Heirloom_Tomato

If we are going to speculate, lets go big or go home. I am going to speculate the reason the 4.0 patch has not yet come out is because Charles has figured out a way to give us CMx3 and make it backwards compatible with all the old content, CMSF and CMA included. We will see an upgrade fee of $35 per title, discounted to $30 per title if you buy for three or more. The delay is all the artwork and scenario/campaign changes to all the BFC stock content. Prepare for minds to be blown! And for the usual whining and bellyaching about how it should be a free "patch"!

Commonwealth forces are pretty much a given for CMFB. I think the British and the Commonwealth contributed to ending the war.... at least that's what my Opa told me!

CM is an addiction. If you are already enjoying the demo enough to buy the game, you will most likely end up buying all of the games anyways. Only you know what you are able to afford to buy, but if you can afford both the big bundle and Black Sea, I doubt you will be disappointed. If you can't do both and are looking for the most variety, I would suggest the Market Garden module as it gives a new location in Holland, and adds some British units to the base game. It will however, only encourage you to pick up the Commonwealth module soon afterwards.... Each title offers its own unique experience. The game I thought I would enjoy the least, CMFI, is actually my favourite one of them all and I am having a really hard time waiting patiently for the Rome to Victory Module to come out. Currently, the CMFI Gustav Line bundle, offers the widest range of nations, unit types, oddball equipment, terrain, weather, and length of of the war covered. If you want variety, CMFI is where it is at.

Not legal age yet so a big NOPE to that one. But you are right, she sure is awesome!

I have CMBN installed on 3 machines right now, my main desktop, my laptop and my daughter's laptop. She is enjoying LAN battles with me almost as much as I am. I have CMFI installed on those three as well as my desktop at work. My understanding is the game comes with 4 activations initially and a new one is made available every year you own the product. As for Steam, Battlefront have stated repeatedly they will not be using the Steam platform. As stated before, my daughter and I have been playing LAN battles with each other without issue. I own a copy of Civiliation V and while it is installed on both our laptops, I need to buy a second copy to battle her thanks to Steam's DRM rules. So a big thanks to @Battlefront.com for not using Steam so I can introduce the joys of CM to the next generation.

This was posted in a thread in CMFB page but I thought it should also be posted in the general forum. Here is a link to a very large and free collection of period maps of Europe from 1943-1944. For the Italy section there is also the City Map plans available. The central Europe section should cover the area for the next module for CMRT. I think a few people here will find this to be very interesting. Big shout out to @AlsatianFelix for the original find. https://library.mcmaster.ca/maps/ww2/ww2_topos_home Here too is the map collection from the University of Texas. They also have some amazing maps. http://legacy.lib.utexas.edu/maps/europe.html As a side note McMaster is not too far from home and in a few years when my oldest is ready for university, I think I will have to encourage her to take a campus tour and I shall get lost in the map room.....

This link should take you to the maps from MacMaster University https://library.mcmaster.ca/maps/ww2/ww2_Fran_Belg_Holl_home

For a Canadian perspective try the Canadian Battle Series by Mark Zuehlke specifically Operation Husky, Ortona, The Gothic Valley and The Liri Valley.

The CMFI bundle is where I would suggest you start. There may be more scenarios and campaigns for the CMBN big bundle but the variety of equipment in CMFI cant be beat. If you can only afford one, it should be this one. Summer heat, winter snows, wide open maps, close quarters battles, widest range of nations in any game so far, the soon to be released Rome to Victory Module will also give it the longest time frame of the games, July 43 to May 45.

Have you read Mark Zuehlke Canadian Battle Series Books? He has three books covering the CMFB time frame and there are literally hundreds of cm scale scenarios in each book. I am currently reading "The Cinderella Campaign" about clearing the Channel Ports and I am really hoping Wasp flame throwers make it into the game at some point.

Go to bed I said, nah check just one more time!! Woo Hoo!!!!! Thanks Steve!!

It would be helpful to know which CM titles you currently own, if any suggestions are going to be made.

I have seen this before as well and definitely well beyond 7 seconds. I was advancing into a town and split off a scout team to go find the enemy. They rounded a corner and were immediately shot down, one man dead and one man wounded, pretty well right at the end of the turn. About half way through the next turn, there was a burst of fire, than another and then one more. It took a bit for it to register, but they were shooting the wounded guy. The firing stopped when he was KIA. I was reminded of the scene from Saving Private Ryan where the messenger gets shot and then again.

Ah! So that answers the question then. Cancelling the planned GoFundMe account now.....

I bet as the entire community we could raise it!

That is awesome. These little details make the game so exciting.

At least he threw a grenade at the tank. I bet it at the very least it gave one crew man a slight headache or ringing in his ears for 30 seconds. I was surprised to see your guy made it into the building and was not shot down by the bow gunner. When I watched the turn I could not help but say out loud "You idiot!!! What are you doing......"

