Interested in CC... will I be happy with it?

[Binchois]

Hi folks,

I just ordered my copy of CC:LD after much deliberation, and am anxiously awaiting its arrival! I've never actually played or even seen the CC series, but I am a board game veteran (ASL especially). The big selling point for me was CC's inception as an ASL simulation, and from what I've heard it went its own way while maintaining the overall scope of SL. Basically I have two questions for the collective wisdom:

First; for those of you who know ASL in any of its incarnations - how does CC measure up? Sight unseen, I imagine the details of a squad plus its morale/behavior to be a real strong point. And, naturally, a computer simulation wil do a better job with various fog-of-war issues. But what about the overall scope of the game? The variety of units, equipment, terrain, etc... In ASL, it seems that virtually everything that existed during WWII exists in the game and virtually anything you could imagine doing - like swimming or cliff-climbing! - could be attempted in the game... I suspect the scope isn't as vast, but is it excitingly broad or frustratingly restrictive?

Second; a strong point of ASL was your ability to create your own scenarios using any combinations of units and terrain. I went with CC:LD because it seemed to be the most advanced PROGRAM of the bunch - not because Normandy is my favorite theater/campaign of the war. I much prefer, for example, the Russian theater, but didn't want to miss out on things like night fighting and air-support. Will I eventually want to buy the earlier games, or is there/will there be the possibility of playing the most advanced VERSION of the game with the forces/maps/scenarios included in the old ones (WaR; CoI)?

You see, I'm a boardgamer at heart and am imagining, wishfully, a single CC with "expansion modules." What I think we have, however, is separate CC games that are not interchangeable. How does it all work?

[panzerlehr62]

Hello,

Ive bought a lot games over the years and some I liked and some I did'nt. I am sure some of the one's I did'nt were liked by a lot other people so basically in the end it will be you that determines that outcome.

I enjoy playing CC TLD. I think overall, for the good and bad of it, its a great game. Not having played the other releases you will be a bit behind the learning curve of this particular game, so its just matter of how fast you come up to speed if you decide to play H2H oppenents with any success.

I think most people out here have been with this game since it came out back in 1997. Probably each one of us has our favorite release. Most like CC2 or CC3, there are a lot people out here that have spent tons of hours making new maps and new mods for this game over the years, so that should tell you something.

Good luck with it and I hope you enjoy it.

Gz...

[CSO_Talorgan]

ORIGINAL: panzerlehr62

I think most people out here have been with this game since it came out back in 1997.

Some of us have been playing it since 1897!

[panzerlehr62]

[:D]

[tigercub]

You will love the Mortar....[:@]

Tiger!

[DasHoff]

if you like cc5 u will definately want to get COI. i still think COI is my favourite, although TLD is very close

also u will definately want to find an opponent for h2h once u get the hang of it, the game is 10000x better multiplayer

[FeurerKrieg]

I'll second that. If you like CC5 TLD is great. And H2H against human player is the only way to play this game IMO.

[billiard]

Have all 5 of the old Close Combat series (CCII still my overall favorite; CCIII was quite nice too in that you could create your own campaigns), played the heck out of them until I got this Vista machine that won't let me even load the old games. The only thing holding me back on another purchase is the price, better than $60 after shipping if you want the disk. Anybody found a less expensive way to get the disk? The Digital River site has a spot for a promo code, any idea if there are any promotions that would make any kind of dent in the price tag of this game?

I think I paid about $60 in total for CCII, the Close Combat Trilogy (yes, I ended up with a second copy of CCII), and CCIV. CCV put me over the top of the current asking price, but then we are talking 5 games. I looked in on Cross of Iron when it first came out, but it didn't seem a great advance over the old games. But with tLD, it appears that enough improvements have been made to make this an meaningful improvement over CCV.

