Dave85

Interesting stuff guys. Im always impressed by the amount of knowledge displayed on this forum. Out of interest, was the idea of the germans winning the BOB really that far fetched? Did they not have fighter command more or less on its knees before the urban bombing started? This is what I've been lead to believe. And if they had won it....what then? Would Sealion really have gone ahead? I guess only hitler knows...I agree it was far fetched and probably doomed to failure. But what if they had beaten the RAF and then not attempted invasion, just continued to bomb London into dust day in, day out? That is what made me go for BOB...would britain have been able to stay in the war? Code breaking, spying, deception and espionage were certainly one area that the allies excelled at, especially the British, and it certainly had a huge effect on the outcome of the war. On other forums, amongst lesser minded individuals, there is always the reoccuring accusation that Britain ran away in 1940 then proceeded to sit on the sidelines, doing nothing and then jump in at the last minute once the US had cleared out all the nasty krauts. Of course we all know this is nonsense. I dont think anyone could really say anyone of the 3 major allies contributed more than the others overall. Russia gave by far the most lives, America by far the most material and Britain, as in Napoleons day, did everything in her power, from the Invasion of poland to VJ day, to make sure the war went on, on two fronts, until germany was utterly broken.

YankeeDog you make a very good point and Im rather inclined to agree with you. Regards Pearl harbour, as a battle, the only thing decisive about it was the failure to sink the US carriers which could have had a huge impact on the pacific war. The japanese decision to bring America into the war was indeed hugely decisive, but that alone does not make pearl habour a decisive battle, as in, a different outcome to that battle would not neccesarily lead to a different outcome of the war.

I know this has been done to death, but I was checking it out on other sites and the one I would pick often does not even feature in the top 10. The most common answer is Stalingrad (of course the war in the west was just a sideshow and had no real effect on the outcome) I dont agree, I think by the end of '42 the war was, one way or another, lost by the germans. Had the russians lost stalingrad they would, by no means have been anywhere near out of the war. With the combined industrial and military might of the British empire and the United states there was no way germany would be able to force a defeat on the western allies without nuclear weapons, regardless of what happened in russia. My choice would be the battle of Britian. It was a close call and it was Britains last chance to stay in the war. Britain (and empire) being the only country that actually wanted war with Germany by this point, once knocked out, Germany would have been able to leave western europe virtually undefended and put her whole effort against the unsupported soviet union. What do you guys think?

Im pretty sure if pearl harbour hadn't happened, some other convenient attack on the US would have. US governments always want war, its the American public who need to see a couple of thousand of their own killed before they want in. I think by 1942 war was kind of inevitable for the US. They had poured so much money into military expansion and if Britain had gone under the economy would have been crippled. They could not really continue to progress while the rest of the developed world was tearing itself to bits. The one I've always wondered is what if Russia had been defeated in late 42 or early 43? I guess a land campaign on mainland europe would never have been an option for the west. Atomic bomb probably would have settled it.

British? Agree to a ceasefire? Never NEVER NEVER NEVER!!!

I too used to be a complete Total war junkie, on Med2 empire and napoleon I clocked up over 3000 hours doing campaigns and online battles. I havn't touched it for 6 months. If like me you loved total war but were always frustrated by CA's complete disregard for realism and historical accuracy, and you have a keen interest in ww2 then this game is for you. With regards to AI I always felt CA tried far to hard to make its AI too clever without resorting to prescripted AI plans. They failed miserably. I loved campaigns, multiplayer battles and especially multiplayer campaign on napoleon, but never had any time for single player battles. They were far too easy. The AI would charge its cavalry straight at your musket line from the off, leave its artillery undefended on the flanks, often with cannons on reverse slopes bouncing shot 100 meters over yr line, and feed its infantry peicemeal into yr waiting wall of lead. No matter how outnumbered you were you always seemed to be able to get fire superiority. Since getting CMBN I have only plyed single player and have been having a whale of a time . There are dozens of scenarios and campaigns designed by people who are far better tactically than I am. So in a sense I am not really fighting AI, I'm fighting the designer, its just that he had to make all his decisions before the battle and then cant change them. So its kinda like when the huns invaded france in 1940 and the british and french had to wait 3 weeks to get permission from high command to fire a rifle or move a section 10 yds. Having said that, on the defensive a well planned AI strategy will punish you severly if you take your eye off the ball. The designer will always put AT guns in excellent positions, but not the ones you expect. The first time you get some tanks to command, you will no doubt lose them all before you see a single german. On the offensive the designer will just throw overwhelming force at you often with a feint attack on one flank and a hard thrust down the other, all the while stonking yr forward positions with mortars and artillery. In quick battle the AI is not so much of a challenge and I generally dont play them as the attacker but if you do a defensive one and give the AI a 4 to 1 advantage in men and tanks, it can be a hell of a lot of fun. Sorry for going on, I'll get to the point: If you found TW AI challenging, and are worried that CMBN AI wont be..... well prepare to get yr arse handed to you

You may well be right, I've only used churchills since getting CW and the commander always seems to go down after a single burst or rifle shot. Rather annoying considering a whole platoon of mine seems to need about 300 rounds to drop a running hun 20 yards away.

