Prince of Eckmühl

Originally posted by WindyCity: There you go folks. If you disagree with them, you're a troll. Want to know how not to be a troll? Just play along, and try and fit in. But, about TOW... It's my understanding that BF has entered into a contractural agreement with 1C to publish and market TOW. I can't for the life of me figure out how they are going to effectively do so, if they continue to allow these has-beens to trash the game. I own all of the CM series. Hell, I even bought the BF Strategy Guide. I've never spent more than 8-10 hours on any of them, because they bore me to tears. If I want to play a miniatures game, I'll phone a buddy with some GHQ micro-armour, and play one. I can't exaggerate how delighted that I am to see a game, TOW, that will hopefully redress CM's NUMEROUS flaws. PoE

Originally posted by Panzerjager653: At the fringes, the game's devotees are really kind of pitiful, caged as they are by it's absurd turn-based mechanics. It's old hat, now, but some of these guys will go on for hours about how "realistic" it is, endlessly quoting statistical data related to ordnance, and the like. That, however, is a house of cards. The game rests on sixty-second turns, a brain-dead AI, EXTREME micromanagment and other conventions ported over from miniatures wargaming. TOW is definitely the wave of the future as relates to company/battalion level combat simulation. PoE

Sometimes, I wish that the "anti" crowd would just go ahead and say what they really mean. For those who don't fraternize with the hard-core, CM community, let me summarize: "I told BF what I wanted. Instead they're giving me TOW and CM2. Well, those games aren't gonna cut it with me and I'm gonna give 'em hell in return. I'm gonna dog their new games and any attempt that they make at innovation in the process. They've betrayed their loyal fanbase (me) and now they're gonna pay. And I'll dance on the games' grave when I'm done." Well folks, if you're not interested in TOW, then please visit the other forums. There are several BF sponsored boards where you'll be right at home. As things are shaping up, you're just gonna spoil the game for EVERYONE else. The rest of us don't care if you hate the ads, or can't or won't play a game that has no turns or doesn't allow moves during pauses. We just don't care what you want from 1C or BF. It's not our problem. Thanks for your respect and cooperation, PoE

Well, this is a 1C product, correct? There's got to ba a plan in the works for payware add-ons. Anyone from the team talking? PoE

I think that some of y'all spend too much time worrying about stuff like this. The boards are about the games, not personalities, right? If someone acts up, the forum cops will take care of them. :cool: PoE

I initially hesitated to add my voice to this thread out of respect for the subject matter, Germany's war dead. In my opinion, the people of the world can't live with themselves or with one another unless they are willing to honor ANY nation's most heart-rending sacrifice, that of the blood of it's young. I supported Reagan's visit to the Bitburg cemetary back in the '80s for that precise reason. I didn't care who was buried there. The visit just seemed like the decent thing to do. What prodded me into posting my note up the thread was the apparent willingness of some of the members to subvert apparently solemn subject matter into a rant against the U.S., and by association it's veterans. That struck me as truly shabby. It didn't surprise me though, as I get a healthy dose of it daily in observing American politics. Both sides do it, left and right. Neither perp nor audience acknowledges how destructive it is, so long as it's the other guy's ox that's getting gored, "hurrah, let the ****ers have it!" No sense of history or proportion is evidenced. No stone goes unthrown. My, what a tawdry, relentless bore. Back in the 70's I remember picking up a sort of almanac of polls, THE BOOK OF LISTS. It was a vast array of "biggest, baddest, best" based on U.S. poll data for the previous year. Two of the lists really struck me as ironic. One was "the worst dictator in history." The top pick was Hitler, followed by Richard Nixon. The other was was "the most evil man who ever lived. Nixon beat out Hitler for the top spot in that one. I'll leave the analysis of the picks and their ultimate validity to yourselves. At this point, it strikes me that the posters can either continue with their nominations for "biggest, baddest, best" for 2006, or we can pause a moment in honor and remembrance of the millions of Germans soldiers who died in WW2. In short, we can throw stones or we can get back on topic. PoE [ October 03, 2006, 08:49 AM: Message edited by: Prince of Eckmühl ]

