[Kiwi Soldiers]

I finally cracked this tiny, fascinating scenario. Achieved the objectives with only 2 casualties. I would recommend it to anyone new, like me, to force you to work out just what exactly you need to do to fully utilise the options available. Key was use of smoke (to screen the railway building from the farm so the troops in the railway building had no visual on my approach to the farm), terrain cover (advance up the far east of the map edge, shielded from the MG in the farm) and splitting teams (nearly all teams, in fact) to provide plenty of selective area fire to suppress the enemy and prevent grenade use as I approached the objectives. My thanks to whoever designed it. It may be tiny but it was a lot of experimenting to find a way to use the sparing resources available to defeat the Axis set-up. Brilliant use of terrain and overlapping fields of fire on the part of the designer. Thanks so much.

[GL Kiwi Soldiers help!!]

Thanks Poesel. I found the thread. Very helpful, if only by confirming that it's not just me that can't win this! Tough scenario. Very well set up by the designer, whoever that was.

[GL Kiwi Soldiers help!!]

I've been dipping my toes in this game, trying to play this tiny little scenario, which seems very difficult to me. I can't get anywhere with it. Has anyone played this through, as Allies, successfully? And if so can they give tips please! Can't get near the railway station without being cut down by the troops in there. Can't find a position to put fire onto the railway station whilst another section assaults. Can't get any of the little arty available to do anything useful. Have tried laying smoke to screen the Railway station, then assaulting it - same result - cut down. Have tried laying smoke to screen the railway station from the farm, then assault the farm - same result - the sniper and MG in the farm cut my kiwis down. Anyone won this? Cheers.

[CMFI VS Achtung Panzer]

I was querying the second half, Womble - the intuitiveness of the UI. It seemed to me that you could meaningfully say that AP is very much harder to get to grips with than CM, but I may be wrong. Maybe I'm just more used to the CM interface. I'm far from a newcomer, sadly. Being new to this forum doesn't mean someone is necessarilly new to the game. I've wasted more time than I care to reckon with the CM series, from CM1 through to CMFI. Ditto with AP, for that matter.

I thought Graviteams first person tank shooter (that was more or less what it was) - Steel Fury - was pretty good, by the way - if all you wanted to do was sit in the tank, move around, fire, follow the preordained orders. I liked the graphics and it 'felt' real despite glitches. Limited interest though, if all you can do is shoot....

I like AP too, but the experience of playing it isn't as smooth as CMFI, somehow. But I might go back and try to work out the patches again, boot it up, try it again, now that I've remembered it. Maybe I'll find something new there.

I also bought Graviteams combo game - Blaze of War. I didn't like that at all, despite it trying to combine the tactical game in AP with the shooter in SF. My copy, at any rate, wouldn't run smoothly and the graphics didn't seem as atmospheric as with the other 2 titles. Not sure why.

[CMFI VS Achtung Panzer]

Meaning what, womble?

[CMFI VS Achtung Panzer]

oh. And the maps look much better in AP - they are from historical photos, no sharp lines etc as in CM. However, there's still a grid beneath them, as there is in CMFI - which, in both games, sometimes makes placing your men exactly where you want them a bit challenging - they snap to the grid, basically.

AI is better in CMFI, I think. Less stupid suicidal behaviour, on both sides.

Both are equally unreal, I should - FINALLY - add when it comes to simulating a command experience as there is no subordinate AI worth speaking of in either game - you have to move each and every squad. You can't, say, be in charge of a company, give general orders and expect the captains etc to move squads accordingly. In both games you will have to give orders to each and every squad. If you wanted a command simulation then Command Ops is the only one that has AI that does this, but the scale is bigger and so you still end up (commanding at battallion level, say) giving as many orders as you would in CM or AP. PLus that's counters, no fancy sprites.

[CMFI VS Achtung Panzer]

Should add, AP should allow more interesting tactics as the maps are huge and there is ample scope for wide flanking etc. For some reason I've never managed this - maybe because I've usually played the reds and they are usually so embattled and short of men that it's hard enough just to hang in there, at least in the first few scenarios (I never got past the fiorst few scenarios)...