Not suprising really considering the british usually outnumbered the germans 2 to 1 whenever they faced them.

You have to have a formation before you can add single units. You can also remove units from yr formation by pressing the little + sign next to it once you have purchased it.

You not seen battle of the bulge? Those guys get the turret blown off their sherman and they just cruise around with the TC hip firing the 30. cal, morale still high...

Anyone noticed that Churchill commanders suffer a far higher attrition rate than other tank types? I have. I tend to have to button them manually from the off which I never did with shermans

I generally find if I have crews in trenches manning machine guns and AT guns, the guns are normally knocked out before the crews. Still excellent protection, from small arms fire.

Dont think I could bear to open up on my beloved brothers in arms (not unless you dress em in blue unifroms and my chaps in red)

Yeah usually PIAT 1 per platoon I find that the high number of bren guns in a UK rifle company is far more effective for suppression fire than the 9 BAR's and two 30 cals in a US company. There's usually plenty of spare ammo in the trucks and carriers and a mag change on a bren is so quick you barely notice it.

Just wondering how you guys are finding british infantry in comparison to US in terms of arms, equipment and doctrine. Personally I think I prefer the british. For staters I dont miss the weapons platoon, I find it a rather unwieldy formation which usually sits in the rear while the rifles take all the casualties. Although the 2" mortar doesn't seem quite on par with the 51 I much prefer having them attatched to rifle platoons for direct fire and the fact they carry plenty of smoke. Light mortars in general are poorly suited to indirect area fire. I find the numerous bren guns far more useful than either the BAR or the 30 cal MG and I'm not missing water cooled MG's either. The bren seems very effective at sustained fire and I dont need to fiddle about deploying them. I find myself splitting squads a lot more now and generally keeping assault detachments in the rear until needed while the brens take firing positions to supress enemy line. This way if I get mortared the men are less concentrated and generally take fewer casualties. Although the lack of semi auto rifles is noticeable when doing close assault I find it more than compensated by the extra close range supression fire I can bring to bear. I like the way the PIAT is an individual team with plenty of ammo that I can call up when I need to deal with a stubborn hard target but otherwise keep out of harms way. I never paid much attention to bazookas until I came across a tank. I find the carriers very useful for mobile fire support in the open and rushing spare ammo to the front while under fire. A jeep is rendered useless after a few burst from an MG and poor off road. British armour and AT are guns are also far superior. The churchill is great for inf support and can take a fair bit of punishment and the 17pdr on the firefly and achilles finally allows me to take on the big boys head on. What does everyone else think?

No freindly fire. i checked the bunker in the review. Played the level again and managed to dispatch two quite easily with a rear piat shot and the other with a point blank 95mm so was happy enough. Did come across an almost invincible AT gunner though. I had a bren, sten and 4 en's firing from <10m in the open and a churchill with eyes on firing its mg from the other side. Kept this up till sten had hosed off 120 rds then had to retreat leaving the little nazi b*stard still alive. Used a whole fresh platoon in a frontal charge to wipe him out later on....nuts. There does seem to bit of an issue sometimes with very close range autofire being fairly innefective.

I have just finished the first scottish mission and had the same problem. First bunker went down to a point blank 75 round, second one to a close range grenade attack from the rear, but the third was unkillable. I had a squad attacking from the side at 23 metres, another from behind 15 metres and my churchill raining 20+ HE from the other side, 100 metres. Not only did this not wound a single occupant, but It didn't even suppress them. The krauts in the bunker mangaed to get 12 kills with the MG whilst being under this 360 degree close range fire. Please designers... If BC can't make bunkers that are killable, dont use them at all in scenarios. It's driving me mad and cost me a whole platoon already.

