While I can see in some certain special scenarios where a hidden victory location might be put in (now just where is that cache of WMD hiding?) - what commander goes into battle without knowing what the goals they are taking are? Thus far I have not seen an option to make the VLs visible. I really don't see the point in not knowing what areas you have to take, it means making a grid search out of the map otherwise.
I'd say a good portion of the time it does seem to act on information it shouldn't have were it a player. The mention of the Panzerschreck team mirrors the same problem I get with a bazooka team, or any other. They can't sneak, the AI always picks them out. Ambushing teams get ambushed themselves. Yet shoe on the other foot, I have Panzerschreck AI units murder my tanks coming right up on them. Fact is the AI's units make or get far better use of and benefit from cover then player units. The one I have in progress right now - MG 42 forced to ground, middle of the street, surounded on 3 sides. Yet it sits there unhit tearing up the squads overlooking from 2 & 3 story concrete buildings. Or an AT gun hidden in the woods, tank rolls by on the road across the field, AT gun bounces a round off the tank, tank turns, fires & destroys the AT gun before the gun crew can fire again? There are some holes in the realism there.
Another goody (supports the "AI always knows" theroy) - had a Bazooka unit stationed to cover a remote Vic Loc, sure enough a Panther breaks off from the main force to capture it. It drives to it, and then, backs away from the bazooka unit with its front facing that way the whole time. Meanwhile across the map, I have an AT gun dug in good cover. A Panzershreck unit (which along with the other Panthers is doing the DOD (Dance of Death, spining & running back & forth) finally move along the road, abot 180m away. They go to ground, and pick off the AT gun which to that point hasn't done a thing. And yet my infantry can't see units barely 20m away in the woods while sneaking forward.
Actually I can tell you why CC4 forced your hand, I was at E3 the year prior to release and talked to the developers along with a couple other fans. Keith Z. had read some gaming rag that called the Requisition Screen in CC2 & CC3 "The most confusing screen in gaming history." He took the author's idiotic rantings at face value not discounting the fact they probably mostly reviewed Barney games for kids & had an anti-war outlook to begin with. The vast majority of people I know that play this game, heard of it or play others like it are war gamers & history buffs. While a few might not know what a Panzer V is, the force bars for AP & AT pretty well give the novice an idea of the units effectiveness. In short, there was nothing confusing about the screen if you can read basic tables. They trashed the integrity of the game to 90% of fans to satisfy 10% of whiners that can't be bothered to learn a game past the 2 minute attention span of a 5 year old. Microsoft & Atomic parted ways, SSI picked the game up for 2 titles and the rest is history. Kind of sad, I looked forward to many expansions and improvements.
I will say though at first play with 2 basic patches the AI is performing very poorly. How entrenched soldiers in large numbers can be assaulted over open ground, and uniformly outshot by soldiers taking impromptu cover in an open field let alone the middle of a road is beyond me. That aspect could use some cleaning up. If its house to house fighting and you drop flat in the middle of the street and stay there for several minutes - you die. In the game I've got every MG42 does it, they are impervious to return fire and shoot up whole squads in concrete buildings. This however, only works one way, if I order men to cross the street, they do so piecemeal, get seperated and cut down. I don't recall it happening like that in the original quite so badly, but then I didnt get to play CC5 much, 1-3 I owned, 4 & 5 my brother bought & I played at his house (part of the problem that Atomic brought on themselves pissing off fans, I liked the mutability of scenarios by being able to freely make forces on various maps).
Was playing tihs morning on the South Eiffel Map starting a Grand Campaign. Defending as US I have troops in positions to Ambush, they are dug in, haven't moved or fired. Yet, unseen German units are firing on them, from an open field even... Better still, one MG unit sits in that field, firing north on the map into the house there repeatedly as I try to flank, but oddly, I can't fire to that location, nor see the MG unit unless I suicide men down the hill. That and having MGs in the houses tearing up my untis but I can't target them to fire back either, just play a guessing game shooting at the walls. Sneak doesn't work unless you are halfway across the map, othrewise your units are seen the minute they start moving from cover (thru more wooded cover) - yet same units can sit in their foxhole and have the German units sneak up right in their face before being seen. WTF, just a tad frustrating.
Major props to Matrix games for resurrecting one of my favorite games. While I credit Keith Z & Atomic with the creation, it seemed to me they also erred in the downfall of their entrerpise. Specifically where in CC2 & CC3 you have the ability to customize forces to make many different scenarios and in 4 & 5 you were forced to take a selection of preformed groups. My experience is mots gamers like to tweak and after playing a game a while "what if" scenarios become essential to continued interest. Too bad they didn't see that back then.
Look forward to recieving my copies here shortly of the new versions.
In August of 2004, Zappi, Homba, Bambam887, RedScorpion and MOOXE all pitched
in to create this Close Combat site. I would to thank all the people who have visited
and found this site to thier liking. I hope you had time to check out some
of the great Close Combat mods and our forums. I'd also like to thank
all the members of our volunteer staff that have helped over
the years, and all our users that contributed to this site!
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