Paulverisor64

Thank you for your suggestions. To be honest it's not the legibility of the text, it's just that it is so tiny. The setup screens take just a small fraction of the screen. The scenario readout is the most trouble. My 47 year old eyes just have trouble reading this. Does anyone using 1920 by 1080 have this same issue? It seems that there has to be some kind of text that establishes the size of setup screens.

Yesterday I downloaded the Combat Mission Afghanistan Demo. As I was loading up I quickly noticed that the setup screens and the associated text was tiny. I thought that perhaps the Options might be able to help a little. I observed that I was setup with "Desktop", as it allowed my non-standard in this game resolution of 1920 by 1080. I got out and manually changed the text file in the game folder to the 1920 by 1080 resolution. This did not change anything with the setup screens. The battlefield itself appears fine. It looks as if the game does support widescreen correctly. So my question is; how can I keep the 1920 by 1080 resolution in the game, yet be able to have the setup screens at least be large enough to be legible? There is too much screen real estate for this to be squished into a tiny area.

Is there any advantage to using Engineers?

I haven't observed any problems with gameplay yet with my custom made computer yet. I have a Core I7 950 CPU with 6 gigs of RAM and an ATI 5850 graphics card in crossfire. Perhaps knowing the make of people's computers with issues might point out that the minimum requirements need to be raised with this game.

No I don't even see XP recommended. The recommended processors are both dual core. I would like to be able to run this on a slower computer that I have but it wouldn't be able to cut it.

Ssnake51: Focus in a bit more.

Thanks for continuing very good information. Hopefully this will help people just getting into the game be able to elevate their enjoyment. As this is meant to be a simulation it will be very frustrating to those accustomed to running and gunning. This realism is what I genuinely love. The commiting of troops to battle causes tension because with each move you could be saying goodbye to valuable members of your army. Those who you have sent off to their death will not be coming back for the next mission. Knokke: I'd like to comment on your last paragraph. I too wanted to use the tank crew of disabled tanks to get a better push with my infantry. Perhaps you do have better luck gaining ground with infantry, but not only do you stand a chance of losing valuable experience through the death of your tank crew as you suggest; you also would lose the tank that was disabled from your available vehicle pool in the next mission. Very good information for using infantry in battle!

Very good advice from all of you. It sounds as if you all take a careful methodical approach to the battlefield instead of trying to Blitzkrieg. IMO experience that is the best. Phil: Thanks for the pointers on specific equipment it does sound like the Pz III N would be quite well suited for softening up trenches. I also didn't realize that equipment such as Mortars would pick up significantly in speed and accuracy the more experience they gain. That also would be a great tool for the trenches. Knokke: That is a very good point for using 75mm over SPG's. I can attest that the Wespe didn't have a whole lot of rounds. After they are gone it was OK now what. Um can it tow anything? nope. Typically these guns don't go very far anyways. I'm sorry you ran into the low frame issue. kip: I like what you said about using leap frog to advance. That would be a good true to life technique to use. I didn't realize you could really use suppression to advance like that. It is quite tough taking ground as infantry. Deputy: That would be really funny to see a tank knock a plane out of the sky.

It is a shame that people are running into optimization problems. I personally am finding this a very fun and immersive game. Knock on wood I haven't had any PC issues yet. (I've only got past the 1st mission however) I like all the effects in this game. The blazing tanks look great. The snapping trees with artillery fire look realistic. The landscape is great. It will be good to discover what it is that is causing a lot of systems to buckle. I do remember how Empire Total War would crash at a certain point in each campaign. Perhaps this game has a similar memory leak issue. I would imagine that this would be resolvable. Hopefully we will get updates on how this problem is being addressed.