I realise the firebombing of Dresden was completely uneccesary and by all rights, due to its nature, an atrocity, but it was the germans who started the bombing of population centres and there is no doubt they would have done the same to us given the resources, I think Harris summed it up rather nicely in his 'Sowed the wind' speech. The shooting of prisoners, was of course carried out by all sides, most notably germans on russians and vice-versa and japs on americans and vice versa. I would not for a second suggest that the germans were any worse than the allies for shooting POW's on the western front. But the shooting of women and children, close range, execution style, for absolutely no reason other than fun/hatred/orders-now that was an SS specialty which they carried out on several million victims. Sorry guys, I know this kind of debate is frowned upon on this forum but its a matter close to my heart and it amazes me that so many people brush off nazi atrocities as being comparible to allied ones.

Just finished razorback ridge. Dunno what all the fuss was about, although I did read up on it before trying, which, needless to say, probably saved me 100 odd lives. SPOILERS I just pummeled the huns in the woods to my left, over the stream with every machinegun and mortar I had and sent all my rifle platoons in a headlong charge up the left most road. Took about 80 casualties, but then Im a fairly sloppy player anyway so I was pretty chuffed. Problem is, I've just started le Haye and have more bloody men than I know what to do with. Apart from 1st platoon I coy, which consists of 3 men, most of my platoons are in pretty good shape.

Put em in an SS hitlerjugend unifrom and all of a sudden noone wants to take them alive. Quite right too. I really wish they'd allow the intentional shooting of SS prisoners in CW because I have no space for child killers in my POW camps.

I havn't read this whole thread, but I'm just giving this campaign one last go before commonwealth and though I'd say my piece. I've tried this camp 2 or 3 times previously and have never had the stomach to get past SHK. I don't really have a problem with the level its self. The thing is, I guess, that whereas games are designed to be fun, combat is specifically designed to be as unfun as possible, so trying to make a highly realistic game/campaign is always about finding a balance. Now if I was a real battalion cdr in normandy, I would have known that had I taken my battalion into an attack, met unexpected resistance, taken heavy casualties with no gain and had to call off the attack, that there would be a fairly good chance that I could get the nice chaps up at division artillery to come in and pummel the hell out of the krauts in their relatively exposed positions before infiltrating my troops over the river under cover of darkness. As it turns out, this is exactly what happens if you fail to attack in SHK but without browsing forums I would never have known that the best option is failure-it goes against all precedence with regard to computer games. It would never have occured to me that a designer would do this. Now I know they cant tell you before the mission-"if it gets rough dont bother" but some sort of previous hint that there is more than one way to skin a cat might have relieved a lot of the frustration displayed on this thread.

I'm glad I'm not the first person here to suggest an Ambrose book. I know there's a lot of controversy about him being a bullsh***er but he does write an enjoyable book. D-day, citizen soldiers and Band of brothers are my favourites. I've never been too interested in trying to find a book covering the entire war as I can't imagine it telling me anything I don't already know Some other fave ww2 books: Stalingrad-Beevor Berlin-Beevor Crete-Beevor Road of bones (seige of kohima)-Hugh Strachan? Arnhem?-Urquart Im currently reading together we stand by James Holland about North Africa which seems good. Looking forward to getting hold of some commonwealth in normandy books as mentioned in other thread

The sherman company was 'typical' so I assume a mix of vet/reg and green. There was also a single 76mm amongst them which scored several hits. One thing that worked in my favour was that there was a lot of smoke deployed so once it had spread the sherms tended to appear 1, 2 or 3 at a time, but still it seems nonsensical that a crew, no matter how fanatical child killers they were and how long they been on the eastern front could continue to operate their weapons whilst taking such a beating. The funny thing was that of my two other panthers, one was knocked out by a single shot from a 57mm AT gun and the other from a bazooka extreme range shot. In a similar experience with a tiger my tank was knocked out quickley after killing 3 or 4 shermans, infact all three were. I have to say as an AT tank the panther seems far far better than the tiger, which begs the question, why did the huns continue to build the tiger 1 at three times the expense of the superior panther.

I did a qucik battle yesterday vs AI. I had a single panther (Elite/Fanatic) come over a ridge at full speed to discover an entire company of sherman 75's, 20 tanks at less than 150 metres. When I realised what I'd done I tried to withdraw it straight away but it was tracked quickley. I thought oh well, that panthers lost maybe I can take a few M4's with me. But no. The panther sat there, taking fire at point blank range from 20 guns and knocked out EVERY single sherman. On its own. It must have taken 100 hits. No damage to the armour or any of the weapons and no crew injured. The panther was not hull down either. Not really relevant, just thought I'd mention it. Is this realistic? I know elite/fanatic is a bit gamey but surely not?

Out of interest when did the british army stop using the bren as an infantry weapon? I know the marines carried it in the Falklands but not the army I believe