It's for the most part a defensive campaign. If the enemy keeps air superiority, nothing works because they can hit your troops and strategic targets and you can't hit theirs. And because the situation on the ground is desperate from the very start, the grunts need a lot of help - help you can't give them.

I have fought off wave after wave of enemy attacks over the flot. Countless times we have inflicted heavy losses on them. But the result is ALWAYS the same - the number of allied planes drops off while the numbers of enemy planes stayes the same.

Eventually you can't compete up there - I am now getting engaged as I climb off the end of the runway. The bridges get repaired, the enemy crosses and we get overwhelmed.

I am going to have one last go - a major gorilla up north to hit a whole load of war production facilities, not just the one aircraft factory. Maybe if I can turn the situation to "good", it will affect re-supply.

You've given us all a lot of things to think about and I wish you luck.

I don't think the campaign (especially Iron Fortress) can be won by attrition. You can't beat them because no matter how successful, they always get resupplied. This may be rebalanced at some time with a patch, but it is a difficult balance to get right.

I think there must be a difference in the way the campaign runs and real life tactics. The campaign must have certain triggers that cause certain things to happen - I hate to use the word with reference to a dynamic campaign, but linear events. Do this and this happens. Do that and that happens. There has to be a list of things you need to hit.

The ring of bridges gives you the breathing space you need to hit something. I really have no idea what that might be, but you can't stand toe to toe.

What happens if you do the bridges and then ignore the ground war? Go for some big targets with everything you've got?

What significance does the airbase in Japan have?

Sorry, I can't help you too much.

To me, making a big dent in the enemy air defenses at the outset is essential. I think it appropriate that should I fail to do that, I should loose. Nor do I find it easy since I do fail about 50% of the time.

One thing that helps me a lot is a screen capture program (I recommend Hypersnap). By taking a lot of screen shots of the map, I can print them out (or just view on monitor)and study them at times when I'm not playing and am a little more clear headed. Making about 3 or 4 shots with different assets showing on each, I can put together a whole picture that is less confusing than having everything crammed onto one map that I can't read.

You can also lay on numerous ATO package routes and study potential game plans without actually running them.

To take out air defenses, look for things like the enemy concentrating flights in one area, leaving another area open. In other words, always be searching for an enemy weakness. They are there! Exploit them.

Also, try to get a feel for the rythem of the war. At times the enemy is very agressive, at times much less so. There is an ebb and flow to these campaigns, just as there is in real wars. I now spend more time map studying than I do flying. There are times when I work only with ground forces, other times with hectic flying -- or both. And then there are times when I just work the ATO and sit back and watch because little is happening, or the AI seems to be handling it well.

OK - I'll spell it out again. My losses are not the problem. The effectiveness of the AI is not the problem. The strategy isn't really the problem (but see below)since it is impossible to go onto the offensive when you are out of amraams, running low on aircraft (because you don't get re-supplied and are fighting a continuous MAJOR airwar over the flot) and the enemy has just had it's second major re-supply in the last hour. All the successes of the previous 6 hours only serve to make matters worse!

THE ONLY PROBLEMS ARE RE-SUPPLY OF THE ENEMY WHICH IS RIDICULOUSLY UNREALISTIC AND THE FACT THAT YOU CANNOT PUT ENEMY AIRFIELDS OUT OF ACTION FOR ANY TIME, NOT EVEN A FEW MINUTES.

But you're right - you have to get off the defensive footing and quickly. There is a period of about an hour at the very start before the enemy gets really active and stays that way. My last shot - and it will be unless 1.08 sorts it out - is to hit about 9 installations in a massive gorilla starting at 0902 on day 1.

If this doesn't work, I'm going to try for promotion to Major in the easy campaign!

I blew the bridges (there is a ring of 12 around our territory which completely isolates us), and kept blowing them to try to last long enough for relief to get there. Trouble is, when they get repaired, the enemy owns the sky and eventually I can't get at them to keep them down.

So I don't know when the cavalry will arrive - after the end of day five at least.

Right Actrade. I'll take on board the suggestion. I will run two parallel campaigns, saved seperately with essentially the same massive gorilla but with different sets of targets. One set will include nuclear power stations. I hope the surrounding countries don't declare war on me for sending radioactive plumes in their direction!!