I've finally had time to complete my 1st mission as the Germans. This post may draw more response from people who have played the German campaign, yet some tactics may work across the board. I have had several trial runs before I did something that worked for me. (I've started this post because I'm thinking there probably are better ways to do this) I found that there was at least one approach that was heavily mined and in bringing forward my tanks I always incurred damaged and occasionally a destroyed tank. My light armored vehicles would always get heavily targetted because they were easier to take out. I tried another approach of pre-bombing the enemy trenches with mortar fire, but they couldn't be counted on to hit anything. Also I noted that as soon as I get to the anti-tank trench that it triggered the enemy ground attack aircraft. Which would disable my tanks and half tracks. What I ended up doing was taking a very deliberate and methodical approach to wiping out one trouble spot at a time. I really love the Wespe; yes I ran out of ammo but they are great for high value targetting. I fired from the tall hill which was a great vantage point, being sure to use a slight raise in the hill to hide my attack. I focussed on the enemy artillery pieces. I landed one or 2 shots in each area that might hold an artillery piece. Once I felt confident I sufficiently weakened the enemy I moved my tanks forward. I abandoned flanking because my 1st attempts were disasterous; especially the middle approach which was mined heavily. I led with my more expendible tanks to the left approach. This brought on the air attack which I had a mobile AA gun to counter as well as an 88 gun. Maybe I'm wrong but it didn't appear that the 88 was actually attacking the air craft. (I thought it was a flak gun). I do think this did succeed in drawing the focus away from my tanks somewhat. Both guns survived but the crews were basically eliminated. I had a squad of infantry ready to man the abandoned guns. My early bombardment with the Wespe left some guns intact, but my tanks outnumbered the remaining guns in all skirmishes. Once I removed visible opposition I brought my half track with infantry and towed gun up to clear the trenches. Basically all the way through I started with initial bombardment, suppressed the remaining mounted MG's with my tanks, and cleaned up with infantry. I only flanked the enemy on one end. I attacked on the easy approach, and enveloped the enemy as I pushed East across the map. When the enemy tanks appeared I then was glad I had my one artillery piece (that I thought was an 88 but maybe I'm wrong). On it's high position it really helped out in repelling the invading enemy armor. This was my experience and what worked for me. (At least in the 1st conflict) Here is the part in this thread where I ask "What works best for you?" Is it possible to storm the enemy position in force using Blitzkrieg tactics or does the enemy's defensive stance with mines, field guns and tank traps negate this possibility? Have you found a good mix of units in battle, if so what tactics do you employ with them? Have you been able to mobilize your entire battle force into action at once or do you play this more like chess; one piece at a time. What have you been able to achieve doing it this way? I do have a configurable gamepad which I could easily group my units and actions but so far I am finding it more effective to concentrate on one area at a time. There must be several approaches to achieve success, I'd like to unfix my mind from the way I am doing things and hear how you prefer to engage in battle.

I find it hard on easy. I'll copy what the various levels do. 1. Novice — Your forces inflict more damage to and receive less damage from the enemy; morale can be enabled or disabled. 2. Regular — Weapon characteristics and inflicted damage correspond to real world values; morale can be enabled or disabled. 3. Veteran — Enemies are somewhat more accurate than on Regular; you can not disable soldiers morale; weapon characteristics and inflicted damage correspond to real world values. In addition, damaged parts of enemy vehicles are no longer visible in popup information side-panel. I play the game on Novice level but leave Morale settings on because it just feels more realistic. I haven't tried the other levels yet because I am finding I don't typically get many blind side shots at the enemy and I still take considerable losses. robecq: You can manually train your turret away from the undesired targets. If you are stationary: Use Defend order and point turret in correct direction. If you are moving: Select the move command and the turret will rotate in your movement direction. Thanks to Sneaksie I've got this figured out.

I too would like to see makers of quality games like this to flourish. I pre-ordered this game for my brother and myself. I advertised this game heavily on a war gaming website I enjoy. Which by the way I could have drawn the ire of this community because I suggested that pre-order would be the only opportunity to get the manual. That proved to not be an issue as my posts were largely ignored. Perhaps the makers of this game could make it up to us by writing a good strategy guide.

