Panther Games' Highway to the Reich revolutionizes wargaming with its pausable, continuous time game play and advanced artificial intelligence. Command like a real General, under real time pressures to achieve real objectives on a real map all within the fog of war. Issue orders to your powerful AI controlled subordinates or take total control of every unit. Fight the world's most advanced AI opponent or match wits against your friends online or over a LAN. Highway to the Reich covers all four battles from Operation Market Garden, including Arnhem, Nijmegen, Eindhoven and the 30th Corps breakout from Neerpelt.
Worked fine for me. Are you saving it to your HD or attempting to open it directly?
Bil
No, I don't even get to any saving. When I click on the first link, it immediatly (wel, after a very short pause) gives a "ding" sound, and the error message. No temp saves or anything.
The other file opens a map (a temp map on my comp, or a map on your side??), but I can not move or copy the file, in fact right-clicking gives a freeze I have to ctrl-alt-del. Task manager gives a "program not responding". I got to delete the task to get out.
Strange isn't it??
Bertram
edit: tried left clicking, and unzipping the file that showed, but got the message "there are no files to unzip". That wasn't unexpected, as the size of the file was 0 kb ......
No, I don't even get to any saving. When I click on the first link, it immediatly (wel, after a very short pause) gives a "ding" sound, and the error message. No temp saves or anything.
The other file opens a map (a temp map on my comp, or a map on your side??), but I can not move or copy the file, in fact right-clicking gives a freeze I have to ctrl-alt-del. Task manager gives a "program not responding". I got to delete the task to get out.
Strange isn't it??
have you tried to right-click the link and then choose "save as". Sometimes that works when left-clicking doesnt.
Ainsi dans le courage et ainsi dans la peur, ainsi dans la misère et ainsi dans l'horreur.
"first you need a tear, just a tear of gin......and then a river of tonic"
Tried you map mods. Very nice.
I prefer the green one---the brown one makes it a bit difficult to see minor roads/trails due to the color similarity and lack of contrast between them.
Anyway please take that as a constructive criticism---I would try to fix that problem or suggest a solution, but my modding prowess isnt so great.
Also I dl'd the quick reference from you site---very helpfull!
Thanks again for hosting those mods and reference material on you site.
I would like an option to automatically pause the game when friendly reinforcements arrive. A few times I have lost sight of the message telling me they have turned up due to the large number of other messages appearing (B coy is questioning your leadership, D coy is fleeing in terror, etc) and so left whole battalions sitting around like lemons until I finally noticed them.
While the battles the British fight may differ in the widest possible ways, they invariably have two common characteristics – they are always fought uphill and always at the junction of two or more map sheets.
Oh O I've been thinking again, this time about the unit counters. Since we have symbols for types and an info box and colors to define engagement various stats, why not combine all 3. For example; in the top third of the counter now occupied by the type and info box we make one combined box. Lets say our unit is AB infantry on the attack. Show two men figures with a para symbol one in standing firing position, one kneeling with muzzle flashes with a green background. On the defense and firing, show same figures behind sandbags with muzzle flashes same green background. Receiving fire, figures crouch and prone, yellow background. Taking casualties, red background, one figure prone in wounded position. Retreating, one figure walking away the other firing from standing position, orange background. Routing, both figures running, red background and so on and so forth, you get the idea. Let the figures resemble the real life actions they would be taking, the colors could show various degrees of engagement. Now down the right side of the counter use 3 boxes like the engagement status box for various other stats, user defined, like fatigue, ammo, morale, etc., color defines degrees of situation. Now I know you guys can come up with some real good ideas for the vehicle and gun actions. More info on the counters mean less references to the unit info display, not to mention having to cycle through all the units.
Okay I agree with what you say here, but at a minimum it would be nice to have an "Airstrikes Tab" showing how many and rough time estimates of when they will be available based on last known intelligence that would have been available when the orders for the scenerio were given. I also like the idea of counters representing the aircraft, I think it adds to the feel of seeing the game from an "overview" perspective. The only issue with this I can see is that the game is written to display the highest ranking counter unless you select a lower one, so something would have to be done to keep the air counters on top. Would even be nicer if airstrikes and aircraft could be redone and given control to us. We could then manage our own aircraft and using a set of rules decide when and how many airstrikes on our own. This would be a major change and would require a whole new game though.
