Streety

Thanks Mark - and thanks MikeyD, I was maybe just being a little overly concerned because of the sheer number of other people's mods I'd be regurgitating with (in the case of MikeyD's tanks for example) only minor colour/saturation tweaks. I did note all of Fox's mods come with a bar to further modding/use without permission (even though CMMODS website rules tell modders not to use CMMODS if that's the case). I tried making contact with Fox once before (on a separate issue to publish a minor correction to one of his mods) but he never replied. I could publish anyway, but would much rather have blessings all round. I'll try to fully credit everyone. Spent last night refinishing the last grau tank - the captured Valentine - did a grey version but with mud and the paint going flaky to show the "original" green (partly lifted from your CMwest one), and added an air recognition flag. From here on I'm just checking things for obvious errors....

Many, many thanks Mark, I appreciate my fellow modders respect each other, credit each other and would be happy to be included. But because there'd be a lot of yours, MikeyD, Gurra, Inglett and Andrew Fox stuff I was concerned about getting blessings from these five. I'm just about done on all the German-grau stuff (of which a lot is MikeyD CMBB, but others too). The uniforms are done (essentially all Andrew Fox or David Inglett and renumbered from CMBB for the Germans and CMAK Italy for the Brit-Comms). Then your stuff mixed with some of my unpublished mods for the Allies armour (along with the odd Inglett, Aris and a sprinkling of others). The UI is essentially a tweaked version of Gurra's Westfront (though if I don't get his blessing I could use mine - or the stock). For buildings and terrain I've a mix of many people's work and my own. I'm 75-80% done/happy. Thanks again.

Yes jocvtrhythgd, if you read all the foregoing thread you'll find MarkEzra already posted a reply. To save you rereading it all: CMWest was good, but I don't think it was ever a full set of BMPs (and certainly wasn't by the time I downloaded it all from CMMODS). I've built my own, incorporating CMWest with a whole bunch of my mods and other folks' mods and renumbered bitmaps from CMBB etc etc (which I think is what anyone else interested in this period has to do, but is actually a lot of work if you read the thread). I'm not yet 100% happy with mine, but was thinking of uploading it when I've finished, but may need other modders' blessings (mainly Ezra and MikeyD) for re-including their works wholesale incorporated into mine (which is desaturated and so you couldn't simply mix & match with theirs).

Ah, yes, I've 40 years interest in military history. I've also a PhD in archaeology which involved a military element, but not for this period. My great uncle was at Sword Beach, which got me into this period (he died 3 months ago). Anyway, I'm planning on CMBN soon but still heavily into CMAK at the mo. As to my inquisitors:- You have to remember almost all sources for Omaha are American and they don't dwell on Allied support, if they mention it at all - and this process of ignoring or belittling the British part in the war seems to be a ubiquitous thread in US histories (even highly respected ones like Atkinson and Ambrose etc, and sadly even among many US veterans) - which has long angered British historians as much as Hollywood pissed off British audiences on the subject of WW2. And British histories for D-Day seem to overlook Brits at Omaha too, concentrating on British beaches - only since Saving Private Ryan has there been a small trickle of a few British "hang on a minute, what about our involvement?" testimonies. Here's a BBC news item of some Royal Navy landing crew veterans moaning about being overlooked: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8080708.stm Here's a personal testimony of an RAF base support unit (to help direct RAF night fighters) that actually landed on Omaha. They first tried to land along with elements of the RAF regiment at 1130 on D-Day, but came under too much German machine gun fire and held off until 1700: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/67/a1947567.shtml So note that coming under too much fire at 1130, your GI's had not secured many bluff points at 0730! Yes, I've read those accounts of many US troops (some say 600!) knocking out strong points and heading inland by 1100. But this is probably exaggerated through the fog of memory because Bradley spent all morning pondering an abort as the troops were still pinned down on the beach (see Adrian Lewis' Omaha Beach, a Flawed Victory, University of North Carolina Press). And as far as I've always been aware, it wasn't until the later close-in naval bombardment took out those strong points over the beach that Bradley decided not to abort. And that was not until after 1225, when the American navy saw US troops start to advance up the slopes, and realised the bombardment had taken effect, see later down: http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_omaha_beach.html The beach-head wasn't secured until overnight on the 6th/7th. And here's a link to a Royal Navy sailor's testimony of the British at Omaha. Note that he refers to many British sailors being killed at Omaha: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/68/a1929468.shtml And here's a link to another personal testimony of the presence of the Royal Marines (as well as Royal Navy) at Omaha: http://www.franktoogood.com/the-true-tory/ The issue of the important difference between launch distances of the DD-tanks is from various bits of personal research for a book idea shelved long ago - but if I can recall a published mention I'll bring it to you. And again, you won't find any US sources admitting to it - they only seem to deride the tanks. However, some of it is discussed here, about mid-way down: http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/battles_omaha_beach.html As to the British Navy involvement on D-Day, you have to remember that the sea was full of thousands of ships and Operation Neptune was lead by the Brits. According to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, the British fleet was the largest contingent there at the time (roughly 58%), with the US being the next biggest (30%), and 8 of the 16 warships at Utah and Omaha were British, in addition to numerous troop ships and landing craft (including all the initial landing craft at Omaha). As to air cover, although the sector was primarily American, the RAF fighter screen was all over the coast, and though I can't now find reference for the hurricanes (probably a long lost personal testimony not available on line), it doesn't surprise me that they may have been called in because there were RAF units on the ground at Omaha beach, and the hurricanes used that day were tank/bunker buster variants. But sorry, but I don't tend to bother posting very much, so if I ever re-find the Hurricane or any further quotes for this subject, this thread will have long unravelled from my memory.

