I’ve been in the middle of the first Grand Campaign playing H2H for a few weeks now. Playing slowly, only a few games a week, and currently am in the middle of day 3 or 4, not far I realize, but enough to make some comments I think. Overall, I think the gameplay is among the best I’ve seen in any CC. I’m playing as the Russians and I feel I’m doing well, taking my shots, and giving it back when possible, and I’m satisfied to date. My opponent however, another CC IV/V vet, while enjoying the game, has been very quick to comment that he feels the Germans are starting off the game understrength and underpowered, at least for the crack divisions he was expecting.
His biggest compliant probably revolves around the ubiquitous Russian anti-tank guns. I long ago, in the CCIII days, grew accustomed to using the various Russian guns as the overall best defensive weapons in the game, and they were so effective in CCIII that one of my oldest most experienced opponents basically gave up the game because he felt the Germans couldn’t win enough battles to grow their forces for endgame, he declared the game unplayable as the Germans when pitted against this defense.
Which brings me to their role in this mod. I feel that they still constitute one of the most powerful defensive units in the game, although they can no longer hide openly on naked hilltops (as they did in CCIII), they provide a number of strong benefits. First, they fire very quickly, and if set up right, often get multiple shots off in the first few seconds, hopefully smoking any STUGs that were left in the open. I still think that guns are harder to kill than my opponent would like, although they certainly can be defeated once they can be located and targeted. However, placing them in houses whenever possible seems to provide added protection, and keeps them hidden until they open fire, and if done correctly should be able to ambush German armor moving up to support infantry. I’m not really sure of their overall place in the battle, because I haven’t played far enough along, but I feel they are and should be the critical defense units for a human Russian player. They can knock off infantry at all ranges including self defense, and do a fair job of resisting MG and small arms fire, operating under suppression for some time before usually abandoning the gun. Usually it takes a main tank weapon to knock them out with any speed. If placed correctly, other units should be used to lure in the German attacker and attempt to get side or rear shots when possible, and this often takes the punch right out of a German attack. In these instances even the lowly 37-45mm guns can be useful and deadly.
My AT threat to him is so high right now that my opponent spends most of his setup scouring the map for locations where he can hide his armor for a safe start. This reduces their effectiveness in infantry support and allows me to mow down German squads in the open inflicting good casualties with my Russian defenders. Thus far he has made some progress on the various maps, taking 60% or so of multiple maps, but I believe that the terrain favors the Russian defender, as I’ve been able to stop him in instances where he has to cross empty fields, etc, common on the first couple maps. I’ve even managed to disband two of his battlegroups, once where he pressed the attack too hard, and again where I defeated his tanks and actually had a T-34 available to go on the attack and take the final victory square. Those units have been replaced with different units, so I’m anxious to see what’s going to replace them.
Beyond that it would appear that the Germans do have an advantage over Russian squads in a fair fight, as they should, and so I do my best to ensure that this rarely happens. Keeping leaders well spread out and covering the worst troops really does seem to make fragile squads become mildly useful, and I do that whenever possible. I also tried to get overlapping fields of fire as most Russian units aren’t strong enough to hold objectives singly.
However, overall I’ve been really having a great time playing the mod. I love the up-gunned artillery, we had a great battle the other day with dueling artillery barrages blanketing an intersection and causing havoc, looks great, sounds great, and deadly to anything moving. Moving by the way seems to be death, as I can keep my squads well hidden so long as they don’t move. My opponent complains that he can’t target me until he’s nearly on top of me. Also, he complains that I have too much air support historically speaking, and that he has not enough. For example on morning of day three I think I had 5 strikes and he had only 2. Given that Germany had air superiority in the Oct timeframe he may have a point, but I would also think this would vary at the spearheads depending on what was happening day to day. My overall guess is that air support was probably factored in as much for gameplay balance as anything else.
My last story comes from a battle this weekend. I had immobilized a STUG in a narrow street between two buildings. This occurred early in the battle, and while I didn’t know it couldn’t move, I went ahead and snuck a tiny SU-45 up behind it and started plinking away with that pop-gun hoping to do some damage or encourage them to abandon the vehicle. The SU-45 proved to be kind of a joke however, and at 100m or so was doing nothing. So it came closer….70m, still nothing, I had to go around a ravine to get closer…the onscreen AT capability showed yellow at 40m, so I got within 40m (worried I was getting within potential infantry range)…by this time I had fired I believe 22 AP rounds or so with no effect at the rear of an immobile STUG, green reticule all the time. At 40m with 5seconds remaining in the game I got off one more shot….and the Stug lived….amusing…but just one example of how entertaining this dated engine can be. To me it really simulates the meat grinder effect of the city, where both sides take losses and thanks to the bigger maps the going is slow...feels like slogging…as it should be. A pleasant change from other CCs which feel more arcade like when you just roll in and wipe someone off the map and move on..makes you actually care about various terrain and VLs….good stuff and as it should be.
One final note is if you aren’t already play H2H running Google talk in the background. We do it, it helps with anticipating crashes, errors, connecting problems, etc and really adds to the gameplay experience, like playing in the same room, worlds better than chat. It seems to run fine underneath CCV, and doesn’t appear to make the game misbehave any more than it usually does….highly recommended.
I've been playing Stalingrad H2H over the internet for a few weeks now and have most definitely encountered various game errors, although actually less than vanilla CCV. I am playing H2H with a UDP “slower but more reliable” (lol) direct connection. The most common erros I'm seeing appear to be oddities in placing units during the setup screen: there are long delays, and often when you drag a unit during setup it just doesn't move to the new spot. Usually this fixes itself after a few min of waiting during setup, however when that happens it usually leads directly to the other major error I’m encountering, which occurs after about 2 seconds of game play and usually results in a freeze and a game or computer restart. We call that the 1458 error.
