How do you play?

[Hetzer21]

I have two brothers who play these kinds of games, and all three of us have played the CM WW2 stuff. I'm the eldest, the next one down is eighteen months younger than me and 'micromanage' doesn't do justice to the way he played. My oft heard question to him, after yet another 30-minute turn, was "what are you doing now, wiping all their arses?"

My next brother is eleven years younger and while he's not so bad OCD still figures large in his style of management.

I'm 50 years old and I can't be doing with it. The set-up malarkey exhausts most of my eye for the finer detail, after that it's find the guy in charge, double-click him so all units are selected and click a destination. That's what the AI is for, right? At a pinch I might deal with three separate leader chappies, I find it useful sometimes to treat inf, AT and armor discretely.

What usually happens, after a few tortuous hours of sitting reading a book while my brothers wipe arses, blow noses and give hair-cuts to their lads, is I declare the turn-time limit will be activated. Hear the howls of protest when I try for five minutes and get beaten down (or up) to ten.

Then I read a thread about some technique of using 'pause' and 'arc' to make pixel-truppen do clever stuff. Wut...? I think if I'd been a general I'd have been best suited to WW1 trench warfare. "Over the top, run, see you for dinner."

[Michael Emrys]

I give great thanks that I never served under your command in combat. BTW, who usually wins your games, you or your brothers?

Michael

[StellarRat]

Well, I play in real time with no pausing, so there is no time for silly 10 minutes turns.

[Cymru]

Very badly.

[Hetzer21]

I give great thanks that I never served under your command in combat. BTW, who usually wins your games, you or your brothers?

Michael

Me usually. They get too involved in the minutae at the expense of real-world tactics. I read a lot of threads that seem obsessed with the lack of ability to micromanage stuff, like "will my tank bog down if I go there?" or "can I get my bazooka team in killing range if I fiddle with this arc thingy while pressing 'hide' behind a rock tile?" I try to think of myself as a geezer in a tent behind the lines, giving general orders and depending on my officers to MAKE IT HAPPEN. What actually happens is the AI beats the crap out of my brothers. While they're micromanaging 20 half-tracks down a road, so that not one of them clips a wheel on a kerb and loses a minute in time, I'm ordering one group to go left and the other to go right and let the AI put a squeeze on them. Kind of thing. Broad AI brush-strokes vs human pencil-sharp lines. But sure, that requires them to agree to a time limit on turns. But my argument is that it's not realistic, or reasonable, to have 30-minute turns to determine one-minute spaces of time in the 'real' world. I only intervene if I see units getting badly out of shape. I'm usually still twiddling my thumbs for a fair bit out of ten-minute turns.

I have no doubt at all I'd be beaten to crap by anyone here who has played extensively and can handle short time limits on turns AND knows the AI inside out, but I'd rather enjoy that defeat than be bored senseless, as I have been in the past, enduring somebody taking half an hour on each turn to re-issue orders to every single unit.

[Michael Emrys]

...I'd rather enjoy that defeat than be bored senseless, as I have been in the past, enduring somebody taking half an hour on each turn to re-issue orders to every single unit.

You wouldn't like playing against me. I've been known to spend an hour or even an hour and a half on a single turn. Most of that though is reviewing the replay so that I know what is actually going on, rather than what I had hoped would be going on. Actually plotting the moves only takes a fraction of that time.

Michael

[DavidFields]

You wouldn't like playing against me. I've been known to spend an hour or even an hour and a half on a single turn. Most of that though is reviewing the replay so that I know what is actually going on, rather than what I had hoped would be going on. Actually plotting the moves only takes a fraction of that time.

Michael

+1

And I won't even mention the amount of time, hours, I spend just analyzing the general situation before I play the first turn.

[Michael Emrys]

And I won't even mention the amount of time, hours, I spend just analyzing the general situation before I play the first turn.

Yeah, in CMx1 I used to put the camera down on ground level and sweep back and forth over the battlefield looking for humps and swales in the ground so as to figure out the best approaches if I was attacking or which way the enemy was likely to come if I was defending. Some might deride that as micromanagement, but to me it was just basic reconnaissance.

Michael

[Mord]

I am both types of player...I micromanage when needed and let the AI do it's thing when not. Seems once you have your guys where you want them and feel pretty decent about it, the Tac can handle most new problems. I end up mostly watching the turns just for the fun.

Now if things get sticky, and stuff is going wrong left and right, I'll jump in.

I am worst, as far as turn planning, at the beginning of battles, once contact is made and the crap starts flying I get much more comfortable...but man, waiting for first blood stresses me out.

Mord.

