An old CMer's first impression.

[TTorpedo]

Press the midle mouse button (and kep it pressed) and you get a "free movecamera"

PS: The camera is fine,

If your having problems with getting use to it ask yourself how many rts games do you usualy play?

Maybe the learning curve its just a bit stepper ... dont blame the game.

Tips (for me): I found useful/ more natural to reverse the scroll for zooming. (in options)

Use the "enter key" to jump in to the action

Use the cursor key to pan quickier.

Set the minimun and maximun distance for the camera at the highest. (in options)

[Dirtweasle]

So far I'm finding the included scenarios / missions a challege. Took a look at the campigns, but am letting that wait untill I get a little better at the game.

Have only had time to play for a couple hours and am getting used to the camera controls, but am still taking casualties at an alarming rate.

Funny thing is I have been able to still win at least one misson while taking amazing losses...

What is the deal with cover and concealment? I am having a real hard time not getting my soldiers shot up. Of course I have this problem in CM as many of my PBEM opponents know, but not to this degree against the computer.

Some of the missions, I really wish the reinforcements cam in sooner too. Seems that they come in too late. Is reinforcement tied to losses or location triggers or ??

[Kalibri]

Originally posted by Dirtweasle:

So far I'm finding the included scenarios / missions a challege. Took a look at the campigns, but am letting that wait untill I get a little better at the game.

Have only had time to play for a couple hours and am getting used to the camera controls, but am still taking casualties at an alarming rate.

Funny thing is I have been able to still win at least one misson while taking amazing losses...

What is the deal with cover and concealment? I am having a real hard time not getting my soldiers shot up. Of course I have this problem in CM as many of my PBEM opponents know, but not to this degree against the computer.

Some of the missions, I really wish the reinforcements cam in sooner too. Seems that they come in too late. Is reinforcement tied to losses or location triggers or ??

Dirtweasel, it’s a matter of trying until you get it right, just like in CMBB. I had many sad minutes, trying to keep my troops alive in TOW, until I got it right, I kept choosing different options for defence/attack roles, and after a few hours kept my losses to very realistic in my opinion.

I do sound quite general, so to give you an example, I started Polish Campaign, and got slaughtered first two times on the second mission, almost 50% of my troops were dead, all four tanks abandoned. I just couldn’t destroy those damn German tanks during the second wave, so I used a different approach. The result is amazing to me, during the first two attacks, I destroyed all German tanks and two rather large groups of infantry with the loss of only 4 soldiers on my side, one tanker and 3 infantry.

I kept my infantry laying in the grass with hold fire command active, until two large German groups of infantry got within 70 meters to me, then I ordered all of my troops to open fire and, just like in CMBB, Germans sustained over 70% losses with more as they retreated. Many people here say that it’s almost impossible to keep your ground troops ambushing while in cover, I say you can, because I did it by now quite a few times.

You must start thinking outside of your “CMBB box”, I am a big fan of it too, don’t get me wrong. But where in the world did you see a platoon hiding in an open place with almost no cover during WW2, and still be almost invisible? CMBB gives you a similar effect, but not TOW. I must hide in tall grass, or other natural cover and you will have plenty of surprise for your opponent. I am not saying, that TOW doesn’t need certain patches to make the game more interesting. Just like in CMBB, we can discuss what needs to be fixed/corrected, and then look forward to better results.

You are all creatures of habit, you are used to one set up that CM gives you, and you have no desire to test something new, might still be “raw”, as far as game play, but new. Instead of simply commenting, having interesting arguments that lead to better results/patches, a lot of the crowd just gives up.

[pad152]

I didn't like at first and had issue with the camera at first, change the Camera Options from Free to Center, I know this helped me.

Give it another try with some of the mods that have been made for the Demo version.

[Dirtweasle]

The camera was fairly easy to get used to, the cover and concealment... well, is going to take a bit longer.

It is odd; I see the enemy units go to ground and I can no longer target them, my forces seem to just get nailed. Even the woods / light trees do not seem to have much effect on LOS.

[Reichenberg]

My first issue with ToW was the camera too.....

Until I inverted the mouse wheel in the ToW options and figured out that holding the mouse wheel pressed gives me a free camera move. This at least solved the camera issues for me.

Hopefully I can figure out now how to let my infanty survive some incoming fire - I am not that far yet...

Uwe

[imported_TREAD_HEAD]

This heated discussion and comparison to CM, reminds me of my own CM experience, at the very begining of CM's history. I was one of the early guys who salivated over CMBO screenshots before the original release. BF put out a lame demo before release (something about a platoon of GIs having to charge a german MG), and that almost turned me off forever. I thought the graphics sucked, and the interface sucked...but my inner wargamer took hold and I still bought the initial release.

When I finally got the game, I had such a hard time with it (interface, features, lack of control, etc...the same sort of TOW complaints we see now) that I put CM aside for what must have been a year, or at least until the first major patch.

For me, the lesson is that I had a hard time with CMBO because it was unlike anything else I had ever played, and this coupled with the first buggy release, really put me off. But once I became used to the interface and game concepts, I grew to love the series greatly.

I think that TOW will be the same for many of the folks posting their bad experiences.

Its my guess that in five years, we will all be complaining that they 'should have done what we really wanted, and just updated the graphics on TOW rather than give us a new game.'