Desert Dave

Right on the money. Even the "best intended" of house rules are suspect, since there hasn't been any attempt to collect and analyze any game data, has there? Anecdotal reporting, as with AARs, could help, but a more thorough analsis would be definitive. And, it is unlikely that we will see another patch, which is, and has to be, fine by me. I wouldn't mind an editor that would allow changing the OOB and status of ALL Countries, but hey, if it's not in the cards... agree with the expressed sentiment that Hubert has gone above and beyond in trying to accomodate the dedicated players. :cool: Ah, yes indeed, which is why I can't seem to go back now and patiently set-up and play the WiF or A3R games... too much bookeeping! Though, my son and I do occasionally get great enjoyment out of the new Axis & Allies Pacific board-game... it is balanced on a razor's edge, with one small run of dice-rolling luck often the difference between two equally determined foes, as fathers and sons... can sometimes be. LOL! Very true... I hereby apologize if ANY of my posts have contributed to any... ummm, existential malaise... ***I do have one other observation... it seems more than a little ODD that there has been no consensus reached... on one particular MOD that makes head to head play... very nearly PERFECTLY balanced. Seems as though, by this late date, and with so very many games having been played, including solo, that ONE UNIQUE version would have soared to the forefront... as that elusive, "balanced" head to head game. :confused: Perhaps this is what Mr Bill was alluding to... his '39 scenario comes close (... though, not so much for solo play) but I wonder? Has any consensus been reached? And, could there be?

I hope I shall not be scolded, or otherwise stigmatized or slyly indicted for this... but, This diplomacy chit model seems too complicated... and distracting to keep track of... I can easily see some wily foe saying... NO! no, you don't have the 2 chits, you only have the one, I'm absolutely certain! of it. Better to wait for SC2, IMHO... I am guessing that Hubert will have some different Diplomacy model, that will "correct" some of these disuputed DoW and a-historical gambits. ***BTW, Shaka, your brain chemistry is changed... even, by eating a candy bar. Or, through meditation, as the Gurus and Fakirs would attest. Everything, as per usual... depends on what kind of "candy" you like... or, for a million million (...inaccessible to the One who stands with hands on hips, quite privately righteous) reasons, momentarily need ... yes?

I would agree with all of those who are asking for better access to the game editor functions. Given that SC has been out for about a year now, it MAY be worthwhile for Hubert and Battlefront to consider this one last patch. It could only INCREASE interest in the eventually tremendous SC2. :cool: However, I would not go so far as allowing modification of individual unit capabilities. or any other game functions. All we actually need is access to ALL of the countries on the board. No doubt about it... the more dedicated modders will come up with a truly "balanced" game (... if not perfectly "historical")... lickety split! And so, the various Leagues and Tournaments and the like could settle on a most excellent version for their competitive contests, While the ones who mostly enjoy AI (due to time restrictions or oddly interfering things like wife/girlfriend/mistress or job or other great or shameful activities) could make a game that PERFECTLY suits their needs. I can appreciate the original rationale for NOT providing full access to all of the countries. Best, for awhile, to have everyone on the SAME PAGE... for tweaking purposes and so that the players could "speak in the same war-game language." But, now that we are one year into this superior and somewhat "addictive" game, IMHO, there are BETTER reasons for... NOW... allowing better editor access. Mostly to do with "Wow-ing the Madding Crowd" and stimulating! ever increasing interest in this... "word-of-mouth" game. So. I would very very humbly request that this one last patch be released, allowing us to modify individual Countries... but NOT any other aspects, such as unit stats.