[CMFI VS Achtung Panzer]

Tanks seem able to plough through forests in AP. Sometimes they can hardly move in woods in CMFI, sometimes they edge through, sometimes they go round. In AP they drive over trees, knocking them down (beautiful deformable terrain allows you to enjoy this holywoodesque spectacle) - hate to think how long their tracks would have lasted in real life, or the optics, or how long before they were jammed. It looks bad, but it also messes things up tactically.

CMFI LOOKS more realistic when it comes down to sprite behaviour and appearance, but not sure if that makes the results any more real.

CMFI is about 500% easier to learn to play and navigate. It's intuitive. AP is definitely counter-intuitive. And wait till you have to patch it (which you have to as soon as you buy)......my God.....

Arty in AP is a bit badly done. You call down barrages and open top half-tracks drive straight through, linger with shells going off right on top and suffer no damage.

Atmosphere in AP is strong. You can take fantastic cinematic screenshots......though that's true in CMFI too, the black and white snowscapes in AP are seriously atmospheric.

The AI isn't 'scripted' in AP. They go for VPs. Sounds great, but it can just lead to daft, unreal, chase-around-the-map-after-the-free-VP behaviour. I have found quick battles in CMFI to seem slightly more real.

Just my little opionions.

AP also takes ages and you can't save mid-game. In the end I stopped playing it for this reason. To really get into it the battles need to be about an hour long....but sit there for an hour with no saves? I couldn't really get the time to do that. It's certainly a game you should have and try though. Very interesting and atmospheric.

Also, the spotting in AP is a bit off. Makes it hard to set up infantry ambushes for armour, because the tanks seem to spot you, hunkered down in thick forest, from a long way away. And you need to do this a lot in the first scenarios

I guess I think CMFI is far and away - for many reasons, not just realism - the very best tac sim out there. It's a fantastic game. AP is much harder work, and not because it's better. CM Normandy was great too, but had - in my humble opinion - a problem with the implementation of bocage hedges which ruined the realism for me - infantry could only get through thick bocage using explosives or gaps or tanks with forks fitted. If you visit Normandy - or read battle accounts - you will know that the hedges are not impenetrable like this. But in many CM Normandy scenarios your tactics were limited because you couldn't get through the hedges where you needed to (lack of pioneer explosives, rhino tanks etc). CMFI doesn't have this issue.

[So how is Caen?]

Sneaksie,

Thanks for that. I'll go back and try again. I had imagined trees to just not block at all. Perhaps the AI can actually see better than me though, given I'm dealing with the limits of the 1920x1080 screen. It's almost impossible, I note, for me to clearly ID a tank, say, when the distance is anything more than about 500 yards or so (I can ID it by using the camera to move closer, but not if I take the view of the AI, as it were). Thanks for the response.

[So how is Caen?]

Sneaksie,

I'm just curious - could you confirm for me that tree foliage (such as very definitely confounds a Mark 1 human eyeball such as mine) is not coded to impede LOS for the AI in this game? I mean, can you confirm that the AI can actually see through trees, even multiple lines of trees? Just so as I know what I have to deal with.

Thanks,

Peter

[So how is Caen?]

Is it just me, or does there seem to be no LOS operational in Caen - at least as far as trees go? This may be the case for all TOW games - I'm not sure. I've noticed it immediately in Caen, and it's made it not worth playing. Going down to vehicle level to check LOS is a waste of time because I can't see through tree foliage, but the enemy AI clearly can. My AI can too, if I direct it what to attack, but it won't attack targets behind trees of its own accord, even when those targets are pouring fire into it. It's easy to spot this from even the first battle. Just drive something into one of the fields, keeping behind trees. Go down and check LOS to the line of 88s that always seems to be deployed in the tree line just below Cheux. You won't be able to see them, but they'll pick you off no problem. This means you have to really micro manage movement in order to keep tanks behind ground obstructions. It's tedious, and very unrealistic. The AI should not be able to spot through multiple lines of trees at a mile distant. I'm playing on a 1920x1080 res.

Also, does anyoneknow how to get anti-aliasing to work? If I set the card (a460GTX, 1GB) to override seems to be the only way, but then I get see-through trees in ther near distance (that is, the far landscape appears on top of the near landscape objects). Maybe that could solve the los issue.....