IL-2 Cliffs of Dover - First Patch is Out

At the time of this entry Cliffs is still an untamed beast with a voracious appetite for stunning visuals who tries to chew too much at a time but ends up choking on the most basic features.

The screenshot above is taken from a low-level flight last night. The level of detail of trees, roads and towns is fantastic, but imposes a heavy toll on performance. I wonder how relevant for a combat flight simulator is to have such level of visual detail in the country side.

Please find below a few more screenshots.

Panzer Campaigns Tunisia '43 - Ignore that open flank, commander ... it's just a small scenario - Part 1

I played the Jebel el Guessa scenario today and got a draw. Victory conditions apart, I am getting too used to the many war gaming  tactical excesses I am  allowed to commit just because the battle map is a small chunk of the whole battlefield.

IL-2 Cliffs of Dover - Dogfight Turned Familiarization Flight

Yes. Not the smoothest release in the history of flight simulators. Nothing like the other problem-free flight sims that 1C Maddox had released years ago. Yet I can't stay away from it ... Gah!

The English Channel looks fantastic for a baptism of fire against a German bomber-fighter.

I soon discovered that I am still too green for a dogfight ...

Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004 - Book Review

Battle for the City of the Dead: In the Shadow of the Golden Dome, Najaf, August 2004
by Dick Camp
Hardcover: 320 pages

Publisher: Zenith Press; First edition (March 28, 2011)


On the morning of July 31st 2004, the 11th US Marine Expeditionary Unit officially started a relief in place to the 1st US Army Infantry Division's Task Force Dragon. Being in command over a sector including the city of An Najaf was not expected to be an easy task, both the Army and Marines reckoned.

ArmA 2 - Antiarmor Ambushes: Mobility Kills Do Not Count

I was lucky to pull out all my US Marines Squad from this one ... I don't know what I was thinking.

To read the rest of this entry, click here >>>>>>

Combat Command, The Matrix Edition - Now Available

I remember some years ago -back when a previous version of this game was being sold by Shrapnel Games- playing the demo and trying to make my mind about buying it or not. When I decided to buy it, it was discontinued! Doh!

Now it is being published by Matrix and it was released today.

Combat Command is an hexes, turn based (IGOUGO) war game with a variety of scenarios set during WWII. The scale of the game is tactical/grand-tactical, with scenarios big and small putting you in command of three or four divisions at a time. Each hex represents 500 meters and each turn corresponds to two hours of action during day time and four hours during night time. Smallest units are companies.

For this re-release, there are new scenarios (Western, Eastern, Southern and Pacific Fronts, I will post a complete list of scenarios in a future entry) and revamped tiles' graphics.

The screenshots below are clickeable.

And no, I didn't buy this game for its looks ... :)

Cheers,

Combat Mission Battle for Normandy - Quick Battle: Bil Hardenberger's vs. Warren Miron - Four Minutes In, The Fog of War is Still Thick

A couple of days after this video left me scratching my head, I read about Bil's wonderfully illustrated and explained battle report of a quick battle with the upcoming Combat Mission Battle for Normandy.

Bil has worked with Battlefront in the past as a consultant (he served in the US Army) and animator for the pixel soldiers in Combat Mission Shock Force. Now he is listed as a beta tester but I bet his work with Battlefront goes beyond that role. :)

Besides showcasing the new installment of Combat Mission, this report is excellent reading material because it covers both the "what" and "why" of the tactical actions. 

Given the size of the map, it is no surprise that contact was achieved shortly after the scenario start. Bil has lost a tank that he was using in the combat patrol role. Despite the heavy smoke that now covers the US tanks he had eyes on before, he knows that the contact so far has been with a fraction of the enemy force. An M-10 tank has showed up at other avenue of approach and it looks like Bil wants to engage it sooner than later. It looks as if he wants to blunt the enemy spear as much as he can before committing his main force for the final blow. It is a risky premise and the cautious in me would wait until Warren commit his forces instead. We will see ...

Cheers,

Steel Beasts ProPE - Match Offensive Tactical Tasks to Terrain

This Steel Beasts ProPE scenario still haunts me.

A US tank and mechanized infantry company team (1 platoon of M1 Abrams and two platoons of M114 AFVs) must attack and seize a town located some 6 kilometers northwest of the tactical assembly area. Rolling hills, plenty of wooded terrain crossed by some deep ravines. A Russian reinforced mechanized rifle company is defending. Time allowed for this mission: 30 minutes!

