Eddie

You need to download and run both patches. Install patch 1.02 first and then 1.03.

Here's my AAR of Valley of the kings. AAR.PDF

No, Battlegroup Ivanov is not suitable for H2H as Red starts with way more units on the map then Blue. You would get the same experience you did as with Hamid's attack on Hill 412. All my missions are designed to play against AI only. Staglers missions are more balanced in forces and could be used better for H2H. You can find Staglers missions in the repository.

Well the bunker itself remained intact but the mujahedeen inside were all killed by the explosions on and besides the bunker. When the 120 mm. mortars were used up I called for two airstrikes on the other bunker but they both missed. A user made campaign.

Hi Stagler, Here is some feedback on your mission Valley of the kings. SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT I started moving the 1st, 3rd and 4th platoon of A-company toward Hill 2521. Once they had a clear field of fire on the terrain that leads toward hill 2521 I positioned all units so that they covered the advance of one squad that I ordered to move up the hill to see if it could detect any minefields. While this unit was moving there came a group of mujahedeen out of nowhere and all my units opened fire on them. The mujahedeen were neutralised in a short but intence firefight and afterward I ordered the one squad to move in the direction of Ghar-Saa-at. The squad came under fire from a trench on the top of hill 2521 and one men was K.I.A. After I ordered the squad to take cover I moved the rest of my units to their position so they could deal with the threat coming from the top of the hill. In the fight that followed most of the mujahedeen in the trench were neutralised and I moved my units a little higher, right in front of Ghar-Saa-at. At this point I saved the game. When B-company arrived below hill 2505 I ordered al units to hide and ordered a th 82 mm. mortars to attack the trenches on top of hill 2505. While the mortars were falling from the skies I ordered B-company to move out of the forest and up the hill quickly. They arrived unharmed and it seemed the mortars did an good job in neutralising any defenders positioned in the trenches on top of the hill. When I moved one squad toward the trenches on the left side of the hill it came under fire from the right side of the hill and I lost two men, one K.I.A. and one W.I.A. I moved the rest of my units to the same trenches on the left side of the hill but now further away from the direction the fire was coming from. All units arrived unharmed and the units in the two trenches closest to Ghar-Saa-at had a clear view on the trenches below them. After a while they spotted some mujahedeen down there and opened fire. In the firefight that followed all mujahedeen were killed and I lost no units. At this point I saved the game again. When I continued the mission I advanced one of my platoon commanders to the ridge of hill 2501 so he could get a clear view of Ghar-Saa-at. While he was moving he became the target of a group of mujahedeen that was moving in the same direction he did but from the right side of the hill. The commander ended up K.I.A. I moved the rest of my units to the position of the commander to engage the mujahedeen and attack them from the rear. The mujahedeen clearly did not see this coming and were neutralised very fast. I now had the opportunity to bombard Ghar-Saa-at but I spotted a bunker right down hill 2501. I ordered the 120 mortars to attack the bunker, after the bombardment all occupants were neutralised. I had Ghar-Saa-at in my sights from all sides now and figured there would be not much room for escape for any mujahedeen. I repeatedly ordered the MIG's to bomb the buildings and the other bunker near Ghar-Saa-at and waited for them to finish the job. Once the MIG's were done I ordered the 1st and 3rd platoon of A-company to move in on the buildings at Ghar-Saa-at. They came under sniperfire from a position below hill 2501 but no unit was hit. From their secure positions in the buildings at Ghar-Saa-at my units neutralised the sniper and then I waited for the mission to end because I was sure I had neutralised all mujahedeen. When the mission ended I was surprised to see I did not achieve the targets objective which meant Mullah Razar had escaped.:mad: Anyway, I achieved a major victory but must admit it, I was playing the mission at difficultylevel veteran. I had a good time playing your mission as it had some pretty tence moments in it. Thank you very much for putting this mission up to the repository! P.S. I wanted to show the AAR but somehow I could not get the thing into my reply so I gave up on this.:confused:

Thanks for the tip!

