Gunslingr3

I've seen infantry 'turn off' the hold fire and hold position commands in less than a minute. Bug or feature?

I've seen the same thing. Apparently it's a bug where the tank is being instructed to target the track or hull, but that shot is obstructed and it doesn't default to what it can see (turret). This is supposed to be fixed in the patch. I have to admit, I'm not sure how to specify what area on a tank to aim for. I see where the manual says it will be indicated, but I don't understand how to specify it myself.

This issue is definitely my biggest problem with the game. At this point I feel like it's more the computer playing the game against itself and I occassionally interfere on one side. I routinely have to babysit units that I've told to hold position and hold fire. Last night I tried the beginning German scenario again. I moved my platoon of Czech 35s and 38s to a small ridge on the right hand side of the map, remaining on the reverse slope to wait for infantry to come up and scout. I positioned my four infantry squads across the map - one of the left wing, one in the center, two on the right (spread out like this honestly to make it easire to avoid God's artillery). As I'm waiting for the squads on the right to reach the tree line by the road behind the tanks I hear a machine gun going off. I spin the view and see that my center squad that should be hiding in the bushes prone, holding fire and position, have decided to proceed with a lone head on assault of the enemy trenches. I give them orders to move back to their original position, and lose three men. Suddenly I hear tank guns. I swing the view back, one of the tanks has decided he's going to crest the ridge, go down the other side, and start trying to engage whatever he can. The multitude of AT guns open up on his dumb ass and he loses a track and his main gun while I'm trying to back him behind the ridge. I suspect he lost his track because when I gave him the order to retreat and clicked to make a green arrow directly behind him and on the reverse slope he elected to rotate 180' and present his rear armor to the AT guns. I stopped him twice (about 20'-30' into the rotation), rotated back, and gave a new retreat order. Sometimes this works, and the tank backs up, but I've seen the behaviour I described at least 1/3 of the time. Instead of 'retreat' can we maybe have a 'reverse'? It would really cut down on the side shots my tanks keep asking for. Anyway, I have to stop focusing on him for a moment because now the other tanks are firing up and trying to cross the hill in contradiction to orders. I manage to get them stopped and hear machine guns cranking up again. Not the center! I look and instead it's the left wing that is led by John Rambo. They've decided without armor, or even a squad to provide covering fire, that they're going to find out what all the fuss is about. Babysitting this squad back into position I hear tank fire again. Dammit! This guy I manage to catch before he entirely crests the hill, but I realize it's now my duty to constantly pause the game and re-issue hold orders to everyone. This is killing the enjoyment of the game. I would like to make a small suggestion. In the Take Command Civil War games each unit had a button that let you 'Take Command' of the unit, which disabled most of the friendly tactical AI routines that are bedeviling me in this game. They would turn to face a threat that was firing on them, but they wouldn't go wondering off without your knowledge getting slaughtered and unravelling the best laid plans of hamstertruppen and men. I like this game, it has loads of promise, but I hope this idea can be taken into consideration and perhaps in some way implemented, because I find fighting my own troops more difficult than the enemy.

I haven't witnessed that. I've had enemy tanks crest a ridge 50m away on my flank and neither my unit nor the AI were aiming at one another until after they could have spotted. In fact, I've dealt with the opposite problem. Tanks will lose sight of an enemy unit in front of them and seem to lose all awareness of the remaining threat. The result is my tank usually starts turning away from the unseen (but still there and still menacing!) threat that broke line of sight looking to line up another target. Here I think some tweaking of player unit AI can fix this. Make the hold position command actually meaningful. Perhaps only let the friendly unit AI override the hold position command for hull facing in the event they take fire from the flanks. Too often I find myself 'babysitting' the tanks so they'll face the axis of the threat instead of getting distracted by whatever is within LOS. Failure to do so usually leads to side and rear shots on my AFVs. Ummm, what did you used to think AI was? I think it's established that the hiding value of infantry (and consequently I presume the accuracy of fire directed at them) are going to be adjusted by the first patch. That should affect the 'bot' aspect. With respect to 'scripts', that's what AI is. You get a glimpse of how staggering a challenge it is to code AI when you take a peep at the options and start to realize how they have to be treed and nested in order to provide a responsive, plausible, and tactically challenging opponent. In my opinion the biggest knock I have for the game so far is the manner in which the missions were scripted. It does seem that the main tactic of the AI is weight of numbers. That's more an indictment of the mission's design than the game's. I think with some user community input this game can shine, and I'm looking forward to MP when a few quirks in the activity of friendly unit AI is addressed.