While I do very much enjoy your postings on your continued struggle with Iron Fortress, I also share in your frustrations. IMHO, your planned strategy above appears to be the way to go. As you said, the magical resupply is the major problem. I would suggest you consider the following:
-Target only War Production sites listed as "very high" in value in your initial gorilla.
-Allow naval targets in the priorities, and locate and destroy any enemy freighters. In earlier versions, this always seemed to affect enemy supply. You can probably get to them up the east coast from sea.
-Perform sweeps from the east coast with the sole intention of destroying enemy cargo planes. In a campaign I won in an earlier version, I hung out east of Sansago-ri airbase near Wonsan, and destroyed numerous cargo planes which also reduced enemy supply.
-locate and destroy if possible, any fuel production facilities. Its gotta take a lot of petro to hold the entire peninsula.

Obviously, I can't be sure any of this will help you, but who knows? I do know that one of the reasons I still play F4 daily, is due to the extreme challenge it gives me! Like Meatball said, if we had all beat all it offers, we might not still be playing it religously. I do hope however, that Iron Fortress is not impossible to defeat.

I'm with you on this one. The DPRK is not what you'd call a high throughput producer of airrcraft, and neither is Russia. If they were as efficient as they are in Falcon 4.0, Boeing and Lockheed stock would drop like a big fat Mark-84.

Meatball said:

"Even so, from what you've seen so far, do you think the designers would stoop so low as to just throw everything at you mindlessly without there being some way to achieve a victory? Don't know the answer to that either, but I would lean toward the idea that there is an open door in there somewhere that is waiting to be found. There seems to be enough integrity in it's design that they wouldn't just throw everything at you without leaving an out."

IMHO, you are WAY too trusting. Your loyalty to F4 has clouded your sense of doubt and objective reasoning. Do I think that the designers and programmers screwed up the campaign on purpose? OF course not! I'm sure they did the best they could with the resources they had, and the deadlines they were facing throughout development.

It's not a question of the designers "stooping low", it's a question of how many bugs can we quash before the deadline. Before economics rears its' ugly head and dictates that we're done with this project and it's time to move on, and MAYBE, just MAYBE, we'll re-visit this thing later and resolve some of the issues, like the ridiculous rate of re-supply in Campaign.

I am just starting to put together my initial gorilla and I will route it to give maximum flexibility for targetting. So I can get a few different scenarios going.

Stanman I agree: of course MPS did not do this on purpose. And if I can stand back from my frustrations at the moment, I can see that it has been fun finding out about Iron Fortress...

I've been reading your postings about Iron Fortress for quite some time now, and although I've never even tried it, I can say that your methods of fighting the war are considerably different than mine. Possibly this is due to, or involves, the degree of difficulty. My point being that most likely you have far from exhausted all possibilities of winning.

OTOH, I certainly agree that what you describe about the enemy resupply situation sounds like a problem outside the realm of reasonable game design. You may remember that I went nuts when it looked like I had enemy battalions marching up out of the yellow sea to completely foil my immanent capture of Pyong. Other people provided reasonable explanations of what I couldn't see through my frustration. In hindsight, I can see that things like that often happen in real war.

The reason I haven't tried Iron Fortress is that I'm not good enough yet. I don't understand the sim or the principles of modern air war and it's endless complexities well enough. I've also been putting in some tough hours reading the Gulf Air War Survey (GWAPS) which describes in detail the mind boggling complexity of Desert Storm. The realities of strategic and tactical planning humbles me down to my toenails.

It also leads me to constantly wonder what principles the designers used for the basis of the game. So far, I've never heard of anyone giving a major description or general overview of how the campaign engine is set up. But clearly there's a lot more to it than merely WW I in the trenches -- he who kills most, wins. Which leads me to the point that I have had three wins, two stalemates and two losses in the other campaigns. I know why I lost, but I haven't a clue as to why I won since I consider myself as only a beginner.

Is there a major flaw in the sim, or is it only in Iron Fortress? Certainly there are hints of a resupply problem in the other two campaigns, but only when I accept the default settings on the force level sliders. Even tho I start with advantage to the enemy, I have the force level at a reasonable setting, and therefore have not been overwhelmed with excessive numbers. In fact, I've never even played a campaign with force levels equal when I probably should be doing that. If there is a problem with grossly unrealistic resupply levels, this would seem to be the logical place to look, since this is the control that apparently governs it.

All I can suggest is that you might -- if you haven't already -- try making a radical change in the setting you've been using and see if that makes any difference. 400 a.c. a day is obviously not right and I don't see how you could expect to win under those conditions.