[LT Blindgaenger]

EDIT:
OMG This post came a bit late....that happens when i hang around in
the forum at 2 am.
well what's done is done
-----> stupid me



Hi Binchois,

i played a little SL and ASL but am still a bloody beginner with this two boardgames, and always will be.
Squadleader is so complex....sometimes i felt i'd need a law degree to understand the manual. Under what circumstances is a
vehicle immobilised, A squad rallied, broken, heroic.....roll a dice to rally a squad after the general rallied himself, if he can....or could....wich phase are we in now? You forgot to put prep-fire! Prep what?! Can i attach my smg to a bicycle and wear a funny hat? Wait, i check the rules!
The complexity of Squad Leader is very impressive but was also very confusing.

Squad Leader:
You need to hide your men under questionmark-counters, accidentally hit the table with your foot
and your tower of men-, concealment-, equipment- and smokemarkers finally falls. You desperately
try to block your opponents view while you readjust your defensive line on the board.
You check the los, check the los, check the los....argue about the los....check the los.
You roll dice and again and again and again until every peashooter found its mark.

Close Combat:
The computer checks movement, concealment, morale, los...in real time. You play the game without interruption.

Close Combat in my opinion is complex, but as player you dont have to do the hard work, because the calculations and
rules work all in the background. And you will like the feeling, when you see how morale works on your men, how it rapidly
switches when your men get supressed, start to panic, or hang in there against all odds. If the last man in a squad helps
himself to the machinegun and still dishes out, no matter what! This things simply happen....in real time. No interruptions and combat phases.

But you asked about the overall scope of the game.
Well. There is terrain from water to mud to road, hedges, shellholes, stonewalls....that turn to rubble and so on. And there is its effect on movement, cover, line of sight. And there is of course different map heights.
In Squad leader you have multiple-story buildings as well, but in close combat you got much more of the terrain and its heigt simulated.
You have tons of different weapons. Every unit consists of several men all armed with different rifles or explosives. And
you will adjust your strategy according to the opportunities the equipment of your men offers you.
What i like is that one battle is just a piece of the whole picture. You will see.

A board game has its charm and Squad Leader for me is number one regarding strategy.
But it takes a huge amount of time to set up the board and play.
With Close Combat you get going in 30 sec. And it has a fine mix of strategy and action.

In The Longest Day are already a lot of maps included, but there is also a mod available for download that lets you play
the Ardennenoffensive (remake of Close Combat 4).
http://closecombat.matrixgames.com/LongestDay/tLDmods.html

And maybe there are more mods on their way. With Close Combat 5 there had been an impressive amount of maps and mods (that
i never played....because my internet connection was crap back then...). But anyway. Maybe people port these mods to TLD and
you will have enough WW2 material to play with for a lifetime.

I wish you a lot of fun and hope i'll be playing with you someday [:)]

[Southernland]

Nope.
 
Sorry...
 
you will hate it.
 
thats just the way it is.
 
there's really no getting past it.
 
You will stick knitting needles into your ears and rip out your eyeballs and stagger blindly (and deafly too I guess) around the house screaming "Oh dear God, why haast thou foresaken me?  I could have been a contender!" while trying to find someone to kill you with a teaspoon... http://chud.com/articles/articles/21562/1/WATCH-THIS-NOW-THE-INCREDIBLY-SLOW-MURDERER-WITH-THE-EXTREMELY-INEFFICIENT-WEAPON/Page1.html
 
 
Well okay there's a 5% chance you may enjoy it but the odds ain't great...

[nietsche]

... in other words ... if you want bad reviews about the game this might be the wrong place to ask :p

Sorry no time to post more ... there are mortars to fire and sneaking infantry to look out for.

[Concord]

I played the ol'Squad Leader game for many years with friends. Great game!
These days, I don't have the time to play such a complex system anymore.

Here's the basic comparison between SL and CC as I see it...

-  SL had a potentially huge scope and scalability, with interchangeable maps, massive OOB and rules coverage (yes, including SMG'ers on bicycles, wearing funny hats!).
-  CC has 'set' maps that you battle on (not scaleable), and a set number of units that can be used by each side.