I noticed frame rate suffering when there were lots of units. I tried turning down several different settings (draw distance for trees, various detail levels, etc.). Until I turned off shadows I didn't notice much improvement. Turning off shadows allowed me to turn most things back to max. 3 Ghz Intel 2 GB RAM Geforce 7600 GS

I have XP. Reinstalled .NET 2.0 and repatched and now it runs. thanks!

Gotta agree with MT's comments. Infantry are almost completely fodder. If I try to position them in the provided trenches I can count on arty eliminating them before they're ever in range of enemy infantry. Even telling them to not fire and lay prone doesn't stop the arty from annihilating them. I've learned to position my infantry near the back end of the deployment zone with one or two 'magnets' in the trenches to try and attract the incoming rounds while the rest of the squad runs to hide in the trees on a reverse slope. If I don't use the magnets I am assured that rounds are incoming on my infantry wherever I'm placed them at the start of the scenario. I know to immediately pause the game after starting and scamper them to the rear. The scenarios are hard because you're usually put in a situation of serious imbalance that is only addressed by scenario triggered reinforcements that don't appear until enough of your starting units have been killed. I feel sometimes like I'm being punished because I manage to keep my troops alive. I would concur that beefing up the infantry role would help this game be more enjoyable. A problem I just had in the soviet scenario (Moscow is behind us). I achieved a hull down position with my T-34 and was trying to engage the swarm of German tanks. I know I was hull down because most of their shots would hit the dirt, but some would bounce off the turret or front hull. For some reason they could see through the foilage and strike me, but I couldn't get a LOS on any of them. My crew would complain they didn't have a clear shot at the three AFVs that were on the front slope of a hill in clear terrain. If anything, I'd hoped the tree on the hill I was hiding behind might cover me, not them. So I ordered my crew to run it over, and then resumed my hull down position. Still couldn't get off a shot while the enemy was peppering my tank and the ground around me. The gun wasn't damaged, and it was a while before they started getting wounded. They just kept reporting they couldn't see (icons for the three tanks shooting at them weren't faded out). I look forward to scenarios the user community puts out (having problems running the editor myself), and would like to try the game multiplayer (to hopefully get away from the Godly Spotter directing AI arty).

When I try to start the mission editor I get this error: this message pops twice then the Campaign Editor windows loads before I get this error: I have the latest drivers for my Geforce 7600GS and I installed the lastest directx9 package from MS (4.09.00000904) dxdiag tests run fine.

battlefront showed three links. One dead, one pay, and the other required registration and didn't want to play with firefox. Finally managed to get it.

I can't find this anywhere for download without paying a subscription. Anyone know where it can be found?

How can we forget? link

How many of them won't show up because the SecDef doesn't think they'll be needed?

Wow, that's about as gamey as it gets. Noticed any other game design exploits?

Last night, playing 1.06 as the Axis in '39 I had the USA jump in two turns before the Soviets. I rolled Poland, after which France invaded the Low Countries. This kicked U.S. desire for DOW back down to 0%. I then hit Denmark and Norway on successive turns. Once France fell the Italians were in and I turned them on Greece. Germany went with Sea Lion and just before taking Manchester the U.S. jumped in. Russia went Allied just after Spain elected to join the Axis. I let Italy take Yugoslavia once they joined the Allies. Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania stayed out of the conflict. Finland joined once I surrounded Leningrad, but even after the Russians surrendered the other Balkan powers sat out. Settings were for random entry, did they sit out because Italy took Yugoslavia?

