[Game to hard]

I'm a new player and have had problems with the difficulty as well.

I think the best advice I've read on this thread is to play with the quick battle system. Scenarios and campaigns are generally made by experienced players for experienced players, and can be brutal for the newbie. Even if you don't want to pick both sides yourself, you can still adjust the force levels to give yourself an advantage - an extra 70% or so point advantage helps a lot!

Things I've learnt so far - there is better, more comprehensive advice upthread, but this is stuff I've learnt the hard way in the last couple of weeks, and might be handy since it is from a newbie perspective:

1. Scout. If you're going to move a squad somewhere, first send a scout team. If you think that an enemy might attack from a direction, detach a scout team and send them off in that direction as a picket. Everything is so much easier when you know where they are before they engage your main force.

2. Discard any rock-paper-scissors ideas you may have from standard RTS games. Yes a machine gun is effective against infantry, but infantry are also effective against a machine gun crew. Volume of fire is the important thing. If you've located some enemy infantry, don't be satisfied by sicing a machine gun on them, they'll probably suppress the crew before they've got set up. Instead set two machine guns on them, as many squads of infantry as you can, and see if you can call in some mortars.

On a similar theme, anti-tank guns are badly named. They should be called anti-everything guns. But they are very effective against tanks. Never ever move a tank anywhere you haven't first moved infantry.

3. C2 is really really important. Keep platoons together whenever possible. If it isn't possible, keep the HQ near the elements which are most likely to come in contact with the enemy. If you get that wrong, move the HQ asap.

4. It isn't a race. There is something in the wego system that makes me want to rush things. I just have this feeling that every unit should be doing something every turn... This is false. Or rather, sitting in reserve IS doing something; it is fulfilling the very important role of not getting dead, ensuring you have forces ready next turn to avenge what happened on this one.

5. Artillery is a bitch. And doesn't know what side it is on. Keep an eye out for every round falling, and if one falls near your guys forget caution and just leg it.

[Need to get a new Mac]

Hi, Everyone--

I'm thinking of making the switch to Apple (but will need to run Bootcamp due to some other, nongaming applications) and I've been looking at the new 27" iMac with 2560x1440 resolution. I'm certainly no power user and but for some some basic office applications, it's pretty much email and web access--no web design, no graphics or CPU intensive applications or anything like that.

Now, assuming I can make the sale on the home front, does anyone have any thoughts or opinions about whether the following configuration would be worth the incremental expenditure from a game performance perspective:

1) 3.4GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7 ($200 more than the 3.1GHz i5, and $500 more than the 2.7GHz i5).

2) 8GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM - 2x4GB ($200 more than 4GB, and an additional $400 to get to 16GB).

3) 1TB Serial ATA Drive + 256GB Solid State Drive ($600 less without the solid state drive, and $150 more to add another 1TB ATA drive).

4) AMD Radeon HD 6970M 2GB GDDR5 ($100 less to get the 1GB GDDR5 card).

As you have probably already ascertained, I'm extraordinarily nontechnical so I'm really not sure if some of these features are worth the price; on the other hand, I'd like to keep this system for a good 5+ years before having to replace it. And lastly, it probably goes without saying that I'm most interested in great experience with CMBN.... :^)

Thanks in advance!

Yay been lurking for a while (brand new CM player) and I finally find a thread where I know enough to comment

1) If your needs apart from CM are basic office functions then I would avoid burning cash on the CPU. Yes it will give the whole machine a bit more life, but it really isn't worth the price - certainly this game would like it, but the lowest end CPU on a modern iMac will do just fine.

2) Do not, DO NOT! buy any more memory than you have to from Apple. Assuming you are in the US you can get Kingston 4GB modules from newegg for $46.99 - that is $187.96 for 16GB. It comes with 2 x 2GB (I think) which really is fairly okish. Although since you are running Parallels you might do well to buy a single extra 4GB to take you up to 8 total, with 1 slot free for future upgrades. This will be more than enough.

Newegg link:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139144&Tpk=kta-mb1333%2f4g

3) SSDs are great if you are willing to spend the money, they are not only a pain to fit yourself (and goodbye warranty), but if you don't buy one you don't get the mounting bracket with the machine that you need to fit one, which is a pain if you want one later. A good place to spend money, although it is still fairly expensive.

4) Graphics cards are non-upgradeable (for practical purposes) in an iMac. The base card will be more than fine for CM, and if that is the highest strain you will put on the GPU then you can skip it, but again this is a good place to spend the money you saved on the RAM and CPU.