[LJFHutch]

I do a bit of both - giving general orders to units but also micromanaging a few select/key units, but I play RT so I'm not doing anywhere near as much as you guys apparently are

[Michael Emrys]

I am worst, as far as turn planning, at the beginning of battles, once contact is made and the crap starts flying I get much more comfortable...but man, waiting for first blood stresses me out.

Yeah, I hear you. Looking at the map and trying to figure out whether to go down the right side or the left or just to rip one down the middle, knowing that the whole outcome of the battle may depend on my decision, is a crisis time made worse by the certainty that no matter what my choice it, bad things are going to happen anyway.

Michael

[Sgt Schultz]

I take just to left of forever to look at a map, purchase, and set up.

Turns usually take 10+ minutes of actual observation and orders(unless a 'wow' moment grabs me). Once the PBEM file is sent, that same movie is watched a few more times for screenies and tiny things I may have missed, that can be incorporated into next turn.

While I appreciate the immersion factor, I would need a Ronco Pocket Difibulator™ to play RT. The lost screenshots alone would send me right over the edge.

-----

[finalcut]

I'm kind of in the middle.I start the game just clikcing on HQ units,and independent type units like Scout teams and Snipers,then when I make contact it is slow and easy and every unit gets personal attention.At the start of the game I click Hunt on the HQ units and let them find the enemy,I trust my subordinates to find the bad guys,but once the shooting starts I become a front line commander.

In the trenches with my Men personally directing them where to go so some 21 year old 2nd Lt. doesn't get half my Company killed.Also,I only play WEGO.Real time will give you a Heart attack,and you miss so much with RT.I tried RT once in CMSF and looked across the map only to find a whole Squad dead and never finding out what killed them.:eek:

[Invader_Canuck]

Like a boss!

[Michael Emrys]

Like a boss!

In the office, smoking a cigar with your feet up on the desk?

Michael

[TheBlackHand]

Coming from a CMx1 mindset, I enjoyed micro-managing each of my units. It was precisely the ability TO micro-manage that made/makes the game so immersive and consistently re-playable. What it comes down to is . . . you are EVERY commander on that field of battle, from the battalion commander right down to the fire-team leader. YOU make the decisions that those men would make at their particular position on the battlefield at that particular time, with those particular goals in mind.

I find it very hard to believe that the A (effing) I is able to make better decisions than a human opponent who takes a serious approach to the minutae of planning a turn.

It sounds to me as though the number of commands available to the human player in CM:BN is less than those available in the CMx1 games . . . and that the AI is allowed/expected to make decisions about the course of the battle that I would prefer to have personal control over. I expect to receive my full game this week and I look forward to finding out if this is true or not.

[Michael Emrys]

It sounds to me as though the number of commands available to the human player in CM:BN is less than those available in the CMx1 games...

Without having counted them all up, I'd say that that is definitely not so. You can now split squads in several different custom arrangements. You can order units with demo charges to breach hedgerows. You can order artillery to fall in a variety of patterns, intensities, and durations. On-map infantry guns can now fire indirectly. And those are just off the top of my head.

Michael

[TheBlackHand]

Till I get the full game, I'll take your word for it . . . but, for example, hearing that I can't order my AT guns or infantry to "target armor" and not open up on infantry without my command is disconcerting.

I'm hoping to be pleasently surprised and that I will, as I've been told, find the CMx1 games "unplayable" after being swept off my feet by this new and improved wargamers wargame.

The demo didn't exactly knock my socks off. Great looker but . . .

. . . we'll see.

[Mord]

I find it very hard to believe that the A (effing) I is able to make better decisions than a human opponent who takes a serious approach to the minutae of planning a turn.

Nobody said that. It's just the fact that the A (effing) I isn't so retarded that you have to worry if you don't zoom down and hold the hand of every unit on the battle field. Your men are fairly good at preserving their own lives when they are being assaulted by the enemy.

It sounds to me as though the number of commands available to the human player in CM:BN is less than those available in the CMx1 games . . . and that the AI is allowed/expected to make decisions about the course of the battle that I would prefer to have personal control over. I expect to receive my full game this week and I look forward to finding out if this is true or not.

The player can give as many or as few commands as they want. And as far as less commands...you can do waaay more crap in CMx2 than you could do in CMx1. You can micro managed your @ss off if that is what turns you on...try stacking commands on every way point that'll really juice ya.

Go at it with an open mind... Sounds to me like you are trying to dislike the game before you even play it. That'd be too bad 'cause it makes CMX1 look like checkers.

Mord.

[Michael Emrys]

...it makes CMX1 look like checkers.

Not to put my thumb in anybody's eye, but it makes CMx1 look like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. And that was about ten quantum leaps ahead of anything else on WW II tactical combat at the time.