Another fair question to ask is whether the real Korean War has any bearing on this sim. We did not win that war because we were overwhelmed by sheer numbers (albeit not aircraft in the early days) of unsophisticated forces. The Chinese came at us in human waves, and we mowed them down by the tens of thousands, and still they kept coming. It got to the point where the carnage of the enemy was so awful that it became a political problem. We simply could not kill them fast enough. And then the Russians came on with their MiGs. Oh, happy day!

That's the reality of a real war. Were there any such ideas in the designers of F4? The fact that the default settings start with an enormous enemy advantage may be a clue. Another clue may be in the name Iron Fortress. Mind you. I'm not saying that there isn't a fault in this campaign, Putting myself in the designers shoes, how would I design the cmapaign? Would I make it fairly easy to win? Not a chance! I were the lead designer, I would probably opt for making this last campaign nearly impossible on the highest skill settings. But I would also throw in a couple of tricks based on reality, such as a certain combination of assests that, when taken out, turn the tide in a big way.

Perhaps they did not do this, and perhaps it is set up purely on the basis of attrition, capture of the capitol city or stalemate. I don't know, and I don't think we will know until we've either played it long enough to grasp the patterns, or someone from MP comes out and tells us directly. I would certainly be disappointed if the victory parameters were set up along such simplistic lines. Yet everthing I've seen so far suggests that this is not the case.

Regardless of the resupply issue that you are facing, my belief is that the key to winning is the destruction or disruption of enemey air defenses early on, just as it was in desert storm. This key may be skewed or not working right, but it is there as a fundamental key to winning, and will be the focus of my next campaign. Up until recently I've made poor use of the ATO, but now that I understand it better, I can envision a winning strategy that should work consistently.

If you want to hang your hat on the universal bug hatrack, that's fine with me. But far too many people who have trouble winning use this as a scapegoat without having done anything to prove it. While I do not doubt Alex's word, he has not, in my view, proven that there is a fault. I do not know enough about the game, or his method of playing, that I'm going to accept that there is a fault until I can prove it for myself. There have been far too many people who have blamed the game for what turned out to be their own shortcomings, myself included.

You are right, Meatball - it would be a great idea to hit (say) enemy air defences. But the examples you gave apply when the allies have air superiority and are moving onto a defensive footing (in the air).

In Iron Fortress, getting to that stage is the problem. Enemy air defences hardly shoot down any of my aircraft. Why? Because I can't get near them to give them a shot. Every time the situation approaches where I may be able to go offensive, the enemy gets resupplied and there are about 16 CAPs over a 100 mile long flot to get over. That's not counting the numerous sweeps they are flying over my side of the flot, all the escorts of the strike flights and if you DO get over the flot, the interceptors vectored at you

You really ought to try Iron Fortress, on the easiest settings and see what it's like.

Anyhow, I have now constructed my 104 plane package!! I fly due north to Wonson hit some targets there and then on to the aircraft factory and hit some more.

Not all 104 planes are in the gorilla. About 20 fly with us as far as Wonson, hit their targets (including air defences) and then go home. About 16 help us on the way home by coming out to meet us in a sweep or hitting air defences on out homeward leg.

I've taken all the advice offered and am hitting the underground factory south of Woson, some nuclear reactors, a refinary, the aircraft factory and some machine tool factories. My flight plan keeps clear of the Flanker base as far as possible, air defences are being attacked in front of the gorilla, an easy route over the flot is taken and the gorilla starts off before the enemy gets active (about half an hour into the campaign).

We'll see what that does, but when I did knock out the aircraft factory, at least I got the situation to "fluid" which I never had before. Fat lot of good it did, though.

Is "universal bug hatrack" a negative connotation? The reason I ask is that if it's such a widespread plague and is so "universal", then perhaps there is some truth to it. You have chosen to give the current code the benefit of the doubt in its' logic and AI. You then state you want proof to the contrary.

But I can just as easily say that I'm convinced the campaign AI is buggy, and I would like proof to the contrary, i.e. that it's NOT buggy. So far, I've seen many strong indications of bugs, from many dedicated simmers. Of course, there are also those that cheerlead blindly without thinking (I don't mean you). Heck, I remember some Falconites claiming 1.03 and 1.04 were perfect. Why then the need for all the follow-on patches? And if the sim is so perfect NOW with 1.07, why is MP working on 1.08??

