Zenomorph

Clearly lots of folks here are well read in WW2 history so I'm wondering if you could offer suggestions on some good reading. I'm hoping more to the point to find the particular type of read that was characterized by Catton's classic (American) Civil War history "This Hallowed Ground". In thinking about why I LOVED that book so much it's mostly bc Catton concentrated so heavily not on the bullets and blood (although he by no means ignores them) but more on the personalities that influenced that war. I've read several WW2 histories but have always been a bit disappointed when comparing them to Catton and would love to find something similar. Other books, of course, touch on the strong (or weak) personalities of the players but none that I've read even approaches Catton in that area. He also uses anecdotal stories not merely for their entertainment value but to make a larger point to help the reader gain a better understanding of the nature of the war. Such as when during a lull in a battle when some enlisted man saunters up to Gen. Grant and informs him (with some exhasperation) that if he'd just move some men onto that yonder hillock he might be glad he did so. What's more, Grant does so and it changes the course of the battle. Catton uses the episode to illustrate what he saw as a uniquely American trait. You weren't likely to see such an incident in the Prussian army without someone getting executed. Any help would be much appreciated!

Hahaha! Yes Blackcat, I remember the thing about the watches now! Can you imagine?! "Here Yank, here's my MG42. Now lemme see that Timex." An incident that once again proves war's insanity. Funny, I'd have totally sworn it was in a village. I've actually heard of memory improving with age. Not to me I guess.

Thx, Jon! I'll pick that up. While I'm at it, can you recommend any other good reads. I should post this as a new thread. But there's so MUCH I don't follow rt that war. One example that immediately comes to mind is why didn't the Allies - at the Battle of the Bulge - pinch off that salient rather than simply push it back. I've read that Eisenhower was criticized for it but not much about his reasoning. I'm curious as to whether it was too "outside the box" or was it something else. Ike was so brilliant in many respects and I'm guessing there were logistical reasons for his actions. Thanks again!

But clearly there are lots of folks here more expert on the game than me and so I wanted to ask everyone what you do in this situation. I'm surprised I haven't run into it before but I guess those clusters of high walls, especially ones surrounding every backyard, are a bit on the rare side. I'm guessing that others have found a method to avoid assaulting a bldg from way down the street when there's a whole row of unoccupied buildings directly across the street from it. Is it just bring in the big guns? And hey! Didn't Sean Connery in "A Bridge Too Far" climb walls and crash thru windows?? So there, that settles it!

Did you ever read that account - in Ambrose's "Citizen Soldiers" I think - of the officer who orders a newbie Lt to "take that house down at the end of the street" or some such. Whereupon the Lt promptly jogs down the middle of the street, knocks on the door and asks the grizzled Wermacht Sgt who answers if he and his men will kindly turn the house over to him. The commander is standing there watching like WTF!!! But it worked. It worked so well that the Sgt sends one of his men to round up all his guys in the rest of the village and once everyone has gathered around the Sgt becomes so exasperated with the Lt (who apparently doesn't know what the hell to do) that the Sgt basically starts ordering his men to stand here and the US men to stand there so that he can finally officially surrender. Talk about on the job training. Hey Battlefront! How about modeling THAT behavior!

Combat is generally hair raising. Beats waving hello to the enemy across the street as you tip-toe thru the front door. But to your point, I'd thought of that and had the troops covered from the second-story windows of the adjoining houses - woohoo do I think of everything....NOT. To no avail of course. And I hate wasting precious HE rounds for such a task. But my question really is whether or not the pratice of using heavier weapons to break thru walls using heavy infantry weapons is simply not modeled in the game for programming reasons or am I missing something gameplay-wise in order to bring it off. Sounds like the former. This game is so brilliant that I'd be surprised if the capability didn't exist. I was thinking perhaps it's not modeled bc it simply wasn't done but then I remembered an account of troops using grenades to break thru interior walls of adjoining bldgs in order to advance down a block w/out needing to go outside.

I've just read enuf military history to keep my red-blooded male cred going and use of smoke is rarely mentioned. And when it is mentioned, it seems only in cases where it's a very windy day and so commanders are discouraged from ever bothering with it again.

