-avedon-

Funny how othewise the best game ever can have a lousy map designing. Me and my friend made 2 maps in a day, and it was impossible to beven believe it was the same game. Why roads end nowhere, there are no fences over houses and so on -a real terrible mistake. After a days work we had tunnels, rivers, bridges, railways and stuff, which aren't even in the ready maps made for campaigns. Hire us, if you cant get better looking scenary. Usually around church, there's a wall, graveyards qnd railroad bridge over river and traintracks immediately bring new kind of reality. Otherwise you guys are super geniuses but only those maps. They were unplayable. Yours J.L Helsinki Finland

Something my friend pulled from scrap (quite fast) is now sent to the 'Depot'. Combat testing underway... -ave- (Map name: Land and Lakes, large, designed for PBEM, clumsily named.)

..By looking at different direction. We see Finland that had kind of two 'conflicts' (full warfare), with the red atmy and the soviets. Among your calculations is good to remind yourself, How on earth the Finnish troops repelled soviet armoured assaults. If pure numbers is your focuspoint, we could't/couldn't have. We had no tanks, light gunnery compared, no air superiority and a thousant km's long border. There was a popultion of 4 million, and land covered by woods neverending. The strenght of finn. Army was quite high- 500 000 men. I must say the finns in this engine have great disadvantages. Often soviets bombarded Finnish civilians -but cities maybe were too small and waste. Attack of 900 sovets bombers caused 4 casualties and so on. On the otherhand, finns surrounded huge enemy concentrations and attacked to destroy them. Often when battles were fought -corpses of hundrends of enemy were found. In some cases 75 Tanks and 100 vehicles. And then methods: by sachel charges, molovs and and mines. Small artillery and often foreign colunteers had arrived to help The Finns, whp had for over 100 days repelled the attack of 100's of thousands of soviets. Sometimes supported by 80 panzers. Finnish defenses were also built well in advance -so called 'million fortresses' were scattered around the forests. They costed a million a piece, thats where the name originated. One was calculated to take 85 direct hits from a 80mm field cannon -until surrendered. Try this in CM2 and let those soviets kick your ass! Otherwise the finnish sounds etc. are exellent. But realism takes a hit, when winning by finnish infantry seems hard. This was not spoken as an insult, a history essay or because FINLAND is the home of TRUE WARRIORS! Simply to appoint that many variables apply in war and stronger may walk to an easy victory or to a trap. Temperature was -30c and men slept outside in a trenches -how to apply these things to the engine? I dont know...

News to the Frontline Greetings from Finland and I hope spring is feeling as goog there as it is here. For ages me and my friends started another round of 'Barbarossa to Berlin' play-by mail games. As you well must know by now, your game is the best batllefields simulator ever. Only thing more mindblowing would be something like WarHammer 40K using your engine or such. One thing keeps troubling -or should I say makes me wonder? If you have the most glorious engine, the best atmosphere, realism and control, why most of the maps and scenarios seem to be so badly engined? I don't mean they suck -and undertstand the importance of realism (there really is no hills at Netherlands). But for a little effort I made a map, of a village somewhere in northern Finland. There was logical roads (leading to somewhere), rivers. bridges, railroad tunnels, fences and so on? Too bad this one was destroyed by some mistake, but I'll gladly make another map -just to show you my point. Do not ever think, that my letter is ment to critisize your exellent game, or effort to say I'm better 'desingner' or something. Most of the maps seem just quite flat and unimprovising. Special thanks to the finnish translation and troopmodeling -which are exellent work and I realy mean it. Rare finnish company could ever reach the same authencity. If I manage to create another 'well eunogh' map, what would be right page to post it? -ave- Helsinki,Finland