Robban

Much better than the first demo. infantry can take out tanks easily... good. would like to know how a joint attack by tanks infantry would work... if its gonna be sharpshooting tanks as in the first demo where the tanks were sniping infantry. i dont like the planes... but hey... guess the germans didnt like them either. a question... were the mobile AA as effective in real life as in the demo?

and lets hope they hide better there than in bushes (just played the demo)... otherwise HE from tanks will slauhgter them in seconds. area fire in CC worked very well to inf in buildings... although no LOS on the soldiers... area fire killed and supressed INF so you could make an INFassault without getting slaughtered by grenades and small arms. I think option 2 would work great. its pretty much as in CC. the game takes care of what floor the soldiers are.

1 Jagdtiger 1 Jagdpanzer 1 Panther 1 mg34 4 misc inf all inf runs away from startarea so they dont get instantly slaughtered by barrage from which trenches seem to give little protection. mg34 where the tank is at pic4. jagdtiger goes to the houses to the right, between the hills, and peeks out to take out tanks at distance. panther hides behind house in the same cluster of houses. jagdpanzer behind the house next to the one in picture 4. mg 34 gets killed immidietly by barrage. i try to abandon the pillboxes but they got killed running over the bridge. infantry hides in bushes in strategic places, hold place, hold fire. it immediatly becomes a tankbattle. takes out several t34s and a couple of IS2... the rest of them i tried to bombard the guns so they couldnt fire at me, 3-5 tanks with disabled guns driving around. bridge gets clogged. enemy sends his tanks around down the railroad. jagdpanzer keeps on firing down the tracks until gun gets detroyed by IS2... abandon it and hides with inf squad behind the houses. IS2 gets all the way to pic4 and starts to snipe down my one of my Infsquads in the bushes. all killed in one squad. several in two other squads. none in the squad who was joined by the crew from the Jagdpanzer. the wave started to come over the hill from the railroad direction... the large hill... used the panther to take out the t34s and mg down the troops... as many as I could while on of my squads nearby kapt on shooting... had to retreat with inf out of line of fire. they joined another squad nearby in the shadow of the jagdtiger. now the infantry started to come running like the ghosts in LOTR3... in two long lines following the the shortest way over the bridge and between the houses... first they attacked the jagdpanzercrew/infantry... by telling my, rather stupid, troops which soldier to attack I could kill several enemies... probably 2 enemys for every one of mine... wondered where the reinf has gone... then they continued the flood against the inf by the jagdtiger... the fought well but i used the jagdtiger and panther to kill them one by one as they ran towards them in suicidal fashion using MG and HE (which seems to work like usual bullets as the man goes down and the shell explodes way behind him... worthless). they got all my inf... i got all theirs. all along 4 IS2 stands, doing nothing, in two groups. i waited. he waited. i waited etc. no more inf for him. no more inf for me. again I wondered where the reinf has gone. i waited. he waited. i started driving closer to two of his IS2 that stood over by the railroad/hill. knocked one of their guns and suddenly 4 tankkillers (100 something) appeared at the other end of map, destroying my panthers gun almost instantly... just managed to pull back a couple of metres... abandoned it and then my reinf came (?!), at last, and killed the enemy. i had no more casualties. the jagdpanthers and nashorn killed the four tankkillers... three fully functional IS2 standning waiting in the village, two tankkillers with destroyed guns in the village, 3 IS2 with destroyed guns. I miss CC

smoke, infantry not as vunrable (I think they are killed too easy by arty when hiding in trenches... seen from way too far away by tanks... in prone postition they get killed way too easy), building entry (dont care how ugly it will look... maybe just a barrel showing through the window)... but then again Im a CC-sucker.... etc. The tank part is fun though. playing the demo now and then... would be nice to be able to tell the tanks that Im the one who decides who to face so they dont expose the flanks to IS2s. with some patches here and there and a new demo with the changes I might consider buying it.

I started this thread because i thought this game would be something like a 3d cc (infantry in houses, smoke etc)... It wont be because that is not the intention of the developers. Saying cc or tow is the best is like arguing about which car is the best... Volvo or alfa? Depends on taste and personality.

my post wasnt which game was the best... just what the developers wanted with the game. if im not totally wrong the developers mentioned that they had CC in mind while developing the game (I googled on CC and similar... thats how i found the game for start). when I tested the demo there was a lot of infantry to select from... so i thought maybe i misused what resources I choosed... I have played the demo several times but havent got the same feeling as in the close combat II demo... but it is rather cool to put a king tiger on a hill top and literally letting him be the king of the hill... then letting the Tiger I and his little "Panzer vier" buddies outflank the ruskies in the end! the conclusion is that this isnt a game for ME. anyone got any suggestions for an old CC-fanatic? will there be a REAL CC VI?

to bad. will have to wait for another game then :-( thought this would be THE game... been longing for a new Close Combat... I made the mistake to lend my copies to a former boss... when i quit he "forgot" to give em back... I still have CC III (which tends to be a Tank shoot out too) but i miss CC II.... great battles Infantry vs Tanks in narrow streets and AT guns hiding in streets... edit: of course not illegal copies... after trying the demo for CC II I bought CC II, CC III... then MS sold the license and CC IV was quite booring so i jumped that one... bought CC V which was quite fun.

maybe just the demo then. is there some way, like in CC, to tell them to be cautios, normal or assault (the two last are ther of course)...

First... the game looks great... no doubt about it. also like the atmosperic sounds of barking dogs etc... just like CC. Ive just played the demo and now to my question; The tanks seem rather stupid compared to CC. In CC they reversed when you told them to move when an enemy was in front. this made retreat a quite good tactic... to, for example, stand with your Tiger in a street and, when there was risk of getting flanked , back away while facing with the strongest side to the enemy... when i try to get out of an engagement in TOW the tank makes the worst of the situation by turning around... me or the game? is there smokegrenades in the tanks (and for infantry) for hasty retreats/cover for infantry? now the infantry gets slaughtered instantly. no way for my tankcrews to escape... they get surrounded and killed. none of my infantry/crews survives the intitial onslaught to participate in the defence of the hills... even if they are crawling for dear life the tanks gets them... no enemy infantry in sight that i can see. is there som way to see what type of inifantry the diffrent groups are? cant find info in the manual and my memory isnt good enough to remember what configuration the command staff/panzerschreck had. it would be great to see a citybattle in the demo to test that type of combat... where infantry plays a greater roll. in this scenario it just ends in a tank shoot out where I put my strongest tanks (jagdtiger and tiger II) in a high position with the front towards the enemy and firing until the end while the smaller tanks tries to outflank... the reinforcements comes at the worst place ever... 20-60% gets killed instatly by IS II and heavy tankkillers from far of on the other side of the river. would be better (and probably more logical) to come into battle via the road at the hills foot.