dbsapp

I double-checked it. No, you don't have airpower from the start.

Well, they are under the sight from the hill and are getting hit by artillery and air in the second mission, but I can agree - it was not hard, especially when my ATGM BRDM performed a true miracle, cured itself from blindness and killed some tanks on the hill. Apart from this incident my ATGMs remain loyal to total darkness and can't see even the enemy found by their team spotters hour ago. I really see no options to clear the enemies from the hill in the third mission, since my artillery is as useless as my ATGMs vehicles. I placed all of my artillery exactly at m2 locations, but it doesn't bother them at all. Even the dirt from explosions doesn't stop them from firing TOWs. The best I could do is to use smoke cover. It definitely helped with the first wave, but the rest were not so lucky and the road to mission exits doesn't look attractive at all.

The third. I don't know if I gather enough mental health and persistence to march further, because watching my reinforcements arrive directly under the enemy fire for the third time (after the same trick in the first and second missions) seems too much even for me.

Guys, the Soviet campaign was a mistake. I mean MISTAKE.

This house definitely posed an airborne threat.

At some point of this campaign I understood that this is a roleplaying game and I assumed the role of a cleaner. My assignment is to clean the dirty forest, meter by meter, and to do it in limited time. And I forgot to mention that by mistake I'm playing March or die variant.

I sent them all, one by one. And they all died, horribly.

This pic sums up my impressions of CW Soviet campaign so far.

I would prefer downvotes only, no upvotes. To make discussion more heated, it would be wise to make several types of downvote, like "contempt", "hatred" and "despise you" options that could be involuntary pinned to the user's profile.

That was no accident! Their KGB officer wasn't vigilant enough.

This topic is OFFICIAL. Approved by the USSR Council of Ministers.

My bad! I did a quick search and found nothing. No wonder I can't manage battalion sized battles properly.

+1!

If your party isn't this lit, don't bother inviting me Some pics of "The Grieshof Meet and Greet" scenario, first one among CMCW campaigns and battles, that I genuinely liked.

I'm fully aware that I may be wrong and I'm not trying to claim any rights on universal truth. Anyway, every man to his taste. Maybe it's not my cup of tea, that's all. In the manual NTC campaign is presented as training that player should go through before moving on to the US, and finally to the Soviet campaigns. Well, judging by your description its something more like a hell of a challenging mission intended for players with 10 years of experience in CM that tricks you into believing things you shouldn't do.

Perhaps. But my bet it's just bad and intellectually lazy. Mission are so simplistic and basic that I can hardly find anything to "think for myself and correct assessments". For example, if I could move my units between those 2 hills under smoke screen and hit enemy in the soft spot, that would be tactically beautiful. But it's not the case. Again, maybe I'm only a noob and this campaign is for pros. Maybe.

I have more simplistic attitude towards PC games in general and CM in particular. I don't want them to teach me anything and don't search any enigmatic truth that they may contain, like biblical parables. I want them to be interesting, entertaining and worthy of the effort. Challenging and clever - yes, boring and stupid - no.

I fully understand that there may be different opinions, but it sounds like bad mission design to me.

Thank you for this piece of advice. I know, that no matter what you are complaining about, somebody will definetly say that they made it and it's ok:) I'm absolutely positive that this mission could be winnable, but its concept and design don't provide any joy. It's more like a tedious headache.

I wonder, if CMCW difficulty is out of touch with reality. I went through Soviet tactics educational missions and found them quite ok and relatively easy. Now I'm struggling with NTC and it's different. The first mission was normal, but the second and the third became an unpleasant surprise. In the second mission you have to pursue the enemy, defeated in the first. What it means: you are given the forces roughly the size of the enemy (including reinforcements that arrive in absolutely inconvenient part of the map). Basically you are in the desert with few opportunities to hide your movement. Only the one way is open - forward, where "running away" enemy forces, t72s and bmps with ATGM, are waiting you in line. First, I thought the trick is to go between the 2 hills in the left part of map and strike at the back of the enemy forces. I employed smoke screen and reached the hills, but it turned out that the train their is impassable. M60s have night vision, but can't see through the smoke. So you left with the option of exchanging fire with prepared enemy line in the desert. I used forward observing teams, c2 lnks, air strikes... Nothing helps. The third mission (I accessed it after defeat in the second) is not much better. So far it looks really bad.

After the second mission of NTC campaign, when you are given the option to "delay" or to ""attack" in the third mission, no objectives are visible on the map. I pressed Alt-J, no changes.

Are you sure that there is no simple solution? I guess it's only a matter of chaging some .ini file from "lod=1000" to "lod=3000" The truth is out there

Was googling possible solution for the issue of LOD and disappearing trees and found this thread. Sad that there is no mod\magic trick to fix it. It spoils the overall impression indeed.

How is "realistic level of casualties" measured? I guess, some average number could be calculated after the end of conflict (in fact, those numbers are never accurate and Soviet\German losses are disputed till this day). But even this virtual number will encompass the days of heavy fighting and month of boredom. Not to mention that it all depends on billions of factors, like time, front, weapons, skills etc. CM like every other game couldn't be fully realstic by definition (you should participate into actual conflict for full realism, not to sit in front of PC screen), but to claim it's not "realistic" in certain aspects you should know for sure what "realistic" is.

Thank you