Doug Williams

Scenario: Pleasently Shaded Woodland (WEGO - Iron)
Playing the Allies, I noticed, for the first time, the AI defender evading towards my positions and away from the AXIS friendly map edge. Rattled/Nervous defenders are charging through hedgerow gaps exposing themselves to small arms fire and then running back. I'd seen to odd occurrence in other scenarios but never to such an extent. I had to stop play as it was becoming an undeserved turkey-shoot.
I understand the evolution in AI Planning and Map Design over the years and this is not meant to pick on a scenario that likely hasn't been updated since release.
I'm more focused on the behavior of player controlled units. Thought I'd mention it as an aside.
As always, I have saves available. The Allied mortars have not been used for a good 5 minutes ever since the Sunken Lane was taken. The three teams are relocating. I mention this only because there was some discussion that the erratic evade behaviour could be linked to HE...

Just joining the chorus in the hopes something will be done about it fairly quickly: I'm also seeing this "fleeing towards the enemy by way of the nearest hedgerow gap" behavior in CMBN.  Disappointing.
Waiting 2.5 years for a patch to fix highly questionable infantry behavior under fire only to see it introduce ANOTHER form of highly questionable behavior?  Geez-o-man.  Between that, the CMFI patch zapping the Fallschirmjaeger uniforms, and complete silence as to the alleged upcoming modules for CMRT and CMFI, 2019 has so far been a rough year for BF and its fans.  I truly hope the year ends on a far better note. 

Pretty much this.
Interestingly, a similar thread recently came up on the Few Good Men forums.
My personal "house rules" regarding this are:
No pre-planned arty (even with a delay) or TRPs for either side in a meeting engagement.
No pre-planned arty (even with a delay) for the defender in a probe/attack/assault.
Pre-planned arty (even arty landing on the first turn) is fine for the attacker in a probe/attack/assault.
 
Always remember to discuss house rules when you are playing an opponent for the first time, as opinions differ. For example, I recently played in a tourney where my 2nd round opponent used turn one arty in a meeting engagement (not in my setup zone, but still.....). I had forgotten to discuss "house rules" with him before we started, so that's on me.
 
 
 

Get a job.

Wait, a minute ago $55 was too expensive, now you say $55 is ok if it's on Steam ?
Well, it's not going to be on Steam in the near future anyway. There are a lot of locked threads on that topic.
But just because it's not on steam is no reason to deny yourself an enjoyable and absorbing game. Is it ?
Hmmm, occasionally spotting "anomalies" are raised here. I've even raised a thread or two on the topic myself. But it's not "bad". The system generates some outliers that sometimes seem strange and once or twice, a bug has been found which the developers squashed. But a lot of the time, it works more or less as you'd expect it to.
No idea what you're talking about with respect to removal of "lines of sight". The game wouldn't work without lines of sight
Don't know who is saying on social media that they refuse to buy CM products, but it's just possible that they have an axe to grind ? There are a couple of people out there who don't get along with BFC...
Anyway, why let someone else make your mind up ? I suggest you try the demo of one of the titles ( Red Thunder, I think, has the most up to date version of the engine in the demo ).
If you like it, $55 is cheap for the enjoyment you'll get. If you don't, it isn't.

"Greed" is used when someone thinks they can extort something from YOU in order to give it to THEM. Work, and the freedom to self-value your own labor, is a concept fraught with opportunity and risk. Those who are afraid of the risk take the opportunity to try to take your labor for themselves.
 
I don't like the price of new cars. Those manufacturers are so greedy. They should cut the price in half. Back in '60, a new car cost 1/10 of what they cost today. It isn't "fair".
 
By using terms such as "fair" and "greed", they try to impose a false morality on the marketplace, and thereby upon the free laborer. You want more money? Work harder, work longer, work smarter. Or, in many cases, just work. How about I look at your possessions, meager though they may be, which you have earned through your labor (or been given by a government which coerced the wealth from the productive members of society and transferred some of it to you), and tell you which possessions of yours that I deserve? If you refuse to give them over to me, you're just being "greedy".
 
I love redistributionists. Or thieves, as they used to be called.
 
And, yes, this comes from someone who once bought diapers and formula on credit cards and went hungry on alternate days, and I'd almost shed a tear when I had to break a $20...

This. (Been there, when $5 had to buy 2 days worth of lunch or I'd go hungry one of those days, so if $60 is a budget breaker, then you need to step away from playing computer games and focus on your work, bills, debts, and opportunities.)

