DougPhresh

That'll happen when you have to fight for survival from the very beginning and find fascists and capitalists arrayed against you from within and without. Haiti has had a similar experience - It's hard to have a stable and prosperous society when you have a giant target on your back. Cuba survived when all of the socialist governments in South America that tolerated liberalism within their borders and didn't militarize their societies fell to coups and the USSR outlived the other socialist governments that were crushed in 1918-20. There's not much to speculate about. The alternative was not only the complete eradication of the European Jewry, but also most of the people of Eastern Europe as well. This is wandering a long way from Afrika Korps but I think the tide is beginning to turn against Cold War historiography and apologia for White Terror.

I know Rome to Victory has just came out, but I was wondering if @Fuser, @Vein @Juju or @umlaut have announced plans to bring their mods to Rome to Victory. The new vehicles and uniforms look great out of the box, but the work the community has put into Fortress Italy these past few years is incredible and I can't help but notice my Sherman IIIs look a lot more beat up than my factory fresh IBs and IIAs. I know these things take time and most of the prominent modders may not even own R2V yet, I'm just curious.

The Dutch, Belgian and Czech formations in North West Europe all had fascinating campaigns.

Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. I would greatly prefer the approach that came with R2V, for example the French forces - They are under the Infantry tab, but have their vehicles. Right now there is no way for example a British Infantry Battalion to have their carriers in QB. Worse than that, there is no way for the Indian army to have any of their vehicles at all in QB. No Jeeps, no carriers, no trucks. I'd rather all QB formations be the same as in the editor. Foot only units would simply be a matter of going through and deleting the vehicles as house rules with your opponent, or when you pick the enemy force as well.

In real time you can get your units under control when the Tac-AI reacts in ways that will get them killed, for example scattering in FAST. In WEGO if the tac-AI makes a bad decision in the first seconds of a turn, you have to watch it play out.

It's like this with other nations as well. Some Commonwealth accounts and sources have the crew armed with Browning pistols and Stens (Thompsons in Italy), at varying levels. Same with US crews and their SMGs/Carbines. I kind of like right now where AFV crews may have pistols and SMGs are varying levels if only because it's a compromise since there may not be a definitive solution.

Maybe in the modern titles, it could be animated as Gunfighter - plates forward, weapon ready. It is a little more tiring to advance in that position.

M24 Absent in QB

So to clarify, the M24 is available in the editor but not QB. Additionally, the US Armoured Cavalry Squadron with M5s isn't either. There is the M8/Jeep Cavalry Squadron and that's it, not the tank variant.

Commonwealth. The Regiment is our sacred home with colours carried from Waterloo, The North-West Frontier, The Somme. Each Armoured Regiment is a battalion-sized perpetuation of the cavalry. (Or the RTR, or infantry but that gets complicated fast) A Brigade is where we go to work.

I'm beginning to see the problem This is a recipe for being roughly handled by the Wehrmacht. Although strangely, Butler found success.

Is that not similar to the structure of a Commonwealth Armoured Brigade? I mean in terms of structure. I didn't know they were given missions that involved taking on enemy divisions! In defense of the Americans, I can't help but mention Task Force Butler. I am curious how combat commands differed in both structure and success. It seems like chapters 2 and 3 of the linked paper discuss American Ad Hoc units and combat commands generally, and their employment.

If you haven't read it yet, World War II Combat Reconnaissance Tactics is a great little title. It goes over each nation in detail and provides examples of their patrol activities. There's a lot of stuff there for scenario designers including typical oob and missions for recce forces.

I appreciate all the work you guys are doing, but I'm hopeful we'll eventually get what we're hoping for. Don't count out Fortress Italy just yet.

