Quintusarrius

For what it's worth, I spotted CM:SF on the ebuyer site as I was googling around for something else and thought "Why the hell not?". I'd not bought CM:SF when it came out after having a pile of trouble with the demo on my old PC but for £3.90 I thought it was worth a punt. Bought it, installed it, got it working (once I realised that the reason it ran like a pregnant cow was my graphics card not liking it at above 1024x768) and loved it. Resulting in my buying both the modules from battlefront.com the very next day. So, overall I reckon it's worked out okay for all concerned - Battlefront probably wouldn't've got a sale from me were it not for Paradox's 'loss leader' pricing and I would have missed out on a game that has me well and truly hooked. At the current exchange rates, the USMC and Brit bundle cost me £22, which is less than even a second flight game in the shops these days and I know that the bulk of that cash is going to the pockets of the guys who made it. I am sure I had a more clearly defined point to make here, but anyway... I think you get where I'm going. Now... if only I didn't actually SUCK at commanding troops

Well, for whatever reason, it's definitely not there now... Short of a complete re-install, any way to get hold of it?

Doing a search for .cam files on my entire hard drive: Spanish - US, USMC, Brit and tutorial French - Brit, USMC and tutorial German - USMC and Brit English - USMC, US and Brit. Is there a legitimate place I can download this campaign?

Apologies if my search-fu has missed the answer on the forums. I picked up the paradox version of CM:SF, patched it to 1.10, downloaded the Brit and USMC modules and then patched to 1.21 using the "I have both modules" option. Thing is, if there's a tutorial scenario/campaign, I can't find it now. It's not a major problem as I am sure I will get there in the end with a cheat sheet of key commands and some persistence. I suppose I should have played the demo game for a bit first but I just leaped in with my size 11's and bought the lot

Excellent, just in time for the release of Campaigns then?

Ancient thread of old... from your unhallowed grave... ARISE!!! Ahem. Hello all. I've recently decided to try and wean myself off Windows as much as I can but the one thing that keeps me rebooting into XP is the CM games I have installed (Hello Tom, don't worry about the PBEM turn, no rush). My machine is a Dell E521 with an ATI x1300 graphics card and 2 gig of RAM so in XP CMBO, CMBB and CMAK run like silk-clad, greased lightning. I've picked up a copy of Cedega 6 (the windows gaming emulatoroidesque thingummy) and installed it on my MEPIS 7 Linux. Sadly the CM game runs like a juddery acid trip. Have any of the Linux crowd on here had any success getting CMxx to run okay?

Ok then quoting from my limited knowledge of ancient history, what about Rome, in it's glory days it employed many, many slaves. Wandering off the topic here but hell, I was a classicist before I was a WW-II nut, sorta. Roman slavery isn't really comparable with the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' forced labour/death camp thing except in those few areas of the economy where they dumped people they really didn't like to do unpleasant work and then grind them into the dirt until they died (For a nice fictionalised account of Roman silver mining, 'the silver pigs' has a nice story). A fair chunk of the Roman economy was run by unfree labour but in the main they didn't have a whip cracking loonie standing over them, they were as much a class as anything else. As an aside, the whole thing about sabotage by slave labourers is probably true but I think it was exaggerated post-war by the "We should have won" brigade in Germany, a variation of the "Stab in the back" whinge from WW-I. "Oh lackaday, if only those Jews/Poles/Frenchmen/Slavs/Trades Unionists that we were working to death had not put too little powder in our shells, then our wonder weapons would have worked!" Hamfisted administration of an economy and getting oneself into fights that one had no realistic chance of winning. On the actual battlefield... well, JasonC's shown how allied kit can work (pencils down notes for next game)

"Does the game suk as bad as the player review scores show?" In a word... "No" It's not some quantum leap from CMBB in terms of gaming technology but it's still worth the 35 dollars / 25 squids.

My take on this tends to run roughly along the lines of Nazi Germany saddling itself with a two front war from Barbarossa onward as mistake #1. By starting a war with Britain and failing to finish it one way or another and THEN attacking Russia it pretty much guaranteed that it would never win the war (At this point I am only saying 'not win' rather than 'would lose'). When Japan attacked America and Hitler declared war on the USA (Pretty much off his own bat and with little or no consultation with anyone saner than himself) Germany went from "Stuck in a war it could not win" to "doomed to defeat". 200+ million industrialised, democratic and free people in a country blessed with epic natural resources and without a nutcase like Stalin in charge of them are going to pretty much be assured of walking over a country the size of Germany (even with her 'allies'), especially when there's an unsinkable aircraft carrier the size of the UK within 21 miles of occupied Europe. One of the big "what ifs" that MIGHT have made a difference to the ultimate outcome would have been KO'ing Russia before Dec 7 1941. A few less ballsups by Germany and a few more on the part of the Soviets and it MIGHT have happened but even with Russia out of the war, it's likely that with American support the UK could have held out (ULTRA, ASDIC and massive US ship production would still have made a difference to the battle of the atlantic). So, for Germany to actually have won, they would have had to either not go to war with Britain in 1939 (or find a route to peace in 1940) OR KO'd Russia in 1941 AND not declared war on America. However as someone once said, "For the Nazi's to have not acted as they did... they would have not been Nazi's" - They lost the war because of the same flaws that made them think of starting it Germany had some very very nice toys but they were SO playing the wrong game with them.

- PS ---- EUREKA! Seems MBNA does not like my using a different address for delivery (neither does my high street bank) in this case... Which is weird as they've never quibbled before. Many thanks to Matt and Gail from Sales for pointing me in the right direction. Whoo hoo! Zum Zum here I come!

