xwormwood

Yes, correct, i ment right click properties. Thanks for the "H" hint and for looking into it!

How can i make out where my amphibs will embark in situations like this (of course the amphib embarked on the "wrong" side, as i wanted to sail toward the westm not the east): The unit now sitting on board the amphib in the firth of forth started from the circled tile. I wanted to send it to the port of glasgow. Try and (expensive) error, or is there an understandable rule or help where i can see which way my units will choose? Shouldn't i be able to choose which port i want to use??? (GC)

Is it correct that i don't get any terrain info from "clear" terrain tiles? Just asking because i wanted to see what kind of weather zone a tile was in, but while an army was "sitting" on the tile i could't see it as good as i wanted to. Would be nice if clear tiles would offer terrain properties as well. Even nicer: if the current weather would be described in the properties as well.

Hubert & Bill101, you make excellent points, after all the first step could only be to release the first SC Global Game, bringing the improved engine and all those new good ideas to live. The second step could be not a patch or an update, but an offical expansion. Maybe you could take a look into to one or the other mod (i'm certain you know the most important modders) and to user their mod for the next upcomming release. I would honestly be willing to pay - for older releases like WAW, PDE an PT ported into the newest, most enhanced game engine of GC - for an even bigger but still playtested map with some good ideas how to enhance game speed (i know that the biggest possible map would slow the game alone from the sheer mass of data to calculate, not to forget for the AI having to calculate so much more) This being said, i'm sure we all will finaly learn to love GC the way this release deserves it. But right now, after the first couple of hours, there is this above described feeling of a "downgrade". Not in the whole game, but in those areas you felt familiar with (from former releases). Those areas i have never seen before feel simply fantastic (Africa, South America etc.). This downgrade feeling is probably the result of wrong expactations of some of us customers. I for example, somehow expected (or better hoped for) that the already excistings maps of WAW and PT would be knotted together, while the not exisiting map parts of the rest of the world would be somehow woven into the whole "package". And you, on the other hand, had to think about how a global game could be work best. The result of your design is a excellent working global game, this i think is pretty sure. Only some expactations, or better: fantasies, weren't fullfiled. As soon as the initial phase of "i dreamt of this" and "this isn't what i dreamt of" and "well, not what i dreamt of, but hey, this is good" is over, everything should level out. At least thats what i think and feel sure about. Anyway, kudos for the good, open way you comunicate with your audience, i truly feel very comfortable to have such good, honest and friendly game designer. Keep up this good work!

Thank you for your good and honest answer, Hubert! I think i'll relax a bit for the next couple of days, and return back refreshed and with a better mood soon after the first mods and / or the first patch is out. Cheers Claus

I love to get the Admiral Graf Spee at the start of the 1939 game, and i love that i can raid the convoy lines and blockade a port. BUT: the AI has obviously no idea or no ships to do anything against the Graf Spee, as the ship blockades the port since months without any AI reaction. Knowing that the Admiral Graf Spee is a single CA, the strenght "8" is probably WAY too much for a single CA. If you grant the Axis the Spee with 8 strength points, than it is hard to understand why you didn't added any else (in 1939 existing) CA as a single unit as well. Correct me if i'm wrong, but i feel that you made the Graf Spee too strong. If not, it would be helpful and nice to enlighten me once more about the naval philosophy in GC (after all the Graf Spee wasn't even the best german CA). What about the UK in South Africa? Don't you think that even IF there wouldn't have been any fighting force to chase the Spee away, the South African authorities would have simply shifted the convoys away from Cape Town toward Durban? It is hard to imagine that a single CA can "close" a UK harbor in WW2 for weeks. But much harder it is to imagine that there would have been no reaction to such a thread. Convoys would be shifted to different routes and harbors, war ships would be sent to eleminate the thread. This picture is from march 1940, after nearly half a year of blockade. I would be SO VERY GLAD to hear from one of the playtesters why you accepted this, as it would help to understand the whole situation. edit: this is the first SC game i don't want to play any further after having spend one - two hour of playtime. 2 tries, and always to the same end. Map size, army movement limitations, strange design descisions - maybe it is me or the weather, but i simply ended both games against the Allied AI after a couple of turns. I probably hoped for for too much, as this would explain why i feel so empty and somewhat dissapointed now. Sigh. I have to leave the game for a couple of days, than starting new from scratch. Maybe this will help me a bit to finaly get into it. In the meantime back to PT and PDE.