A dear aunt of mine married into the family after WW2. My uncle was part of the army that occupied Germany post-war and met her while he was stationed there in the late '40s. For a host of reasons that I will not detail here, I became a de facto child of theirs and "Bill" and myself grew quite close. She did not talk about the war, at all. But, on one count she did articulate her views, and that was her love of America and, in particular, of the American soldiers that she believed had saved her from the Russians. It's funny how the folks who criticize the behavior of American forces forget to mention that German refugees, civilian and military alike, clamored to no end in seeking refuge in American occupation after WW2. Did U.S. forces commit atrocities during the war or in its aftermath? Well, of course they did. Were the acts "legal?" Well, no, they were not. Were the perps prosecuted? Nah. Half a million Americans were dead, 98% of them across some God-forsaken ocean that they would never on their own have conived to cross, let alone make war, in the defense of folks that they frequently couldn't even carry on a conversation with. The war was over, and there would be no great "cleansing" of "bad-apples." What about Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Enough Americans were dead already. Had the weapons not been used, civilian and military deaths in the naval and land campaigns that ensued would have dwarved those associated with the bombings. The use of the atomic bombs likely saved millions of Japanese lives. Haven't U.S. forces raped women in their path? Sure they have. About a decade ago, three American servicemen raped an Okinawan girl and caused all manner of controversy in the process. The three perps were put on trial and sent off to prison for a long, long time. But, there was another victim. A high-ranking Navy official was sacked for expressing his opinion that the men could have visited a "hooch" and saved all involved a lot of heartache. Boy, now that's a long way from Zhukov, Yama****a or Kesselring, huh? And therein lies my point, I suppose. The difference between the German armed forces and those of the Western Allies was that the latter were constrained by all kinds of law, the fabric of which was sorely tested during history's greatest conflict, but one which endured, to their everlasting credit. The Germans, Russians and Japanese evidenced no such constraint. Criminal polical systems provided a rubber-stamp legitimizing whatever military excess that the exigencies of the moment might require. The only rule was that there weren't any. Driven by ideology, they fought total war with utter, perverse abandon, and all, to a degree, rept the whirlwind. So, please, stop the equivocation. Interning a quarter of a million Japanese is not the same as killing five million Jews so confined. A G.I. shooting a guy with his hands in the air is not the same as a Field Marshall mandating the action, and sailors raping a teenager is not the same as a nation's political leadership promoting the practice. Were Wilhemina Maben still alive and sitting in front of this keyboard, she'd agree, I have no doubt. PoE

The prospects for successfully completing a multiplayer wargame of any type are inversely proportional to its length. This is true of both board wargames and those for the PC. Want to have a good experience with your PC? Find yourself a game that you can finish in an evening or less. Close Combat is fabulous in this regard, as is Sid Meier's Gettysburg. The CMx family of games is far less satisfactory, because all but the very shortest AND smallest scenarios simply take to long, what with the turns and all the planning that one has to do for friendlies. TOW looks to be far more manageable in this regard. It ought to be possible for a couple of buddies to play a game or two on a Thursday evening after KP. In this respect, TOW ought to be the best thing that's happened to multiplayer wargaming, in a very, very long time. My vote? I vote for TOW Multiplayer!!! PoE

Good combat officers make terrible mistakes in war. They often do so for want of accurate information and/or because they are forced into doing so by the tasks they're assigned, time pressures included. A lot of them get their men and/or themselves killed in the process. I can't for the life of me understand how a game that depicts this possibility could be considered fatally flawed from its inception. PoE

If players aren't gonna face time pressures in decision making what's the point, what's being simulated? Flight sims don't allow orders to be issued while the game is paused. Although, if your nerves can't take it, I suppose you can play one of those silly, turned based flight-monstrosities. This is computerized tactical "wargame," correct? Turns? Pauses? In a computerized environment, they're both crutches, and they're both cheats. "Now, how am I gonna outsmart my opponent, how is Hans gonna nail that JSIII from the top of the Reichstag with that Panzerfaust?" That sounds neither "fun" nor "realistic" to me. In fact, it sounds contrived to the point of lunacy, especially given the insistance of so many here that wargames stress "authenticity," the ever guiding hand of the almighty-Borg notwithstanding. I have shelves full of old, POS tactical wargames that allow players to cheat by moving via turns or pauses. I don't want another one. I consider the "feature" a waste of programming resources that could be better spent on other aspects of the game. PoE