I don't see this as a bug but rather an expected feature of the game. I have been in a few "risky" situations where some of the people involved ran away while others of us ran towards the "risk". In none of these situations was anyone's life on the line or in any real immediate danger. It is not unreasonable to me to see a few guys from a squad turn and run when coming under fire, especially if they are already on the move. In the game situation I quoted, I was impressed that it was the SQUAD leader who came back to his cowering man, stood his ground, got the guy to his feet and brought him safely back to the rest of the squad. As you say it looked just like a movie and was very easy to visualise all the profanity being directed at the guy on the ground.

There is always a debate about which way is better to play the game, WeGo or real time. For me, it is WeGo all the way and the following two moments sealed the deal for me: The first PBEM match I ever played in CMBN was a quick battle against a friend from college. I was trying to advance under fire into the next set of buildings in a town. The squad I was moving came under fire and all the men but one ran up to a fence, jumped it and rushed into the safety of a building. The straggler, held tight at the fence and cowered. The turn ended with him kissing his butt goodbye, bullets bouncing all around him. I figured it was only a matter of time until he died, so I tried to move the squad into a better position in a different building. When the next turn started, they cancelled their movement order. The squad leader ran out of the building and stood over top of the cowering solider. He turned and fired in the direction of the incoming rounds. Several bursts of fire came flying at him but nothing hit him. The guy on the ground stopped cowering but he still refused to move. The squad leader fired another burst and then another at the enemy. He then turned and faced the guy on the ground. With only a few seconds left in the turn, the cowering solider got up and ran ahead of his squad leader into the safety of the building. Neither guy suffered a scratch. I must have watched that turn at least a dozen times. I told my friend and he could not believe it when he watched it over and over again as well. The second time I was truly impressed by this game was another CMBN battle. I had an entire platoon moving from one section of woods, across the road and into another set of woods. There was a two man scout team in the woods who opened fire as my men moved out. They hit one man and then began to take a whole platoon worth of return fire. One scout was killed right away but the other took careful aim and fired. He shot a guy from my platoon who was just about to throw a grenade. This man dropped dead and dropped his live grenade. It went off and killed three men in my platoon and lightly wounded several others. Unfortunately, one of the men who was killed also dropped a live grenade. It went off killing another 4 or 5 guys and lightly wounding a bunch more. My entire platoon panicked and ran away. I had to watch 4 or 5 times just to figure out what had happened and then another 20 times to finally believe it was true. It was such a clear demonstration of the randomness of war I was too impressed to be mad. I saw neither of these events on the first play through of the turn and it was only because I rewound the turn to see what had happened on the other side of the map that I even saw it all. If I had been playing in real time, I would have missed them entirely. Once I found out about this little program called FRAPS, I always load it up first just in case another one of these moments happens again, I can have video evidence to share with you all.

The game is still keeping track of the number of KIA or WIA removed from the field of play correct? If I have 10 guys go down, four KIA and six WIA and I do no buddy aid, the game knows how many bodies are on the ground at the end of the battle. If I give buddy aid to those same 10 guys and there are no bodies on the ground at the end of the battle, the game still knows there were 10 casualties. So this information is being stored somewhere and then recalled at the end of the battle for the AAR page. If this is correct, somehow displaying the data on the AAR page showing how many men were removed from the battlefield would be interesting to see. As an example: Men Ok:56 KIA: 4 WIA: 6 Buddy Aid Given: 0 or 10 for the two examples given. I think it would give casualties an ever greater impact in the game if at the end of the battle you saw just how good or bad of a job you did taking care of your wounded men. I know it seems simple and often what seems simple would require a complete rewrite of the whole game code so, not gonna happen , but it would be fun to see. It could even be used as a house rule to declare a winner in the event of a draw. The guy who gave more buddy aid wins.

Since buddy aid does affect the number of men KIA vs WIA, the game must be tracking the number of men who received buddy aid. If this is true, I wonder if it would be possible to have this stat show up on the AAR screen to show us how many men survived due to buddy aid. I don't think it should have any impact on the score of the game as the AI does not move any of its men over an action square or two to give buddy aid.

If I understood the information from @Schrullenhaft correctly, would having the game be able to take advantage of multiple cores on a cpu give a boost to frame rates?

Not sure what @Battlefront.com used to define a blizzard, but here is the data from Environment Canada and NOAA on the definition of a blizzard. Looks like if the game is allowing you to see units out to 200 metres all is good. If they can see beyond 400 metres, then the game is broken and we should all get a refund. Blizzard Table 2. Alerting parameters Environment Canada uses for issuing a Blizzard Warning Alert Type Location Threshold Criteria Warning National, except North of the tree line When winds of 40 km/hr or greater are expected to cause widespread reductions in visibility to 400 metres or less, due to blowing snow, or blowing snow in combination with falling snow, for at least 4 hours. Warning North of the tree line Same as above, except conditions are expected to last for at least 6 hours. Officially, the National Weather Service defines a blizzard as a storm which contains large amounts of snow OR blowing snow, with winds in excess of 35 mph and visibility of less than 1/4 mile for an extended period of time (at least 3 hours)

Thanks for the replies. I will proceed with completing them and not worry about any small changes.