationed around the Alex it should allow you to hold up long enough in time for you to reinforce the area, it also protects the Carrier from ground attack while it's in port. [ November 01, 2002, 05:11 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

The Battle of France =============== Again this may or may not work against a competent Axis player and may just be some food for thought. In the battle for France I pretty much go into it with the understanding that it's going to be a lost cause. I could put everything into it, but too often I will still end up losing at a heavy price to the UK due to their extra efforts, i.e. losing the Canadian armies or risking portions of my UK fleet that could come back to haunt me later on in the war. So the strategy I have devised can really make the Axis player pay with some casualties while limiting my UK involvement and at the same time (if you are lucky) drag out the Battle for France to August or even September. The key here is patience and just the right amount of manouvering of the French armies to take out at least 1 Axis unit and at most 3 during the Battle of France. This strategy of course assumes you have taken out his Axis subs in the Atlantic and that he has taken his time by going with Poland, at least Demark and then the Low Countries. Also FoW is the key, here is a screenshot of my initial French setup (Note shots were taken with FoW off): Ok, what I have done is made sure my Allied ground units in the Med have not moved to keep Italy out of the war as long as possible, and then proceeded to move my French Air Fleet to England, switched the Maginot units with Corps, and moved all armies with a few additional army purchases to this new front line across Paris. The new French line: This line I've found to be helpful in many ways, but primarily it limits his attacks to only two ground hexes per French army, keeps my French armies close to Paris so they are in good supply (better than if they are along the Belgian border), forces him to attack me close to my supply source and away from his supply (Brussels which will be at level 5 once the Low Countries surrender). What it also does during FoW is give it may give him a good surprise here and there. Notice all the positions that this gives you to surround his units on 3 to 4 sides if he ventures too far and not in force, also notice the French positions just north of Paris, if he ventures too far off along the coast, you can hammer him with your French ground troops, the air units in the UK and portions of the fleet located here next to Brest. Again there will be patience needed here, to balance out when to strike back and when to sit tight and hold the line, but with keeping your air units initially out of his range (chances are he won't suspect they are around) there is a good chance you can even move in your carriers at maximum range with a good strike from your UK air units, bomber and French ground units, and French naval units (shore bombardment, better these than your UK navy) to take out 1 or 2 German units along the north. If he forces the situation in the south, a timely retreat from the Maginot swinging French units downwards and towards Paris while maintaining any part of the Maginot helps, regardless, at some point he will have to move along the upper portions of France otherwise his Axis armies will be too far out of supply and ripe for the picking once again. All in all if done right and with a bit of luck, you can give your Axis opponent a bit of a bloody nose and even delay his conquest of France which can be very important as he will be forced to replace his losses instead of spend on tech, and it should give him less of a headstart in the all important tech race. France will eventually fall, but before it does, if there is any remaining French naval units use them to attack the port at Antwerp. This is key since he will be less likely to spend his time attacking your French naval units with his air force while the Battle for France rages on, and if you can manage to knock it down to below 5 he will not be able to transport any units over from there for an amphibious assault of England. Right before France falls, station the bulk of your UK navy right next to Brest and move your Allied air units over to that direction as well as shown here: You naval units will be in good supply from the previous turn, and it will enable you to immediatly hammer Brest, start with the port and make sure you reduce it to 0, then hit the city with whatever is left. Notice the position of the Allied Bomber, right below Liverpool, at that position you can reach both Antwerp and Brest, and if you reduce both these ports to 0, that is 5 turns before he can mount an amphibious from those positions forcing him to use either Arcachon or Kiel. This alone can save the UK from amphibious assault. Once these objectives are achieved, haul ass out of there with your navy (make sure you have enough to guard against an eastern and western approach to the UK from an amphibious assault should there still be one) and air force and sit tight to see what your opponent does next. Make sure your air force is out of range of intercept range of London for now, all your opponent can do is hit it without any immediate fear from amphibious assault and it usually costs him more than you since that Corps is at entrenchment level 6. [ November 01, 2002, 01:13 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

Defending England ============= At this point you can only hope that things have gone well in the Battle for France, you have given your opponent a bit of a bloody nose, delayed the victory a bit and reduced his two nearest port enough to stave off an immediate amphibious assault, but you are still not sure. You should have a fair amount of MPP's (despite the immediate purchase of Montgomery for the Battle of France), yet it's still a good idea is to sit tight and avoid tech investments for now unless your situation is very good, invest in another Air Fleet or Strategic Bomber if possible and make sure you have enough Corps just in case of a daring amphibious assault. The following setup usually gives me enough cover to counter an amphbious invasion if one is still launched at me: With my current Bomber position stationed just below Liverpool I can still hit his ports and spot an invasion force from any direction unless it comes from the extreme north, in that case I have a decent naval contingent stationed at Scapa Flow for that. If I suddenly see an invasion flotilla I move all my Corps units down along the coast line around London to deny him a place to land (denying them London is important to limit their supply). I then move in my Air units to make sure they are in a defensive range of the Corps and station my navy in striking distance, I don't commit them just yet in case this is all just a bluff, but I do sit and pray that the rolls go my way. On his next turn he has either got to hit my Corps units with his air or retreat from the assault. If he goes for my Corps, I have about 2 or 3 air units defending and the Corps can usually take some losses and not be destoyed. This will eventually be a losing battle but the longer you delay him, the more time wasted on what could be a fruitless endevour especially since it may bring in the USSR or USA early as well as deny him time to sit back and invest in tech. An optional strategy is to wait out of distance from London with your air, garrison Manchester, Edinburgh and the mountain hexes south of Manchester and allow him to land. This too requires a bit of patience and knowing the right time to strike back, with some skill and a bit of luck, it can cause the early entries of the USA or USSR as desired and if things go really well, hit the London port with your Bomber, he won't have any way to escape once the port strength is less than 5 and you can wipe out his landed units in England. If successfull it should be a short war. [ November 01, 2002, 05:08 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

