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R.J.

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Posts posted by R.J.

  1. Just came across some info on a new grand strategy game Strategy First is publishing in the spring called Making History: The Calm & The Storm. It looks more like HOI than Strat Com - risk-style provinces rather than hexes/tiles - and there's not a lot of info on it, but there are a couple of dozen screen-shots. Here are some links:

    http://www.making-history.com/home.php

    http://www.3dgamers.com/games/makinghistory/

  2. It's the craftsman vs. mass production conundrum. If you sell a million or more copies of a game you can afford to sell it for less – and/or hire more people to give the game more glitz and glitter and sell it for more.

    War games, alas, have a much smaller market share, thus have smaller design teams and higher prices. SC2 (in fact all wargames) might look like a budget game, but it's not. You pay for the quality of the game design- if it also looks good that’s just a nice bonus.

    You can rest assured you're not being gouged. HC isn't blowing your hard earned money on Ferraris and supermodels.

    :confused:

    (Actually, if you are, let me know. I might give up my day job and go into game designing.)

  3. Originally posted by Blashy:

    An amphibious transport is not ONE ship but thousands.

    One corps is 100 000 or so men, that can easily mean 50 ships.

    So loosing 2 points is 20 000 men, more if it is an army group.

    So it it all relative.

    Too me it makes sense as is for the reasons above.

    Very true, but it also represents 2-8 weeks worth of naval operations in a rather abstract way. It would seem to me that if a nation has the will and ability to launch naval attacks against an invasion, it should be rewarded with more than a 20% decline in a corp's/army's fighting strength.

    Reducing the transported unit's supply a few points for each attack could be one option.

  4. The French seductively removing their garrisons to get a rise in Italian readiness – it's not just gamey, it's positively immoral.

    To counter the Italian exploit, when Italy's readiness reaches 100%, it should not automatically enter the war, but rather the player should then be given the option of entering the war when they choose. Or at the very least, Spanish readiness should also go up.

  5. Originally posted by Cary:

    As to mowing your lawn... do you use a rider mower? (Let me avoid wandering way off topic).

    LOL, actually I use a push mower- but that’s just to save my ears and lungs, not mother earth.

    Originally posted by Cary:

    One of the real challenges that the United States faces is that we have not thought for a long while what ideals and interests we have that are really worth fighting and dying for ...

    I agree with you there. The concept of real sacrifice for a greater good kind of faded away when eat, drink and be merry for here and now is all there is became the national (indeed Western) ethos for the modern age.

    With morality (the domain of religion) giving way to ethics (the domain of philosophy) the gold standard for some will be us versus them, and me me me the standard for the rest.

  6. Originally posted by Cary:

    As to the 105s and the village: I am going to take your bait. Yes, probably so, perhaps not so much because civilians were killed, but because it was an attempt to fight a war without sacrifice on the part of our soldiers. Frankly, Patton's view that the point of war is to make some other SOB die for his country is dead wrong: the point of war is to prove your own and your country's own willingness to sacrifices for its own beliefs and its survival.

    Cary also wrote (p3): Because we generally accept that mixing religion and politics is a disaster.

    I'm afraid you're setting the moral bar too high for the strictly secular concept of the nation state. If you're going to ask for a sacrifice that grand you'd better be offering something more than the temporal.

    Politics (modern and Western at any rate) tends to play out in more pragmatic, alas even cynical, terms. 'Bomber' Harris may have to answer to God in eternity, but in the here and now (or there and then as the case may be) the idea of ending a war through terror bombing was believed (falsely as it proved) to have merit.

    And where does one finally draw the line in us v. them? My family v. the criminals who threaten them? My country v. the country that threatens to enslave us? The family of man v. the livestock that feeds us? All organic matter living in perfect harmony? Will some future generation condemn us for mowing our lawns as some now condemn Harris for trying to spare "his own" at the expense of others?

    It's an imperfect world. We need both our ideals and a good dose of pragmatism for such difficult questions as war.

  7. Originally posted by xwormwood:

    But i agree with you about all this gold, trasures and hats. Sell them to help the poor, Herr Ratzinger, and change the world through this.

    Sell it to whom? Rich industrialists who would simply raise the price of products and commodities to offset the capital expenditures on luxury goods? Money that would have better served the poor by being put into industrial expansion (i.e. creating jobs).

    Meanwhile the world is poorer because priceless art treasures are now in private hands and not on public display. Wealth isn't created by a simple exchange of paper money and/or property. Wealth is created by investment, labour and human ingenuity. And I'm afraid that opinion is the typical fuzzy logic of socialism that kills investment and personal motivation that creates real wealth.

    The other part of your post is spot on though.

    Originally posted by Liam:

    however breeding Christians? what about all the devoted Christians in Mexico though and South/Latin America?