(I think I've avoided any major spoilers here.) I'm playing my first MG battle - "A man can die but once" (just against the AI to get the hang of it). I know good walls make good neighbors but, man, there's a LOT of them in this scenario. I made my first mistake when I told my troops to enter the houses across the street from what the scenario briefing told me would be an occupied school. I thought my troops would just climb over the walls behind the houses. But being polite Nazi boys they dutifully went around to enter thru the front door. The Brits - being uncharacteristically not big on courtesy - promptly blasted them. So I replayed the turn (like I said, just getting the hang of things) and tried targeting a portion of the walls with my infantry - assuming they'd use panzerfausts, grenades etc. While my guys squeezed off lots of bullets, they apparently didn't use anything heavier. Finally I had to resort to wasting rounds from bigger guns. Any tips on how to breach these walls? And it seems like my troops should just be able to climb over them. The same goes for entering thru windows. Thanks!

I use smoke rounds as often as I can in these games and usually to good effect. I really don't understand why smoke was so rarely used in the war. I also wonder if I'm possibly taking away some of the historical accuracy and thus taking away some of the challenge of the game (not that it's not still tough to win!). Thanks for any input!

I have done. I used "hunt" until the 6th or 7th floors and use slow to get up to the 8th. They still get spotted - and only when they finally reach the 8th floor. Thanks tho. I still feel like I'm doing something that I don't even realize. Like that there's some command to tell them to keep quiet that I don't know about.

Thanks to Battlefront for creating an absolutely brilliant game! And before I ask a question that sounds like nit-picking I want to say I work in the busiest ER in my city and I know all about the aggravation of a family member firmly planting their chin on my shoulder while I try to start an IV. Just wondering if I'm doing something wrong really. As an example, I'm playing the MG scenario "A man can die but once" and if I try to sneak my arty spotter nice and quietly to the top of that 8-story church steeple it's as though he's putting on pink and yellow satin, jumping on the roof and doing Sweatin' to the Oldies ala Richard Simmons. Every weapon in town opens up on him. (I know what you're thinking! Poor ol' Ritchie.) So I thought, well, it makes sense that the enemy would keep an eye on that steeple. But the problem is I've experimented a little and it seems to happen everywhere I try it. Any advice would be appreciated. Btw, the spotter unable to complete a smoke mission bc he loses sight due to smoke in the spotting rounds? Totally brilliant!! And frustrating - but in a good way.

Hello all. I know this has been discussed before but I don't think it has been recently and the posts haven't been exactly what I was looking for. I'm looking for an operational level PC game as a companion to CMBN (and add-ons of course). These are the criteria I'd hope to find: - Not too complex; I want to concentrate on playing CMBN and not get bogged down in the minutia of the operational level game. I've played TOAW and I like it but it's pretty complex - unless anyone is aware of how to mod TOAW to make it less so. - it doesn't have to be a Normandy-based game so long is you can create your own maps and OOBs - (which brings me to) a good - not too complex - map and scenario editor - it pretty much has to be a PC game; I have a house full of kids and board games don't stand up to well to them. I've glanced at vassal but it seems pretty difficult to mod and you're stuck with whatever area the map happens to cover. Thanks for any help!

I'm wondering if there's something I'm missing. The maps in the repository: "Caen Area - Juvigny to Fontenay" and "The White Manor (H2H-only QB Map)" look to be really great maps but for some reason I can't open them. I've downloaded a bunch of other maps from the repository, extracted the .btt files and placed them in the QB folder (or wherever is applicable) and never had a problem opening them. I don't think I did anything different with these two maps (tried the procedure a few times including re-downloading) but for some reason I can't open these ones. Since these two maps are among the most recent additions to the repository I'm wondering if there's a (very recent) patch or some such that I missed and is causing this. (I'm also remembering that this happened once before - the Caen area map project I think - but I never asked about it.) Thanks for any help!

Thanks for the response, mj.