Yes, I think so. Fortress Italy as a whole needs a once-over to get everything in-line with the changes that have happened over the years. Now that it is complete, pending the Italian module and Elite Forces Pack - I think it would be worth the effort to give it a thorough once-over. Something like the SF2 campaigns, although it will probably be much less work and take much less time. The reality is that so much has happened since 2012. AI plans are better, there are new terrain features, new types of equipment and formations, maps can be much bigger and many more changes large and small. Maps and AI plans made for R2V are miles ahead of Gustav Line and light years ahead of the Base Game which in turn makes all of the scenarios, campaigns and QBs better. I am a supporter of how Battlefront develops Base Games and modules. It's been much smarter I think than breaking up the effort over the past 11 years into 3 straight for Battle for Normandy, 3 straight for Fortress Italy, 3 more for Red Thunder and so on. This is a marked improvement over the CM1 titles where CMAK was so much better than CMBO that there was really no reason to buy the older titles unless you had an interest in that particular theatre. I know I started with CMAK and had a very hard time going "back" to play CMBO. The engine patches across all titles and cycling development into modules for each series in turn has meant that the older titles don't feel as "old". The system now works fairly well, where R2V is in fact newer than the newest base game and the quality of scenarios, maps, campaigns and so on is just as good as the nearest WW2 line, Final Blitzkrieg. Even with the engine up to date, and new modules being as good as the newer games, the old modules and base games certainly show their age, for the aforementioned reasons. There are so many scenarios in the base game and Gustav Line that would benefit tremendously from AI area fire, AI withdrawl and for God's sake AI triggers! There are very good maps that could be improved with ditch contours, streams and the like. On-map AAA was added in Gustav Line and is conspicuous in it's absence in Fortress Italy. On top of that is the TOE and OOB changes, and the much better formation selection in QB, that for one thing gives infantry units their assigned vehicles. British infantry Carrier Platoons actually have carriers! In short, the way the titles are developed is a good way to distribute improvements, maybe even quality generally between titles, but not within titles Bringing the existing content up to the standards that have grown over the past 8 years will be a fair bit of work, but it will eliminate bugs. More than that, it will mean that when you buy Fortress Italy, you are getting a CM title of 2020 standards, set in the Italian Theatre of Operations in 1943 and incorporating all of those improvements into each campaign, scenario, QB and map. The Gustav Line module may introduce the Commonwealth and fighting in mainland Italy, but the quality of the maps and scenarios alone will not set it apart from the Base Game. Rome to Victory brings many new forces to the table and takes the timeline to the end of the war, but wouldn't be alone in having steams in Italy or the AI withdrawling on the defense. Think of it as a capstone - the engine is not only up to date, but the game is as good as new, across the board. This is much easier to do when a game is complete because each module may change things. However, once it is done it will make engine updates or routine patches much easier. It would also mean Battle Packs can still come out, though the BP for CMBN they would likely require all existing modules. Which just goes to show how these improvements build on each other and are best used together. For Fortress Italy in particular, I'm happy to wait for this kind of undertaking and get a temporary patch for the bugs that have popped up. My rationale for this is that I don't think Fortress Italy is complete yet. We know that the Italian Forces at least will be coming at some point down the line, and that obviously would have big implications for the Base Game. Any changes to the Italians in a module focused on them made there would create the same sort of problems with TOE and OOB we're seeing now with the Commonwealth, Germans and Americans. I know that there are major modules in the works for other games, so this is probably down the list. I believe that in the same way patching all of the games to Engine 4 and rationalizing the TOE OOB and so on was an agonizing time for BF, a "capstone" update is a necessary process to close out the CM2 titles as they reach the end of their time periods and full roster of forces. Think of it as Shock Force 2 on a smaller scale. This "capstone" would also be good to do before serious work starts on CM3. If all the CM2 titles are great from top to bottom, you can buy the oldest or the newest depending on your theatre of preference. It's a good way to keep sales going while working on a whole new game.

I think, as Citino says that the Allies as a whole thought the Wehrmacht was collapsing and wanted to take big risks while they were off balance. While Citino is more forgiving of Clark for his failure to encircle the German Tenth Army near Rome, by Market-Garden the harsh criticism of Allied generals for letting the Wehrmacht "get away" at Messina, the Anzio Breakout and Falaise must have been a consideration for Monty and SHAEF. 21st Army Group was already having problems making up for infantry losses and the Americans did not share the Commonwealth appreciation for set-piece battles and slow, methodical operations. The British did not have the manpower to land a "knockout blow" and as the Americans came up against the West Wall and bogged down in Metz, the Americans didn't have the room to fight their preferred battle of maneuver. If the British didn't catch the Germans while they were too disorganized to blow the bridges and firm up their defenses, they would have to conduct a series of set-piece river crossings. I suspect that there was not a lot of patience or enthusiasm for that idea among the Americans. Market Garden would have succeeded two weeks earlier, and if the weather had been better, and perhaps better drop zones been selected, may still have worked when it was launched. As Monty proved with Operation Plunder, and the Americans at Remagen, fighting their preferred kind of war the Western Allies were very successful. Perhaps had the British been on the right wing fighting set-piece battles to reduce Metz, Aachen and the Siegfried Line, and the Americans on the left running down the retreating Germans like they did after Operation Dragoon or the Cobra Breakout, things would have gone better. The same could be said for their respective areas of Normandy, but of course the beaches were ultimately determined by where in the UK the Allied armies were encamped. The Allied army that least preferred the kind of rapid operation needed to seize bridges before they could be blown had to launch it, and as Citino says the criticism of Montgomery of the plan is flawed for the same reason that plan itself was - the enemy gets a say too.