Also, while the Campaign engine is impressive, I would not reference it as a lesson in history. The political, economic, and military dynamics of the region have changed many fold since the 1st Korean War.
I think the vast majority of simmers are aware that the enemy strength and skill are inflated over the current real-world situation, but that this is fine, because it adds to the gameplay and makes it more challenging. I certainly have no problem with that.

I am enjoying this sim and playing it on a regular basis, but I refuse to put my undying faith in a product that is still evolving, and has many un-addressed issues (see Alex's post above).

Have you tried hitting supply depots & port facilities? They seem to have *some* effect on enemy re-supply, although it's hard to quantitate.

Another reason I take issue is that I have been guilty of the same thing, saying that some aspect of the sim was broken, only to be proven wrong. One of the difficulties we have on this subject is discerning what is intended from what was not. Then we also have a problem with the sim performing differently with different hardware. I had huge problems with that which were only solved by building a new computer at no small cost.

Now, if you are familiar with competitive games in general, then you know that it's universal practice for designers to have increasing levels of difficulty right up to the impossible. That started with Pac Man! It should be no surprise if F4 is also designed this way, tho my hope is that it's not that simple.

By far, the biggest complaint has been that some aspect like missiles or wingmen don't perform properly, makes it too difficult. I have not agreed with these arguments (short of the early Archer)--despite my own early frustrations--because I've always found a way to deal with the situation. The answer was that I was doing something wrong.

ALEX, it has occurred to me that possibly your problem may have something to do with the force levels slider. Mine seems to work very erratically -- meaning that a small change may produce a huge difference, and sometimes a large change produces a small difference. I've not really checked this out, but the thought has been nagging me. Problem is, my campaigns take too long cuz I don't get to play that often, so I have a hard time remembering from game to another. Have you noticed anything like this?

After what you've described, I'm scared to death to try it. Not sure my ego could handle such a crushing defeat!

If I did have his problem, I think I'd try something really radical. Like what? Well, maybe trying to retreat my army, letting the enemy advance, and then try a flanking action. Let 'em have Seoul, move to another base, and since most of the ATO does not fly out Seoul or nearby bases, work the ATO against them hard. Try to lead the ground forces where you want them. See if you can get them cut off and isolated after their advance. Anything but the way you normally think. Take a couple wild-*** gambles and see if that doesn't change things.

Try out Iron Fortress - you only need to play for about 8 hours before the pattern becomes clear. You have a free hand for the first hour, but then the enemy gets REALLY active. Even the campaign engine thinks it's time to do purely defensive since no matter what the mission selections are on the PAK screen, it only tasks BARCAPs.

I have the sliders to the right. Here, there are the same number of batallions and squadrons but with the slider set far right, the enemy has 24 units per batallion and 16 aircraft per squadron. (as opposed to 48 and 24 with the sliders in the middle). It doesn't seem to affect re-supply.

GORILLA UPDATE.

I flew this giant package last night - 8 strike flights hitting targets along the route, with SAED support and plently of escorts and sweeps. It started 10 minutes into the campaign (when the flot is clear), went up the east coast to hit targets at Wosan, and then onto the aircraft factory. Some observations:

1) We didn't get hassled by enemy planes at all.

2) The SAED escorts did well - lots of calls of "Magnum" and looking at the status of the sam sites and air defence batallions afterwards, they did indeed make a dent in them.

3) Sam activity was heavy around Wosan, but not as bad as I thought it might be (it's VERY heavily defended). Maybe the SAED flights kept them quiet?

4) I re-tasked SAED STRIKE aircraft to hit air defences on the flight path. No go! When they hit the IP, they turned away west, presumably to hit their originally assigned targets (which for a SAED STRIKE, you can't change - only move the SAED sp).

***Retargetting SAED STRIKE flights doesn't work****

5) There were 10 targets - 8 for the strike flight and 2 for me, if my wingmen managed to hit the primary. They did.

6) Seven targets were hit - My wingmen totalled the aircraft factory, and I hit another factory and a nuclear reactor. Four other flights hit their targets (2 flights of F-18s and 2 of F-16s). One target was only reduced to 90% effectiveness, the others to 0%.

7) There is a clear pattern to what flights hit their targets, and this conforms to a suspicion I have had for some time now:

*** The only flights to hit their targets were the ones that were within my bubble when they attacked***

Three of the flights had to diverge from the gorilla to strike their targets. There was no reason for them to miss - little sams and no enemy fighters. There was no problem with the flights that struck while inside my bubble.