What would happen if the U.S. didn't have a $300+ Billion per annum military empire stretched across the globe? Would Canada find us too tempting? Mexico? How would the military strength of this country that the Founders envisioned and protected fail to hold back these threats? You say: "There are persons who lack education," and you turn to the law. But the law is not, in itself, a torch of learning which shines its light abroad. The law extends over a society where some persons have knowledge and others do not; where some citizens need to learn, and others can teach. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can permit this transaction of teaching-and-learning to operate freely and without the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by government to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case, the law commits legal plunder by violating liberty and property." -Bastiat, "The Law" What makes you think companies would suddenly stop spending the billions they currently do on research? Do you think that research on subjects that people will only fund at the point of a gun are somehow superior? Why? You know this because...? Ad hominem. :confused: You're the first person to resort to this in this thread. I hope you're the last. Why would OPEC cut off their share (~40%) of contributions to the world oil market? Why have they in the past? The U.S. spends more on it's military than North America does on oil. If, in the absence of a U.S. Empire OPEC decided arbitrarily to double it's prices, what is the consequence? The other countries of the world, who produce more oil, would have greater incentive to increase their own production and take the OPEC customers. The higher prices would also encourage research in alternative fuels and power sources (without even a politician confiscating someone's earnings and ordering it be so!) just to reap the potential profits. You keep seeing how things are, and as result will be tomorrow, without seeing how they could be today, and would become tomorrow. Gunslinger

Yes. You know, the bases and colonies in Central and South America, Europe, the Middle East, Central Asia, Asia. That U.S. Empire. He's an avowed Mystic. I have no reason to doubt he believes what he professes to believe: that infidel non-believers should be kept out of Islamic lands. We used him while he was using us. What is your point? Or were you trying to make mine? I was deliberately precise in what I wrote: "UBL attacked the U.S. because he views our military as an occupation force in his holiest land, and views himself as a warrior for god." He doesn't want the Russians in Afghanistan and he doesn't want the U.S. in Saudi Arabia. So his master plan is really to get rich? Then why did he forsake his family fortune (millions of dollars), go live in caves, and fund militant muslims in regions like Afghanistan and Kosovo? Your analysis doesn't add up with the known facts. Add this information, from an August 22, 2001 Asia Times article, to your analysis: http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/CH22Df02.html "Prince Abdullah has good relations with bin Laden as both are disciples of slain Doctor Abdullah Azzam, a Palestinian scholar and former leader of the Muslim Brotherhood Organization (Al-Iqwanul Muslamoon). Azzam was the main motivational force in the Arab world for the Afghan jihad (holy war) against the former Soviet Union. Bin Laden fought, and helped finance, opposition to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan." "Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Abdullah, meanwhile, wants bin Laden to stand trial in his country. He is said to believe that any trial against the fugitive would see him acquitted as no case has been registered against him in Saudi Arabia. In addition, there is no precedent of Saudi Arabia ever handing over one of its citizens to the United States (even though bin Laden has technically lost his Saudi citizenship), so the crown prince considers that bin Laden will be safer in Saudi Arabia than in Afghanistan. Bin Laden left Saudi Arabia in 1991. He was asked by the Saudi government to return, but he refused, so they withdrew his citizenship, cancelled his passport and froze his assets. Bin Laden is believed to have amassed a fortune with his family's construction business. Prince Abdullah made a clandestine visit to Pakistan a few months ago and met senior army officials, and he visited Afghanistan with the director-general of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Lieutenant-General Mehmood. According to sources, Prince Abdullah met Taliban strongman Mullah Omar and tried to convince him that the United States was likely to launch an attack on Afghanistan and insisted bin Laden be sent to Saudi Arabia, where he would be held in custody and not handed over to any third country. Mullah Omar apparently rejected the crown prince's proposal, saying that despite the threat of US attacks the question of bin Laden had become one of honor and he would not be handed over in any circumstances." Even if UBL wants to control the oil in Saudi Arabia, how does that involve American armed forces who are established to defend the Constitution of the United States? Gunslinger