Well, am I right in thinking that you can't play with British and American forces in the same CMBN game? (I've yet to buy it). But if so then you can't fully play Omaha because those first waves of US troops all landed via British armoured landing craft (and crewed by Royal Navy) and not smaller the US higgins boats as shown in Saving Private Ryan. As to the D-Day bombing - the Brits wanted a surprise landing, and the Americans wanted full saturation bombing before going in. The American idea was that, in addition to hitting some of the defenders, the bomb craters would help give some cover as well as break up some of the beach wire and mines whereas the Brits felt that bombing would probably not be accurate enough and of course alert the defenders. The end result was a typically useless compromise of a limited bombing! Yes, the default for if target was not directly sighted was a short (30 second) drop delay because the planners felt it was better to go to far than too short because if they went long they might at least miss their own forces and maybe interrupt German communications and reinforcements. And indeed, the bombing mostly missed the beach but did knock out some of the defender's communications. However, for the US beaches for which he was in charge, Omar Bradley did get blamed for poor co-ordination of the bombardment with the assault. At Omaha, after the initial assault got bogged down, Bradley was on the brink off calling off further landings at that beach, especially when the US DD-tanks were launched too far out for the rough conditions and most sank (by comparison, the Brits launched theirs much closer in and the majority landed ok and were a big help in securing their beach-heads). But with the Omaha situation in the balance, a brave US warship supported by some British escorts went in dangerously close to running aground in order to bombard the German bunkers there at close range, supported by RAF ground-attack hurricanes (and probably US planes as well), under an RAF fighter screen. And it was these near point-blank bombarding destructions of bunkers that saved the day. Well, you didn't think it was a just couple of GI's with a mirror and a bit of bubblegum and ingenuity like the film showed did you?

Cheers Mate! Yes, as we've been having this discussion, the more it's made me think about it all again and that I should just get around to repackaging it all anyway. I'll get around to finishing tweaks asap, then put up a new thread with the mega-mod's name, ask for permissions where needed etc. Then perhaps upload a test set for feedback. Currently its huge, even though I've stuck to smaller 8-bit files, just the early war portion would still be about 500MB, but I could try to slim it down to a basic test set without all the optionals (300MB maybe). I better go away and try to figure out at least which were the main CMAK and CMBB modders I re-hashed a lot of..... Adios.