Interesting comment, worthy of some additional elaboration. An excellence (... "arete" to the ancient Greeks) has been attained. If not to achieve, and receive the laurel leaves, yourself, then to appreciate as a (... could be ) common human accomplishment. :cool: We can admire, and attempt to emulate... Mozart, Rodin, Cezanne, Yeats or Keats, Frank Sinatra, or Roman Polanski (... cinema artists must rely on collaborative efforts... very few, if any, can control ALL the technology, such as editing or lighting the stage, EVEN IF they have the requisite... "driven Vision"), But, there just aren't many who would CHOOSE to accept the bedviling demons or rough-neck angels that are an intricate part of the inspiration-creation process, such as: Assorted mental afflictions, like obsessive-compulsive behaviors, mild schizophrenia (so that Clang Language is finally edited and organized), bipolar depression, inclination toward addictions (ie, determined RISK taking) and anti-social disorders, which cause no end of trouble... both for the shocked society and for the one... outside the Realm. ***We could ask Terif if he has any apparent demons/angels riding alongside his valiant SC stallion, but, I doubt that he would tell us about them... even if he knew who or what they were. Therefore, it's true... humans INNATELY adore the "great Spirit" and will go to quite extensive lengths to... move as close as they possibly can, physically or mentally or by way of the "soul"... and finally, in exaltation... TOUCH that tremendous Magnificence... whether it be a mortal grace, or... of another world. ***Sad odd note: "Celebrities" have largely replaced better and more worthy models, in this... The Faux Golden Age. Too bad, since none of them seem to know very much about mystic and immensely powerful and meaningful things. :eek: So. Terif is, at the moment, the ALMOST untouchable example of... excellence. Every group or clique or clan... REQUIRES... at least one, though, it could be several. Well, it's not for me to say... who (or what) this might be, as each Culture has their own mythic preference. I would say... as a born American... it is the... god or God who... created... The Wilderness. We seem to NEED... at a miminum, the idea that there is never any end to... courageous exploration. Alas, this occasionally takes the (mis)shape of... ill-advised "foreign" adventuring. But, otherwise, Lucky! for us there is (... diminishing?) separation of Church and State. Terif is where he is and largely esteemed because... it's a natural need we have for... excellence, in deed.

JJ, Sorry to hear you haven't tamed that Insomnia Beast... it troubles me time and again, as well, and counting constantly bleating! Sheep ain't no solution, though, toting up ALL the intricate statistics from the 1957 baseball season sometimes works for me... I usually get through the Yanks and Chisox and Tribe and into those swaggering, cool-cat Tigers... Which, brings us to an... interlude: It's a quarter to three, And there's no-one in the place, Just, you and me... so, Set 'em up Joe... -- Old Blue Eyes... Forever Young, Forever Relevant ************* Speaking of the dying American Pastime, quite an apt description of what Designated-Hitter is all about... except, I would add: Due to the dearth of Offense in the mid 60s to early 70s, the Powers-That-Be (... always to be Xtra leery of, no matter what "sport"... to include the ubiquitous StrangeLove sorts who twist the levers & gears over at The Military Industrial Complex, but of course) determined that the typical Fan was falling asleep in the early innings... like the first or second! with so very little fast-flux! & flow, so They rudely and stupidly stuck in that DH rule. :eek: To hype-up the snoozing viewing audience. In hopes of... what? Who knows? But, that little problem of... how do you KEEP ON KEEPING ON with all that Xtreme smashing and bashing? You just cannot keep INCREASING the mighty homeruns! Without destroying all those small strategems that make the game... ah, Sinatra relevant. At some point, they will... LOSE the dedicated aficion,, true? Two analogies: 1) The constant eye-seizing action-reaction in most American movies these days... too little attention to character development and the "psychological" nuances, a la Bergman and the French & Italian "auteurs." And, 2) Conglomerate Capitalism, where the idea seems to be... RUSH off-shore to avoid fair share of taxes, un-stitch all the Union labels, annihilate the surrounding Eco-system so no-body can hardly even breathe, and as CEO... drift down to moon-silvered Malibu sands from high-horse heaven... on stolen golden parachutes. (... ummm, wherever? Did that "Calvinist work ethic," which INSISTED on putting any corporate SURPLUS... back to work! For, common cause... as Carnegie and Vanderbilt and even Rockefeller used to do... ) Well, as for competitive PBEM... I too prefer easy-going and laid-back contests, although... I wouldn't mind a rousing, rock 'em clock 'em, roll around the Big-City alley type of encounter now and then, so, I truly hope that Hubert WILL include a fool-proof reload mechanism (... if there is such a thing) in SC2! :cool:

Valiant effort by the team captain, taking on that Immortal Euro-Avatar and thereby taking a hard shot to the chin for the... dust-devil raising! Purple-Sage Riders! After all, them feisty and nefarious Euros been playing wargames and miniatures (even... in their dreams!) since the days when Charlemagne thundered! across the flower'd Flanders plain, at least! :eek: Now, the long-riders... outfit in them flowing black jackets and coats... got to take... 5 out of 8! Yet, there's always hope... for instance, JJ's been teaching amazing and classic-great chess strategems since the days when Billy the Kid terrorized Ranchos & Villas all along the Rio Grande! So... perhaps he can translate that New Jersey savvy into... WW2-style gun-slinger lingo! O seize that stallion-mane and Ride On! All you sidewinder-eyed, And loco-weed bespitting, And low-down-holstered... Pistoleros! :cool: We ONLY need... 5 out of 8!