I have felt that inside the bubble, the AI runs the show - while outside it's the campaign engine. They give different results.

Anyway, time will tell what effect this will have, but I'm now going to blow the bridges, and have delayed for a few hours another batch of strike packages for another gorilla, this time up the east coast. I will try to hit port facilities and more nuclear reactors, I think.

Why would it make a differencew with a flight being outside of bubble? I've never noticed anything like this, but then I've not been looking.

If only ac within your bubble hit targets, would you not be able to control this by means of timing?

Meatball: Of course things are different inside the bubble than outside. No point in having them otherwise. Outside, individual enemy units don't exist (just flights and batallions), the same as happens when the campaign is running in the background. So the AI can't really control them - there IS nothing to control!! The campaign engine decides for itself what is happening.

Inside the bubble, a flight is divided up into individual fighters, each with an AI pilot which can affect what goes on, just like you can (you are always the centre of your bubble).

You will not have seen any difference outside your bubble because you can't really see what is going on - all you see (using far labels) is the flights and no individual planes.

BTW in the middle campaign, I saw a few EF-111s and even flew HAVCAP for one. A miserable failure - it got shot down which is maybe whay there are none left!!

Keep those updates coming! Interesting observation on the SEAD flights only being able to hit their originally assigned targets. I have had good success with large SEAD gorillas. But, the majority of the SEAD packages I use are not reassigned a different target. I just manipulate their SP's to fit the gorilla. I will pay close attention to this in the future.

The fact that you have learned from previous mistakes and are aware of previous flaws in your approach, means that you're studious and observant of patterns within the program, but it doesn't mean that there aren't fundamental reality flaws in the campaign engine.

I break this sim down into 2 levels: 1) The 1st level is a high fidelity simulation of a Block 50/52 F-16 and its' associated weapons and systems. 2) The 2nd level is a real-time war environment, of which your F-16 is but a very small part.

Many sim developers haven't even attempted #2 because of the difficulties involved in running a full-fledged campaign on a home PC. Those few that have tried this have had to make sacrifices and tone down the campaign, either in terms of the number of individual units, or using semi-scripted missions.

The fact that MP even ATTEMPTED to do #2 with F4 is quite admirable, and I'm certainly not faulting them for it. They did achieve at least a semblance of a realistic war (whatever faults it may have), and that alone is a formidable achievement. And it goes without saying they were quite successful in their foremost task of simulating an F-16 jet, and this alone makes the sim very enjoyable and worthwhile for me, not to mention all the eye candy. Of course, I still don't forgive them for releasing it before it was playable, but then I don't think they really care whether I forgive them or not

In answer to your earlier question, I have no proof that there is no rhyme or reason to certain aspects of the Campaign. It is simply a strong hunch based on my own observations and those of other simmers, such as Alex and Marlin.

And the main reason I bring this up in the 1st place is this: those searching for a "greater truth" or the "ideal strategy" in F4 may ultimately be disappointed. What may be termed as sound "real-world" tactics (e.g. the 1st few days of Desert Storm) may be useless within the code. And vice-versa: a seemingly suicidal approach in a real war may work out quite nicely in this program. This shouldn't take away from actual enjoyment of the game, but I wouldn't try and use it as a lesson in strategic warfare either. There are only so many conclusions that I would draw from the F4 campaign. To instill it with a greater wisdom or logic may be simply setting yourself up for a disappointment.

"The problem with Falcon is that to win the campaign you have to fly one successful mission every hour (sim hours). A short war to win will take you six days. A typical war will take you twenty to forty days. So, if the human player actually played the whole game, that's 24 times forty, at an average an hour a mission, that's how long it will take you to complete one campaign. So it was not humanly possible to test out all the combinations. We did statistical analysis in order to test the different components and we had a couple of guys run through the entire war, but it's just not possible to test under the old methodology here. "

I hail F4 as the very first in a new generation of war games that will become increasingly realistic. This is sort of like the first cell phone I owned more than 15 years ago. It came in an attache case, it was so big and clunky. But you know its only going to get better over time.

As Alex mentioned, we just don't know how this thing works yet. Or maybe I should just speak for myself and say that I don't. And as mentioned in earlier post, there may be some surprises ahead, good, bad or ugly. Yes, we may be disappointed to find that the random generator is a bit too random. The jury's still out on that in my view.

