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Is this the game for seniors?


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What would you need as an incentive? The previous post would do it for me...if I needed one.

I find real time to be way too fast and it involves way too much micro management for me. PBEM on the other hand is probably the most awkward and ridiculous system I've ever seen. I don't want a 60 minute battle take 6 years to finish.

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Just turned 44 here. I think it is so cool to see guys on here as old as their 60’s, and as young as their teens. That is one thing I have always liked about this forum is its maturity level.

As for me, like many of you it all started when I was a kid in the 70’s with the GI Joe action figure, and the plastic green army men (I can’t believe my set is worth $250 now!) Later, I had an interest in “military” strategy board games like chess, strategy, risk. None of my friends were into some of the cooler games I have seen mentioned here, but I would have been if exposed to them.

I started computer strategy wargaming when I got my first computer in 1995 with “Empire Earth” being what I played. When I got my first PC I got into playing the WWII RTS “Sudden Strike” which I played competitively online in a gaming clan. When that game died I found CM about 8 yrs ago. It took awhile to adjust to WEGO at first after doing RTS, but I have grown to like WEGO especially for playing CM.

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Looking at 57 this July. Started with Avalon Hill boardgames (France 1940, Third Reich, D-Day, Stalingrad, Midway) vs my step-brother about 1969-70. Still have 3-4 of them. Went through the whole electronic progression from Pong, Atari 2600, Intellivision, Bally Astrocade, Atari ST to my first computer a Gateway 386. Started out mainly liking the sports games on the game consoles then played games such as Empire-Wargame of the Century, Silent Service, Their Finest - Hour Battle of Britain, Knights of the Sky, M1 Tank Platoon................... Now about 4 years from retirement, looking forward to more playing time then. No plans to stop due to age alone!

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Considering how many of the people have been on the CM forums for a decade, I wonder if the average age is well above the typical computer gamer? I am 68 and have been playing various forms of war games since the early 70s (even earlier if you count the old board game with numbered counters, mines and a spy)

How about the rest of you: obviously unless you started playing in diapers most must be at least late 20s or 30s.

Come to think of it, I may still be playing when diapers become necessary again

I think that's great that at your age you have pc gaming as a hobby. My parents were just a few years older than you and didnt know how to turn a computer on...

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Love the tactical element. Love the realism. But those hidden moments of battle-soaked drama that go unseen without WEGO - that's pure gold for this Battlefront fan. It's not just winning or losing, it's the story that unfolds over each 60 second turn.

That's been on my mind as well. I can recall replaying moves in CMBO over and over and over again to view the action from different POV and loving every second of it. Sometimes it was useful too. On one occasion I was being shot at from an unknown location and I kept replaying the moment while moving the camera around the map. When the sound of the shot was the loudest, I knew I was in the general area of the unit even though I hadn't spotted it yet. Maybe that was a kind of cheat, but I loved doing it.

Michael

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Stratego was the board game with the counters, spy and mine. One of my first forays into strat/tac gaming at the tender age of 12.

The Seabees share their motto with BFC...

"The difficult we do immediately, the impossible takes just a little longer."

My father was an aerial photographer with the SeaBees in WWII. He photographed amphibious landings in the Pacific as part of his duties. He brought back cool pics from his time both there and working for the US State Dept.

My favorite pics were the H Bomb tests at Bikini.

It's not every day you get a picture of a cruiser climbing the stalk of a mushroom cloud for your bedroom wall.

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Given how many oldie like me there are here got me thinking ( I still have just enough remaining brain cells).

My wife is a psychologist and in recent years research using fMRI scanners shows that in early adolescence the brain like the rest of the body goes through a rapid transition. It first produces large numbers of new neurons and then they die back.

Thus like toodlers in the terrible twos teenagers seem to go through a hormone induced return to childhood before becoming adults. But the effect is that what influences them during that period and they latch onto stays with them for most of their adult lives.

Now given the number of us who are 45 to 65 it seems to me that we might love CM because we were all influenced by wargames around the same time in what can be looked at as teh gold age of tabletop gaming.

In the 60's to 80's wargames came of age and became more formalised and affordable they became less on a niche product and were dominated by WW2. So most of us were influenced by that be it SPI, 1:35 scale Tamiya models or watching combat.

Like the people who made CMBO, like Steve or Moon, we are all sort of hard wired to like it because of the things that influenced us in our teens.

We went from Toy Soldiers to Solider war games and it stuck, so that when BF produced a computer game that fitted the bill it was all our Christmases. For thirty years or more we have all been programmed to like this game it's why we love it and why BF loves to make it.

The problem is that so many young people now are being brought up on youtube and Portal, iPods and halo so will they in future get it when we show them CNBN or will it be the game of our generation with no one to follow in years to come.

