Demo US scenario help

[KL2004]

Even having played the scenario with the US reinforced company attacking the German recon spear a few times, I still find it really good to get the performance I'd like to.  What's the things I should be noticing to make the right decisions and what can I expect as a good outcome?

[Xorg_Xalargsky]

We've got little information to work with here, perhaps if you could give details about your results and the difficulties you faced, you would receive more useful help.

For now, I can still recommend you this excellent youtube playlist featuring a thorough set of tutorials, some of which were made by this forum's own Chris Maillet

 

 

[butler69]

These two links are also great resources; http://battledrill.blogspot.com/2013/08/combat-mission-tactical-problems-cmtp.html & http://www.raafsquad.com/cliffs/battlefront/

 

[KL2004]

My tactics and techniques are decent.  I'm very familiar with this stuff.

The trouble seems to be my planning.  I have found there are three routes of attack for the US.  You can go far left through the valley, but you deal head on with the German defenses.  There is a short right flank by getting the company online in the hedges and trees mid-left.  That allows a lot of firepower and cuts the German OP there but it can't seem to be resolved fast enough to avoid artillery.  The positions also need to be guarded once you've cut the road near the bridge, so you're down a squad at least no matter what.  The other option I have tried is using smoke and covering fire to get the company over the field to the right and dislocate the entire German position.  This works well to some extent, especially since you can link up with the lost platoon, but you do take casualties running over the field to breach and it seems outlandish and based on prior scenario knowledge to choose this route.

 

What I'm really looking for is someone who has it nailed to tell me what they did and how they figured it out, and what kind of casualties they still take on average to succeed. 

 

 

[Bulletpoint]

It's some time since I played the demo, is this the scenario where you quickly spot a Tiger II down in the valley?

[KL2004]

That's the one!  The Tiger II is pretty easy to dispatch.  The rest that's hard.

[Bulletpoint]

17 hours ago, KL2004 said:

That's the one!  The Tiger II is pretty easy to dispatch.  The rest that's hard.

Yes, I struggled a bit with it too. And I'm a reasonably decent player. So don't get discouraged, it's just a difficult mission.

One of the big reasons is that it's one of those scenarios that exploit one of the game´s main limitations, in that you cannot target many of the buildings because of slope effects, even though the buildings are visible. Also, the small hedges make it very difficult to achieve LOS. This severely limits the value of having tank support, because the tanks need to get so close to be able to target buildings that they are well within German infantry AT range.

I think what I ended up doing after replaying it several times was to go through the village on the left flank, but probing very carefully with small scout teams. then when they took fire, I would roll up tank support and area fire heavily, then repeat the procedure. Can't remember the wind direction, and if it would be possible to do more smoke work, either by mortars or preferably by tank smoke ejectors or smoke shells.

The result was some kind of win, but I took far too many casualties for my liking. I was not able to find any smart and easy way to roll up this scenario.

[General Liederkranz]

The first time I played this I stumbled into the right-flank approach and that worked pretty well; I avoided taking many casualties while crossing the field by moving fast. But it got a lot tougher when I tried to go through the woods and clear the central buildings--the tanks couldn't go through the woods so had to go around, limiting their ability to give me infantry support. When I brought the infantry and armor together against the central building cluster, the targeting limitations @Bulletpoint notes drove me crazy. One building in particular was full of SS infantry with automatic weapons and I simply couldn't area target it without bringing a tank within PF range. Part of this is the engine limitation about targeting buildings, but part of it is the fact that one particular building is set in a hillside facing one direction so the bottom floor is basically on a reverse slope. I finally won when the AI surrendered, but with far more casualties than I thought I should have taken. I tried again thinking I could do better going down the left flank along the road, and I found it's possible to avoid the mortars by watching very carefully for spotting rounds and risking rushing the fields too quickly to get out from under impending barrages. But it was so slow to clear the Germans out of one house after another that I couldn't clear all the objectives in time and ended up with a Draw. I didn't knock out the Tiger II either time, just avoided it.

[Armorgunner]

On 2017-07-31 at 0:28 PM, Bulletpoint said:

Yes, I struggled a bit with it too. And I'm a reasonably decent player. So don't get discouraged, it's just a difficult mission.