It is weird, as I've tried with my VISA and mastercards (different card providers). Both cards have worked with other e-commerce transactions with US vendors (and paypal) so I'm mildly boggled at this hiccup. Oh well, you have to laugh... as I said to your sales department : Someone up there is telling me to not spend $42 this side of X-mas!

Bit confused as to how I managed to double post at 25 minute intervals there. Just not my computer-related week I guess!

Not a game related problem per se but I am interested as to whether anyone else has had problems in the UK ordering CMAK online? From two computers, two different ISP's and with two credit cards I am forever getting : "Sorry, your transaction has been declined for: Invalid timeout value, 0 Please go back to the form and try again " Battlefront are being very kind and trying to get to the bottom of this but has anyone else had the same problem?

Not a game related problem per se but I am interested as to whether anyone else has had problems in the UK ordering CMAK online? From two computers, two different ISP's and with two credit cards I am forever getting : "Sorry, your transaction has been declined for: Invalid timeout value, 0 Please go back to the form and try again " Battlefront are being very kind and trying to get to the bottom of this but has anyone else had the same problem?

Joke-mode on : Whilst the war in the Western desert was no game of patty cake, maybe the 'war without hate' aspect has been modelled and the troops are simply more willing to surrender to a 'humane' opponent than they would be in Normandy or Russia (Yes, yes... I know... the Sicilian, Italian etc campaigns were nasty but it's a nice image for the desert side of things)

Do you mean a K6/2? I thought they never went about 550Mhz You know, you could be right. Maybe it's the next one up, it's been so long since I paid attention to the startup screen. Doh! 20,000 points? My machine would fall over and die. My CMBB 1250 game in a large town is getting somewhat juddery (mind you, 660K PBEM movie files are not uncommon in this fight). I took the graphics card out of my machine at work to stop myself falling victim to temptation

This new feature could get unwieldy in the Italian-intensive scenarios. Wasn't there a radio message sent by a British unit at one stage that went something like "Please advise... I have two acres of prisoners!" I'll stick up for the bravery of the Italian fighting man though, surrendering when you've no transport or decent supplies and outmaneuvered seems to be the act of an incredibly sensible person. I wish faber&faber would re-print "Alamain to Zem Zem" again...

AMD 750Mhz K2 with 512Meg Pc133 and a 32Meg ATI graphics card. Turn processing takes longer than CMBB but the movie and in game scrolling seem smooth enough from the brief play I have had so far. I suspect my machine will struggle with anything over 1000 pts though.

I suspect I shall be hunting out the old AK mods for CMBO and seeing if I can change the intro tune to 'Lili Marlaine'. Not that the intro that's there is bad... it's just if there was a song to conjure up the desert war, that'd be it.

I have a 700 MHz machine, 128 MB RAM. If I'm wasting my time waiting, tell me now... Well, you should be able to run CMBB on that. Although you might want to keep battles to below 1250 points as my 750 struggles with more stuff than that. If you have any kind of graphics card, that will make life easier. RAM is still pi$$ cheap so if you pick up another 128 (Or a 256 stick) that will make the world of difference. If you have trouble finding someone willing to play small scale battles, let me know... I like <1000 point battles.

I'm pretty sure of the 007 / John Dee connection. Fleming is said to have got the '00' numbers from reading Dee's biography during the years leading up to the creation of Bond. The '00' being seen as a symbol for the bearer being the 'eyes' of the state. (It's also an old designation for secret files) However '007' whilst also being Dee's "Sigil" was also the number on the front of the train in a certain Kipling piece of which Fleming was fond. The one thing that almost certainly wasn't the root of '007' was the turret # of an ardent Nazi (not unless anyone can ever prove that Fleming once lost money to Wittman at roulette...)

IIRC Smoke was used offensibely (WP I am assuming?) was used by German armour during 'Market Garden' to flush out defending paratroopers in the streets of Arnhem. They'd fire an HE shell into a house to chew things up, then a smoke shell was sent in to set things alight. I THINK my source is a veteran account from the 'World At War' series or a BBC Timewatch docu' on Arnhem. I must admit, it would be a welcome addition to any future game.

Wow... one hell of an interesting thread. The W.A. vs USSR thing does really depend on "Who started it and why". For example, were the Soviets to kick off against the allies out of a desire to liberate the whole of Europe for Marxist Leninism, then I would imagine that the Western Allies would fight back both hard and dirty. The scarcity of atom bombs has been mentioned but I am wondering how squeamish the Allies would have been about use of chemical weapons? Churchill was willing to countenence the use of chemicals in the event of an invasion in 1940. Ironically, Hitler was squeamish about gas weapons on the battlefield after being on the receiving end in WW-I. Germany and the Allies had nerve agents in active development but I believe that Russia lagged behind until she acquired German scientists post war. Lacking long range delivery systems like the B-29, I suspect Russia would have been at something of a disadvantage had that particular evil genie got out of the bottle.

I'd have to root through the morass that is my book room to find the reference (so I'll have to work from memory) but IIRC, John Dee Queen Elizabeth I's court astrologer and part-time spymaster used to sign off a lot of his letters with the numerological sigil '007'. A quick google turns up stuff like : http://www.sirbacon.org/links/dblohseven.html http://astrology.about.com/library/weekly/aa040500b.htm [ October 20, 2003, 03:49 AM: Message edited by: Quintusarrius ]

I haven't looked deeply into the question, so I may be nurturing a misconception here, but didn't the anti-Fascist partisans fight well in the last two years of the war? Michael </font>