Hi Erwin, That new AI really does sound the business - you've sold it to me on that. The CM1 AI is a bit silly sometimes. So yes, I'll be onto CM2 as soon as the next price-drop comes. As to mods viable for a CMAK early-war Europe, I personally don't need any more hunting around for old mods - thanks - I've long ago exhausted all of it, modded everything that was missing, and am just tweaking things. I was merely thinking aloud about bothering with the hassle to repackage up what I've done (and get fellow modders' permissions etc, because I've long ago lost track of which stuff came from which mod and whether I remodded it or used it as-is, etc). All merely in order to save other gamers coming to the idea later from going through the pains I had to. And I'm not sure my desaturated, 8-bit colour would be to everyone's tastes anyway, and it still needs more tweaking. But at least they can read this thread for ideas about "how to". Maybe I'll upload some more stuff soon and see how popular it is. My English church had 60+ downloads but that can be used for more than just an early-war CMAK europe conversion. I'm guessing current interest in such a conversion is really only in single figures....

Yeah, I guess I'll get CM:BN sometime now that they finally saw the sense to include the British and Commonwealth forces! I'm especially happy to hear you say that the CM2 AI is good. But I will probably wait for the price to drop, especially because I'd need to buy both the original CM:BN game AND the Commonwealth add-on in order to play the Brits. Meanwhile, yes, it seems the mods for converting CMAK into an early-war Europe game are all over the shop, partly because of many terms (Sealion, CMWest, ETO etc), partly because nothing truly comprehensive ever came out, and what there is doesn't always match up well. I've spent the past 15 months slowly building my own as described earlier, a mix of mods and renumbered/retweaked stock. And it seems that's what you are expected to do. A major task! I've pondered the idea of suggesting to GaJ the notion of a separate folder, or a mega-mod (or at least removing all the really crap mods to save follow-on downloaders wasting time). But I've gotten into modding Sealion/pre-July43 NW Europe on CM1 very late and now imagine it to be of increasingly minor interest. Most of my fellow modders have moved to CM2 and the few active in CM1 are good but, like you say, with so many versions and mods of CM1, those few modders are very spread out. Maybe I'll upload a test mod sometime and see how many want it.... Cheers, David.

By the way, though I've been playing and modding CM1 for ages, I'm a solo-gamer (forever toying with a new solo-campaign rules book that'd be simpler to run than ROQC), and in the midst of a huge campaign to recapture central England from that cunning fox Rommel! (he gets everywhere). And so I'm an extremely rare visitor and poster to forums, and very out of touch with the community. Are there many CMWest/Sealion (i.e. pre-July43 Europe) gamers out there??

Hi again Erwin - No, I didn't do them. I think a lot are mikeyD, but many others too. My skies are a mix of stock CMBB and other modders' CMAK ETO skies, with a few of my own, but all retweaked to be desaturated (less colour). Yes, the CM1 mods keep on rolling on. I've added a few of my own, mainly filling a few gaps. Oh, and I forgot to add to my earlier advice/experiences that for the British-Commonwealth you can use their 100000s series European armour models to replace their respective 10000s series Africa ones. For example, the African British Early Sherman 2 is numbered 16680-16699 and the European one is numbered 116680-116699. So you can simply renumber the European ones to help build your CMWest/Sealion collection. By the way, once you've done that, there's no need to also keep the higher numbered version because, say when playing after June43, if the higher numbered version isn't there the game automatically opts for the lower numbered one - at least in the times I've tried it (but you'll still need to keep the higher-numbered's snow version).

No absolute need to copy the game, and indeed I started out by just having two BMP folders. But then you have to keep renaming your different BMP folders, unless you plan to do it all with CMMOS or something. And making a fresh copy of the game means you'll also have two different sets of saved games, scenarios etc which makes things simpler. I suppose you might mod different sounds too (which I do, a few, for my "CMWest/Sealion" game). Yes, I suppose you could just create extra copies of all those folders and keep renaming all of them for each time you play your different games. But what a pain, and if you go to that extent you may as well just make another game folder because you aren't saving much space anyway. So on balance its much better to create another game folder. And its not a simple matter of just filling your new BMP folder with all the ETO mods because you can't rely on them for any pre-July43 battles because they mostly alter the Italy theatre and not the period before - and it is the earlier period (1940-may43) as much as later which we are talking about in this thread. Oh forgot to mention about also changing the skies in my previous list.