Anarchy is a kind of loaded word. You never know what exactly someone means by it. an·ar·chy Pronunciation Key (nr-k) n. pl. an·ar·chies Absence of any form of political authority. Political disorder and confusion. Absence of any cohesive principle, such as a common standard or purpose. I do not seek 'anarchy' in the sense I desire the absense of any cohesive principle. I hold that man's rights are an absolute principle that it is the purpose of government to protect. 'Something'? 'Anything'? Hitler looked around Germany and saw retarded children. In pursuit of his vision of the 'common good' for Germany he did something about them. He put them in concentration camps. Instead of putting someone in power with the authority to violate our rights in pursuit of 'doing something' for the 'common good', why not let me live my life and you yours as best we see fit, abiding by one another's rights? Imagine you break your leg. Because you decided whiskey was more important than insurance, should I have to denude my savings to help you? What if those savings, one month hence, were needed by me for a life saving appendectomy? Why do I, who had the good sense to save my money, have to die while you hobble around on the cast and crutches I paid for? Has the 'common good' thus been elevated? Please point me to the overseas battle currently being fought to protect my right to free speech? As you correctly pointed out, the threat to that right is centered in Washington, D.C., not overseas... For further evidence look at the 'campaign finance reform' bill that recently emerged from the same place. It makes it illegal for me to advertise faults I find with a politician seeking office during the 60 days prior to an election - when most people start to pay attention. We'll see if it survives the courts, but it is currently the law. No, I expect to pay for those I choose to use, and no more. It's easy to look out the window and point at the things that tax money has purchased, what is more difficult is to envision how things would be without this forced expenditure. What if, instead of govt. (federal, state, and local) reaping ~43 cents for a gallon of gasoline in my state to build roads the govt. stayed out of the road building business. What alternatives would have arisen when people with an actual stake in the outcome, instead of bureaucrats, had the opportunity to make decision on where those funds, that they earned, were allocated. Might we already be 'driving' to work in these: http://www.moller.com/skycar/ Should a vegetarian, opposed to the slaughter of animals in the first place, be forced to pay for the inspection of said carcasses for someone else? I propose an absense of coercion, not an absense of liablity. When I hear on the news that Jack in the Box is being sued for millions because some people were poisoned by spoiled meat purchased from their burger stands it makes me realize I don't even want to chance going there for food. Liability and market forces (individuals deciding where they want to allocate their money) are effective stimuli to business. Having someone show up from Occupational Safety & Health Administration and fine a business because their stairwell hand rail is 2 inches too short isn't helping any of us. I highly recommend Bastiat's 'The Law', for a better understanding of how mankind can best be served by government. It's not very long, and available for free on the web: http://www.econlib.org/library/Bastiat/basEss2a.html Gunslinger

The viewpoint is not simply 'liberal'. There are plenty of people who are not liberal in any sense of the co-opted word, but still oppose the burden of a U.S. Empire. UBL attacked the U.S. because he views our military as an occupation force in his holiest land, and views himself as a warrior for god. This happened because we forgot George Washington's farewell address, and gave up a Republic for an Empire. Gunslinger "And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.... [America's] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice. -John Quincy Adams, 1821