Hey, thanks big guy... for inquiring... but, no, no, 9 times Next Nirvana no, I ain't on enny a them... anti-godlin' fixins. Know a bit (... actually, quite a VAST, VAST amount)about it though, and once upon a kick-ass time, I read that mean-street-smoking underground Swag Rag... through & through and even way the hell past them stupid table of contents. Yeah brother, they is... all manner of this sort of hi-jinks, oh, "addictions" I mean. Just depends on what kind of funk or junk is bothering... you, or the man who goes awful berserk on the street whereat you USED to live. Now, in that great and under-rated movie, Three Days of the Condor, there was this interesting picture... taken by that woeful but... plum delicious! Faye Dunaway. It was a bunch of illiterate branches, stuck in a bleak, wintering frame... beating the dickens out of the low grey Gestalt that... made them oh, a tad paranoid, like Robert Redford was for awhile... remember? The thing is... look close... closer... what do you see? It's... well, no... you tell me. What is WASN'T, however, was... just nothing... or, a drug addicted swallow, preening the bedraggled feathers and calling for... more of the same. See. You HAD to have been... afflicted yer OWNSELF, in order to call out any others who... is, are, or used to be. If you ain't been addicted yer ownself, why, it's prob'ly best... yea indeed it IS, to NOT make ill formed, ill advised speculation about... what is ACTUALLY true of... somebody else, yes? Anyway, you young guns surely do get the old blood delightfully! riled... keep in mind though, EACH old slinger has got 'is OWN sort of silver-bulleted Colt. Kicking bad habits, once, or at the moment, or... only midst some bad-bent memory... thanks to a Neitzsche-like WILL power... stays, in a quaint quiet repose.

Well, I've been around the block a time or two, and thought I had seen just about all the crazy amazing things there are to stumble across and rip rumble about, and see... but rambo? In cahoots with one of the charter members of... The 60s-precursing Beats? Those road-going, risk-taking, prankster-acting, Rimbaud-reading ... Beats? Quoting... Bill The-Opium & Lotus-Eater... Burroughs? This would be like... Black Jack Pershing quoting Henry David Thoreau's On Civil Disobedience... or, Arnold the Barbarian forming a fast and lasting friendship with a sheepish... Little Bo Peep! Hmmmm... could it be? That all along, he has actually been styling himself after the FIRST Rambo, and not ANY of the subsequent ones? Now, that would be Jake. That he has an iota of... that rough-neck elegance just like that... cool-cat choir-boy rake, Bobby Kennedy... used to have? :cool: Geez, my WHOLE WORLD... turned upside down! And not a single solitary warning! What a wild old time in the mo-jo moto-village, oh, what? In the name of Sal Paradise, Next? :eek:

And I am disappointed that you are... disappointed. For the moment, you prefer to think that I am elitest. All right. I'll consider the criticism, and if appropriate, will try to learn from it. If most members want this kind of thing, or something similar, then... perhaps, it shall be done. I'll have to accept that as part of the forum... no problem. For consideration... if the moderators of this forum had wanted futher delineations, they would have set up something akin to other boards, where you are "ranked" or are a "senior" member, etc. Here, everyone is, after a month, simply... a member. But, I have merely expressed my opinion on this matter, And, as far as I can figure, that's ALL I have done. You are entitled to yours, but I hope that you or I or anyone... would not accuse another, so very blithely, of being an elitist. Besides, NOTHING is inevitable. Absolutely... nothing. Ever.

