Slappy

Good tip. Fatigue is the main drawback with Assault. The command gives a morale boost, but fatigue gives a netative morale modifier. By the time your units get to Tired, they've eaten up all the Assault benifit and then some. This usually happens in 30-50m depending on terrain, so use Assault only over short distances. Backwards certainly qualifies if only 10-20m and I like the use of the morale boost of Assault rather than the morale tanking effects of Withdraw.

Hi Mom.

Crossing the street under fire. That's about it for me. Anything longer than 30m, or in dense terrain is too tiring to be worth it.

Defending is tougher in CMBO than the other versions. MGs are less effective, FOW is weaker and infantry stronger. This means that classic BB/AK (and real world) strategies won't work as well as they should. For BB/AK I would advise you to open up with MGs at 400m to pin and disrupt the advance while you remain totally hidden. In CMBO, a MG at 400m won't even slow down an infantry advance, but they'll pinpoint the firer within 60sec. If you're defenders are getting plastered with artillery, try to move them around some more and defend less from fixed foxholes. When you open up to do the killing, hold position and fire for only 1-2 turns, then get away. Leave an MG or two to cover your retreat or call in some artillery of your own, or some smoke to break contact. You won't do as much killing, but you'll live to play the same trick again. If you split your squads in setup, each half will make a foxhole, giving you nearly double the foxholes and double the fighting positions. For bonus points, TRP your own anbush positions so that when his infantry regroups and storms the now empty position you can drop 105mm on them.

True, but the AI can also see you which tends to altar its play too. You can't really get a true representation that way. I recommend periodically saving off a file and surrendering to get the after action view of the battlefield and taking a look at what the AI was up to.

Not entirely. Infantry tend to balk at minefields, but they can be moved through with great morale peril. Vehicles will also replot if a minefield is discovered, but you can override. Also, in my experience, using the same 'path' does not affect chance of detonation. It's all the same die roll when another vehicle goes through. Sometimes you can get through again, sometimes not.

Never played that one. I know that planes tend to target AFVs as a first priority and that they are terrible at determining which side those AFVs are on. They also target AFVs in the open with a huge bias. They'll coninue to strafe dead AFVs in the open for turn after turn while ignoring those in scattered trees or even brush. The best situation for air support is when you have no AFVs, your opponent has a ton and the map is very open. It sounds like this is exactly what you had.

More interestingly, they seem to be firing FTs FROM the boats. I was unaware that you could fire from a boat. Is this really what's going on or is the flame trail that seems to start from the middle of the river an optical illusion?

TRPs are particularly nasty if you can catch some tight infantry formations in the woods due to treebursts. I recommend scouting with half squads.

Great shot. I went over to the Scenario Page and realized that I downloaded some of your great scenarios back before BB came out. Any chance you'll redo some for CMAK so that we can enjoy them again with the new engine?

Thank you MrSpkr. I can understand bemoaning the gamey borgness of this if you're opponent does this, but I have a hard time finding complaint with the plain badness of the idea. My opponents do all sorts of stupid things, and I rejoice. Of course, they're the only ones bad enough to still find playing me entertaining.

Generally, it will need to see something on turn one to shoot at. I've only seen the AI use preplanned fire when it has a target in the open and never seen it use a delay. You may want to padlock a unit in the open for it to fire at.

You may want to watch out putting spotters in tall buildings if there are only one or two. Many players have been known to level them as soon as the first couple rounds fall or even before for good measure. Of course if there is a whole town to contend with this can be prohibitively expensive.

Actually, I've noticed that most of the gamey whining around this has dried up since the BB release. Why you ask? Covered arcs. This severely limits the number of units that will open up on this type of lone gamey borg unit and therefore the amount of intelligence that one will garner using this tactic. That and much more effective FOW around firing units mean that you will probably never see much of value before you are toasted.

Why not the French and Indian War?

Quantum Tunneling in CM. Fascinating.

Yep, that's a new one to me. I've never heard of it ever being used by more than one vehicle in the field and I don't think Panthers carry enough AP to take out a Division. I'm not sure the British Division would sit still long enough if it did.

Russian figures are also complicated by the number of non strictly combat related deaths during and in the period following the war. Lives lost in a variety of stalinist purges, camps, exiles starvations etc. are varringly listed as anywhere between 25% and 100% of more directly combat and displacement related fatalities.

I've fooled around with this a lot and come to one solid conclusion: The stock Bocage tile is terrible. It may block LOS like bocage, but it gives no cover on either side from an AI perspecive and makes it impossible to defend the terrain effectively or historically. Using elevated trees and brush is a good compromise, but no panacea as the 20m tiles are too wide to effectively model. They do block LOS pretty well in the summer (which is when this combat happened) and are my preferance with some scattered trees and brush thrown in to allow some visual variety and vehicle access. As others have suggested, elevate the berms, drop the roads and use treelined roads and you'll come out OK. Throw in some stone walls and maybe a fence or two and you'll be fine. Remember not shift your orientation as well. As that picture shows, the bocage wasn't drawn on graph paper.

The AT gun is usaully enough to at least slow the armor advance, particularly as it is unwise for the Axis to advance the armor faster than the infantry can cover the woods on the sides of the road for fear of AT teams. Use the 105mm and long range MG fire to hold up and suppress the infantry and you can slow them up even further. This should allow you to move up the TD to find exposed flanks on at least some of the armor.

All true. Actually, I've long thought that CM should also have cheaper 'obvious' mines available. Many military minefields are marked as such and have a much bigger deterrant effect than killing. There are some times when I want my opponent to know that one roas is mined so he'll take the other one.

I've had good success leaving the central hill across the road to the germans. I send a platoon to the North hill, one to the area just South of the ATG and one on a far loop through the woods to the South. You'll keep 2/3 flags and the germans won't be able to attack effectively across the road that you can't retreat over. I'll take you on in the CMAK version if you want to experiment.

I know several people who play with a one reject map option for either side. Either player can balk at one setup, but then must take what they get after that. I usually find opponents I like and play repeatedly. I find that the odds even out over time and I don't get that worked up over one map or another.

About 10m from the outside of the circle icon if I remember correctly. You can check this by targeting a FO in the vicinity and looking at the time to fire change. The 'boresighted' text may come up for ATGs as well, but I don't know if that's the case without a target in range.

Large HE will do it. Bridges are about as tough as heavy buildings. You'll probably need 2 150mm HE guns or a lot of 75mm. Extremely large cal artillery will do the trick too, but getting the direct hit is much harder.