Combat Mission Fortress Italy takes wargamers to the “underbelly of Europe”, a place that was anything but. Fortress Italy, an oft-neglected theater of war, begins with the Sicily campaign of July-August 1943. Sicily was the first test for the newly reorganized and improved American forces as they fought against grizzled veterans of the Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe, as well as a wide range of Italian army forces. The arid terrain offers a unique experience for fans of World War II combat missions.
Fortress Italy transports wargamers to the start of the Western Allies’ campaign to take the fight directly to the territory of the Axis powers. Combat forces include the full range of historically available American, Italian and German forces that fought in Sicily. Some of the most notable are elite formations such as the Italian Bersaglieri, the American Rangers, and the German Herman Göring Division. In addition to the all-new Italian forces, both the American and German organizations differ significantly from those found in other Combat Mission games. Four challenging campaigns and 17 separate battles provide a gripping fight for control of Sicily. To fight these battles you have 38 vehicles and a ton of other weapons at your disposal, many of them exclusive to Fortress Italy.
Players are assigned detailed missions that they must complete based on a very diverse set of objectives. Missions can be played in real time or in our innovative WeGo turn-based hybrid mode, introduced with the first Combat Mission game 20 years ago. WeGo allows each player to plan 60 seconds of combat and then watch as both sides’ orders are executed simultaneously. The WeGo system also allows you to rewatch turn action and play against another player via email (PBEM) or hotseat on a single computer. Head-to-head play between RealTime and WeGo can also use TCP/IP over a LAN or over the Internet. Huge replayability comes from a unique Quick Battle system that allows players to purchase their own custom force and fight on the battlefield of their choice from a wide range of different maps. A powerful map and scenario editor allows you to create battles or campaigns for yourself and others.
All units are rendered one by one in 1:1 scale in high-resolution 3D polygonal models with articulated suspensions, animated hatches and other features that make them look real. Unlike other 3D tactical war games, Combat Mission combines real-world physics with a thoroughly researched depiction of forces, right down to what individual soldiers bring into battle. Advanced vehicle damage modeling enables tracking of every subsystem, including the most realistic ballistic, armor, and post-armor effects available in any game. Unlike other games that claim this level of realism, Combat Mission actually delivers it across the entire spectrum of warfare, including the interaction of weather, lighting, and terrain on the operation of units and their weapons.
Perhaps the most important feature of Combat Mission is its detailed and innovative description of “soft factors.” Experience, morale, leadership, and other elements operate at the level of the individual soldier and collectively transform the behavior of units. As important as these battlefield concerns are, most other games either give them short shrift or don’t bother to cover them at all. In the real world, having the best weapons means nothing if the soldiers manning them are huddled in fear or too distracted to see what’s going on around them.
Weapon penetration and armor protection values are based on extremely detailed real-life data and scientific algorithms that are specific to what exactly is seen in-game. There are no arbitrary values (hit points) or pre-calculated resolution tables (CRTs) that so often produce frustratingly inaccurate results. Advanced Tactical AI (TacAI) models the psychological state and inherent qualities of each soldier on the battlefield, enabling genuine battlefield behavior of each soldier as if they were their own free-thinking individual.
Simulating independent soldiers is important in another sense because it allows Combat Mission to have what we call Relative Spotting. This is a system that ensures that each soldier has their own unique view of the battlefield, avoiding the “Borg” problem seen in many games where once one person has detected an enemy, everyone else has automatically detected them and can shoot them as well. Any wargamer worth their weight in powder knows that Fog of War is one of the most important elements on the battlefield. An unprecedented Command and Control (C2) simulation combines with Relative Spotting to realistically portray the flow of information and responsibility between soldiers as they share information with each other about what they can see on the battlefield.
All of these elements, and many more, fit together perfectly to create the most realistic battlefield experience available. The level of realism is not forced on you with a lot of data and obscure references. Instead, players experience all of this with the 3D graphical environment. Combat Mission’s visceral gaming environment is what draws players in, the richness of the game is what keeps them playing for years.
Characteristics:
- Tactical warfare at battalion level and below scale in a true 3D environment
- Command vehicles, teams and individual squads.
- Expansive simulation of “soft factors” such as morale, experience and leadership.
- Innovative systems representing fog of war, detection, line of sight, command and control and targeting.
- Unmatched and realistic physics, ballistics and battlefield effects.
- Fight in a wide range of weather and lighting conditions, all of which realistically impact your combat abilities.
- Unique hybrid system for real-time or WeGo (turn-based) play
- Full-featured editor for maps, scenarios and campaigns.
- The Quick Battle system sets up deliberate or random battles based on the player’s specifications.
- Single-player and head-to-head gameplay, including email play (PBEM++)
- Backed for the long term with patches, updates and expansions
- The only family of combat missions representing formations and equipment from 1943.
- No other force in Combat Mission is as uniquely strange as the Italians with their mix of World War I and 1930s equipment and organization. Talk about tactical challenges!
- Find out what it’s like to play with or against Germans who can’t count on Panthers and King Tigers to save the day.
- The arid, rocky, sparsely forested terrain produces an entirely different type of tactical scenario.
- Expansive maps with 1 x 1 m resolution enable short and long range actions in complex terrain.
- The buildings have explicitly simulated doors, windows and floors.
- Weather and ground condition modeling systems allow for everything from dry, sunny days to stormy, muddy nights, with visibility and mobility dynamically affected by conditions. Some Combat Mission games also include the full range of winter, spring, and fall weather.
- Line of sight and line of fire are calculated separately, meaning sometimes you can see something you can’t shoot and other times you can shoot at things you can’t see.
- The soldier’s posture (prone, kneeling, standing) affects everything, including detection, cover, and the ability to engage enemies.
- Line of sight is calculated from the “eyeballs” or “sensor” point, not a generic value
- Lighting affects combat greatly both in real life and in-game. The correct lighting conditions are simulated depending on the time of day, time of year and weather.
System requirements
- SW: windows 10
- Processor: 1.8 GHz Pentium IV processor or AMD equivalent speed
- Memory: 4GB RAM
- Graphics: 256 MB VRAM or higher and must support 1024×768 or higher resolution in OpenGL
- DirectX: Version 10
- Storage: 13 GB of available space
- Sound card: DirectX 10 compatible sound card (Windows only)
Screenshots
How to install Combat Mission Fortress Italy (v2.20 & ALL DLC)
- Click the download button below or in the top of the page
- You’ll be redirected to the specific game installer download page.
- Download the game installer, this allows you to download the game from the nearest possible server. We use it to improve download speeds, ensuring stable and smooth experience
- Disable Windows Defender and any installed Anti-Virus software before installation, most will flag the file as false-true due to the nature of the installer
- Follow the game installer instructions, wait for the download to finish
- That’s it, enjoy gaming!