SAINT Thanks for bringing up that Louies interview. I intended to look it up but forget.

"WE HAD A COUPLE GUYS RUN THROUGH THE ENTIRE WAR." I just caught that! No wonder no one has from MP has broken silence and said anything. THEY DON'T KNOW!!! We've spent 10 months with it and we still don't know either. However, I think between what Alex has described (9 campaigns) and my experience, I still wouldn't judge it as a totally random war scenario generator. There are too many similarities between campaigns, and too many tactical and strategic ideas that we employ that proves that some degree of strategic concepts were designed into it.

Saint Viper:

Interesting observation about turning the situation from "bleak" to "excellent" very quickly following taking out of strategic installations. I am slowly coming round to the notion that the best way to improve the situation - which may affect re-supply and certainly affects the relative aggression of the two sides - is to hit strategic targets. Now if I only knew which were the most important. There have been a few suggestions from people here, and I am starting to try them out.

In the debrief, was it PRC Flankers who were hitting your package? If not, go to the OOB and in the DPRK/air forces you will find which airstrips the Flankers are based. They are the main threat to gorillas beyond the FLOT as they carry LOTS of long-range radar missiles (the AA-10c). The last package I flew, I positioned the escorts between their base and the gorilla, but although they took off and launched a few missiles at max range(ineffective), on this occasion, they didn't close with us so I lost no planes in AA combat. Didn't shoot down any either, but DID hit most of the targets. My previous gorilla got harassed by them all the way to the target (about 300 miles) and all the way home again.

Unlike Alex with his aircraft resupply problem, my problem has been army reinforcements. I just discovered that I have been completely neglecting army bases (crossed gun symbols) because I never click them on, on the map. There are two bases south of Pyong, 815th & 820th Armored. I hit the closest one hard and the reinforcements stopped.

But something about Force Levels is reallly bothering me. I just kicked the enemy really hard with a huge assault engineered from ATO. He is down to only 13 battalions deployed on the map. I've got 33 battalions deployed. I've got 600 ac, he's got 400. Yet the ground power graph shows the enemy ahead of me. I note the numerical graph is labeled "vehicles," not battalions, whille the bar graph on Intel window sez "Ground Power."

Okay, so if the map sez I'm winning and the graphs say I'm outnumbered, where ARE these mysterious enemy forces? Then I go to the army bases and find that the 815 is listed at 0 strength and the 820 is at 50%. The Pyong base is at 100% and the Wosan base is at 70%.

What the heck? According to this there are no reserves other than Pyong. Okay, so then I go to Divisions, and there are all the vehicles. But wait! The DPRK 23rd Armored shown in red on the map, when I click on status it is listed as ROK Armored Division with an Engineer battalion symbol. Oops, this is a mistake.

Then I go to the 25th Armored at Wosan. Oops again, another red division symbol shown as an ROK division in the status box. How about the DPRK 14th Infantry Division? Same thing.

Is this just an error in the placement of the wrong symbol in the status box? Or is there a fundamental error in the enemy battalion count? Since the enemy has only 13 battalions deployed, where are the rest?

In total divisions, there are 9 per side. But three of mine have engineer symbols when the status box says infantry or armored. I wondered why I had engineer battalions on the front lines! I also have lots of brigades AND battalions. The enemmy only has battalions. I thought brigades were made up of several battalions.

But the icons on the map are only of batallions when the positon is actually KNOWN - in other words, they are in contact with a ground unit, or have been spotted by an aircraft which has recently flown over it. After a few minutes, the batallion will disappear from the map if it hasn't been spotted again.

I was surprised in my gorilla up north to see many enemy batallions far to the north of the flot. They didn't appear on the map (my gorilla was the first to overfly them), but to have so many batallions so far north was a surprise. Needless to say, they will enter the war at a later date if needed.

If you want an estimate of enemy strength, go to the OOB and click on every batallion in the enemy ground forces. You may have to expand the brigades to show batallions. As far as I can tell, the INTEL numbers on the graph and the OOB numbers pretty much agree.

But it is an idea to hit the bases. Never thought of that.

Alex.

- Erroneous (mixed up blue-red)battallions/divisions in INTEL is a known problem from v1.0 !! MPS refuses to even acknowledge it ... I fear that this is *the* major problem with the campaign ground-war AI

- Also the only way I've found to reliably affect the 'situation' is to complete many successful missions back-to-back (in 2hr or less intervals)

my two Cdn. cents