With the base game you can download from the steam workshop, including the absolutely amazing Normandy scenarios. Sword Beach to Caen, XXX Corps at Villers-Bocage and Tilly-Sur-Seulles and the absolutely incredible Charnwood and Goodwood-Atlantic. If you thought that these deserved their own campaigns or scenarios in Battle for Normandy, this may be the next best thing, and if you didn't it may be enough to win you over and petition Steve for a Battle Pack for the fighting north of Caen. Here's an example of a Canadian action, famous here probably less well known to our friends abroad. Tiller made a scenario of it, and I can tell you with a brother in the Algonquin Regiment and many friends over in the British Columbia Regiment, having these stories depicted means a lot. I was very saddened to see Ortona and the Liri valley, or any Canadian campaign absent from Fortress Italy.

Anyone here who is interested in gaming this out should try Market-Garden '44 Gold by John Tiller. For those of you that have played his games before, they are absolutely brilliant. I think that they do many things better than TAOW, so you really do have to get the staff work right rather than stack and pile on! Check out his design notes and the work and thought put into this really comes through. All of his games are incredible, and wouldn't you know - there's one for pretty much every CM title. Normandy, The Bulge, Sicily, Salerno, Minsk '44, Budapest. I know we wanted our own operational layer, but this is as good as operational games get. If you want to get really deep, he also did a game with all of Normandy in 250m hexes! His OOB manual alone is 130 pages. The guy is a madman. I like Command Op2, and their large Market-Garden scenario is great, but I don't like the supply system. There are no replacements or repairs, so while you may get gas and ammo you won't make back your manpower or get vehicles sent up. For scenarios that are a day or less that makes sense, but the fighting in MG was 8 days and I know XXX was able to make up some of their losses.

I agree wholeheartedly! There are hardly any scenarios with battalion fire-support. The rifleman takes ground sure, but the battalion mortars and MGs, especially for the Commonwealth armies are what shoots them onto the enemy position. And not a lone HMG attached to a rifle company, a section or platoon of them, coordinating and concentrating their fire. It also teaches that the tactical value of a tank is having as thick armour and as large a main gun as possible, and tank "duels" are what counts. Rather than the tactical unit of Armour being a tank platoon and maneuver being as important as firepower. Finally, we have all these great recce units - in all titles - but never the space to use them. Taking a US cavalry or recce unit is an exercise in frustration. Where's the enemy? Well he can only be somewhere in this tiny area, and if you bump into him you're dead already because you can't maneuver so you either sit on your hands and end the scenario or try to conduct a frontal attack with jeeps! Larger maps would let motorized recce stretch their legs, evaluate routes and take an end run around the enemy.

Garth Ennis found a way to combine Warsaw, Blitzkrieg and Israeli tankers. If you haven't read War Stories, or Battlefields, check them out! Garth Ennis is obviously a history buff. He also wrote a series about the Tuskegee Airmen.

I think that the modern titles really do need maps larger than 16km2 . As you say, they are so mobile, dispersed, and possess so much firepower that many if not most scenarios and QBs were realistically be missions for platoons or companies. I think battalion-sized engagements is where all of the pieces of CM come together, and with the battalion tactical groups in Black Sea or the mechanized battalions in SF2, there's just not enough room.

CMFI Gustav Line FJ Battalion - Peaked Caps are wonky.

Thank you. The quality of life of the series as a whole has definitely improved which makes me very happy. WRT to the changelogs, there are readmes in the doccuments folder, for example CMFI with all modules: It would be nice to have one document with all changes over time on the forums somewhere for reference, especially for discussing bugs or changes . One last quality of life suggestion, especially since I know you guys are probably hard at work on documentation for the new modules - Some manuals include dates of availability and formations equipped. That's really handy and I wonder if we could see that format applied to all manuals. For example, Fortress Italy Gustav Line Rome To Victory It's a fairly small thing but is very helpful. On a more comprehensive note, The Black Sea Formation Encyclopedia was absolutely outstanding. I realize this would be a fair bit of work to retroactively add to all of the WW2 titles, but the dizzying array of formations in those titles is why I think it would be so handy. Please consider it for future modules though. I know most people on the forums are wargamers and amateur historians and so on, but a layperson would not reasonably be expected to know the difference between Heer Fusiller and Grenadier battalions or what the difference is between StuG formations: Whereas the Formation Encyclopedia does explain this kind of variety in Black Sea:

I am excited to see them close out the war on all three fronts. Who would have thought Fortress Italy would be first to the finish?

@BFCElvis If patches are applied across titles, I wonder if now would be a good time to standardize the editor and QB based on the improvements in R2V and SF2. e: And if there could be changelogs across all patches for each title somewhere on the forum. I was trying to find the changes in BN made in 3.12 and had to read it in French!