    "If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it." -Benjamin Franklin
  8. Originally posted by well-dressed gentleman:

    and didn't the Russians have exploding dogs that were sent against panzers?

    Soviet dog mines. Fairly good in theory, explosive pack on the back of a dog detonated by a rod that was pushed back when the dog dived under a German tank. In practice, the dogs (who were trained by placing food under Soviet tanks) tended to make a beeline to the familiar smells and sounds of the Soviet tanks. The program was cancelled very quickly.

    (I suppose you could simulate that one by having Russian tank units randomly lose a strength point once and a while. ;) )

  9. Originally posted by Liam:

    also the answer to the shortness of breath for UK defense, a Houserule, making it impossible without a DOW upon the USSR?

    I had an idea for a rule that would give the RN a shot at defeating SL rather than an outright ban on it.

    Amphib tech level squared = the number of tiles that can be moved before unloading. i.e. with level 3 tech you can move the full 9 tiles before unloading – 4 tiles with level 2, 1 tile with level 1, and with level 0 you have to start the turn adjacent to land.

    The axis could invest like crazy in tech if they really wanted to do it, but otherwise it would give the UK a fighting chance with their Navy.

    EDIT: or use Rolend's tech level system as a house rule:

    "I still think lowering the range is not the way to go. Now that a Amphib tec has been added it should go something like this.

    Level 1. Units must wait one turn next to land before unloading. No movement allowed after unloading.

    Level 2. Units can unload on same turn. No movement allowed after landing.

    Level 3. Units can unload on same turn. Units may move if enough AP's after landing."

    [ July 11, 2006, 05:34 PM: Message edited by: R.J. ]

  10. Originally posted by John DiFool the 2nd:

    As I said in the other thread I think all units,

    mechanised or not, should move at a maximum of 1

    in mud. Perhaps another weather setting (let's call

    it "light rain") would be equivalent to what we now

    have with "mud."

    I think 'heavy mud' with 1 tile per turn movement would be appropriate in Russia, to reflect the fact they had mainly dirt roads there.
  11. "Wartime Casualties: Soviet: 25 Million, 1/3 soldiers"

    And iirc some 3 million of those 8 million Russian soldiers died in German captivity (because in Nazi ideology Slavs were subhuman), and probably another 2 million died needlessly because of stupid Soviet tactics that essentially wasted human lives (because in Soviet ideology everybody was subhuman). I'm not arguing that the Russians faced the bulk of the German army, just pointing out that the numbers were higher than they had to be because of the inhumanity of the two systems.

  12. Germans need to get out more.

    But not as far as Poland this time.

    That English thing is hilarious. Mind you, at first I was having a fit – its not the sort of thing I'd put past Blair. All I could think was "Shakespeare must be turning over in his grave."

    Originally posted by Blashy:

    OH and if one is built for Canada, it should also mean we cut you off our oil.

    It's Alberta's oil, paws off. tongue.gif
  13. DD - Holden and Bogie were definitely two of the best and always fascinating to watch. My mother raised me on a steady diet of classic films - while most of my school chums were drooling over Cindy Crawford I was entranced by Audrey Hepburn and Gene Tierney - and for my money actors from that golden era had both more style and substance than the "stars" of today.

    I must confess I've never seen Cabaret. I remember in school all I knew was that it was a musical with the dark-haired girl from "Arthur," after that I put it so far out of my mind that I never even realized it had a connection to WW2. Thanks for recommending it, I'll definitely move it to my must see list.

  14. Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

    - it was destroyed by bombing the oil refineries so it couldn't fly.

    Speaking of which, I recently saw the 1962 film The Counterfeit Traitor, the true story of Eric Erickson (played by William Holden) the American born Swedish oil businessman who was one of the most important spies in the war. He passed key information to the Allies about the location of German oil refineries and their synthetic oil production. It's also one of the best war movies I've ever seen, a great character study, well worth seeing.
  15. Originally posted by Sombra:

    At least the minors should react if a hungry monster Germany attacks one neighbor then another.. Perhaps building up more garrisons?

    I like that idea. After all, from 1940 on minor nations aren't going to be just sitting around hoping Adolf respects their neutrality. They're going to be mobilizing and training. So if in 1940, Norway (and other minors) has only 3-strength corps, in 1941 they should be 10-strength with 1 experience. '42 – 10 strength armies, or something along those lines.

    Plus, if the Norwegian King got out with much of the treasury in 1940, plunder should reduce over time as well (as nations prepare for an invasion).

    And perhaps add some diplomatic 'drift' toward the Allies for both Norway and Sweden over time (so that the Axis lose the convoys) if they aren't 'threatened' – ie troops in Denmark or Sweden threaten Norway, troops in Norway threaten Sweden.

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