-  SL, being a board game, had limited FOW capability, and everything had to be done manually (LOS checks, rule and resolution checks etc etc).
-  CC has great FOW (makes a big difference!), and reduces the details to their essence. The result is that although you don't have the scope and scale of SL (I recall some massive SL games we had when I was in my early 20's...regimental size at least!), but what you DO have is greater ease of playing, real time excitement, and special effects (BOOM!!!). It's more of a "beer-n-pretzels" style of game, with a stronger emphasis on nitty-gritty small unit tactics. Funnily enough, I think this was the original goal of SL, before it grew into a monster! ASL had so many expansions and rules and updates that they needed to be filed in a big ring-binder.

By the way, I've still got my entire set of original Squad Leader games, mapboards, and expansion sets in a 90 litre crate in my shed. It will have to wait until I'm much much older and retired before I dust it off again!

[Concord]

One more thing. I would love to see a Squad Leader or similar game made into a computer game. Can you think of a better, more thought-out and designed, complex game system than Squad Leader that deserves to be streamlined by the power of modern PC's? All the farting around with rules checking, LOS, graphs, tables and counters...handled by the program.

I saw "Virtual Advanced Squad Leader" (VASL) out there on the net some years ago, and thought GREAT! But it turns out it's just a graphical display...you still need to know and apply all the rules 'manually'. IIRC, Hasbro bought Avalon Hill, and tried to make a SL computer game long ago, but FAILED ABYSMALLY!!!

I'm still keeping my eye on Lock n Load Heroes of Stalingrad, listed on the Matrix website. It seems to have been in development for ages. I wonder if it will ever see the light of day?? If it does, I'm IN!

[Pz Leader]

Concord,

You might be interested in Combat Mission ("CM"). It's an old game, but people still play it. Not sure if it's against forum rules, but CM was made by Battlefront. Their website is here: www.battlefront.com You can find players still playing the game at The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club. The website for the club is here: www.theblitz.org CM is not as easy to play as Close Combat, but CM covers a much larger scale and scope. Check it out and let me know what you think. I don't currently play CM, but I will probably return to it when I am no longer burned out on it. LOL. That is, if I don't purchase War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition first.

Jim

[FeurerKrieg]

BUY AE!! BUY AE!!!

Your life will never be the same....

[Andrew Williams]

If I spend 110% of my spare time with CC how will I fit in WitPAE?

[FeurerKrieg]

That's easy - make more spare time. [:D]

[Southernland]

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

That's easy - make more spare time. [:D]

yeah sleep is for the weak.[:D]

[Concord]

ORIGINAL: Pz Leader

Concord,

You might be interested in Combat Mission ("CM"). It's an old game, but people still play it. Not sure if it's against forum rules, but CM was made by Battlefront. Their website is here: www.battlefront.com You can find players still playing the game at The Blitzkrieg Wargaming Club. The website for the club is here: www.theblitz.org CM is not as easy to play as Close Combat, but CM covers a much larger scale and scope. Check it out and let me know what you think. I don't currently play CM, but I will probably return to it when I am no longer burned out on it. LOL. That is, if I don't purchase War in the Pacific: Admiral's Edition first.

Jim

I'm also a big fan of the CMBB and CMAK! Very challenging and fun game. Quite a realistic simulation of the WWII tactical scale.

ORIGINAL: Feurer Krieg

BUY AE!! BUY AE!!!

Your life will never be the same....

I've looked at this one a few times. The thing that has kept me away is its complexity. I played Hearts of Iron a few times co-operatively with a friend on LAN. While it's a good game, the rules and micromanagement of supplies and trade and production seemed to bog it down. There's not enough time in my week to explore really complex games that you can't get into properly without studying it in-depth. This is one of the great things about games like CC and Combat Mission. Easy to learn, hard to master.

[FeurerKrieg]

WITP AE (or stock) is very complex, but like most things, before you know it, some much of the game is just second nature. It isn't really anything like HOI though, so don't judge it based any experience you've had with that series.