Matrix Games Forums

Great write up Henri, it's much appreciated. Still lurking about, but tipping closer to buying...

ORIGINAL: Laramie
Thank you Dr. Sterrett.

Play two scenarios and call me in the morning. [;)]

I spent yesterday early afternoon watching the tutorial videos, which were informative and an excellent addition. Certainly easier to follow than several hundred pages of PDF!

I then did the St Vith tutorial before evening, which I found a bit easy. I'm guessing that it's not been set up to be a big challenge so as to ease the player in or I just got lucky. I reckon it'll be a pain as the Axis or if the allies have fewer reinforcements.

I didn't really have any more time to do anything but peruse the scenario list and fire up and review one or two. The corps-level stuff looks intimidating! BftB feels slightly larger scale than CotA, which I'm not 100% sure about, although it's possible I've not seen the smaller battles. I think it might take me a little while to get used to (and building enough trust for) giving macro commands to whole divisions, but it'll certainly give a flavour of what it must be like to be a corps commander.

I then did the St Vith tutorial before evening, which I found a bit easy. I'm guessing that it's not been set up to be a big challenge so as to ease the player in or I just got lucky. I reckon it'll be a pain as the Axis or if the allies have fewer reinforcements.

You're spot on. The scenario was designed for new players to learn the ropes, and to have a good chance of getting a result at the same time. The 'regular' scenarios will generally bit a bit tougher...

Pieter

Yep, I've just had to surrender the Roadblocks game, playing as the allies, as dawn on the second day revealed the German forces had flanked me and were happily running around behind my lines. My troops were stuck and out of supply. I was screwed. Even the arrival of the Airborne couldn't save the day.

So far only managed a quick test besides starting on the tutorials. I own RDOA and HTTR so I know something anyway [:)]. Appreciate the graphics options since I have a nice 24" 16:9 monitor and running at the native 1920x1080 resolution rocks.

One funny thing I noticed is that when I ordered a battalion to attack the unit designated "rear guard" seemed to be leading the  attack [:D]. It was going to be the rear guard when it reached the final position but while moving in the attack it happened to be the very first unit.

You will leran over time when to micro manage and at what level to macro manage...I've never gone over battalion level on the whole in either HTTR or COTA...possibly brigade on the odd occasion...never division as you do need to have some control otherwise there would be no game to play....I micromanage as little as possible....

as for Arty there have been many threads on this and my best advice is to leave it to the AI on call....its never failed for me.

I played the Roadblocks scenario today and, apart from the start when not everyone had arrived, 95% of my instructions where at the regimental or kampfgruppe level. Everyone performed pretty well. In CotA I'd generally gone to battalion level, but I really wanted to let the AI control things more before I move onto the larger Corps level scenarios, where battalion level control might just send me mad.