DaveDash

I'm on WBS's side in this 'discussion'. The comments from many people in this thread is yet more confirmation that western society is on the down slope. At least some countries still have some sense, I believe Australia is looking to BAN Political Correctness from schools because it is actually detrimental to students learning, particulary history. IMO the fact that someone from Finland gets all worked up about the word 'Jap' being used in a WW2 orientated forum really indicates in my mind that the Finnish people don't have enough to worry about in their daily lives. Oh, and "slopes", "yellows", or "gooks" are lightyears ahead on the offensive scale than Japs.

Hi there, I'm new to the forums (just picked up CMBO, certian to buy everything else these guys make for ever after now). I'm also a big fan of the Total War series. One of the biggest dissapointments with the latest game, Rome Total War, is the developers have 'dumbed it down' to attract the masses and you have to mod the heck out of it to get it realistic. Anyhow, my computer: Radeon 128MB 9800 Pro P4 3.10GHZ 512MB 433MHZ DDr Ram In Rome Total War I can have upwards of 8000 men on the battlefield at full resolution and detail graphics. It looks incredably beautiful btw. Anything after that and it bottlenecks my CPU (not my video card or RAM). AFAIK these are some of the calculations RTW does : Tracks experiance and morale on a unit by unit basis Shields are tracked (so if the arrow goes past the shield it will likely kill a man, or if a arrow hits a shield it will likely bounce off - this makes your right flank very vulnerable) Weapons collisions are tracked. Collisions between men/animals are tracked. However arrows and so forth going through trees/obsticals are abstracted I believe. And a whole bunch of other stuff. Individual men have different morale depending on how many friendly/enemy units are around them. Groups have different morale levels depending on their flanks being exposed and the proximity of enemy forces. It is possible to rout shaken enemy units simply by running a formation of cavalry behind them. So as you can see, it puts a fair strain on your processing power when you have up to 8000 men. Not even the latest CPUS can handle more than that. The good news is that CM will never need 8000 men or above, at most 800ish. It will have more complicated routines than a game like RTW but there should be able power to do all this using todays machines. This also means video cards can easily render everything required. I would love to see a 1:1 graphical/engine representation provided I could have a range of preset realistic formations to chose from and the ability to 'group' units together and recall that group with ease. All in all as someone mentioned in the first page, I'd like to be higher up the chain of command. If I order a Platoon to move to position X I would want the tacAI to sort out the finniky details for me (where each unit goes) - I just tell them what kind of drill to use (formation, speed, stealth, hold fire, so forth). That is also more realistic too. However I doubt AI is up to the task of picking the right spot for a MG unit and so forth so I guess we'd still have to manage that when a firefight starts. [edit] To also avoid formations not using walls/corners/etc properly you could use a system that Full Spectrum Warrior uses and apply it on a squad/team basis where corners and so forth are 'sticky'. That is if you order a unit to the corner of a wall, it assumes a point fire formation (two guys stick their guns around the corner and the remaining two stand against the wall). If you move a unit behind a car they use a line formation: ____ XXXX If you move a unit behind a box they use a square formation: __ XX XX Any units ordered in the open just use a default wedge formation. You could simply apply this to the game but on a squad level. Move the mouse cursor near a damaged wall for example and it 'sticks' to it and draws out the likely formation of all the individual men. If a whole squad can't fit behind enough cover then others gone in the prone position around the object. Sorry it's difficult to explain, you'd need to play Full Spectrum Warrior to get what Im talking about. Here are some screenshots: Take note that you DO NOT ORDER INDIVIDUAL MEN AROUND, but rather fire teams. The AI choses the best formation based on the terrain around your units: How would this work in CM? Well if you ordered some men behind a wall the mouse pointer would stick to the BACK of the wall and your men would line up nicely behind it, with the leader going to the exact point on the wall. Order them into a clumb of trees and it would STICK to a particular tree based on where you move your mouse pointer, and that is where the leader of your formation goes, and everyone else arranges around him based on their current formation. [ January 27, 2005, 07:01 PM: Message edited by: DaveDash ]

Yeah the AI definately seems a bit of a joke on the attack. It also tends to use smoke a lot but on your own forces when it should have used HE rounds, but sometimes it gets it together and gives you a nasty surprize, I agree. Many times I often pretend that I am fighting a real opponent and I try to do things 'properly' without getting into bad habits anyway. For example, in the Eagles Clash scenario I probably could have wiped out the AI forces well before turn 50 if I had more experiance with the game and the predictability of the AI, but I scouted properly and used plenty of overwatch movements so forth because I'm still new to this game and don't know what to expect. At the end of the day I will eventually like to play against Humans (although I undoubtadly will have to get CMBB and CMAK too) so I definately don't want to become lazy in things like flank protection and so forth because im playing the AI. I like to use my limited knowledge of real world tactics anyway (which is why we play this game isn't it?) so I don't like doing silly things, call it roleplaying if you will.