Hmmmm, Well, while the orginal impulse is normal and quite understandable, I would oppose ANY method that would separate the many forum members. I appreciate your nomination JerseyJohn... my understanding is as always... you are kind-hearted, quite naturally. Exclusiveness is what this other ultimately is, and IMHO, we should strive to be ALL including. Therefore, I WITHDRAW my name from any consideration, in any proceedings where some sort of hiearchy or popularity contest is attempted. To paraphrase a great and eternal Spirit: All are equal in the sight of the Lord, The sparrow, The hunting-hawk, And even, The little mouse chousing about Beneath the rock & roll floor-boards. Or, this other one arrives on an Easterly breeze: Be easy and equal In all that you do, or see, And soon enough, it's true, You will be... now, and then again, Eternally... free.

Perfectly understandable. I am on a kind of... hiatus, as well. ***Hiatus = trying to get some simple, mundane things done... such as making a decent living or not forgetting! a family member's birthday... also, convincing the beautiful Sweetheart that you love her... MORE than SC! The question, of course, being... how MUCH more? No one wishes to seriously examine this issue, I am thinking, since this would create a kind of personal crisis, such as... how on earth could I love... a game... MORE than the person who... cleans the bathroom, top to bottom? And, best of all, without awful much complaint? See, SC gets... INTO you. It dictates where you are, and where you go and when and how you will... do what you wacka-do. It is like a Creature-Thing in a Stephen King novel... no matter, an avaricious vampire, a slavering dog, a mutant disease, or a late 50s Plymouth named Christine ... that plays old rock & roll on the push-button radio... "Poetry in Motion" or "Johnny B Good" or "Are You Lonesome Tonight" (... and you likely ARE that latter, if you've been playing too much SC!) Anyway, who can be "normal" once SC is... IN the veins? It is like highly refined opium flowers doused with... extremely precious pheromones... extracted from an eternally youthful... Marilyn Monroe! (note: I presume, likely stupidly as per usual, that MOST of us are male... fact is, there are COUNTLESS females out there who STUDY this forum religiously, taking copious notes in a little locked book, with a lavender odor'd pen... IF they can figure out the wargamer Psyche, THEN... that footloose cat who hawks stocks or vacuum cleaners door-to-door, or over the Internet, well, hey, he's awful easy prey!) It IS understandable that a man would take a week or so and get his... LIFE... re-arranged and somewhat organized, and... his Sanity soothed to such a degree that the neighbors and co-workers will... no longer shudder and GASP! when he... stumbles into view. Which reminds me... I used to be sort of cordial friends with a Psychiatrist... since I started in on SC... NOW... whenever he sees me...he turns and RUNS the other way! I laugh. He is not part of the cognisceti. :cool: He is... easy prey... for all those copious note taking SC women. He is causing me no undue trouble, no indeed not. I laugh and laugh, because you see... I am on... HIATUS. Well, take 'er easy rambo, you've earned yer reprieve. Hey! Is that? An old hot-rod-radio, suddenly aflame? :eek: Is that... The Stones? "Please allow me to introduce myself, I am a man of wealth and fame... ... and! I have set aside my hot-lick SC guitar and... rubbed most of the rust & dirt... off my Idaho golfing sticks, and so... away I go! It's all... perfectly understandable.

In America, EVERYTHING... is ultimately and utterly to do with... Baseball, yes. And, indeed. :cool: Parlays, politics, war-games, Los Angeles-sur-mer, the price of tea in China, or even... the incredible lightness of Being. The list is endless, and I won't bore the... ah, uninitiate with all of it... it would require several thousand forum pages. And more. Even that exquisite cinematic Pixie, Miss Kubelik, would undoubtedly and avidly agree. I should say... it's, quite, like this: Baseball has the same tremendous meaning to America as this event... does for Great Britain, tell me if you disagree... ***The fateful day that a young and wildly prescient King Arthur extracted Excalibur from the rock. Mythic Beginnings are existentially essential to... eventual Cultural harmony. It is why, quite simply, that America... recently and especially... these days of pitiful ersatz Ideologies, is struggling mightily with... realizing its appropriate place in the World... with... its very... soul. :eek: The amazing game of Baseball has been corrupted by avaricious... Dilettantes and Fools... the Owners AND the Player's Union... too bad, but we who KNOW what this can finally mean, are determined to re-arrange this... shameful disgrace, post haste.