Hi Guys, yes Ezra's mod was a good effort but is now quite incomplete, missing some terrain tiles and seemingly a great many other bits - though I don't know how comprehensive it ever was to begin with. Also, in terms of approach, it seems to try to convert the desert theatre into Europe/Britain, when converting the "combined theatre" would make more sense. I've used various bits of Ezra's and others' mods, much added to and further modded, to make my own full conversion of CMAK to a Sealion/ETO game, utilising the combined theatre region. However, its huge, half a bmp folder, all in 8-bit colour (not most people's favourite) and all desaturated for a more natural look (so you'd have to completely replace all your folder with my versions, because other mods for the pre-July43 or post-July43 stuff won't match with what I've done). Uploading it to GaJ's site would take ages and be in a hundred parts. And I've been testing and tweaking it for half a year or more now. And it includes retweaked verisons of a great many other modders' work but of which I never kept an exact record and they would expect to be credited and may not agree to my wholesale re-use of their work. And it uses my mods (as "streety" on GaJ's site) including many I've not yet published. But also, I've doubted many people would be interested enough and it still isn't "perfect". So I've not uploaded it and merely kept playing and tweaking it as my little pet.... If you want to do your own version, copy your entire CMAK folder and call it CMWEST or something similar, and in it do the following: 1) replace the Italian buildings with as many English, ETO and northern European ones as possible. 2) replace all the pre July 1943 desert stuff with CMAK Italy or CMBB versions of the same or similar armour and uniforms (no need to change the British paras or Americans). 3) replace the dirt terrain terrain tiles with the later of the two Italy grasses (no need to change the other terrain pieces, though you might want to change the interface terrain images). 4) create a new shortcut to the game's exe file and paste it to your desktop, where you can rename it "CM West" or similar. 5) play the game using the "all combined" theatre for pre-july43 situations. Apart from the sheer scale of changes and that you might have to seriously retweak or re-mod some models, and that you'll be limited to armour types that appeared in North Africa, the only issues with all this are: 1) that you won't get snow on the ground (though you could visually replace the renumbered grass terrain with renumbered light snow for just those months and you can at least tell the weather to make snow fall out of the sky). 2) Italian helmets pre-July43 stay modelled as pith-helmets, but you'll probably not want the Italians for a Sealion campaign anyway. 3) you'll get a bit too much dust. The way I accept this is to imagine that this sort of equates to the problem of exhaust smoke chucked up and hanging around more like smog used to in British/ETO climates (at least before we used clean coal in the 1970s). But change these bitmaps from a red dust to one that's more grey. 4) From July 43 you can switch to using the Italy theatre for your ETO games (as this will give you better dust modelling and snow). However, if you switch over to using the Italy theatre before Feb44 (i.e. between July43-Feb44, or between July43 and before your snow that winter), you'll find the terrain colours too red etc as the game models southern Italy in this period. So best stick with the Combined theatre until your first snows of the 43/44 winter. Thereafter use Italy. I keep thinking about uploading my efforts, and maybe will one day, but is there really much call for it? especially now that almost everyone is pre-occupied with CM:BN??

I concur with Kingfish. The 50% per 6 months rule is only a rough ready-reckoner based only on European campaign history, dealing with the logistical and health issues of maintaining a traditional army in the field, often in cramped camps and far from home (thus picking up and spreading any local diseases that are alien to them etc, and struggling with hygiene, malnutrition or lack of medical supplies or spells of relief etc). So, it wouldn't really hold true for insurgents who are often in their "home" territory, and nor are they really consistently concentrated together "in the field" like a regular army. Nor would the rule be as effective in regions, say, that didn't have noticeably seasonally harsh weather (i.e. cold winters, or hot summers or a rainy season). However, all campaigns, anywhere, by regular or irregular forces of course face some sort of health attrition. Back in the 1980s I was trying to develop some campaign rules (for table-top wargaming!) and studied the issue. There was a fair bit of British military medical research and authorship in the early 20th century that looked into the history. These lessons were put to good use by the Brits in WW2 - a key factor in the Desert War was superior hygiene rules by the desert rats over the afrika corps. Brit forces had to always dig latrines and sit on boxes with resealable flaps even away from base camps. The Germans did not, tending to individually go behind a dune or a rock with no sergeant checking each mess was properly covered. Consequently, there were far greater problems with fly-borne diseases in the German camps. This was recently demonstrated in this year's TV series "Generals at War" on the National Geographic Channel.