Will I buy from Battlefront and IC again; absolutely. They produce games which attempt to emulate true life on the battlefield and with minor gripes they do this extremely well. Did they false advertise. "YES" This should not have been posted on the website as an extra sales feature. It says; •and you will receive the limited edition printed game manual** a couple of weeks after the release in the mail (together with your box and DVD disc of course). This says "with your box" not "in your box". This is exactly the way Battlefront sent the game manual for Combat Mission Berlin to Barbarossa, it was outside of the CD case. If you look at the online PDF manual you will see that the pages are side by side, which is absolutely set up for print in a small book. If you look at the PDF manual included with the game and setup for printing you will see that the pages do not even set up to proper size. It scales for printing in a small sized book. This obviously was set up to be printed in a real book, just like in Battlefront's previous titles and IC decided they could keep the extra money. Would I have bought the CD version if I knew it would contain only the game setup guide; perhaps. Would I have made a stink about this? Absolutely not. The whole essence of this disappointment stems from the fact that we were lied to. The game setup guide is absolutely different than the "manual". The definition of manual in previous titles has meant a literal manual. I appreciate the apologies submitted by Moon. I normally do not grudge over pages of paper with writing on them but promotion needs to match product. There are times when it is necessary to let salesmen know that we will not be fooled twice.

I got my physical copy yesterday. I can't see how "the manual" could be made as an additional selling point. That is very cheesy advertising. It got me hooked. This is not the game manual, it is in PDF. That is the last time I will buy an additional CD copy. I too remember Combat Mission's manual which was a true manual. Shame on you for pulling one over on the faithful people who pre-ordered. Please do not use gimmicks like this again!!!

That is a real bummer. That is the reason why I have been anxiously awaiting the arrival of my pre-ordered CD copy. Must be a tree shortage.

Alan123: Your idea sounds even better. It would seem that it would not be outside of the realm of possibility to have something like this patched. It is not a game killer but just annoying. Some kind of modification of victory condition such as what has been mentioned or even a proximity trigger on offensive missions. Hopefully someone from Battlefront or IC might have a suitable suggestion which could be implimented in a patch to resolve this issue.

I do the same. It is a shame that the game gets hung up when the enemy is not putting up any resistance. It would be nice to have a button where you could remove the fog of war in the single player campaign once you were in a position where the last unit is somewhere hidden.

Very true; After the initial surprise it should be much easier for at least the infantry to see the big frame of a tank than the tank seeing the crawling infantry in grass. As you suggest after a certain amount of time the T-34 in real life would become spotted. If the T-34 can see the target, the target eventually would see the T-34. I would imagine that initially the T-34 would have been in the dug in position which would give it an extra advantage in concealment, but it shouldn't be invisible.

I can understand the inability to see the T-34 in the 1st screen shot. I can understand the T-34 getting the jump on your group from it's defensive position. I can't understand how something of T-34s size and limited spotting FOV could be seeing and picking off infantry in the grass, whereas they from their full FOV can not see where the fire is coming from. I can see where your tankers encroaching on the T-34 might have a hard time seeing their target from their limited FOV. But point blank range? I do wish that tankers could open their hatch from the distance to better seek out their target.

Wow! this was confusing. I think I finally have this correct. Part of the problem is that I got an error message when I tried unzipping the replacement auto update exe and ru file. I had to unzip this to the desktop and cut and paste them into the auto updater file. Great this was in place. I did the "run as administrator" directly from the auto update exe. I then went to the game shortcut and tried the update button from there. This failed to connect. I hit the "run as administrator' and it loaded successfully. To make sure this finally was correct I hit the update button again. I got another fail to connect. I finally discovered that the Administrator Rights which "WERE" checked yesterday "WERE NOT" checked today. Perhaps this had something to do with the replacement of the auto update??? I will be keeping an eye on this flaky behaviour. Things are once again good to go.

I have upgraded to the patch, but I believe I must have done something wrong in dragging the zip file for the auto update. (Update from the sticky) I get the below message when clicking the update button. Checking for the updates... Update failed. Error: Access to the path '..\users\Patches' is denied. Checking for the updates... Update failed. Error: Access to the path '..\users\Patches' is denied. I put this in the Battlefront/IC/Theatre of War 2 Kursk 1943 area. The download is a zip file but for some reason once downloaded I don't see anything in this location which needs unzipped.

I didn't know about the facing command. Thank you

That is my observation as well.

For waypoints use the shift key. For reverse look for the reverse icon in the lower right panel.

Good job Battlefront and IC I am very pleased how the released game is playing. I played my 1st generated mission all the way through and was happy with how everything played out. There were no real bad surprises. Thank you for being responsive to this community with the patch that was released. Hopefully this game goes above and beyond TOW Africa. I am also hopeful that down the road new missions will be added whether through users or developement team.