I just saw the mission lasts 90 minutes. It will take me some time to finish this. But I will let You know how I'm doing in the coming days.

Indeed, we are being spoiled. I'm interested to find out more about this Mullah Razar and his entourage and will therefore skip some hours in editing tonight. Thank You Stagler for uploading this mission to the reposistory! I will give You feedback once I have played Your mission.

I´m looking forward to Your campaign too. Super!

I did not even give thought about the fact that the use of (too) many units might slow down a low end computer since I don't play the CM series on such a PC. I don't play it on a high end machine either but I never had any problems with framerates and never experienced any slow downs at all. But You are ofcourse right on this. I get it on the gunships, sometimes the attackorder will be executed, sometimes not. So no reason not to order such an attack, one just does not know if it will be executed or not. I took another look at the first video and now did see the poor pixelsoldier in the trench falling down, and when You zoomed out the unit(s) in the building firing on the trench could be seen clearly. In the second video I now also noticed better the firing of the tank on the trench and the effect it had on the pixelsoldiers there. To bad the tank was hit immediatly after it fired. I think You will manage to make some nice clips of the CMBN mission once it is done. There will be plenty of short and long range fire exchanges, and other action to do so.

Good to see the handling of the camera is enhanced, I will take a look a this when I get into CMA again. The vertical lines in the sky do look a bit strange but the game has to many good things to make it a gamestopper for me. My CMBN mission is getting on the way, the map is done and the first stages of the battle are ready. I wanted to make a mission playable for both sides but Blue has got so many units (more than the mission You're currently playing) that it would be to much to handle for any player, no fun at all. Therefore I will make a mission for Blue using the same map and mission but with adjusted units for both sides. The computerplayer needs more units to make things challenging for the human player I think. Moving Your armor to the left could be a good idea. Maybe You can find a weak spot in the defences of the enemy tanks there. In the early campaign I only ordered gunshipattacks on terrain where I spotted muja's and never on buildings. But when I will play CMA again I now know not to order any attacks on builidings by gunships as they will be probably not be executed. The enemy armor is well hidden in the terrain and they have good fields of fire. Most of them will see You coming from a far while You can't tell where the enemy tanks are positioned, at least not all of them. I will take another look at Your video's to see the sniper in action, I concentrated on the armor and the beauty of the scenery to much and must have missed this. It must have been funny and maybe frustrating to see the recon forces crawling to their destination while under fire. But they got there in one piece. I tried to give the enemy armor orders in such a way they could reach their defensive positions but this is ofcourse also achieved by not giving the player tanks from the beginning. As I wrote yesterday this mission should better not be played real time but I would not dare to say (or write) one would be diluded by trying so. Without the tank the crew can't do to no damage to Your tanks but they still can be a threat to Your men. From that perspective it would have been better if the tanks and its crew would have vanished in a huge ball of fire all together. If Your tanks could not see anything from the position where they were it would have made little sence to keep them there, it's just to bad their movement was punished so hard. Some say learning the hard way is the best way, so it could be You will turn out to be an excellent CM player in the end. Those who start this mission with the idea of being superior because of all the assets at his or her disposal will realise the enemy is actually a lot more stronger then one might think. The thought of a walk over will fade away soon enough when time passes and this has a lot to do with the terrain and the way the BDF is positioned in it. I hope the "commando's" of B Company will succeed in the task You have in mind for them. The enemy is not organised in such a manner as if they would expect to be attacked from the rear. But as you mentioned there is a lot of open ground that needs to be covered and one can never know how such an adventure turns out. Looking at the numbers of enemyunits You neutralised so far I would say You are doing a great job at softening up the defenders. I wonder how Your plan to hit them hard will be planned and executed. Just don't take more risk then is necessary or the whole thing might backfire at You. I am trying to make my missions challenging for the player and am willing to sacrifice the time needed to do so. I'm glad to have the editor provided with the CM series as designing scenarios has actually become one of my major hobby's. And getting feedback like Yours gives creating scenarios an extra dimension. I understand Your units must be positioned before any attack can be executed and this can only be done with moving Your forces. So no worries about the video's, they were very nice to watch. If You get a draw or loose this mission I'm sure the difficulty level You are playing on is one of the causes as it is the most difficult one. But if You like playing the CM series that way why not, this is entirely up to You. I play on somewhat less difficulty level and that is hard enough for me.