Something else: The army in the yellow circle isnt' able to reach the tile between Brussels and the german tank unit. The programmed formular for movement in mud may work correctly, but it still feels WRONG that i can't reach the tile, having motorization lvl 1, sitting so close by, and this on roads and rails. As if i'm playing a competly different game (compared to SC, SC2, WAW, PDE or PT). If i make a right mouse click on the yellow circled army and choose from the context menu "properties", i can't see the properties of the tile, only the properties of the army - Is this a bug, or a feature, or did i simply made a mistake? :confused: I have the strange feeling that i would love GC MUCH MORE if i hadn't had the pleasure to play all its predecessors. Btw.: dear reader, don't get me wrong, there is very much i like about GC. I simply write (probably too much) about the things i don't like more and sooner than about the good, enjoyable things... edit: the more i think about it the more i feel sure about it: there shouldn't be any "mud" weather results, or better: land movement limitations in Germany at all. "Mud" was much more a russian (no proper streets) problem than a german one (nearly everywhere a perfect road and railway net).

After playing my next 20 minutes i have to admit that right now (now as in "having played only 30 minutes") i tend to dislike the map more and more, minute after minute, as it has been compressed too much in the regions where the descisive action takes place. Please let me explain this at a simple example. Central Europe, Germany & Danmark. As the standard international or american / candian player this might doesn't interest you, but if you know the reality than the GG map is no fun to look at. In reality the distance between Hamburg ( - Munich (A) is about twice as long as the distance between Hamburg ( - Copenhagen ©. In the compressed map of GG the distance between Hamburg and Kopenhagen is even LONGER than the distance between Hamburg an Munich. I don't need to be a prophet to assume that there are plenty other examples like the one above. This wouldn't be so annoying for me if the former maps wouldn't have been so much closer to reality, of course not perfect, but still so unbelievable much more acceptable than the european map of GC. I think i wrote and hardcopied all this only because the sea movement in this region is brutaly ahistorical as well (and both issues together somehow brought me to post all this). Example: Start of the 1939 axis game: Within one game turn my sub or CA from the Kiel region (not the port, but the tile above the port) isn't even able to reach Bergen / Norway. I would guess that they have to end their voyage at the height of Stavanger / Norway (which is somewhat more in the south than Bergen). I took the liberty to calculate a bit: stopping near stavanger after 14 days sea voyage implies that my CA or sub would have traveled only meagre 700 km. 700 km distance after 14 days, well, that implies an average travel speed of something about 2 km/h. So we are talking here about a travel speed 1 up to 1,5 knots an hour (!?!). That might be the correct speed for a galley of ancient rome, or mabye a viking rowboat 1000 years later, but clearly not for 1939 warship of any nation. At least not after the hell of war has broken loose. Call me a nitwit, but "something is rotten in -and around- the state of danmark". I can understand that somewhere you have to make concession for a world wide map, but i still hope that some corrections will be made in the future. If not with a patch, than hopefully with an expansion.

Boy, i looove this large map. Man, the european and pacific map ist soo small compared to the excellent maps in PDE & PT. Great: new and so much better statistics! Yikes, less unit types and less levels to research. Hurray, AI play so much faster. Hrmph, the map scrolls somewhat slower than in PDE / PT. Yeah, my CA raids convoy lines! Wait, the UK raids MY norwegian convoy lines in 1939? This much from my first ten minutes: uncut, unfair and uneducated. Now i know i HAVE to read the manual, as there are new symbols i don't know from any other SC release, and probably new game mechanics and concepts as well. Well, anyway, it is so very nice to be a part and player of this first and important GC release. I hope and pray (and feel pretty sure) that Hubert and his team will grace us with some performance patches and further improvement, as well as bigger maps. After the first ten minutes i would like to share this thought: Gentlemen, buy und this game and starrrrrt your engines! Sorry if i offended the developer, playtester or publisher with my stupid first impression! If needed, just delete it!

Since SC1, yes.