Way too much control for a ground pounder. Close air support was in it's infancy during WWII. Even more realistically, not only should you not have any control over airstrikes, but there should be a chance that they hit one of your own units as well. Communications between air assests and ground forces were pretty much non existent. CAS missions and interdiciton missions were briefed to the pilots before a mission. They flew out to their assigned area and looked for targets of oppritunity. So I think even allowing us to select a target for an airstrike is pretty damn generous.
not only should you not have any control over airstrikes, but there should be a chance that they hit one of your own units as well.
If you aren't careful where you place them, airstrikes (unlike artillery) will engage friendly forces. Be particularly careful of ordering airstrikes close in front of advancing friendly troops; by the time the airstrike takes place the friendlies may be right in the impact area.
Communications between air assests and ground forces were pretty much non existent. CAS missions and interdiciton missions were briefed to the pilots before a mission. They flew out to their assigned area and looked for targets of oppritunity. So I think even allowing us to select a target for an airstrike is pretty damn generous.
Interdiction would normally have taken place beyond a bomb line well in advance of the battle front, so it's outside the scope of this game. You can consider it to have already occurred by the time reinforcements etc. arrive on the map. CAS was pretty rare in WWII, as you say, although in Market Garden specifically there were GLOs accompanying the forward troops of XXX Corps who could call in strikes from the 'cab rank' of fighters circling above - at least, when the GLOs' radios worked, that is.
There is certainly room for refinement of CAS operations in the game though - keep the ideas coming!
Well this was true to an extent. But 30th Corps' vanguard had a Tac Air ground controller team travelling in an armoured car just behind the Irish Gds Gp HQ commanders vehicle. They were able to call in the cab rank of fighter bombers ( one flight every 6 minutes during the breakout from Neerpelt ) with reasonable accuracy. A similar team with specialised comms equipment was dropped with 1st Abn Div, but they were lost on landing.
I just turned off a game because the AI send my troops all over the map, after thinking about it for 60 minutes (to be exact, it turned a 3 km probe over open terrain in a 18 km all day long walk, complete with surprise encounters and an occasional short swim). I can cancel those orders, and give new ones, but: a. it takes an other 2 hours before taking effect, b. I don't want to micromanage each unit.
Suggestions for AI rules:
- when setting up an assaulting or probing solution, no waypoint for an unit should be further from the target then the current location of that unit. This might limit flanking moves some (especially when starting from a location close to the enemy), but it also cuts down on the reshuffling of units, and flanking moves that take 12 hours to effect.
- when moving, the total lenght of move should be no longer then x times the original distance (in a straight line). x may be depending on the kind of move (safest, , normal, shortest). x has to be tried out, but 2 seems to be a nice number to strat with.
I think that for a better AI the notion of enemy and friendly territory needs to be taken in account (or maybe between known and unknown - where known means in regard to enemy presence). As it is the AI often seems to prefer a long detour through unknown terrain, because it does not "see" any enemy troops there, while it does "see" an enemy along the short route, over known terrain. Forbidding moves through unknown terrain won't work (you would never advance) but it should be penalized in the pathfinding algorithm, so that the AI would prefer to move as much in known terrain as possible (maybe two kind of "moves" for the algoritm, a cheap one, in terms of weighting the alternatives, only to be used in known terrain, and a certain distance from enemy units, and a more expensive one to be used otherwise).
I just turned off a game because the AI send my troops all over the map, after thinking about it for 60 minutes (to be exact, it turned a 3 km probe over open terrain in a 18 km all day long walk, complete with surprise encounters and an occasional short swim).
Sounds like a bad FUP spot with the wrong options on how to move. I've done a few of those myself. Painfully Realistic orders makes for Painfully Realistic mistakes.
We already apply a penalty in the movement algorythms for "current enemy controlled" and "old enemy controlled" territory even if there is no actual enemy intel report there. Maybe this needs to be tweaked a little. It's a fine balance though. You raise these too high and the AI will end up never doing outflanks and will become far too predictable.
I thought someone bring it up before in another topic, that is to pursue enermy units.
I think it is a good one since sometimes the enermy makes a mistake, and got beat badly, had a very high cohesion. It will be nice for some unit to pursue them, then it is very hard for them to reorg, and disband eventually if there is no backup.
I know to input new orders might take too long for your units to pursue. Maybe a good idea is have checkboxes for each unit: []persue when enermy retreat, []persue when enermy routing. And the distance for pursue, from 500m up by 500m increament.
Add to my previous post, also an checkbox for pursue if enermy near, to chase away weak enermies sitting in your large objective parameter or on the edge of your parameter, of course, if the enermy move the wrong direction into the objective further, then it will get beating badly with all your friend defending unit.