Before the next patch arrives I thought I would address the apparent Axis bias with a few key Allied strategies and insights of my own. These may or may not work against a very good Axis player, but at the very least they will give them a run for their money and perhaps show that the Allied position is not untenable after all. An interesting note is that Bruce Geryk gave Strategic Command 2 out of 4 stars in a recent issue of Computer Gaming World mostly in part because of an apparent Allied bias in the game, so either Bruce is not the strategic tactician he thinks he is or perhaps he has had some of the same insight as mine Let's start with some of the key elements to an Axis victory as found in this game: 1) Quick victory over France 2) Key research in Tech and Jets 3) Bold and aggressive strategy The main reason I start with France is simply due to the economics, the earlier you knock France out, the sooner you receive the plunder (a big one at that) her resources, and the sooner you can start that all important tech investment strategy. This is key since the Axis needs all the advantage they can get early on in order to win. They need experienced units, the right amount of units, the right return from tech investment, and a bold and aggressive strategy if they want to have a chance at winning, otherwise if any of these things don't happen the Axis will have a very hard time once the combined incomes of the UK, USSR and USA come into play. I think that this much has been agreed upon and the main argument has been that the Axis can get too much of an advantage early on (especially via research) and that makes the Allied position unwinnable each and every time. What is left then is the all important question, what can the Allies do to turn or even stem the tide? Primarily the Allies have to change their way of thinking and how they do battle. Some recent suggestions have been: 1) Disbanding and reorganization of units 2) An early attack on Italy 3) Moving the bulk of the French army to England I'll start by saying that some may find these gamey, and that may or may not be a fair assessment, but consider this, the Axis have declared TOTAL WAR and found a winning strategy whereby they invest heavily in tech and build a superarmy so any effort to counteract this strategy I would not consider gamey at all, it's all a part of declaring total war as well and fighting anyway you can to win the game. Despite saying this, I've never employed any of these strategies simply because I find them too risky and could open you up to potential problems in other areas. 1) I've found some good use of the start Allied units, more on that to come 2) Risky at best and very easily counteracted by a good Axis player, just ask Jollyguy 3) Doing this and you allow the Axis player to take France too early. Sure he may never be able to take England, but with that early MPP bonus he can really make you pay by the time he decides to attack the USSR and have enough left over to counteract any amphibious assaults on the French mainland even with the extra Free French units. Ok so the question remains, what can be done then? Well it all comes back to identifying and working against the Axis winning strategies as outlined in the original points 1-3. I'll outline some optional strategies shortly, but the basics come down to picking your fights as the Allies and when you do, fight tooth and nail while at the same time trying to limit your losses. Make him pay every step of the way. If done right, you will limit what your Axis opponent can invest in research and limit his options during the all important time frame between the Fall of France and Barbarossa Next installment: Battle For France

Actually her name is Claudia Ok seriously, right now I've got a patch in the works (v1.06 Final) barring any outstanding bugs etc. which will go to make the game a bit more interesting overall. I will be taking a short break (very soon) probably for a couple of weeks, but in the meantime it's in the process of beta testing/feedback and I figure once I get back there should be a nice and shiny new patch ready to go for everybody. Just to name a few items that will more than likely appear on this patch - South Atlantic/Suez Canal transport loop. This should open up the Med. a bit and at least allow Allied unit to be transported to the Suez Canal. The trick is that you will have to ship your units to the Southern Atlantic first and this may open up the importance of controlling the Atlantic somewhat - modified research formula that should slow things down slightly, add a penalty for switching from one category to another and will also take into account enemy research via spying/espionage etc. Once things are tidied up some more and testing is satisfactorily finalized, more details will surely follow. I just wanted to add that I think many of the recent suggestions have been great, some other extras will appear in the final patch, but I think the rest of them, including many hundreds of my own ideas will be better suited to a newer and slicker SC2 that may see the light of day in the future Thanks! Hubert

I am guessing dougman4 figured out what was causing the problem on his end, perhaps he might be able to give us some feedback as to what was going on. When you are in the MAIN MENU screen where all the 'Leaders' are shown, what version number is shown on the bottom right hand corner, you may have to resize your screen if it does not immediately appear or is cutoff. A quick way to tell is if you see the proper border all the way around in the MAIN MENU screen. The version number should appear as grey text. Hubert