A host of interesting replies, bear with me for trying to address the important parts of several at once: ALL governments, to the extent to which they expropriate and direct the wealth of their subjects by the hand of bureaucrats who do not pay a penalty for their mistakes, are akin to the Soviet Union. That would be downtown Newark and Detroit, not anywhere, and the problems there are crime (a large part of the violence being driven by pursuit of obscene profits to be reaped by circumventing the govt. prohibition of some drugs), not poverty. The ratcheting up of the War on Drugs since the early 70's has witnessed American homicide rates return to Prohibition era levels. Corporations must be free to lay off workers in order to maintain profitablity. If a corporation keeps unneeded workers to the detriment of it's bottom line for too long it will bankrupt the corporation and everyone working there will find themselves 'laid off'. Hoover encouraged your 'solution' at the outset of the 1929 market crash. It resulted in 25% unemployment, FDR, and the Great Depression. You're in effect saying capitalism can't work because we have socialism. Remove the socialism and let capitalism work. Instead of having you pay less for the product and then make up the difference in taxes to pay someone to do nothing (welfare) allow capitalism to find use for the money you saved, and the laid off worker find employment providing the new product/service you can now afford with the money saved. Plan? Plan for yourself, let me plan for myself. This is capitalism. Imposing your 'plan' for the economy puts you in league with Stalin, Lenin, etc. trying to dictate the lives of millions. If these things genuinely concern you there are people willing to provide you a sense of security for less than the tax man. It's called insurance. This is a fallacy, and what's worse is that you even recognize the money is not 'dead' because it's being lent. By putting money in savings in a bank you are forgoing immediate satisfaction of wants for the reward of interest. Someone who is willing to pay that premium on time (the interest) then attempts to find good use for that saved capital. This is the foundation of wealth creation. If he does find good use for the capital he repays the loan and something that did not exist before is brought into creation: wealth is created (and your loan is repaid). If he doesn't find good use for the capital wealth is destroyed (your savings disappears into miles of unused fiber optic cable for example). Banks charge a premium on the interest you demand (for deferring the meeting of your wants with your money) to cover these occassional losses and provide themselves a profit. Banks are encouraged by this reality to reduce exposure to bad loans and at the same time charge a low enough interest rate to encourage the risk taking that builds wealth. In Sweden central government outlays account for nearly 2/3rds of GDP. Compare this to approximately 1/5th in the U.S. (state and local government expenditures in the U.S. bring the total over 2/5ths, but I did not include them because I do not know the comparable numbers for Sweden). So the govt. takes from person A to give to person B, but since they tax person B the govt. gets some of the money back. What does this do for person A? Just as importantly, do the bureaucrats required to take money from A, the bureaucrats required to give money to B, and the bureaucrats required to take money back from B actually increase the wealth of the country? Get the right to study? Everyone in the U.S. has the freedom to study, the difference is whether or not someone is robbed to pay for your studying, or you foot the bill yourself. No one has a 'right' to force others to foot their bills. What are the ones who get robbed (the producers) getting that they couldn't buy without the wealth transfer? A promise from the non-producers to not riot and rob them to an even greater extent? Isn't that extortion? Isn't that a crime? Not familiar with the term. Is there an approximate English translation? Poorer in more relative than absolute terms (at present). The point of the article is that Sweden's socialist system has created a middle class that is comparable to the poorest segment in American society. The wealth destroying activities of socialism undercut growth, and worse undercut sustaining the status quo. The Soviet Union didn't just wake up bankrupt, it worked it's way there for better than 70 years. Is socialism necessary for literacy? Could the same literacy rates not be achieved without compulsory confiscation of income? Do you think parents would suddenly have no interest in seeing that their children learn to read if someone from government didn't come along, take their money, and force them to enroll their children in state schools? Free? To whom? There is no free lunch. Scarcity is not magically negated when you introduce bureaucrats to