Given the climate and context, this is a classic post. Two kinds of players... old and the new. New: Use a corked bat if you can get away with it, and uppercut the ball most of the time, and strike out so very much that The World (... the pitcher... merely 60 feet away :eek: ) begins to look... like a delirious demonic dream... and you are the Archangel of righteous Freudian retribution. All in all, kind of like playing... pinball, in a Buster Brown shoe-box. Old: Choke up, hit to the opposite field, like Nellie Fox (... 2 strikes? don't matter! it can be, it WILL be done... for the TEAM) moving "Little Louie" Aparicio over to third, with less than 2 outs. Or, "Laughing Larry" Doyle... laying one down right on the first base chalk... so that the hustling over Pitcher, say like old "Three-Fingered" Brown... will soon enough... be counting to... two... when he orders his little brown bottles of root beer... from that working class Vendor who likes to feed pigeons in the park. :eek: --------- Old offseason job: Pumping "tane" down in New Orleans, or... selling Mother MaCree's Magik Elixir out of the back of a broken down Model T. New offseason job: Complaining to the "haven't got a clue" Press every other week about how you don't get ANY respect, my god it's like yer a great war-game maker and living in Canada!... see, a team-mate makes 12 million bucks and you only make an INSULTING!... 8.3 --------- Old attitude: Thank Ma and Pa (... and the Stranger strolling on the corner, counting up street lamps) every single day that the good Lord has gone out of his way and gifted you with... EXTRAORDINARY talent. :cool: New attitude: I am mightier! than Quinn the Medicine Man, since as we all realize, I can count up to... 3... on my fingers, and I'll NEVER have... ONLY 2 (you see... no Nellie Foxes or Laughing Larrys due up next, to SACRIFICE for... the Team, oh no, not any of THAT hokum, not ME!...) Get it Rube! I wants to... just CRUSH that ball and stand watching it majestically depart the Park, so EVERYONE paying $300 dollars each for this special middle-class privilege... will just KNOW... how beautiful and darling! I am indeed... --------- Old favorite song lyric: "Bang the Drum Slowly, and Play the Fife Lowly..." New favorite song lyric: "Have a nice day, and, while yer at it... get the hell out of my way!" ---------- Old Nice place to Visit: Niagra Falls, in the Springtime, when love is in the air, and the water won't alight on fire! from all the chemicals floating around in there. New Nice place to Visit: Las Vegas, where "the people bowed and prayed, to a neon god they made"... to practice your gambling technique, and... your foreign language skills, especially... the tres tres elegant.. French.

Good thing indeed There is a full-moon Every 28 days, give or take, So, I'll likely ALWAYS be.. swooning In the great but forsaken... shadow Of Kuni-the-Occasional... Wolf-Swede. :eek:

All right all ready. Time for... the... showdown... at SC corral. No doubt that rambo is a very good player. Results matter, talk-talk-talk doesn't very much, and he has done the Knights of Olde right by taking on... MOST challenges. But, The BEST in North America? :confused: Hmmmm.... maybe. The thing is, I know of one other person (... among several others) who could very well change that fairly common SC Forum perception... In this corner... Mr... Bill Macon! Who has gamed in famous war-colleges and in national conventions... and, from personal experience I can vouch for the fact that he is... a very relentless and a very determined and a very formidable foe! Therefore, I propose, and acting as a kind of unofficial and unlicensed fight promoter, without any fright wigs or pancake make-up applied, whatsoever... A tcp-ip match between these two heavyweight CONTENDERS! :cool: For the Champeen-ship! of the American SC World! ***Complete with detailed AAR, but of course, so that we may ALL learn new! tricks of the strategy trade, much in the way that we do from... the incomparable... SUPER-Heavy, Terrif (... in fact, I am inclined to think that he isn't even mortal, rather, a gaming Avatar come to appreciative Earth!). Anyway, What Say Everybody? Rambo VS Macon, (... who? is... Rocky and who... Dionysus, or Apollo?) Time to strap on the old, well-oiled, well-worked leather gloves? Come one -- come all! Enter in to the center ring! Get yer special fight programs here! Get yer flapjacks and cracker-jacks! Get yer... cauliflower ears boxed in! From... merely being in attendance! :eek: [ July 18, 2003, 12:39 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