I lean my axis of attack on one of my flanks to avoid the pesky Russian infantry outposts. Otherwise I will get pummeled by enemy artillery. We are moving to contact and everything works fine so far.

Movement to contact. Contact is likely now and the tanks are overwatching the movement of the infantry.

To reach the objective, I chose a questionable approach route. A single road in the middle of heavy woods.

A two tank section leads the way as a sort of advance guard. The other tank section is now behind us,intermingled with the infantry. Very stupid train of tactical thought I was into ...

The wooded terrain ends 1.5 km short of the objective. Once the woods clear, contact will be unavoidable. My two-tank section will make contact first, but I will not be able to maneuver other units based on that contact because there is only one road and the terrain surrounding it is un-passable, at least for the tanks.

Contact! The two tank section just emerged from the woods (left) and is immediately engaged by Russian armor. Note the red rod in the M1 tank in the left. It is an enemy shot that resulted in a catastrophic loss. I am in the tank in the right, trying to maneuver.

Once contact is made, the commander should engage his team into the so-called "offensive tactical tasks". One of those (and the one I intended to push my team into) is "advance in contact" (maneuvering your team into an advantage position to destroy or assault and enemy position). Didn't work out very well in this case: lost one tank right  and thus fire superiority over the enemy off the bat, my main body will arrive in a narrow column. Aaaggghhh!

The infantry arrives through the road. My other two-tank section should be next, I hope (?). Caught in the open, these guys have little hope to survive.

The Russian tanks rush to put a cork on my attack. It's now a knife fight (I am the guy in the background).

Advance in contact is possible only when there are alternatives to maneuver. The little area I had available was of no use for that.

Still puzzled on how to achieve the objective. I will keep trying!

Cheers,

Understanding the Operation in One Game, Playing it in Another ...

I am a fan of the Panzer Campaigns series. However, I struggle to plan at the operational level in titles of this series where corps-sized formations are spread over 70 kilometers or more. I have no issues moving a thousand counters, but if I don't see the whole corps and its operational objective/s in one single snapshot, I just don't get it.

To be completely fair, Panzer Campaigns has a zoomed-out view, even a jump map that shows big chunks of terrain and troops at once. But the structure of armies and corps is difficult to grasp in those. The zoomed out view in Panzer Campaigns even obscures some roads in certain types of terrain.

An scenario of Panzer Campaigns Tunisia '43. The 2D map view in the background is rich and detailed, but doesn't allow you to see too much of the road ahead for the British brigade seen in the map. The Jump Dialog map offers the whole picture view, but details like place names are gone.

For playing other titles of the Panzer Campaign series I was in better shape to circumvent the above mentioned shortcomings. I read about the operations and I mimicked the real life operation. In the case of Tunisia '43 I'm ill-prepared and un-read. Books are on order and my interest on this campaign is now very high. On the meantime, I'm reading whatever I can find and consulting The West Point Atlas of War for a quick reference on operational movement during the battle. 


Another thing that is helping me a lot to understand the "big picture" is other game from John Tiller, War on the Southern Front. This game is at the pure operational level, and the units are regiments/brigades (compared to companies and battalions in Panzer Campaigns) and above. Also each terrain hex corresponds to 10 km (compared to 1 km in Panzer Campaigns).

The War in the Southern Front scenario counterpart to the one shown above.

So, I'm going back and forward between both games now and this is helping me quite a bit to understand the operation from the top-bottom, the bottom-up and anything in between ...

Cheers,

Pride of Nations - An Homeopathic Preview - Dose One

Disclaimer: images and comments below are from a preview copy of the upcoming Pride of Nations grand strategy game from AGEOD/Paradox. These images and content may not reflect what we will get in the final release version.

This is a game that I have been aching to play.

I got a preview copy and after a couple of hours of playing through the tutorials, it looks like a great game. I'm going to take it easy in my posts, because Pride of Nations appears to be a couple of notches more involved than the latest Revolution Under Siege. Thus, if you don't mind the homeopathic delivery of content ...

Right off the bat, I noticed some stuff that may have been in other AGEOD releases (I apologize if so), but that is new to me. I thought of sharing some screenies with you.

Those merchant ships are animated. They keep running while you plot your turn's moves.

The military situation in Europe at the beginning of the game. Note the forces icons ... they have NATO size symbols now!

When zoomed out, the maps offers a great, un-cluttered view of the main military units. 

Military Mode tutorial. On the job training: crush the rebels!

Cheers,