I'm not sure, send me the campaign and let me know exactly how to reproduce it so I can take a look. Thanks, Hubert

It has been known to crash for AI games where the unit in the half hex is AI controlled. Hubert

Sure please send me the campaign file, it may be useful to identify any other outstanding issues with the campaign editor, in the meantime I'll just paste what I mentioned to hans-micheal As a general rule do not place units in half hexes as was done in your custom campaign down in North Africa, i.e. only place units in hexes that allow the unit to be fully visible. Also placing units in Neutral territory may cause the game to crash as well. I'll take a closer look and have an updated campaign editor that limits this type of unit placing in the future. Hope this helps, Hubert

Good point, Ok as a general rule do not place units in half hexes as was done in your custom campaign down in North Africa, i.e. only place units in hexes that allow the unit to be fully visible. Also placing units in Neutral territory may cause the game to crash as well. I'll take a closer look and have an updated campaign editor that limits this type of unit placing in the future. Hope this helps, Hubert

Send it to me at support@furysoftware.com Hubert

Each new patch often will include additional files that will be needed to run the latest executable, in this case v1.05. If you are running v1.04 or earlier then all you need to do is download the patch, and then by double clicking on it you should receive a pop-up dialog for the self extraction. Ensure that the path specified by the self extraction matches your installation path for SC, default is 'C:\Program Files\Strategic Command' for both SC and the patch and then hit 'Unzip'. It should overwrite the necessary files and then you will be able to run the updated 'SC.exe' without any problems. If you extract the patch in the wrong or different directory it will not work with the error message you are receiving. Hope this helps, Hubert

Forgot to mention that some of the interface mods may need to be adjusted a bit since there were a few graphic additions included for this patch. Hubert

Consider it a freebie

Not sure but this could be your ISP, if you still can't see the link by tommorrow send me an email and I'll figure out something for you. Hubert

Actually you're full assessment is not far off from the idea of how the Siberian Transfer is triggered in Strategic Command. Yes Moscow the Urals, Stalingrad and other cities are key to triggering the transfer, but it also depends on relative strengths, troop positions and so on, basically it is triggered when the in game assessment mechanisms decide that the USSR is threatened and the transfer must be made. I do call this option 'War in Siberia' but it could just as easily be looked upon as 'Allow the transfer of Siberian Troops' as well since I don't think it would have been too far off to assume this transfer would have happened regardless of the situation with Japan. Debatable yes, but just in case let's keep it civil everyone

Maybe the REPORTS section can give you what you are looking for here. Even with FoW, you won't have an idea where the physical units are but you do get the relative strength levels etc. Hubert

Sounds like some good use of the Campaign Editor here, how about sending these to Otto at otto@ww2n.com for his SCHQ site as he already has a few custom campaigns and other goodies. Hubert [ October 23, 2002, 11:44 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

Looks good! I'll add a link to the this site at http://www.furysoftware.com Edit: Also as I recently just suggested to dgaad, how about sending these mods to Otto at otto@ww2n.com for his SCHQ site as he already has a few custom campaigns and other goodies. Hubert [ October 23, 2002, 11:48 PM: Message edited by: Hubert Cater ]

Good stuff!

Difficult for me to say off hand, try sending me the troublesome file or even the contents of your directory zipped and I can take a look. Hubert

Oops, and most of all Madmatt!!!

I also wanted to extend a special thanks to (I hope I didn't miss anyone here) Immer Etwas, Bill Macon, Jollyguy, Daringly, Lance Larka, Marc Rebhun, Jon Pesano, Davide Albegor, Rob Anderson and Russ Bensing who volunteered some of their time to playtest and provide some feedback for the latest patch! Hubert

Play online! We are very proud to announce that the new TCP/IP patch (v1.05) has now officially been released. The patch can be downloaded for free from the Battlefront Downloads page, and enables online play over the Internet or LAN against other human opponents via TCP/IP. TCP/IP (v1.05) Changes Include: - added TCP/IP play (PBEM and TCP/IP games are interchangeable, see the 'TCPIP Quick How To' guide in the Strategic Command installation directory for further details - added storable preferences, set personal preferences will now be stored in your installation directory and will not be overwritten when playing multiplayer games by your opponents preferences - added 'Declaration of War' popup during TCP/IP and PBEM replays - tweaked Siberian Transfer triggers to weigh the Stalingrad/Caucuses area a bit more - fixed some minor PBEM replay bugs - fixed rare launch crash - fixed Campaign load crash for corrupted campaign files - fixed the PBEM exit bug, should no longer freeze up as it did on some systems - fixed rare AI bug *Remember: There is a 'TCPIP Quick How To Guide' included in the release. This guide is a text file that can be found in your installation directory once the patch (v1.05) has been applied and should answer most questions regarding the new Multiplayer functionality for Strategic Command. Enjoy! Hubert

Great list Norse, many things to think about here as well! Hubert