blackbellamy

intrasensitive verb (Chiefly British): To complain or protest, especially in an annoying or persistent manner. Dialectal alteration of Middle English whinsen, from Old English hwinsian. sounds like a good ole 'whine' to me

Hubert, I noticed your French defense setup takes the army out of the Maginot and replaces it with a corps. Since the army begins dug in and the corps will not, do you have enough time for the corps to dig in so as to present an obstacle to the Germans?

keep your armor as tight as possible - if you spread them out you will have the advantage of covering the entire battlefield, but unfortunately when you see the enemy armor it will be rare that you will get fire superiority because not all your tanks will be able to bring fire to bear on one target. if on the assault, try to drive up one side so you can eliminate worry about one flank. send in the infantry and/or scout cars first, find the enemy, then move your armor to suppress and eliminate them. enemy tanks are not that hard to spot usually - your scout/lead element's main worry is to find any ATG guns, as these usually are not seen by your armor until they fire.

If you want to avoid the "move forward, click go, repeat 15 times" i would suggest you try Mobile Defense operation as the Germans, or the Magnuszew Bridgehead operation as either side.

no, those are just simple replacement graphic files and should have absolutely no effect on current and saved games besides replacing the graphics

I assume this applies to games vs the AI. Every game I have played against the human Allies they pull the figher out and replace it with a corps.

without a little war thrown in once in a while, love doesn't taste that good

you want war in the pacific, look here: http://www.matrixgames.com/Games/WarInThePacific/features.asp it's sort of on the opposite scale of SC you manage individual ships and air squadrons

you can make bunkers along the coastline....NOW build a corps and tell them to march to normandy there you go

"I really have to wonder how much time the author of these really has spent playing..." Why? Would that be an indication that I would be qualified to comment on an amateurish, confusing, and frustrating interface? Perhaps if I mention that I am a professional with years of experience testing user interfaces in particular? Users should not have to "get used" to an interface. They should not have to suffer for the lack of effort in that area, just because all the mechanics and rules are in there. A lot of developers fall into that trap unfortunately - they concentrate on gameplay and implementing all their rules, and meanwhile the users are looking at crappy graphics, nonsensical element placement, scrolling difficulties, tiny buttons, hard to read text, etc. I am a big fan of WiF. Unfortunately I will be staying far, far away from CWiF. I applaud the effort, but the developer spent approx 5% of his resources on the interface, then dashed off to make sure the convoy routes are being properly set. I challenge anyone here to download CWiF, then go to http://www.the-underdogs.org and see if they can find a crappier wargame interface from any wargame published since 1985.

CM does have 3d graphics, but underlying all the eye candy is a super detailed and realistic tactical resolution system - i think that (and the excellent moddability) is the main draw for me as for WIF (the computer game), if you have ever wanted to look for an example of what _not_ to do with an interface, then just download the beta while WIF the boardgame remains my favorite ww2 themed game of all time, it's monster size and complexity does not translate well (or at all) into the current iteration you can't scroll the map with the mouse - you can only see like 20-30 hexes at a time (mind you this is a game with like a billion x billion hexes), and giving a unit orders can give you the fits the author is concentrating to make sure all the little obscure rules are in the engine (what is the chance tunisia will go allied when germans take over vichy? how about syria?), meanwhile the interface remains an archaic example of the worst of the EGA games from the 80's. Shiiit, Knights of the Desert from SSI had a better interface than CWiF

the french ai is passive human french + british can drive into germany from first turn

"- friendly aircraft now provide air cover for each others units etc., this was actually part of the original design and always considered a bug on my part" whoa!! british air will now react to strikes on french units? that's pretty un-historical, no? i mean, british drawing supply from french sources i can overlook, but cap? you know, most games or simulations have specific rules prohibiting the french and the english from co-operating closely in order to simulate the historical friction... what reason do the americans have to build even a single air unit now? i'll try rebasing the entire british air force plus one hq to russia after barbarossa and we'll see how the germans do then...

mincs it's too bad you are letting the game play you instead of you playing the game what, you don't like russia building cheap gay corps, so you are 'forced' into buying your own cheap gay corps? duh why don't you buy some air fleets, huh? i don't care if the russian has a double row of cheap gay corps - i can pound a hole in there with 6 air fleets, enlarge the holes with armies attacking their flanks, and then pour 3-4 tank armies through to cut everyone out of supply and create a nice fat zoc so next turn half my army pours through it seems like you WANT to play a world war 1 game that's fine if that's your style, but don't come here bitching and moaning how this game is gay and how it sucks when you're obviously NOT using air power and armor as it's meant to

you can assume that sub is actually preying on convoys going around africa, to reinforce whatever troops england has in the pacific or indian theater

the problem with adding more ports is that a port is useless unless it's at 5, so if you add new ports then you're giving people extra MPP's perhaps the mpp's given for a nearby city can be reduced to accomodate the new port?