No precision weapons then, just bombs away! and obliterate what you may, Organic or not, so... how about having it the other way around... When you bomb a city with a unit in it, that unit suffers one-half (rounded up) of the damage that the city itself takes? And, Air Fleets should not do much damage, if any, so you must use the improved! Strat Bomber to get any decent results. **Also like the idea of static or mobile Anti-Air unit... rather than buying protection that is mostly just concept, I would like to see a separate AA unit that can be Op moved around the board, depending on enemy concentrations (... unless if it is mobile, in which case you would have a 1 or 2 movement allowance). Remember, our larger map and game engine in SC2 would allow more units without cluttered-up game board, true? :cool:

Remember it well... it was the best of times, without any of the worst of times mixed in. Congratulations Hubert and Fury and Battlefront, may you have continued success with ALL your gaming ventures, to include... SC2! :cool:

Ah... SELECTIVE quotes... taken out of context and without appropriate elaboration. With this kind of arbitrary tomfoolery, why... you could make a person seem... quite the idiot, or just sublime, as you personally please... hey! People in the Mass Media do it all the time! And so do Government propogandists and spin doctors! :eek: And, it's apparent that you have your... favorites, those that you make out to be just wild with elan and animal grace, And, you have some others that you don't particularly like... and of course they come off as blithering idiots. And many poor souls that you just ignore altogether. Why... you could even make a dogged and robust Army Mule seem like... an old Nag long overdue for the glue factory! I am wondering... to what common SC purpose? I am thinking, thinking... and IMHO, this surely falls into the category of... CHEAP TRICKS. :eek: Then again, what the hell, it's the kind of World we live in now... one-upmanship and rip! while the ripping's good and no sense of fair play... ah, not to fret, It's done without discrimination and all over the place and even in... highly enlightened Sweden.

And! If you do, You will surely provide MORE than a passing nod to the once great... Lewis Carroll. Who said, Among many other fine poetic lines: Twas brillig, and the slithy toves Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe. Well, I am really VERY certain (... and given your forum handle, MUST appreciate the many accomplished Russian poets) That you are extremely respectful Of ALL poetry, Since, As we know, There would be NO History, Or Myth, Or insight-delving delight On a... raining & storming night, Without it... true? --------------------------------------- PS: Mr Bill, Winning is... only another failure To say... I can't figure out Any... OTHER way.

Ah... those CHOICES... it's what makes a good game... a great game, every time! It should be noted that... this Med strategy can be best implemented when you play one of the seriously considered scenarios (... Mr Bill's '39 campaign is one of the best!) that include a desert-rat bolstered 8th Army down in ancient old Egypt. Many games I have happily played! where the Med Theatre was truly an exciting spectacle, with many outcomes determined by a few particular rolls of the dice. Is Egypt even worth it? O yea, because oil-rich Iraq is right around the corner and CONTROL of the Med severely limits the assistance, such that it is, Italy can provide to their howling-wolf partners, yes? Go for it... but, don't be shy about TRYING OUT the several campaigns that... surely make this Theatre MUCH more compelling & competitive!

Edwin P ... A very compelling and interesting take on SC, as per usual... I am hard pressed to think of many others who put so much serious thought into this excellent game... :cool: One wonders... shouldn't you design and retail a game of your own unique conception... I would be inclined to give it a shot, for sure! Like Panzer39 I am in favor of ALL of your suggestions, except the audio... although, if you remember, and if you have even played it, Pacific General had a Great! Soundtrack that included big-band sounds from the 40s and clips of radio messages... tremendous music interludes all around! For those who only like meat & potatoes for breakfast, well, I suppose we could have a "chrome toggle" which would allow them to remain conservative in their approach... As usual, CHOICES are ALWAYS BETTER than merely a few paths to travel, and it's true in war-gaming just like... REAL Life, true?

When your life is through, And you mosey on up To the... shut & closed... Pearly Gates, And you see St Peter, calmly in wait, And he asks... what did you DO? And you begin in on all These terrific stories About... winning and gathering Things and being rough-tough & cool, O it's then my friends, That he holds up a hand And says... no, no, that's not What I meant, Rather... what did you really truly... DO With your one and only And extremely... brief Life? And when you get to the part Where you... dutifully hated Whole groups! of people That you didn't even KNOW! Just like... the many Americans who hated And publicly berated These: The Germans and Russians and Italians, The Japanese and Koreans And Chinese and Vietnamese, The Cubans and Iraquis and Iranians, The Serbians and Libyans and Of late... the despicable... French! (... and that is only the last 80 years or so) Well, sadly, sadly... St Peter stares, And asks anew... why in God's name? Would you hate, And publicly berate, ALL of these Very old and long-flowering Civilizations? And so you begin to eagerly explain And St Peter... begins that... laugh, And he laughs & laughs & laughs & laughs And laughs and laughs... and laughs. Finally saying... you hated? And! Publicly berated? All of those very old cultures... and Even more? Because... someone else Whom, you've surely noticed, Wasn't with you... the moment you died, Nor, are they with you NOW As you wistfully admire These... shut & locked heaven's gates, You did... all this? because Someone else, say Like a politician or a parent Or a... Church leader? Told you to? You are... putting me on... right?