the problem. The difference is instead of the person wanting a knee operation and the person willing to do it agreeing on terms a third party is put in the mix who will determine who gets knee operations but doesn't have a stake in the outcome. A horrific example the unavoidable consequence of socialized medicine is when a couple pays taxes into the 'free' healthcare system only to learn that a bureaucrat has determined their 8 year old daughter wouldn't have the proper quality of life to justify a heart operation. Why? She's mentally retarded. This actually happened in England. Maybe you don't want your money spent on someone's retarded daughter, but why can't they be allowed to keep their money and spend it on her if they want instead of your 'free' knee operation? Maybe you do think your money should be spent on the little girl, but an unaccountable bean counter has decided otherwise. You've put him in charge of your money, and now are stuck with his (sometimes stupid) decisions. What is his impetus in this process to make better decisions? Are you hoping he's blessed with some kind of vision and understanding that you lack, and thus you are better off under his decision making than your own? The article touched on how damaging socialized medicine is to improvement of medical care. How long is the waiting list for your 'free' knee operation? In the U.S., where everything isn't free, there are more Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines in Orange County, California (population ~2.9 million) than in the whole of Canada (population ~31 million). The U.S. has an enormous prison population, but this is predominantly the result of prohibition of drugs, and the pursuit of the inordinate profits that result from govt. prohibition. No one has a 'right' to not work and get paid. The average American could work 5 less weeks a year and still make more than the typical Swede. That was the point of the article. How much you are compensated is best determined by the parties involved (the one offering work and the one offering pay), not a third party (bureaucrat) who does not suffer from making a miscalculation. "For ourselves, we consider that Government is and ought to be nothing whatever but the united power of the people, organized, not to be an instrument of oppression and mutual plunder among citizens; but, on the the contrary, to secure to every one his own, and to cause justice and security to reign." "There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation." -- Frederic Bastiat "A single question added to each of the… above clauses would make the issue clear: At whose expense? Jobs, food, clothing, recreation, homes, medical care, education, etc., do not grow in nature. These are man-made values - goods and services produced by men. Who is to provide them? If some men are entitled by right to the products of the work of others, it means that those others are deprived of rights and condemned to slave labor. Any alleged "right" of one man, which necessitates the violation of the rights of another, is not and cannot be a right. No man can have a right to impose an unchosen obligation, an unrewarded duty, or an involuntary servitude on another man. There can be no such thing as "the right to enslave." A right does not include the material implementation of that right by other men; it includes only the freedom to earn that implementation by one's own effort. Observe, in this context, the intellectual precision of the Founding Fathers [of the United States]: they spoke of the right to the pursuit of happiness - not of the right to happiness. It means that a man has the right to take the actions he deems necessary to achieve his happiness; it does not mean that others must make him happy. The right to life means that a man has the right to support his life by his work (on any economic level, as high as his ability will carry him); it does not mean that others must provide him with the necessities of life. The right to property means that a man has the right to take the economic actions necessary to earn property, to use it and to dispose of it; it does not mean that others must provide him with property" - Ayn Rand It is an archiac device, but more importantly it's definitely a deliberately imprecise one. Who can determine what constitutes the 'common good'. There may well be shared pursuits between you and I, but who makes the determination of what is for the 'common good'? Do you decide what's good for everyone? Do I get to? I propose instead you decide for you and let me decide for me. By this method are we more likely to achieve our 'individual good' and thus promote the 'common good' you are so interested in. When it ceased being an act of benelovent, individually determined charity and became a 'right' guaranteed by the State through coercive extortion. Gunslinger "See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime." -Frederic Bastiat