One of the big reasons is that it's one of those scenarios that exploit one of the game´s main limitations, in that you cannot target many of the buildings because of slope effects, even though the buildings are visible. Also, the small hedges make it very difficult to achieve LOS. This severely limits the value of having tank support, because the tanks need to get so close to be able to target buildings that they are well within German infantry AT range.

 

I played this one maybe 6-8 times before buying CMFB. But always from the German side. The US AI always targeted the Village with mortar fire at the begining. And I remember taking more than expected loses from that initial bombardment. Even though my poor nazis where in the buildings. The first time i played, and was not preperd for the bombardment. I had most trops outside the houses in ambush positions, and they where severly decimated.

Just a view from the Nazi side 

Edited August 7, 2017 by Armorgunner

[Bulletpoint]

6 minutes ago, Armorgunner said:

I played this one maybe 6-8 times before buying CMFB. But always from the German side. The US AI always targeted the Village with mortar fire at the begining. And I remember taking more than expected loses from that initial bombardment. Even though my poor nazis where in the buildings. The first time i played, and was not preperd for the bombardment. I had most trops outside the houses in ambush positions, and they where severly decimated. Just a view from the enemy side 

Never played it from the German side, but of course the mission is much easier if you happen to guess right where the enemy is, and bring down some artillery on them. But if you guess wrong, you just wasted your fire support.. and some scenario designers are really clever in that the obvious defensive places start out empty, then they get occupied later after you wasted all your shells. So you never really know

As far as I remember, the first time I played this scenario, I kept the mortars in reserve, because the LOS is quite good from the hill to most places on the map, so I thought I'd better be flexible with the fire plan. Then in next playthroughs, I knew the enemy was in the village, but it felt like cheating to use this knowledge to bombard them.

Edited August 7, 2017 by Bulletpoint

[Armorgunner]

38 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Never played it from the German side, but of course the mission is much easier if you happen to guess right where the enemy is, and bring down some artillery on them. But if you guess wrong, you just wasted your fire support.. and some scenario designers are really clever in that the obvious defensive places start out empty, then they get occupied later after you wasted all your shells. So you never really know

 Then in next playthroughs, I knew the enemy was in the village, but it felt like cheating to use this knowledge to bombard them.

You are so right in Everything you Wright, But sometimes you get crazy, after the fifth time. And a Little whispering spy (From the Frensh resistence) Can Always bring a Little morale boost

Edited August 7, 2017 by Armorgunner

[Armorgunner]

It might not be clear. But what i ment was. If we/you/me fail after a few attemts, about Five?  We all get mader, and mader. And maybe, to the point we get so crazy. That we don't want to play this great game no more. And thats where the "Frensh resistences" helpfull "somewhat real" reecon. Morale boost come in  

When i look at what i Wright from the beginning, some people might have thought that i meant "Bulletpoint" as the crazy one. Thats not the case. I'm not native english speaking, so when i think it looks good. It might always not be the case in your eyes 

 

 

Edited August 7, 2017 by Armorgunner

[Bulletpoint]

16 hours ago, Armorgunner said:

It might not be clear. But what i ment was. If we/you/me fail after a few attemts, about Five?  We all get mader, and mader. And maybe, to the point we get so crazy. That we don't want to play this great game no more. And thats where the "Frensh resistences" helpfull "somewhat real" reecon. Morale boost come in  

When i look at what i Wright from the beginning, some people might have thought that i meant "Bulletpoint" as the crazy one. Thats not the case. I'm not native english speaking, so when i think it looks good. It might always not be the case in your eyes 

No problem, I understood you perfectly the first time

And yes, the important thing is to have fun.

[Armorgunner]

10 hours ago, Bulletpoint said:

No problem, I understood you perfectly the first time

And yes, the important thing is to have fun.

that feels good to hear

[KL2004]

I cracked it, sorted out what needed to be done. 

The infantry (speaking US side) need only provide security for spotters and mortars.  The objectives required for victory are so specific that you need only blast the ones on the left with armor (don't wait for spots, or engagement.)   The two buildings near the bridge need to be bombed with mortars.  The KT at the start can be killed easily because it's facing the wrong way. 