I've tried to get my 14 year old nephew interested in the game and my ten year old sone but when we met up to go camping they talked about portal.

Yeasterday at dusk we were all camping in Perthshire having a BBQ looking out across fields and hedges to a wooded hill beyond. My brother handed me binoculars while I looked at the lengthening shadow and said "Do you want these to look at the Osprey nest" to which I replied.... " No I am trying to work out how to take that hill".

He was enjoying the evening and the kids were talking about FPs's and the next transformers movie, but me well like you since I was the same age and my nephew and son have been programmed to try to take that hill.......

Peter.

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Yeah, as a teenager it can be pretty rough finding friends who have the same interests that I do. A couple of friends wanted me to come hang out at this park that consists of a very large hill, perhaps about 150 meters in height and covers about a pretty large area. Being in South Florida, there are barely any elevated locations. So I said to my friend, "You know, this hill would be the ideal position for an artillery battery." He just looked at me strangely.

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Emrys has captured the appeal of CMBO for me.

Having grown up admiring my WWII vet dad, always keeping an eye on the TV guide for a decent war flick, and being an avid wargamer, I always hoped that somebody, someday was going to do a computer game from melded those three elements...The challenge and depth of a good wargame, enough authenticity to lend an air of serious history to it, and the drama of a great movie or story.

I could see the faintest glimmer of it in arcade games like Commando!, and when Close Combat came out, I knew it was only a matter of time.

CMBO nailed it because of the WEGO system and the ability to replay the turns. Yeah, there were times when you wanted to tell that squad you ordered forward to get a brain and act on it's own when the situation changed after you pressed the "go" button, but there were so many times looking at a turn where it played out like a plausible drama, it was addicting.

The improved graphics of CMBN are certainly amazing compared to the old game, but I wonder if it's going to make that much of a difference when it comes to telling the story while reviewing a turn. The graphical abstraction of CMBO meant that you could pack a lot of stuff in there without bothering to make it work visually. The videos sure look impressive.

I sure hope the storytelling element of the game is as strong as ever.

I don't know if it's a game for seniors. It's more a game for boys trapped in an old guy's body.

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Emrys has captured the appeal of CMBO for me.

Having grown up admiring my WWII vet dad, always keeping an eye on the TV guide for a decent war flick, and being an avid wargamer, I always hoped that somebody, someday was going to do a computer game from melded those three elements...The challenge and depth of a good wargame, enough authenticity to lend an air of serious history to it, and the drama of a great movie or story.

I could see the faintest glimmer of it in arcade games like Commando!, and when Close Combat came out, I knew it was only a matter of time.

CMBO nailed it because of the WEGO system and the ability to replay the turns. Yeah, there were times when you wanted to tell that squad you ordered forward to get a brain and act on it's own when the situation changed after you pressed the "go" button, but there were so many times looking at a turn where it played out like a plausible drama, it was addicting.

The improved graphics of CMBN are certainly amazing compared to the old game, but I wonder if it's going to make that much of a difference when it comes to telling the story while reviewing a turn. The graphical abstraction of CMBO meant that you could pack a lot of stuff in there without bothering to make it work visually. The videos sure look impressive.

I sure hope the storytelling element of the game is as strong as ever.

I don't know if it's a game for seniors. It's more a game for boys trapped in an old guy's body.

Exactly! CMBO was the first time I'd ever risked pre-ordering a game. When I started seeing articles about it, I knew that it was that perfect game I'd been dreaming of for years! It definitely had its problems but at the time it blew me away! And it shows just how great a system it was when I can still enjoy playing CMAK and CMBB today! I'm sure that all those old games that seemed so impressive on my Commodore 64 wouldn't be able to hold my interest for 5 minutes now, but I could still see breaking out the original CM games 20 years from now and being able to enjoy them!

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"You know, this hill would be the ideal position for an artillery battery."

Maybe a spotter in cover but not the battery... to obvious a target. Artillery should be hidden.

Peter.

Indeed, this was a couple of years ago and I've learned a lot since then. Didn't want to change the story though.

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62 and playing war games since Nieuchess (one of AH's first hex-based games IIRC) sometime in the early 60's. Spent my teens solo playing Stalingrad, Bismarck and Waterloo until I found a buddy to play against (and whom I still stay in touch with.) Got my first computer in '84, gave up table games and never looked back. CMBO ranks as one of my favorite PC game experiences (next to X-Com) and I'm very happy about CM:N. One could not even imagine such games as we have now when I was growing up. I feel lucky to be around now that they are here.

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...programmed to try to take that hill...

I haven't done it recently, but there was a spell 30-40 years ago whenever I was out in nature—and in those days that was most of the time—I would look out over the land and part of my thoughts would be of how I would defend it and how I would attack it, if it were on a wargame map.

Michael

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