I happen to have done some past studying on disease and warfare, ages ago but now, enough to offer the following. There is was general rule-of-thumb that existed for centuries that in a campaign, for every 6 months in the field, the typical army (at least in Europe, which is the only theatre with long enough good records) can expect to lose 50% of its initial force due to disease (and problems with non-combat injuries and resurfacing of old wounds etc) even if no battle was fought. This figure did not change much until the 20th century. Hence, even if resupplied with new troops, campaigning seasons tended not to last year-round not only because of the problems of travelling in winter but also because this attrition rate only worsened in winter conditions. Jason C, I wonder if your calculations of the size of Napoleon's forces by the battles of Smolensk and Borodino, compared to the initial size of his Grand Army, may be over-accounting, for not all of his forces took part in those battles? The figures vary according to varying sources. But although he had about 400,000 to 800,000 men overall (or 600,000 if you take the middle value of that range), his main central army was only of about 265,000 and it was mainly with this central army that he fought at Smolensk and Borodino. Hence it may be safer to calculate the losses of those first two months as at most about a third (say 90,000: i.e. 265,000 minus the 175,000 that lined up at Smolensk) rather than three quarters. And half of those 90,000 missing were due to earlier fighting (some 12,000 dead and perhaps 30,000 wounded). Thus, the number lost to disease in the 2 months before that battle was probably about 48,000 (90,000 - 42,000), not far off the 44,167 that would be estimated by the general rule-of-thumb. Also, the typhus seemed to have struck more on the return trip, not in the earlier months. Finally, the papers that forum users have linked in their replies are great but all over a decade old and, as pointed out in an earlier message, within the past few years mass graves of some of Napoleon's troops have been uncovered. Research continues, so if you are keen on tracking down losses to disease, I'd recommend including more recent research.

Hi Guys. Thanks for replies. And thanks for the reminder about about the Korean War Mod, which sounds like the type of tinkering I had in mind. Yes, I'm sadly aware that I can only change textures and sounds (I'm a past published minor modder of CMAK and Medieval Total War). I've been away from the scene for a few years and I was hoping either that someone had already done such a mod in the last couple of years, or that the makers or some clever modder had come up with patches or cheats to unlock unit data, or pitting nations or units who were originally on the same side against each other. Such a change would in this case make it easier for a US/UK v Soviet mod because the CMBB Soviets could remain as is and another CMBB Soviet side (modded into US/UK forces) could face them. Also, just generally, unlocking the sides on which nations fought in all the CM series could open up some interesting scenarios such as for CMAK having Vichy French v US/UK in operation Torch, or randomly fanciful unhistorical wars (a German or Soviet civil war, US v Brit Empire, etc, etc).

Hi Guys, This may be a foolish idea, but has anyone tried modding CMBB to create the scenario of US & UK-led forces taking on the Soviets in 1945, as historically some US and UK generals wanted to? It seems to me to be possible, owing to the existence of captured armour on both the German and Soviet sides, and US-UK armour on the Soviet side, within the game to potentially mod the CMBB German army into a Soviet one and mod the CMBB Soviet army into a US/UK one (possibly with some German units wanting to join back in against the Soviets). Of course, it would be a lot of work and the range of armour would be relatively limited, and although the infantry units could be made to look and sound different they would still have the characteristics of the original. But I suppose at least regarding infantry units you might find some basic types that were similar enough for all but the historical purist to accept. So, has anyone tried this? Of course, it'd be better if the game's makers could release a patch/cheat to allow allied and axis units to fight besides and/or against each other. But I'm guessing they want to stick to historical actualities rather than what-if scenarios. Again, apologies if this idea is just too wacky.

Hi Nick, That's interesting. Not realising that there was a Vista version, I recently installed my existing copies of CMBB and CMAK onto my newer Vista laptop and both have run fine so far. My versions of these games is a 2004 (i.e. pre-vista) version release called Combat Mission Anthology. Anthology is great, by the way (if you can get it cheap), because its a version of CMBO, CMBB and CMAK that runs without needing to have the disk in your machine.