It also helps that everything is shooting, so you can pull contacts by just exposing infantry to fire in relatively safe short bouts, and then hammer those positions with 60mm and tank fire.

The armored car on right rear of the map near the lost platoon is challenging.  The best way to dispatch it is by sneaking the Platoon HQ into a spot and then calling the 60mm on it.

The wrong things to do:

Try to clear positions with infantry before they're already running.

Use the 81's for positions the tanks can handle.

Bring the tanks up close enough to get hit by infantry AT.

Try to take out any German AFV with infantry based assets.

 

 

[KL2004]

" it felt like cheating to use this knowledge to bombard them. "

 

I had the same sentiment.  However those two buildings by the bridge are clearly marked as objectives and they are stonework, one with a very good basement, and both in difficult spots for the tanks to engage them.  Anticipating that those positions are going to be a problem and using the 81's on them makes sense.  If you want to be realistic, you could draw fire from them with infantry first.

The route down the right hand side of the map can be tested and found safe, and then the HT's can shuttle infantry there.  Rolling up the central wooded area is easy with infantry and tank support.  Just takes about 20 minutes, but you have plenty of time.

Assaulting infantry down the road is obviously going to go badly once you send a platoon that way too.  No reason to push there.

[Bulletpoint]

10 hours ago, KL2004 said:

I had the same sentiment.  However those two buildings by the bridge are clearly marked as objectives and they are stonework, one with a very good basement, and both in difficult spots for the tanks to engage them.  Anticipating that those positions are going to be a problem and using the 81's on them makes sense.  If you want to be realistic, you could draw fire from them with infantry first.

Sometimes I will dial in a pre-planned bombardment of suspected enemy positions, but then add a delay of 10 minutes to give me time to scout out the place. If enemies are found, I let the bombardment come in, or I cancel it if the place is empty. Sometimes, I will do this even after replaying several times and knowing the place will be full of Germans.

[KL2004]

I like that idea!

[StieliAlpha]

On 7.8.2017 at 4:54 PM, Armorgunner said:

It might not be clear. But what i ment was. If we/you/me fail after a few attemts, about Five?  We all get mader, and mader. And maybe, to the point we get so crazy. That we don't want to play this great game no more. And thats where the "Frensh resistences" helpfull "somewhat real" reecon. Morale boost come in  

When i look at what i Wright from the beginning, some people might have thought that i meant "Bulletpoint" as the crazy one. Thats not the case. I'm not native english speaking, so when i think it looks good. It might always not be the case in your eyes 

 

 

As a very general comment: Yes, CM requires a certain "frustration resistance".

When you finally start to enjoy the punishment, you've made it. 😀

[Michael Emrys]

On August 7, 2017 at 5:16 AM, Bulletpoint said:

...and some scenario designers are really clever in that the obvious defensive places start out empty, then they get occupied later after you wasted all your shells.

The reverse of that is that I usually play as the attacker vs. the AI and almost invariably it will start the game by bombarding the most obvious approach routes. So I just wait out the first few turns until I am sure where the shells are falling and then go some other way, happy to have the AI waste its artillery.

Michael

[Bulletpoint]

6 minutes ago, Michael Emrys said:

The reverse of that is that I usually play as the attacker vs. the AI and almost invariably it will start the game by bombarding the most obvious approach routes. So I just wait out the first few turns until I am sure where the shells are falling and then go some other way, happy to have the AI waste its artillery.

That's only true when playing quick battles against the computer, which, in my opinion, is a waste of time. I'm talking about playing scenarios.

[Erwin]

"I just wait out the first few turns until I am sure where the shells are falling and then go some other way, happy to have the AI waste its artillery."

So gamey, Michael...      

[Michael Emrys]

47 minutes ago, Erwin said:

So gamey, Michael...  

Right. Since it's a game, by definition anything we do is gamey. But there are different degrees of gaminess. I think what we are concerned to do is to ask if what we do in the game has a plausible parallel in the real world. What's not plausible about taking a route the enemy is not shelling?

Michael

[Erwin]

If I were the AI we'd need to agree on certain ground rules b4 playing (and stick with em) or I would self destruct game...