Sorry, but there was no german ship of importance using COAL anymore in WW2, neither the Hipper class not any other. But i'm not sure about the Linienschiffe Schlesien and Schleswig-Holstein (the only main ships Germany was allowed to keep in the Versaille Treaty), both build in the ealry 1900). I don't know too much about the merchant fleet, but even there the "Steamer" were probably already obsolete. The german trains ran mainly with coal, here you're correct, this changed in western germany in the 1950 - 1960ies, in east germany even later. But even the allied nations did use coal in this time for their trains, the UK and Russia for sure, while the USA started to introduce diesel engines in the 1940s, but the change from steam to diesel wasn't complete until the 1950s. Length of the german Autobahn-freeway (completed and opened to the public) in km: May 1935: 22 km December 1935: 108 km October 1936: 1000 km Decemerb 1937: 2000 km December 1938: 3000 km start of WW2: 3297 km (in 1939 most of the worker were withdrawn to build fortifications at the westwall / eastwall) end of WW2: 3893 km 2005: 12200 km The Autobahn was mainly build to allow the Wehrmacht fast movements. It was a waste of money, material and time if it would have build for private cars. At the begin of the building process only 1 of 100 german citizen owned a car (today there the ratio is 2 citziens : 1 car). Source: http://www.autobahngeschichte.de/Seitenstreifen/Geschichte_n_/geschichte_n_.html Sure, what else could they do as to use what they can grabb? But let me quote wikipedia again: "... Direct conversion of coal to synthetic fuel was originally developed in Germany. The Bergius process was developed by Friedrich Bergius, yielding a patent on the Bergius process in 1913. Karl Goldschmidt invited him to build an industrial plant at his factory the Th. Goldschmidt AG (now known as Evonik Industries) in 1914. The production began only in 1919. Also indirect coal conversion (where coal is gasified and then converted to synthetic fuels) was developed in Germany by Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch in 1923. During the World War II, Germany used synthetic oil manufacturing (German: Kohleveredelung) to produce substitute (Ersatz) oil products by using the Bergius process (from coal), the Fischer-Tropsch process (water gas), and other methods (Zeitz used the TTH and MTH processes). The Bergius process plants were the primary source of Nazi Germany's high-grade aviation gasoline and the source of most of its synthetic oil, 99% of its synthetic rubber and nearly all of its synthetic methanol, synthetic ammonia, and nitric acid. Nearly 1/3 of the Bergius production was produced by plants in Pölitz (Polish: Police) and Leuna, with more than 1/3 more in five other plants (Ludwigshafen had a much smaller Bergius plant which improved "gasoline quality by dehydrogenation" using the DHD process). Synthetic fuel grades included "T.L. [jet] fuel ", "first quality aviation gasoline", "aviation base gasoline", and "gasoline - middle oil"; and "producer gas" and diesel were synthesized for fuel as well (e.g., converted armored tanks used producer gas). By early 1944, German synthetic fuel production had reached more than 124,000 barrels per day (19,700 m3/d) from 25 plants, including 10 in the Ruhr Area. In 1937, the four central Germany lignite coal plants at Böhlen, Leuna, Magdeburg/Rothensee, and Zeitz, along with the Ruhr Area bituminous coal plant at Scholven/Buer, had produced 4.8 million barrels of fuel. Four new hydrogenation plants (German: hydrierwerke) were subsequently erected at Bottrop-Welheim (which used "Bituminous coal tar pitch"), Gelsenkirchen (Nordstern), Pölitz, and, at 200,000 tons/yr Wesseling. Nordstern and Pölitz/Stettin used bituminous coal, as did the new Blechhammer plants. Heydebreck synthesized food oil, which was tested on concentration camp prisoners.the Geilenberg Special Staff was using 350,000 mostly foreign forced laborers to reconstruct the bombed synthetic oil plants, and, in an emergency decentralization program, to build 7 underground hydrogenation plants for bombing protection (none were completed). (Planners had rejected an earlier such proposal because the war was to be won before the bunkers would be completed.) In July 1944, the 'Cuckoo' project underground synthetic oil plant (800,000 m2) was being "carved out of the Himmelsburg" North of the Mittelwerk, but the plant was unfinished at the end of WWII. ..." To cut a long story short: i agree with your statement that this is difficult to emulate.

Tirpitz & coal is one of the worst examples you could choose from, as this BB didn't used coal (maybe for a stove in the kitchen, but not as "fuel"). The Autobahn and the German rail system worked good for the 3rd Reich. When fighting neighbors. But are not very helpful in the USSR with her different rail gauge width and NO autobahn / highway system at all, but way to many dirt roads, which turns to mud after rain. Most of the Wehrmacht marched per pedes into Russia and all the way back. quote wikipedia: "...The Heer entered the war with a minority of its formations motorized; infantry remained approximately 90% foot-borne throughout the war, and artillery primarily horse-drawn. The motorized formations received much attention in the world press in the opening years of the war, and were cited as the reason for the success of the German invasions of Poland (September 1939), Norway and Denmark (April 1940), Belgium, France and Netherlands (May 1940), Yugoslavia (April 1941) and the early campaigns in the Soviet Union (June 1941)...."

SeaMonkey, you old pirate, what have you done? Now i sit here and play Allied General again, hour after hour! Thanks, man! Great news, great info, great past-blast (right into the heart, argh).

Some national anthems, when you click on the capital of a major power. Nothing else. Personaly i loved the concept SSI had in Pacific General (aka Pacific Admiral). Some historical background music would be nice (Lili Marleen, Tipperary, Coming in on a wing and a prayer, swing music, marches). But i think the majority tends to tune down the music in a game.

I think the answer is easy: there is no music in the Game. The only music i know of is that you can hear some national anthems after clicking on the capital of some nations.