They keep the price as is to keep people like you from buying and playing the game.
 
Its a real elitist group with the price of the game so high.
 
No bargain basement players here'
 
 
Really, sad when someone cannot handle a one time cost to get a game that has some substance.
 
And really, you know the price is really not that expensive.

You can share ammo, acquire ammo and buddy aid ammo.
 
Ammo sharing distance is two action spots.  The units must be in the same platoon / section (both highlight when you click on one).
 
Below is an example of a two man scout team going to an ammo dump in a building, using the Acquire command to obtain ammo and then returning to the squad to distribute the ammo.  
 

 
 

Old age and treachery will overcome youth, strength and skill every time.
 
Edit to add: I agree. I don't care about winning or losing, this is a lot more fun than playing the computer.

Welcome to the forum, johnsilver. As I found out when CMBN was first released, CM2 is so different from CM1 that it needs to be treated as an entirely new game, not just an upgrade of CM1. You're going to have to start fresh and learn everything like you would with a game you had never played before. The curve is steep, but well worth it. I could never go back to CM1 again.

Now, I have a bone to pick with you. Why, in the name of all that is good, did you ever get rid of the "peg legs"? They were so much more tasty than those newfangled "chicken planks" or whatever you call them now. Also, you don't give away the cardboard pirate hats any longer? What's up with that? LJS has seriously gone downhill since I was a kid.



Pure 1980s goodness....no longer available. :-(

The rapid destruction of the Soviet army was unlikely, given its size. You would also be wise to remember that one of the linchpins of the Stalingrad battle, you know the one that constituted the turning point of the Eastern Front, was as much about Hitler obtaining the oil fields behind the city as it was about the Russians recuperating and reorganizing for the counterattack. Armies run on gasoline, and food etc. Those resources exist on land, they dont grow on the backs of soldiers. 
 
I cant think of a single major war in the last 100 years that resulted in the utter and total destruction of the enemy army that was not the result of the loser running out of places to retreat to. Ultimately, destruction of the enemies forces only happens when he surrenders because he has been forces back onto and untenable position and chooses to surrender. Nobody wants to fight to the last man, and even if they did, it wouldnt matter (see Japanese holding out on islands until the 70's...) OR all the islands in the Pacific we bypasses that had large numbers of Japanese troops on them. 
 
Terrain and Attrition are both means to and end. They do not exist in as vacuum. One does not superseded the other intrinsically, only with the situation dictates. 
 
But dont mind me, just look at how an ACTUAL army does things. The US Army trains METTC. NOTE: Terrain and Enemy are BOTH on there. Most people in the Army simply refer to the aforementioned acronym as "mission dictates" or in layman's terms, IT DEPENDS. 
 
Mission Enemy Terrain and Weather Troops Time Available Civilian Considerations

You are aware this is a Combat Mission gaming forum, right? I show up at a chess club and start telling them how to play chess, I expect to have to demonstrate. 

I know we're veering from CM to grand theory and back again, so I'll keep it up.
 
My first post on the CM boards was in March of '05 (Dear God, ten years gone by...) in a thread about the attritionist's approach started by none other than JasonC.  At that time, it was clear that he didn't think that Victory Locations should be removed entirely (except for maybe meeting engagements).  His words:

If the battle ends in the place it can be expected to end the majority of the time, given the odds, flag points should -divide- and do so roughly evenly. With a slight edge to the defender in the highest odds cases, only. Having 500 points on the map is not a play balance or incentive problem if many fights can be expected to divide them 200 vs. 300, or 300 vs. 100 with 100 unawarded.
 
This was back in CMx1 days but the principles apply; it's a de-emphasis.  The normal thing is to have both sides with some presence on the map and VLs in hand.  Sure they provide flavor and focus but, in this telling, they're not the be all and the end all.  If you sweep the map of the enemy, there's nothing to discuss.  The enemy doesn't have troops or territory.  But consider the curious case where you inflict disproportionate damage to the enemy forces and they "win" by holding a piece of terrain.

Yes, there are examples throughout military history of fights for a "key ridge", "critical crossroads", etc...  But are those the majority of engagements?  Where victory is more reducible to who holds a VL and less to which force was knocked around?  Are those the kind that people prefer to play in CM?  Maybe, maybe not.  For my part, I accept the necessity of VLs and time limits as a concession to the game.  And if we're going to have them, people are bound to quibble about them.
 
Should it come as a surprise that we can't always get along in a Wargaming Forum?       