Sweden: Poorer Than You Think [Posted May 16, 2002] One of the enduring myths of the "Third Way" welfare state is that a nation as a whole can have a high standard of living--even if no one really has to work--as long as government transfers massive amounts of wealth from those who are well off to those who are less well off. For the past four decades, we have been inundated with news stories, books, and public commentary, all of which have exhorted us to be like Sweden. The Swedes, we have been told, enjoy free medical care, generous welfare benefits, time off from work, and subsidies for just about everything. When one counters that Swedes pay enormously high taxes, the standard reply is, "That is true, but look at what they receive for their payments." According to a recent study, however, the cat is out of the bag. Relative to household in the United States, Swedish family income is considerably less. In fact, the study concludes, average income in Sweden is less than average income for black Americans, which comprise the lowest-income socioeconomic group in this country. The research came from the Swedish Institute of Trade, which, according to Reuters, "compared official U.S. and Swedish statistics on household income as well as gross domestic product, private consumption and retail spending per capita between 1980 and 1999." The study used "fixed prices and purchasing power parity adjusted data," and found that "the median household income in Sweden at the end of the 1990s was the equivalent of $26,800, compared with a median of $39,400 for U.S. households." Furthermore, the study points out that Swedish productivity has fallen rapidly relative to per capita productivity in the USA. In defense of the Swedes, let me first say that simple comparisons of income can be deceiving. While I have never been to Sweden (even though I have relatives there), I would think that even the poorest sections of Stockholm and other Swedish cities are more livable and attractive than what one finds in many U.S. cities. Even with the high taxes, I think I would rather live in downtown Stockholm than in downtown Detroit or Newark. However, the study alerts us to something that is much more important, and that is that the European welfare states are not making their citizens wealthier. Over time, the cracks in these relatively wealthy nations are growing larger, and if the disease is not arrested, much of Europe will tumble off into real poverty in the not-so-distant future. Europeans--and, most likely, Americans--seem destined to learn the hard way that large, seemingly intractable welfare systems have their way of destroying the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs. While people can debate the present condition of Swedes in Stockholm versus blacks in Harlem, there is a deep issue here that people seem to forget when it comes to welfare states: they are destructive at their roots. Advocates of welfarism concentrate only upon distribution while vilifying production. Such a state of affairs cannot go on forever as governments are forced to cannibalize their own capital structure over time in order to make the system to continue to work. The premises of the welfare state are as follows: (1) free markets, if not regulated by the state, lead to continuing inequality, as wealth becomes increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, while more and more people become poorer; (2) the only way to combat this problem is for the state to take a large portion of earnings from the wealthy and distribute it among others; and (3) such distribution actually enables the economy to grow, since growing concentration means that fewer people will have the ability to consume the products that are created within a private-market system. Karl Marx developed the first premise into his theories, calling this the "internal contradiction" of capitalism. However, the statement contains its own internal contradictions, as it creates an impossible scenario. As Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard have pointed out, in a private-market society, individuals cannot gain wealth unless they produce goods that are demanded by large numbers of people. For example, it was Henry Ford who became rich producing cars, not the producers of early luxury automobiles that were accessible only to the wealthiest people in American society. Ford developed a method in which he could create cars that most people could afford, yet keep his costs low enough to where he could still make a profit. The most successful producers in our economy have been those people who make goods accessible to people across all socioeconomic levels. Wal-Mart, which is another example, became the largest corporation in this country--and one of the most successful--by creating a retail system that would enable large numbers of people to conveniently do their shopping. In fact, Wal-Mart began its route to success by building discount stores in rural areas and small towns that were shunned by larger department stores and enterprises like the now-bankrupt Kmart. Therefore, it seems that if producers are becoming wealthier, it can only occur if consumers are purchasing on a large scale what the the producers are producing. The first statement justifying the welfare state does not have a good causal mechanism, for it does not explain how this transfer of wealth from poor to rich takes place, especially since it makes the implicit assumption that the voluntary purchase of goods is actually a wealth transfer. Such a statement turns the age-old theory of exchange--that economic exchanges create mutual beneficiaries--upon its head. If anything, wealth transfers inhibit economic growth, not increase it. For one, it violently penalizes entrepreneurs for being successful. By accusing those who create wealth of actually being the ones who destroy wealth, welfarists do violence to language itself. If enough people are punished for creating wealth, less wealth will be created in the future. The more government impedes the creation and distribution of wealth, the less that will be created, which means that those people who are on the margins--that is, those who are less productive--are the first to be hurt. Thus, the welfare state actually makes the poor worse off in the long run. This notion that the welfare state actually "helps" an economy is also bogus. As I stated earlier, consumption of goods must first take place before producers can reap the rewards from creating them. Furthermore, welfare regimes that attack business enterprises by confiscating their profits also impede future capital formation. This became quite apparent to me in 1982 when I went to Central Europe, including what was then East Berlin, the capital of the former communist East Germany. While East Berlin was likened to being the "Paris" of the then-communist world, it was more like a huge time warp in which one was placed back in 1948. The entire city was shabby, and what new construction there was had the appearance and attractiveness of a typical American public housing project. While the western portion of Germany was better kept and more modern than its eastern counterpart, it was still like traveling back to the 1960s. West Germany had a well-developed welfare state by then, having shunned its earlier model as an engine of free enterprise. A close friend who is a dentist brought this point home to me. Like other medical care, dentistry in Germany is run on socialist principles. That means that individuals do not pay directly for dental (or medical) care, which is provided by the state. My friends, who were vacationing in Germany, visited a number of dental offices and found that the facilities looked like dentist offices in the United States four decades ago. In other words, the German dentists are still depending upon old capital. One of the worst aspects of socialism, economically speaking, is that it has the perverse tendency to turn new capital from an asset--as is the case in a free-market economy--into a liability. German dentists have no incentive to purchase more modern equipment, since it is expensive and patients have nowhere else to go. In fact, wherever socialist medicine has been practiced for a long time, one can readily see deterioration of capital stock. For many years, Sweden, like its European counterparts, has been eating its capital stock instead of replenishing it. Some high-profile Swedish companies like Volvo have been able to remain well capitalized, but even those companies are now finding it more attractive to locate in other nations, where their profits are not so readily confiscated. The Swedes and other northern Europeans are somewhat lucky in that they have had a relatively high standard of living. People in southern European nations like Italy and Spain--where high taxes and vast regulatory agencies abound--find themselves to be much poorer and with no prospects of real improvement. Unfortunately, many Europeans (like our Canadian neighbors) believe that a vast welfare apparatus makes them morally superior to nations that do not have the same scope of benefits. (While one can point out that the United States has a huge welfare bureaucracy itself, it does not offer the same "generous," long-term benefits of the European states.) While they prattle on about their moral superiority and their egalitarianism, however, something else is happening. They are slowly becoming poorer and poorer, and the welfare state cannot save them. It can only accelerate their downward slide. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- William Anderson, an adjunct scholar of the Mises Institute, teaches economics at Frostburg State University. Gunslinger