I am with you all the way. Simple upgrades would enhance the game quite a lot. Upgrade a tile with garrison, with AA, with AT, with Arty, or even with supply. Upgrade a unit just as well. More movement points needed? Upgrade your unit. Your HQ should be able to attack? Buy AT, Artillery or Garrison upgrades for it, Even better would be if Hubert would introduce and widen out the idea he had / the concept of the carriers in Pacific Theater (strength points for hull and planes divided). Let your Army lose or gain AT points, Tank points, infantry points, or even TAC AIR points. This would be possible if each one would have a separate strength point scala. Maybe this could be an idea for SC3. Research would allow you to buy more AT strength points, the higher the AT level, the more strength points you can buy.

As far as i know these statistics will be introduce for the first time with the upcoming release of GLOBAL CONFLICT. Btw: welcome to the Forum!

Sorry if i didn't made my point clear enough. Yes, you are right, that was exactly what i ment.

arado234, sometime you just need a little inspiration to think / one step more. I believe that a new devastating weapon would have Hitler inspired to use something to retaliate. He even changed the Luftwaffes main objective in the Battle of Britain to take revenge for an english bombing run on Berlin. Of course, there is no ultimate guaranty, but personaly, i think that is a very probable option he might have used. He didn't cared much about civilians, german or enemy. Even though neither side had plans to use poison gas, there was always the possibility that exactly this could have happened. Churchill thought about it, the USA delivered poisenous gas ammo to the Italian front. wiki-quote: "...William L. Shirer, in The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, writes that the British high command considered the use of chemical weapons as a last-ditch defensive measure in the event of a Nazi invasion of Britain. On the night of December 2, 1943, German Ju 88 bombers attacked the port of Bari in Southern Italy, sinking several American ships– among them SS John Harvey, which was carrying mustard gas intended for use in retaliation by the Allies if German forces initiated gas warfare. The presence of the gas was highly classified, and authorities ashore had no knowledge of it– which increased the number of fatalities, since physicians, who had no idea that they were dealing with the effects of mustard gas, prescribed treatment improper for those suffering from exposure and immersion. The whole affair was kept secret at the time and for many years after the war (in the opinion of some, there was a deliberate and systematic cover-up). According to the U.S. military account, "Sixty-nine deaths were attributed in whole or in part to the mustard gas, most of them American merchant seamen"[32] out of 628 mustard gas military casualties.[33] The large number of civilian casualties among the Italian population were not recorded. Part of the confusion and controversy derives from the fact that the German attack was highly destructive and lethal in itself, also apart from the accidental additional effects of the gas (it was nicknamed "The Little Pearl Harbor"), and attribution of the causes of death between the gas and other causes is far from easy.[34][35] Rick Atkinson, in his book The Day of Battle, describes the intelligence that prompted Allied leaders to deploy mustard gas to Italy. This included Italian intelligence that Adolf Hitler had threatened to use gas against Italy if the state changed sides, and prisoner of war interrogations suggesting that preparations were being made to use a "new, egregiously potent gas" if the war turned decisively against Germany. Atkinson concludes that "No commander in 1943 could be cavalier about a manifest threat by Germany to use gas...." I once read that there was a real chance that the Allies might have used poison gas after this incident, as the thought the german bomber did have droped bombs with poison gas (the whole matter of this delivery on this allied ship was top secret). Again, there is no guaranty that Hitler might have used the nerve agents, but he did had a knack for an "an eye for an eye" revenge system. Be it treatment of prisoners, bombing of London (even in 1945), etc. etc. Well, maybe there should be a game option to allow everything, for every side. A-Bombs, nerve agents, poison gas. But i don't think that the game would benefit from it.

It is shattered alliance. I play the Russians against the AI. if you like i could send you a save-file

Another oddity: If you place in Saudia Arabia a HQ at this spot, than this HQ won't ever be able to move away from there. At least not on its own. Supply level 5, but no movement possible. I think that should be better checked by the map designer. Oh, yes, same campaign (shattered alliance).

Ta-daa. Take my money, i don't need it. Pre-ordered today. Captain, may i come on board?

If you do, best Hubert of all, think about an city-garrison upgrade like you did with the city-AA upgrade.

Campaign Name: Shattered Alliance But better check all of the scenarios. I might be wrong, but i think i saw this before, maybe it was in another campaign, even though i am not completly sure.

If we add the A-bomb, than we can add the german nerve agents as well, which would have been for sure Hitlers answer to an Allied A-Bomb drop on Hamburg. Those agents were in stock, and the Allies had nothing like them. I suggest we leave the A-Bomb out, after all we already have strategic bombers, which are already capable to bomb a city to ashes, even without an A-Bomb.