Thanks for the sentiments about my uncle. Awful how PTSD was so misunderstood back then - and STILL isn't understood by way too many people today. And YES, if you go, hire a guide! I've been fortunate to travel to Normandy a few times. Not until my last (3rd) trip was I smart enough to hire a local historical guide. He was a retired British history professor living in Normandy. Made the trip about a million times more interesting. He had it down even to important gullies that you'd drive past without a thought. Kicking myself for not doing so earlier. I'd give you the man's name - a true character and a lot of fun - but he's retired (again) even from tour-guiding.

mj, that's one of the greatest stories EVER. I wish my father and uncle were around to hear it!! They're both passed away. My uncle seriously wounded on Okinawa and it is my opinion that he passed away due to PTSD. Everyone talks about how changed he was upon return home. Life of the party before he left and very dark and sad when he got back. Died, essentially, of alcoholism. But I remember him well enough to know that he would have TRULY LOVED that story!! I'm guessing that it wouldn't be out of the question that a pair of those vehicle tracks may have belonged to that tanker at your party.

Is it possible to import maps (or anything else for that matter) from the other CMx2 games such as CMFI of CMSF into CMBN? Thanks for any help!

I see photos like this and think Lord, what these guys went thru on our behalf. And it's not as if the battle of Aachen is exactly a household name. So much un-sung bravery.

Forgot to mention if you look at the built up are in the center bottom of the photo and go to the fields just to the east of it you'll see that - although much of the area is filled with bomb craters - that area really got pulverized. You can also see lots of vehicle tracks in the fields where there apparently was a lot of activity. Also if you look just a little east of that same built up area there's a massive shell crater just between the bldgs and that little hill. Anyone know what would have caused that? If there were a lot of them I'd assume a high-level bomber but there's only just the one. A sturmpanzer?

I found this photo so compelling that I thought others here may find it interesting. It's an aerial photo of the town of Alsdorf, Germany that apparently was part of the larger battle of Aachen (caution: the photo is pretty large). Aachen is about 10-15 miles SW of Alsdorf. What I found most helpful is that very prominent hill-type feature in the left center of the photo (on google maps the hill's named "Berghalde Maria-Hauptschacht"); the feature allows you to very precisely figure out where you're at if you google map Alsdorf: http://www.oldhickory30th.com/Alsdorf18111944.jpg I found it on this boardgamegeek forum page: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/929475/original-wwii-tactical-maps-influence-on-game-maps/page/1 And this is the wikipedia page on the battle of Aachen that includes references to Alsdorf: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Aachen

Probably everybody here knows about this but me but here's a LOT of WW2 photos most of which I hadn't seen before. I decided to set the link to page 29 of the forum bc of the very curious photo at the top of the page. Everybody looks pretty happy except, ya know, the one guy. http://forums.gamesquad.com/showthread.php?104031-WW2-Photos/page29

Thanks Fuzee!!! Now, if you can post an Ipad version you'll know that I've found it bc you'll hear me yelling "Yeeeesssss!" There's all kinds of Ipad overlay map makers but none, at least that I've seen, that have military symbols or allow you to import your own. They let you draw lines but only have cutesy trip planning-type symbols or the like.

Hello all. I'm wondering if anyone is aware of a good app/program to use for planning a battle. I find I enjoy simply creating a plan (if only to watch it break down within two minutes) almost as much as the actual battle. I have seen both Hex Map Pro and Gameplan but both of them are lacking as planning tools for a game like CMBN. What I have in mind is an app that includes the following: - ability to import a screencap jpg of a CMBN top-down-view map. - either existing military icons or ability to import your own (your own customizable ones would be by far the best so that your icons could include things like names of leaders etc.) - colored line drawing ability - An ipad version would be AWESOME. I'm certain there's more features I'd like to see but those are the biggies for now. I'm surprised it's so hard to find something like this - or maybe I'm looking in all the wrong places. Thanks for any help!

Twilight 2000. You are correct! Apologies but no door prizes. Thanks for the responses tho. I'll try your suggestion, Yankeedog.

Hello all. I've never created a mod but I'm thinking of creating one that may have an unusual twist. My nephews play a role-playing game that takes place in a sort of post-apocalyptic Europe where the war continues but units that were once 10,000 strong are now down to 300-400 and supply chains are virtually non-existent. Vehicles are kept running thru cannibalization and things like laser range finders or thermal imagers are hard to come by. As such, I'm wondering if it's possible to disable these features on the vehicles in CMSF. I'm really doing this mostly as a way to keep a connection with my nephews who live about 900 miles away. Thanks so much for any help!!