Oddly enough I can't bring up the website I saved them from. The individual's name was Micah Wright, but the url I have doesn't bring up a page anymore. Perhaps he was an enemy combatant... http://homepage.mac.com/leperous/PhotoAlbum1.html Here's a link where you can still find some of the pictures. Be forewarned, the article they're included with is pretty 'out there'. http://www.hermes-press.com/brainwash1.htm

Successful perhaps in pushing initiatives like ending "tax competition" http://www.cato.org/dailys/01-10-02.html and eradicating individual privacy http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,52829,00.html I'm personally not so sure those successes are worth crowing about.

The winner in WW2 was the State, in it's many odious forms. The loser was the individual and his freedoms that make everything possible. Gunslinger

Biggest gripe I can find with the game so far is the ability of other units to spot/destroy subs. Because of the relative expense of these units (and Germany's land war responsibilities) I've never managed to maintain much of a sub fleet, or make much of an impact with the one you have at the start of any campaign. Allied success against subs was tied to their ability to improve detection capabilities. Instead of improving naval defense against sub attacks with sonar research I suggest that without sonar research naval units do only 20% percent damage attacking or defending against subs. Ratchet this value 20% with each level of research so that research level 5 would impose 120% damage on subs. This would obviously require some play testing to ensure balance, but the editor isn't flexible enough to test this idea. As it stands the Royal Navy can sweep the Atlantic of subs in about a month and honestly never worry about them again. I'm interested in learning whether or not anyone else has found successful strategies for subs that I'm missing, or has thought of ways to improve their contribution. Gunslinger

Richard Sorge "Richard Sorge was born October 4th, 1895 in Azerbaijan, Russia. After service in the German Army during World War I, Sorge earned a doctorate in political science. During his student years he became a member of the communist party. In 1924 he went to Moscow and five years later he was sent to China by the Comintern to organize a spy ring. Sorge was an able journalist and used this position as cover for his espionage activities. He built a reputation as a loyal German and joined the Nazi Party in 1933. The comintern then sent him to Japan where he joined the staff of German ambassador Eugen Ott. On may 12th, 1941 Sorge reported to Moscow that 170 German divisions would attack along the Soviet frontier on June 20 with Moscow as the main target. The attack came on June 22nd. In August of 1941 he reported to moscow that the Japanese would strike south against Pacific targets rather than against the USSR. This enabled Stalin to transfer large numbers of Siberian troops for service in the west against the Germans. On October 18, 1941, Sorge was arrested by the Japanese security police and eventually was executed on November 7th, 1944." Gunslinger