It's good to know the patch can be used with saved games. I installed the patch to see if my version of CMA upgraded properly and it did. But I have not seen how the patch changes gameplay since I am using all the time I have for creating a mission for CMBN. It is a wise decision to let the armor support A-Company in securing the left flank. But first one has to get the armor there and this can be a tricky thing. Yes, the artillery does a good job in turning any hideouts into rubble. So the gunships did not arrive? That's strange, I have never experienced this. But I never ordered a gunshipattack on a building, could this be the reason for them not showing up?:confused: The plan You had in mind for eliminating keybuildings on the flank and in Ikashim seems a good one to me. But could You please clearify why You were in for a surprise there? The enemy is indeed agressive, when they spot a target they can destroy they will open fire. Fortunatly Your recon squad managed to reach the building without taking any casualties. Did the sniper hit any targets? If You could get men across the bridge without getting shot up then why not armor, this makes perfect sence to me. And yes, I tried to improve the survivability for the enemy tanks and therefore changed their orders. This way they have more chance to fight back and do some damage. The tankcrews have different skills, from green to veteran as far as I can remember. So there should be some who can hit Your units at great distances with no problem. I would not recommend playing neither version of this mission in real time. I watched the video You made. That was a nice close up of the tankcrew bailing out of the tank, luckily these pixeltruppen survived the enegament wiht Your tanks and You scored some points. Still it was a very nice video with these tanks side by side. To bad one was destroyed because it was exposed to much. The BDF is indeed well posistioned and this can make it hard to decide which way to turn best. Thanks to the patch You can now disembark Your units, let them board the vehicle again and disembark them later on and still use them in the mission. At least that is what I understood of the list of improvemenst that came with the patch. When I designed this mission I tried to give the player the idea that he would be superiour because of the superior tanks, numbers in troops, support assets and information. As You now have experienced things turn out to be somewhat different and the mission is not so easy. But if You stick by the tasks each group has assigned to it You should still be able to secure most of the objectives in time. Do You mean You are moving some units away from Objective Backyard across the river? If that is the case it's a bold plan but I'm curious to see how it works out. That does not look to good considering the fact You have not secured any objectives so far and only managed to destroy one enemy tank. I hope You will manage to turn the whole shootingmatch around into Your favor. At least You did not loos any APC/AIFV yet. The times I played this mission one of these vehicles was ussualy the first to get knocked out. Anyway, thanks for Your feedback once again. You made some really nice videos of the action so far. And remember how things turned out with The Samti deposit raid. You thought You would loose badly but still managed to get a draw. So I think nothing is lost yet, just take Your time and plan Your moves carefully.

Life is not fair!

BFC, thanks a lot for releasing patch 1.03. I did not expect it to come so soon, great!

An excellent marketing strategy. If Things would end up that way it would be nice.

Snowball is handling improvements for the Russian version of CMA. And I have read repeatedly BFC is planning for a patch for CMA, so I think in time it will be there.

The elevation of the Shilka's guns in the picture makes me wonder what it's aiming at. It is not the man running down the street in front of it, that's for sure.

As things are now one has to use some special tactics when disembarking passengers from the BRDM, and still use the vehicle. Maybe this will be fixed in a patch for CMA.

I'm glad this is solved, it was a bit confusing indeed.