Thanks Vulture, I've been reading a lot of PBEM AARs and it's definately making me interested, however I need to clue myself into the game a bit more to make myself a worthy opponent before I tackle a human . I realise the fighting the AI can get predictable and is a far different thing to playing another Human, but, baby steps The full game arrived yesterday and I cranked up that 'clash of eagles' scenario. I won a Allied Major victory on turn 50 suffering only 70 casualties including 14 dead on my first go, capturing the main hill (but not the Eagles Nest itself) and inflicting serious loses on the Germans (over 400 casualties I think). I completely avoided the river crossings on the right flank and used much of the advice here to take out the Pillboxes, (mostly a combination of smoke, surpression, and infantry manouvering to take out the anti-tank pillboxes then move in the tanks to deal to the rest). I think my artillery and airpower was massively overbearing in that scenario because I only ran into at most one German company which got pretty much pinned down by massive fires and slaughtered by incoming artillery. One of the first things I did was blow up most of the houses (wanted to take out enemy FO's) on the main hill with artillery so I suspect the Germans had lots of men in them. I also installed many of DD's terrain mods, man the game looks way better now. I wish still that someone could do a mod that made all your men represented (is that aspect of the game modable?). My computer can surely handle 700 men on the battlefield if it can handle 8000 in Rome Total War [ January 27, 2005, 01:22 PM: Message edited by: DaveDash ]

Thanks for that, I don't mind the graphics too much as it is (and that's coming from someone whos been playing a lot of Rome Total War at 1280x1024 full graphics settings ), but after I figure the game out ill take a look at some of these mods.

Yes smoke is a good idea - thanks. What units are good for surpressing a pillbox? Other MGs (but the possible "exploit")? Normal infantry? To 'surpress' the pillbox do you target the pillbox specifically or do an 'area fire' around the pillbox. Thanks for your time.

Well unfortunately ran out of time. I had around 150 men remaining with roughly 47 KIA (cant remember the wounded) and the Germans had around 46 men remaining and 40 KIA. I also was in a good position to win, the enemies moral was close to being broken. They still had a tank and unfortunately I had lost most of my bazooka guys, that would have proven to be a problem. However I moved my left flank through the trees to the victory location and avoided the one remaining pillbox (using terrain). This put a squeeze on the village and allowed me to move men down into the rear of the Germans defending. I also was in the process of fighting off a platoon of Germans assaulting hill 209 (the dominating hill on the battlefield) and I was in a good position to hold it. Alas though, those Pillboxes really slowed me down. Plenty of lessions learned though. Damn I wish the full game would hurry up and arrive

Some pretty good advice here, thanks. I've been trying to get around the damn pillboxes (outflank) but the checkerboard formation (see below) has proved difficult. The situation I face is the following: Red circles = active pillbox Red circle with cross = knocked out pillbox Blue circles = my infantry Blue arrow = breach As you can see I've managed to breach the lines on the right flank, but at great cost. My units on the left flank are pretty much pinned due to the remaining pillbox and tank. My bedraggled unit that has breached the right flank is trying to move across and 'roll up the flank' but they're having a tough time. Im also suffering surpressing fires from the town and I wasted too much of my artillery at the start trying to take out some of the pillboxes. I will press on and try and move more infantry through the breach on the right. My flamethrower units are too slow to get around behind saftely so I've been moving a squad of infantry into the pillboxes and the Germans surrender. ------------------------------------------------- Another question: How do you use onmap mortars effectively(I dont have a manual with the demo version )? Do they need a line of sight to their target or can they be used if they are near a HQ unit that has line of sight? Please remember this is my 2nd game so I still grasping many of the basics Cheers Dave [ January 23, 2005, 10:26 PM: Message edited by: DaveDash ]

The battle is in the balance right now and I've taken a fair amount of casualties. Im going to continue to work on the right flank where I have made a breach. As some general advice against Pillboxes, are tanks the only things that work against them (and not very well) or do you need to do the infantry wave thing? I would have thought 105mm artillery pounding the hell out of one would do some damage, or at least give the guys inside a bit of a scare (surpression)

Hi there. I recently stumbled upon this game looking for something new (after playing too much Rome/Medieval Total War). Now the graphics arn't anything to write home about but I was so impressed with the gameplay that after playing about 10 minutes of the Demo I went online and bought it. Now I just have to wait for the damn thing to arrive I completed the crossroads scenario with relative ease thanks to lady luck being on my side (managed to take out all the German tanks without losing one of my own, it was pretty easy after that) Now I've hit the 'Valley of trouble' scenario - and yep, a valley of trouble it is. Now I'm reasonably competent with tactics and so forth having read a lot of material (books on various wars, U.S. FM's online - very slow work day that) but I'd still consider myself a 'newbie'- particulary at WW2 warfare. Anyway, in this scenario I am having difficulty with the Pillboxes (particulary the concrete ones). Artillery seems to be wasted on them, and due to limited map space it's difficult to manouver around them, with a checkerboard formation of pillboxes this is almost impossible. The only success at actually taking them out that I have had has been tanks, but unfortunately in this scenario I have lost all my tanks (including the reinforcement ones). Two of them got taken out pretty much right at the start by an 75mm gun on the dominating hill and I lost another three to one German Panther tank, with my fourth tank being knocked immobile by another hidden anti-tank gun. On the right flank of the map I have managed to get a bedraggled force of 2 squads and one platoon HQ behind the dominating hill and most of the pill boxes, but on the left flank my forces are pretty much being cut to pieces by pillboxes in a checkerboard formation and unable to out manouver them. Any advice for taking them out? Cheers Dave