We have encountered the occasional mid-game crash, but actually this seems to happen less often in Stalingrad than in vanilla CCV, for the better I might add...if there is going to be a problem setup is better than endgame. Another thing I've noticed is that this game most definitely runs better on older computers than new ones. When playing on a slower Pentium M laptop the game crashes less often and has less issues overall. When I play on my modern dual core AMD we have more problems overall. So I think when possible old and slow is the way to go, and running Win98 emulation in XP is also beneficial
Lastly we’ve had some “new day” strangeness that only appears at the start of a new day or new half day….one time the game tried to start the first battle of the day half way down the line instead of at the top, and another issue occurred when a German battle group was destroyed off the map and then came back only on the German player’s screen not on the Russian one, odd for sure, but all of this seems fixable with a restart.
Overall, it's a buggy system, no fault of the modders of course, but CCV takes love to persist through these problems...However, I think most on this forum agree the gameplay makes it well worth it.
Has there been any kind of documentation or Read Me or anything of that nature developed along with this mod? I really think the mod is fantastic, but I'm trying to figure out if I'm missing some basic explanations of the creator's intentions, major changes, compromises, points of note, etc. For example Katushyas only fire in squares next to the Volga I gather? Differences in the two Grand Campaigns? Overall thought processes in how the units were picked, play balance decisions, relative strength rationales, best h2h settings, comprehensive unit lists, beta testing notes, basically anything that might help one fight a better game and sort of give some background on what the creators were thinking and how they came to decide on their final product. Some of these issues have come up in the forums, which is great, but I'm curious if the creators, or anyone else, actually wrote anything up that is available for download/viewing. I think it would be a great asset to have, to help a CC vet playing the mod for the first time to understand what exactly he or she is dealing with, and how to start planning/playing to win. Thanks in advance, and once again, this to me is where the CC series should have been from the get-go. The authors should be commended for a supreme effort...
Just started a H2H game (vet vs vet level), and I must say this mod is fanstastic so far. Very different feel from the original, and really plays like a whole new game. Wonderful job, and finally gives the CC series the location it was always destined for, the tight confines of Stalingrad. Having visited the city myself, I even found the overall depiction of the ground, ravines and such, to be very accurate.
Now that it's been out awhile, is the general consensus that the sides are pretty balanced, or that the German side is easier to play? In my game it's too early to tell, but I feel like the Russian player can do some damage to the German on the opening maps, especially when the German has to cross open ground. On the other side, the German tank units seem pretty strong, and the T-34 not very powerful in a straight up duel with Panzers. One other difference I've noticed is how much bigger the maps are, so where as on CCIV/V you might play one map for a turn or two, now you might fight on the same map for a longer period of time. I like this change as it makes you invest more in each advance, and avoids the one shot push off the map that was so common in CCIV in particular. I look forward to more H2H feedback/strats in particular.
I would like to know if people still play the campaign to completion or not to determine a winner? I recently played about half of a campaign with a friend, and to be honest neither one of us was really sure how to win. Or rather what moves to make to head toward endgame on the campaign screen (other than the basic, Germans attack, US defend stuff). I think I've played maybe 5 CCIV campaigns and never really gotten to the end, mostly due to time constraints. I've generally played as the Americans and IMHO the game, talking about standard game with patch, should be a walkover for the various Panther units, as the Americans and their lack of AT power become kind of a joke. An aggressive German player can just dominate with his armor.
Thus I am starting to believe that the standard game is probably flawed enough not to be a really challenging game unless the German player really sucks. (Maybe everyone here already came to this conclusion?) Moreover, the middle battles, before the US gets reinforcements all tend to be infantry vs Armor walkovers which I find become very un-enjoyable over time...panther's dominate, repeat...no fun or challenge for either player.
Beyond that both of us were really struggling to understand what our overall strategy should be. The game does a very poor job of explaining how you win, other than the historical comparison it throws up there. In my most recent game the German player stopped attacking because he was nearing Allied supply depots and felt any further moves would compromise his supply lines. What matters more? Progress or line integrity? I had the same issues as the US, do I let troops get run over to stall advancement, or is retreat a better option even if you only hold the early maps for half a day? Finally, even if the US gets killed by the never ending Panthers early in the game, are the US reinforcements enough to give that player a chance at all to recover and at least gain a draw, or is giving up more sensible if Bastogne falls and the Panthers push on the edge of the map?
In any event, I find the individual battles great (when there aren’t panthers), but the overall situation difficult to interpret or make strategic decision on, we sort of feel like we are just feeling along and at the whim of the computer. So, do people still play the campaign? How about the VetBOB campaign, is that playable and fair? Lastly, are there strategy resources that deal with the campaign and winning it? These forums seem to be focused mostly on modding, and not overall strategy, and I get the impression that the ladder games that the clans play are mostly one off battles, not full campaigns. Appreciate any thoughts or comments on any of these issues, excuse the long post.
I've been playing the various CCs for years mostly on LANs against fellow wargamers, and this XMAS I set up a game on my new Dual Core Althlon 4200 with 2GB of RAM and XP SP2, the usual. The game will play for a few battles slowing down slowly until it becomes unplayable. A similar occurance happens on my other newer computer, a Dell XPS laptop with a P4 3.4, 1GB of RAM, etc. Oddly, the game runs fine on my slowest computer a Pentium M laptop with 1GB of RAM running probably 1.6Ghz. Any explantions or solutions to the modern computer old CC games dilema? We still love the engine and the experinces enough to keep whipping them out year after year despite newer matierial. Seems others in the forums were having problems along my lines, however I never saw concrete answers or workarounds? Much appreciate any help you can provide.
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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