Well, the topic is "clickfest..." With that in mind I'd humbly submit that the average player will expend a heck of a lot more clicks in a medium size/length scenario of CM than the game to which this forum is dedicated. This is true because the friendly AI is so bad in the older game. In fact, you'll be hard-pressed to find one that's worse. Friendlies typically don't do anything on their own, other than face, fire or run away. If the friendly AI in Theatres of War is as bad as that in CM, it'll fail. I haven't played the new game, so I don't know. Until I have a look at it, all I can do is keep an open mind regarding its several attempts at innovation. After reading some of the comments about the game(s), I'm reminded of the old saying, "the only people who look forward to change are babies with dirty diapers." How true, how true, of the pure of thought, here at the BFC forums. PoE [ September 25, 2006, 09:11 AM: Message edited by: Prince of Eckmühl ]

Along with the pause, how about having the game autosave when the "P" key is depressed? That way, players can reload the game if anything goes wrong and won't ever lose. At that point, the only thing missing from the package would be the inclusion of a butt-plug which would allow them to hold their stool until Thanksgiving. PoE

I realize that this was directed at RMC rather than myself, but I'd like to comment, nonethless. I believe that the solution lies in a system like that used in Take Command: Second Manassas, one whereby players issue orders to subordinates who then order THEIR subordinates to take particular actions. In an altercation involving a Confederate division vs a Union Corps, say 16 regiments a piece, plus four batteries, Pinky isn't gonna have a lot of luck clicking his way to victory against Norb Timpko's AI, no matter how many games of Quake he's got under his belt. That game forces players to rely on their subordinates to control segments of the fighting. Sure, you can ride around and Take Command of various units at critical points, but the game tends to get away from you if you TC too many, and little Pinky is by no means immune to the scope of these battles. Delayed orders as a panacea? CMAK has some really big maps. I never realized how plagued with problems the delayed order system was until I tried to march a column of Panzers down a long, straight road in one of the scenarios. It looked like a Chinese fire drill. The total inability of the AI to coordinate the movement of units belonging to the same parent formation led to chaos. The supposed cure in that case appeared to be worse than the disease. In closing, I'd encourage the developer to devote their remaining resources to successfully executing their original concept. Wasting time and money on implementing turns into the game sounds like a bastardization of their original design and won't make the game one bit more playable or valid as a simulation. PoE

Respectfully, I don't think it makes sense at all, excepting the possibility of a new title, "The Borg do WW2." We have computers now, we don't have to do this turn stuff anymore. Continous play, FOW, friendly AI and reasonably accurate modeling of the tactical combat environment are possible in ways that were only a dream when I started playing wargames in the 1960's. Suspending play for orders/planning/refreshments just isn't gonna cut it on the "realism" front. I don't intend to be cutting or unkind, but that seems a salient, unavoidable truth in these circumstances. It's my understanding, btw, that developers like turn-based games because they are easier to code. ToW appears to be a step in the right direction. Time will tell, PoE

Turns in tactical games are a crutch. Battlefield commanders don't get the opportunity to go potty during a firefight, although some occasionally do so in their pants. But bathroom breaks aren't really what's at issue, here. No, the true desire of some of you folks is to turn the tactical battlefield into a chess match, obsessing over each and every move, and then to conclude the ritual by spending hours on end raving about how REALISTIC it all was. Excuse me, but that's both conceptually and practically absurd. You're not Hindenburg in these situations, standing over a map in a chateau somewhere 30 kilometers to the rear. You're a company or battalion commander in the heat of a battle. You've got to assess your situation and make timely decisions under the stress of combat. The philosophical conflict herein goes back to those stupid-ass tactical boardgames and miniatures rulesets. It's always amazed me as to how someone could wax volumes about the "realism" of ASL or other tactical games (including CM), when they take an hour or more to complete a move in a game played in time increments of a minutes (or less). Realism? Wargamers can spout all the technical details that they care to about the penetration qualities of ordnance and the slab of metal on the receiving end, but if you wrap it up in a package that rests on a big, fat, phony crutch that TOTALLY distorts the time element, the resultant game is just as much a failure as were the aforementioned tactical boardgames and miniatures rules of years past. Bah! PoE [ August 02, 2006, 07:08 AM: Message edited by: Prince of Eckmühl ]