You are aware this is a Combat Mission gaming forum, right? I show up at a chess club and start telling them how to play chess, I expect to have to demonstrate. 

Agreed - CM is so good sometimes at depicting the battlefield that we forget that it is a wargame and as such, the "player as god" issue cannot be eliminated without removing almost all the player's control which makes it not-fun ( or at least, not a wargame ).
 
When you're playing another human PBEM, you are both capable of the same somewhat unrealistic behaviour and that at least, keeps the field level. Against the AI the human has an advantage, but then you always will against AI ( at least until Skynet  )

This makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. There isn't any reason that a weapon directed at a piece of terrain should be less accurate simply because you cannot see the "target" that is presumably occupying said terrain (but cannot been see by the shooter.)
 
To build upon the church tower example posted by Rinaldi, if I told a MG to fire a object like a church tower than is concealing a target that is either suspected or spotted by a unit other than the shooter, there is no reason what so ever that the shooter should be "less accurate" in his attempts to hit the spot he is directed to shoot. The Machine gun in question should not be made artificially inaccurate just because it cant see the target. The fact that it might not hit anyone in the tower because it cannot see them, but is in fact saturating the tower in hopes of hitting them, is already modeled. Once directed to shoot at a specific area, a unit would not just randomly start shooting something 15 feet to the right of that area. In other words, If someone orders a tank to blast a bell tower, than tank should not be randomly missing right or left of the tower or shooting some place other than the tower outside of ballistic limits of the weapons or skill limits of the shooter.
 
When I was in Afghanistan in 2011, the FOB I was at came under attack from a 3 story building just outside the ECP. The shooters occupied the roof, and were using it to fire over the walls and into the base. A patrol came back during the attack and was directed to shoot the rooftop with its 50 cals. The troops firing could not see the enemy because of the height of the building. So they were guided to shoot the roof by people in higher up locations. The people manning the 50's did not start randomly hitting things other than the roof area. They ONLY shot the roof area. Not the second floor, not some other building. Not seeing the enemy did not suddenly reduce their mental capacity to fire at a directed point.
 
There is no such thing as "abuse" of area fire. There are no rules in war. It is completely possible, and was a historically common occurrence, to saturate areas with fire.

You are aware this is a Combat Mission gaming forum, right? I show up at a chess club and start telling them how to play chess, I expect to have to demonstrate. 

Combat Missions's scenarios aren't designed for textbook applications of tactics. They're designed to be challenging. In that light terrain objectives and short mission timers make perfect sense. I could see QB essentially being the place to go for a by-the-numbers approach. The scenarios, campaigns, etc should not be so easy.

Discussion about operational art in a tactical game....yes, this will go perfectly. Oh wait, its a complete mess, shocking!
 
Lets stop confusing terrain objectives at the tactical level for terrain objectives at the operational level, one is necessary, the other is only contextual next to the main body. Considering the 'main body' in a tactical scenario may be no more than a reinforced platoon of enemies, there's often serious considerations viz. force preservation to not break your neck trying to completely destroy them.
 
What, precisely, is the point of this thread if not to stroke some ego and take cheap shots at the design philosophy of these games? That's clearly what its devolved into. Also: regurgitating quotes from Guderian doesn't make you an expert on operational art, it simply makes you a good reader. Obviously going after the bulk of the enemy is always a sound option, but terrain, context (which despite your asinine wording, is neither stupid nor unrealistic)  and what your force is offensively capable of (which is dictated by so many factors that I'd rather not rival the length of your average post trying to jot them all down) may mean a more limited approach is necessary.

Interesting, but yea, DAR time. Show us.

The condescending tone is nice, thanks for that.
 
So your plan is to:
"Murder" the enemy Read the briefing for your intel and force estimates Once you "murder" the enemy read the victory conditions Number 1 is not always so simple.. I suppose you never play H2H?
Number 2 -- hey whattaya know; this will use the "idiot" scenario designer's objectives and his scenario briefing, etc..
Number 3 - only after you "murder" the enemy will you check the victory conditions?  
 
Personally I think knowing the conditions during pre-planning helps some... because it is not always possible to simply destroy the enemy force.  If you can do that in every game, even against the AI I would like to see an AAR from you.

Games Of Thrones!
 
1. Bronn vs Lysa Arryn's champion
2. the Viper vs the Mountain
3.Brienne vs the Hound
 
Yes, GoT fan and proud of it!

Then write us up an AAR and show us neanderthals how it's done. You sure like to type a lot, but you never really show what your strategy actually looks like in the game.