I am a big fan of the Combat Mission series since the release of CM Beyond Overlord more than 10 years ago. At the moment I am mostly playing CM Battle for Normandy when I need a brake from Il-2.

One of the nice features in CM is, that all objects in the game are fully skinable. Unfortunatly there are no template files like in Il-2 which makes skinning more difficult and my first skinning attempts were not really successfull, but there are a number of very talented guys in the CM community, whose new textures are a big improvement over the stock textures.

Here a few screenshots with stock textures:








And here screenshots with new landscape and Panther tank textures by Aris:






For those who never played the CM games here is a demo of CM Battle for Normandy:
http://www.battlefront.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=277&Itemid=477

It is not really comparable to the usual RTS games. It can the played in real-time or in turn based mode, which means commands are given turn based, followed by a 1 minute long execution phase. I think the game is most fun in turn based mode, which is preferred by most players.

I have been playing CM since the old open Beta days of CMBO! Loved it, CMBB and CMAK. I never bothered with the modern-era ones, though. I bought the new CMBN, but for some reason I just haven't been able to get into it like I did with the old ones. Spending too much time skinning, I guess.

I too wasn't interested in the modern-era titles and only played the demo. It took me some time to get into CMBN, because there are so many difference to the old titles and my old playing style no longer worked against the much smarter AI.
What I really love in CMBN is that you can now successfully simulate real-world tactics, which never really worked in the older titles.

Maybe you know these video tutorials on the use of real-world tactics in CMBN from a retired Lt. Col. The videos were very helpful for me to get into the game:
http://www.armchairgeneral.com/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy-tactics-a-video-series

looks interesting, but i?m addicted to Panzer Corps:

http://panzer-corps.com/game-info/

I have heard a lot of positive comments about Panzer Corps. Is it just a remake of the old Panzer General series with better graphics or is it more complex?
I had played the games of the Panzer General series for years, but after I discovered Combat Mission I completely stopped playing PG.

it's a remake with some improvements and there are masses of new maps which are available as DLC for a reasonable price, i like it a lot

These look great, gonna check them out. Are the graphic requirements high? The screenies look like shader-2 or higher.

The system requirements really aren't too bad.

System Requirements SUGGESTED:

Operating System: Windows XP/Vista/Win7
Processor: Pentium IV 2.8 GHz or equivalent speed AMD processor or better
Video Card: GeForce 6800 or Radeon x850 (256 Megabyte VRAM or better and must support 1024x768 or higher resolution) in OpenGL
Sound Card: DirectX 9 compatible Sound Card
System Memory: 1 Gigabyte or more RAM
Hard Drive Space: 4 Gigabyte
Other Requirements: CD Drive (not needed for download version, but recommended for backup)
The game does not work in a virtualized environment (virtual machine)

One of the neat/odd things about CM was that it was originally (and still) programmed on Apple computers. There aren't many games for OSX, but this one is great no matter what platform is running it.

There's even a version of Combat Mission for the iPad now.

Thanks Jim, now I will certainly get 'em.

Monty, you should try the demo if you want to see how well your system runs the game.
The technical problems a few people have with the game are usually not caused by the graphic requirements, but by low system memory, which can cause very long loading times when starting some of the larger scenarios.