The Cromwell and Crusader marks were big on mobility at the expense of armour, and certainly in the latter case, reliability. For some reason a decent all round medium tank seemed to elude British tank designers until the very end of the war; the Comet, but that's about it. They seemed fixated on either well armoured but slow infantry tanks or fast and fragile "cruisers".
It seems that the Italian campaign is a huge opportunity inexplicably missed in the Close Combat series in general. Successive owners and developers have spent their time obsessed with NW Europe and dabbled in Russia a bit, but Anzio (and Cassino combined?) could be awesome. You'd have everything from swamps, mountains, urban fighting, river crossings and more unit types and nationalities than you could throw many, many sticks at. Actually the Italian front doesn't seem to get much attention in a lot of WWII strategy games from what I can make out.
Returned to CC after years away; stopped playing at Battle of the Bulge edition because of the terrible bugs (mostly line of sight and pathfinding).
Coming back after a long break first impressions after a campaign as the Germans
Explosions effects great. Love the idea of mortars being able to reuse "zeroed in" target areas; nice touch. Infantry combat is as good as it ever was.
The not so hot: Mortars still too accurate when they fire blind, (nor friendly troops to spot for them... that would be at least one good reason to be accurate). 6 Pdr AT seems to stay invisible after firing a lot of shots off, sat in a field with German troops less than 100 metres away, only supressing area fire and a costly infantry charge to less than 40 metres revealled it. Some line of sight bugs; Can't recall the map but I had PZIV being shot at by a Cromwell with only a small hedgerow between them, no smoke or anything else in the way but the PZIV couldn't "see" to shoot back. Similar happened to some infantry who couldn't see the Sherman shooting at them from other side of a hedgerow. Yes I know there are often tiny gaps where line of sight is possible but Ive played these games a lot and it isn't those.
Path finding is worse than CCIII . Several times vehicles ordered to drive along a lane next to a hedge row managed to veer off into the hedge and get tracked for no apparent reason, (it wasnt under fire or anything like that). (Is it just coincidence but I've never noticed AI vehicles getting tracked when crossing hedges etc... I hardly dare drive a Tiger through anything more than grass or roads). Path finding seems to be worse for halftracks or that's been my experience so far. In one instance a 251/1 was ordered across an open field but instead it headed for the nearest hedgerow which was no where near it or the destination. Micro managing their path finding is too distracting ... Infantry are doing similar things now and then but not so badly. EG retreating them out of a hedge row because they're under fire; instead of withdrawing they insist on a random crawl along the line of the hedge row until they're wiped out. I know it's programmed so infantry seek out cover but there is a limit... or should be.
The strategy feature that I can't get my head around; why the AI is able to secure a victory even when its morale breaks and I still have a force left that can wipe it out or at least force it into retreat. It's a big get out of jail free card for the AI which makes no logical sense. On one battle I was attacking, had taken one victory location, then the AI threw in an early counter attack, which was fought out until their morale caved in. It had a few battered infantry units left and one Sherman. I still had 3 PZIVs and most of my infantry. If the AI had not thrown in the towel I would (like to think) that the Germans could at least have taken the major objectives on the map in good time. If a force has its morale broken, even it is sitting on most of the objectives then surely it isn't in condition to resist the enemy and would have to give up ground?
Ref: the Super Crocodile. For some reason it has massively thicker armour in the Vehicles.txt file compared to the other Churchill models; I haven't read anywhere that it isn't just a converted Mk VII, nothing about thicker armour. They have one parked outside the D-Day museum in Portsmouth (UK) and another at the Tank Museum in Bovington
Vehicles.txt file also reveals that the Cromwell is too slow compared to other tanks speed figures; the Tiger has some part of the frontal armour which is very weak (but only one area, anyone figure why that is?).
Good point made about why no MP44?
Oh one final whinge (for now) ... Panzerfausts, the scourge of Allied armour in the Bocage, are proving pretty much as useful as water pistols; maybe they can be used to rust the Royal Tank Regiment to oblivion. They packed a punch in CCIII. Apart from when they're in solid cover in L2 or higher buildings, German infantry seem happy to get shot to bits rather than think about using them.
The AI seems to be having even less luck with the PIAT against German tanks, but I've not played the British yet. I'm not expecting to fare any better.
Apologies if these items are mentioned/explained ad infinitum elsewhere but I don't have the time to search everything on here. none of the above is a show stopper, just niggles which I thought may have been corrected.
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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