Can I use them for camouflage then? :mad: If I cannot build an emplacement of dead cows I will NOT be purchasing this game :mad: </font>

CMx1 does a lot of things very well. For instance, you can setup a situation where AFV face off at 750 meters and go at it. The modeling of the relationship between the vehicles as they shoot it out is peerless, exquisite if you will. That said, there are aspects of the game that are flawed, holes that a critic could drive a truck through. I will not detail these here out of respect to the pure of heart and a recognition that the POH are fully aware of said flaws and choose to overlook them. I believe that they are willing to do so because they value certain aspects of simulation over others, but that's pure suppositon on my part. Well, we've got another developer in play here, one that's pushing out a product that MIGHT deal with some of the shortcomings evidenced by CMx1, ones that could really use some doctoring. If the direct-fire-vs-armour modeling of CMx1 gets watered down a tad in the process of delivering a better-rounded simulation, then I say, more power to them. There's more to simulating a WW2 combat environment than armour placement, thickness and the qualities of a HV round coming down range, a lot more. Otherwise, the Wehrmacht would have been defeated in France in 1940. How about let's put the axe aside and give these guys a chance? PoE

@Bill, My comments weren't directed at you. In reading through the posts since the forum opened, just yesterday,, I was sort of appalled at the pirahna-like edge to many of the comments. The character of the messages ran the gamut from simple demands, all the way to threats and ultimatums, "it's my way, or the highway...If it doesn't have turns, I won't buy it." That's not an actual quote, btw, but I believe that it captures the spirit of many of the comments registered here since yesterday. And folks repeatedly asserted their conviction that to deviate from established norms would likely undermine ToWs REALISM. This is far, far from certitude, won't you agree? It's ironic that I managed to step on your message above. Yours was apparently posted while I was composing my own. For that matter, my comments weren't directed at anyone in particular. I didn't cite a direct quote because I didn't want to ruffle any feathers. My sincerest apologies if I offended your sense of propriety with my comments as that simply was not my intention. PoE

And so it is that, occasionally, we might want to take a gander at the less satisfactory aspects of computer wargaming. With that in mind, I'd submit that, generally speaking, they are as follows: 1) Hexes 2) Turns And, for tactical/battlefield games, yet another: 3) Micro-plotting moves/orders for EVERY unit at one's disposal I identify these items because they are so patently unrealistic, items that we had to endure with boardgames, wretched devices which were subsequently ported-over to computer sims. Although I still play boardgames competitively, I genuinely hated the tactical genre, beginning with Panzerblitz, right on through Sqaulid Leader and ASL. The turn/movement/combat systems that "sorta" work with strategy games become laughable at the tactical level, at least to anyone thoughtful enough to consider what's going on as you microplot the behavior of all those units in turns ranging from 6 minutes to 30 seconds. That's one hell of a command and control system. Makes the Borg concept look a lot more plausible, doesn't it? Now, a developer is trying to take a step toward delivering us from what I've described above, and a lot of people here are challenging the attempt as being UNREALISTIC Well, for God's sake would you please, just for once, take a look at what you assume to be REALISTIC and acknowledge its shortcomings. If you're not willing to accept a change of paradigm, computer wargaming simply cannot evolve. ToW will likely not be PERFECT in any of the regards that I briefly touched on above, but it sounds as though they are at least trying to address some of the shortcomings of the CM series. I humbly submit that they ought to be given an opportunity to do so. PoE