Sorry, didn't respond to the original question. YES, the Axis has the advantage. In almost every scenario, mod or not, that I have ever played, and I've played a lot. However, decision trees as outlined in my post above would go a long way toward eliminating this advantage, yes? You could even have the Wily Computer keep track of "the score" (... I am presuming a more elaborate schematic in SC2) and THEN Introduce willy-nilly! some strange and interesting events that would tend to restore the balance! ... though, not so much that it would be unusually obtrusive. Example: Axis is crushing every innocent tree and Sherman coffin-unit and hut and they are way out ahead! of the game. So... here comes! a decision-tree Event that says something like... "Hitler Meddles Yet Again" and lo and behold, NOW 2 whole armies! are randomly re-assigned 6 or 8 hexes away from the Fortress Europa front... to make their way back, but by then! It's too late and USA has finally taken Brest! See what I mean? The possibilities for outright FLAMBOYANCE!! are very nearly infinite! :cool:

Well, I would not say... constraints. Rather, why not have elaborate decision trees that would give the Player some great game-changing choices? For example: ***A box pops up and LO! "Turkey Changes Cabinet"... You must decide... RIGHT NOW... do you opt for a RANDOM possibility that you MIGHT receive favorable diplomatic influence, IF... you spend say, 50 MPPs? THEN, another choice comes along LATER in the game... related to similar meddling in Turkish politics... perhaps even MORE favorable to you, BUT... ONLY if you had chosen this path to begin with! **(... in this way, the Conservative player could always essentially ignore these events, thereby maintaining the status quo) See, the Computer CAN remember ALL sorts of things, and keep the choices stored in 1/0 memory files to POSSIBLY influence later events! Now, there are literally NO END to these kinds of choices... whether Military (... OKW re-assigns Rommel to Libya... whether you WANT IT OR NOT... it just happens! and Rommel is whisked away from wherever he is wreaking havoc... to Libya, Or it could be Economic (... workers go on strike, or, downturn in the market, or forced labor sabotages production, etc etc) or even Having to do with SUDDEN changes in the Weather, which might force a howling WolfPack to return to base? See, you could have uncounted Events that would all be based on RANDOM chance... this would insure that the SOLO player at least, would NEVER EVER have the same game twice. :cool: Also, for human VS human, there would always be that lightning strike! that would foil even the most nefarious of Foes... you are losing ground to the berserkers in Russia... BUT! All of sudden Zukhov is taken ill with potato peel scurvy and is out of play for 6 months! NOW, that T-34 strike force is without a HQ! :eek: Reprieve in the East! You see what I mean? Let's have DECISION TREES galore! Where each and every choice, like the merry maiden selecting out the most suitable suitors, would influence love & war events... for years to come! What say?

Yes, it was. And yes, there is, most especially by me. One fine day... there WILL be a grand strategic game... the likes of which will make everyone forget... the long forgotten "Road to Moscow." (boy, that was a lot of hullabaloo about not much at all, true?) I am hedging no bets. I bet... that Hubert will... get it done. So superbly, in fact, that we will all be posting on this board... for years & years! Cheers! :cool: And, it's just incredible! If we EVER need precision details in order to make a game of... the glory that was Rome! why, There are folks here that would put the entire aggravation of the aggregate Ivy League History Departments... to shame! ***... although, this would not be so very hard to do, given that most history departments are more concerned with office politics and one-upping the chairman... oops! omitted my customary PC... chair-PERSON, that they cannot get out of their own didactic way! Speaking of which, hows about a game devoted to ALL the great and intricate details of... The Battle of the Atlantic! :cool: [ July 14, 2003, 12:40 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]