If "T55M-T62M Partial Patch_Afghan_MikeyD" is the name of the file when the "T55M, T62M correct bow patch" is extracted to Your CMA Z folder that should be the one to use for CMA.

It took me some time too to give orders to all the units that were deployed, so I understand things don't go that fast. But there's no rush what so ever, just take all the time You need and have fun.

There is one file in the repository for CMA which is called "T55M, T62M correct bow patch". This should be the one that is placed in Your CMA Z folder. It could be the file is called "partial patch" or "uparmored T55/&62 bow mod" once it is extracted to Your CMA Z folder, this I don't know. But there is only one "T55M, T62M correct bow patch" and this is intended for CMA. I have no knowledge for such a patch for the T55M and T62M in CMSF.

Thanks for the links to the repository. I will download the best ones later today and try them in the coming time. I'm going to switch between the editor and all the campaigns/scenarios to see how various units could be used when creating a scenario. I'm not really surprised with the hardcore playerbase that follows the series. It is a unique series that offers features no other game provides; lots of stock missions, superb graphics (vehicles especially), gameplay that makes You feel like You're commanding units in a combatzone with many different orders to give without losing control of the situation, an easy to use scenario editor and the opportunity to playback all important events in a mission as often as one likes. Not to mention the repository BFC provides with all these modifications and missions to improve this great series even further, for free! CMBN is indeed another type of theater then CMA and therefore needs a different approach. But I'm going to try and make the best of it. You can, ofcourse, take all the time You need to play Battlegroup Ivanov. This could give me some interesting feedback spread out over a longer period. And I'm looking forward to some videos with close ups of these T-62's firing their ATGM's at their opponents.

Allright, so You agree with the altered start of the mission. Most of the tanks the observer saw must have been moving, at least that would make most sence to me. And don't worry; no long waits for, or last minute reinforcements in this one. The Soviets have prepared themselfes for this assault so they better would have enough firepower for this operation, which ofcourse explains the numbers in artillery- and airupport. The information I gathererd regarding the capture of kabul will surely be used in one or more missions based off an actual battle but it is indeed put on hold because of my plans with CMBN. But the revisioned mission You are currently playing will not be my last one for CMA. I will not forget about this beautifull game and the possibilities it offers. I really liked making these scenarios for CMA, it has tought me a lot about the editor and I never would have thought that I would get the reactions I did. I'm having a great time at this forum so far! Yeah, it's a shame that people seem to be overlooking this great game, but with games like CMSF and CMBN I can understand it. I have been waiting for CMBN for a very long time to arrive and untill now I did not do the things with it I would have liked to do. I have been preparing the concepts of the maps I mentioned since june, and have been gathering all sorts of information (as if I did not have enough allready) that could be used for missions. Though it is very hard to get specific information about units that were deployed in certain areas or villages. So I guess the mission(s) will become semihistorical but it is to early to tell how things will turn out. It has my prefence to play against the AI too because that is the way I introduced myself in playing PC games and I never saw the need to change it. I loved PC gaming right from the beginning and felt privileged to live in a time that such technologies were available for people like me. Absolutely great! I'm glad You like the way I tried to make the AI challenging in the missions, thanks for Your appreciation! And thanks for the tip regarding the old CMBO missions in the repository, I will take a look to see which one would be worth playing.:cool:

I'm glad You did observe the difference between the two versions and I hope You like the additional changes. But after reading your post of 08-13-2011 I got the impression You appreciated most changes since You gave a five star rating. You mentioned CMBN in this post as well and I have started this game up recently since I took a break in scenariodesign for CMA. I noticed there is a huge difference in graphics, aspecially when zooming out, between this title and CMSF/CMA. So I decided I'm going to pay attention to this title in the coming time. I'm almost done creating the concept maps which have a total of 87. I will pick the ones with low civilian density, and with these concepts it should be less time consuming to create the somewhat larger maps I had in mind so there will be plenty of room for defensive zones, and tankbattles.