the capital supply rule leads to gamey play where you can surround the capital and not take it and the rest of country can't reinforce or build new units the same happens when russia is cut in half - meaning if german forces drive through and capture the map edge hexes north of stalingrad and south of the urals - the russian player will be unable to build anything in stalingrad and south of it imho the capital should not influence reinforcements and replacements at all - it makes for a nice victory condition but the capitals in ww2 did not serve as distribution center for replacements - historically in russia the soviets formed replacements wherever it was convenient - usually several hundred kilometers east of the front line, regardless of proximity to any population centers [ August 16, 2002, 12:49 PM: Message edited by: blackbellamy ]

by the time you go against france you should have built the fourth air fleet no french army unit can resist 4 air strikes and 2 ground assaults no matter how skilled or fierce the french defender is, he cannot replace the dead units fast enough don't worry so much about achieving penetration - simply destroy at least one french army per turn and put a small hurt on one or two others

they key is to be ready for russia you have to fight every battle up until barbarossa with two things in mind, first to not lose even a single unit and then to make sure all your units accrue max experience i take poland, benelux, france, denmark, norway, sweden - by then yugos are mine courtesy of the revolt and my minors are activated the swedish force transports to danzig and is ready to invade russia - after fighting in 3 campaigns all those units are at 3+ exp i buy nothing but research until maxed for both axis - i max out industrial, then crank out cheap airplanes, then research jets and build ground units, after which i switch research to anti-tank i fight russia normally, for the challenge of it, but if you want to be gamey about it drive a huge force to moscow and surround it, but don't take it - russia will be unable to build new units or reinforce - you can then take the rest of the country easy as for the allies, i don't contest any landing due to their airpower - i let them land and get into a battle of attrition in france - it works out well because the americans are low tech with their 10's and the wermacht is at 13 or 14 by that time the west front doesnt matter unless they break into germany - if russia falls you will have overwhelming forces coming back to the ruhr and kick the allies ass, so just concentrate on russia

the best tutorial is a hotseat game with yourself with no fog of war do that and only move naval units around - you'll get a feel for their capabilities soon enough

unless you are French, or playing the French Intelligence Artificielle !

rofl i don't think you're meant to invade them i.e. they are only staging areas for incoming troops if you get to that point, increase the difficulty levels and fire up another game if you're _really_ into blowing up north america and want to make sure you can get ashore, build lots of aircraft carriers

Immer, I have also began to win consistently at +2 as the Axis. I have taken some steps to make the contest more even. I have adjusted Industrial Tech for the following countries: Britain: 2 France: 1 Russia: 3 USA: 4 I have left all other settings at default. As a result, France is a bit tougher to take, Britain becomes more invasion resistant, Russia is able to generate sufficient replacements to fill holes in their lines, and the USA becomes a true threat, being able to stretch their 180 MPP's a lot further.

Thank you for taking an interest in my reading habits. I recommend Gentile's "How Effective is Strategic Bombing".

isn't hindsight wonderful? i do agree that the bombing offensive did draw manpower away for the purpose of providing AA coverage, but the AA guns were manned by 17 year olds, old men, and others who were generally unfit for the rigors of front line combat, so i'm not sure exactly how much of a drain this was on the crack ss/wermacht formations fighting on the eastern front as for the diversion of german production towards AA resources, this is undisputable, but i believe the allies achieved this in non-cost effective way imho the resources given to the strat bombers should have been diverted to produce more fighter planes and tac bombers, which would have produced similar or higher attrition among axis fighter pilots, as well providing more firepower against front line german units, which might have given the allies better progress, especially through tough patches like the bocage country, and the mountains of italy those same resources could have been used to launch overlord earlier, and with greater material resources im not disputing that the bombing offensive produced results, but i believe that the amount of resources used and the tremendous amount of allied airmen lost (>50,000?) was way disproportionate to the results achieved, especially during the first 2 years of such bombing the one place where the strategic bombing offensive _did_ produce cost effective results was the bombing of Japan, which while not as effective against industry (the Japanese would have fought with sticks if they had to), did produce the realization among the Japanese leadership that the Allies would not land in Japan until each and every one of their cities was a devastated smoking ruin