Michael

[Mord]

Not to put my thumb in anybody's eye, but it makes CMx1 look like a Hanna-Barbera cartoon. And that was about ten quantum leaps ahead of anything else on WW II tactical combat at the time.

Michael

LOL yeah, Larry, Moe and Curly, the three bobble heads.

It really does blow me away...I described in another thread that it's like going from table top miniatures to playing with real soldiers in a field. It's that far ahead.

Mord.

[user38]

I'm very new at this game. I got to the last mission in the tutorial and I found I had no idea how to solve the problem of a bunch of troops in one corner of the map and an empty battlefield full of terrain and an invisible enemy. I stared at the battlefield for hours and I had no clue. And then I remembered the words of Fred Thompson in Hunt for Red October: “Son, Ruskies don't take a dump without a plan”.

So I did this:

And then I calmed down and played.

[Hetzer21]

You wouldn't like playing against me. I've been known to spend an hour or even an hour and a half on a single turn. Most of that though is reviewing the replay so that I know what is actually going on, rather than what I had hoped would be going on. Actually plotting the moves only takes a fraction of that time.

Michael

Holy crap.

I guess it's the difference between chess with one of those timer-clock things and chess without one.

[TheBlackHand]

Nobody said that.

Well, from my reading of this statement . . . that's exactly what he said. He said his reliance on the AI beats his micro-managing brothers practically every time.

They get too involved in the minutae at the expense of real-world tactics. I read a lot of threads that seem obsessed with the lack of ability to micromanage stuff, like "will my tank bog down if I go there?" or "can I get my bazooka team in killing range if I fiddle with this arc thingy while pressing 'hide' behind a rock tile?" I try to think of myself as a geezer in a tent behind the lines, giving general orders and depending on my officers to MAKE IT HAPPEN. What actually happens is the AI beats the crap out of my brothers.

If this guy is unconcerned about whether his tanks will bog or whether his bazookas act appropriately and he really thinks the AI can make a better decision regarding such things then . . . I'd love to play him in a PBEM. Once or twice. After that it might get boring.

Sounds to me like you are trying to dislike the game before you even play it. That'd be too bad 'cause it makes CMX1 look like checkers.

I'll plead guilty to that. If this game is as good as you and so many others say it is . . . then there is no possible way that I'll be disappointed, right? One thing that does bother me though, the way CMx1 is derided as yesterday's news, as if it had nothing to offer in comparison to this new-fangled messiah called CM:BN. I'm reading the forums and I'm seeing a lot of what sound to me like excuses for leaving this or that fine feature from CMx1 on the floor. It reminds me of that old story about the Emporers new clothes.

Lots of talk about how great the graphics are in comparison . . . as if a pretty face is all that matters.

You've got to prove it to me with more than just a nice looking skin.

I'm open-minded . . . but highly skeptical. CMx1 was a effing fantastic series of games. The derision that they get from the new kids, as well as old-timers is rather insulting.

Proof will be in the pudding. The demo tasted sour.

[Hetzer21]

I am not "unconcerned" that my tanks will get bogged down, I simply consider it the driver's responsibility to ensure he doesn't. Which, in reality, is the AI's job actually. If I tell my tank to go from A to B, and along the way, unknown to me, there is boggy ground, is it unrealistic if the driver fails to spot it, as happens in reality? Or should my alter-ego general persona go out onto the battlefield and walk every meter personally and give a detailed map to the driver?

This is the micro-management I talk of...thinking it possible to avert every possible detrimental outcome if only enough time is expended on every single turn. All it does, in fact, is turn a simulation of reality into a Hollywood script. The AI makes mistakes. So do real people. Incredible ones, absurd ones, and especially so in the heat of battle, under fire or with too little sleep between moves.

No real general got to ponder for 30 minutes between each one-minute period of action. Sure, you can excuse such a style of play by declaring that you are playing the general, the colonel, the captains and the Lts. And even the sergeants too. Personally I choose to play the general overall and the captains and Lts only when an obvious disaster is about to strike. It makes for a much more realistic experience in my opinion. And prevents the mind-numbing tedium of wiping arses and blowing noses.

As for your thoughts on the new game, and disrespect to the old...the old was good, just like a VW was good. Until the Porsche came along. The VW is still a VW, still good, but a Porsche is better. I loved the VW, but I stopped driving it after its constant breakdowns became too much for me to endure. Now the Porsche is doing the same, but this time around it looks like somebody A) admits there's a problem and gives a damn.

I don't think anyone can "prove" anything to you though, I think you'll have to suck it and see for yourself. That's what demos are for I guess. Soon as I got mine running smooth and tried it properly I was hooked.