Encirclements and Surrendering

[Little_Black_Devil]

I'm wondering if there is some sort of strategic element in CMC that would account for eincirclements and mass surrendering, as seen in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa.

If you had a body of enemy troops physically encircled and cut off from both supply and communications in CMC - would you always have to fight them to the last man in CMBB?

In a sense - I guess I'm wondering if there will be a "surrender" option in CMC, and moreover - if the AI will use it when applicable.

Thanks

[General Bolt]

In a CMC encirclement, would the CMBB bullet supply be zero thus triggering a surrender for the side?

[Little_Black_Devil]

My concern is - if I encircle an enemy unit - regardless of its size, and cut it off from supply (not sure if communications will have any affect/be modeled) - if the enemy unit in question will suffer any reprocussions as a result of that loss of supply?

Moreover, will there be any good reason to encircle an enemy, if you can't effectively cut off his supply?

Will I still have to fight every remaining enemy soldier in that "pocket" to the last man in smaller and smaller CMBB battles?

Cheers

[imported_KG_ThorsHammer]

I would assume force morale would come into play, culmulating in an auto surrender.

[Little_Black_Devil]

I hope something like that kicks in, otherwise purposely cutting off large numbers of enemy troops becomes pretty much pointless.

Many of the gains made by either side throughout the conflict were dependent upon this kind of strategy.

I for one would love to be able to at least try and cut off the enemy, and avoid fighting every last troop in his inventory.

Cutting off the enemy in this manor - provided he is unable to break out and rescue his trapped forces, would concieveably score me a rather big victory...and some bragging rights.

[JasonC]

On tactical time scales, there should be no immediate effect. Armies do not surrender because you drive around them. In the big pockets in 1941, they fought for weeks. The only effect should be limited ammo resupply - as in nothing for weapons with rounds per gun directly represented, and topping off only to half ammo for small arms. If you want to finish them off, you'd have to detail men to hold the areas around them and shell them with artillery e.g. Any auto-evaporation would be completely unrealistic.

[Little_Black_Devil]

Yep - I understand all of that.

What I'm getting at though, is that it should be possible - over time - to see an affect of having cut off large bodies of enemy troops.

Obviously, cutting them off from communication and resupply and keeping them that way for a duration should have an effect.

So much so - that at some point, some of them would concieveably surrender......eventually.

Sure - in some cases, this might be more akin to Lenningrad - but in others, I believe it would have happened more quickly, such as the large numbers of prisoners taken in the early stages of Operation Barbarossa.

I agree though - that such a possibility should not be as simple as cordoning off a circle around enemy troops on (CMC) turn one, and by (CMC) turn two the enemy has surrendered.

Yes - its more complicated and involved thah that.

But in the end - I do believe there should be some provision for accounting for the encirclement and mass surrendering of troops.

[JasonC]

If they don't have heavy weapons resupply, they will run out of heavy weapons ammo. If you have arty and they have squads only with half ammo, are you saying you don't know how to roll through them? When they rout, sure you will eliminate them. But just standing around waiting for them to give up would not have any effect in the time scale of a CM campaign.

[JasonC]

The 101 was surrounded in Bastogne for a week. And not left alone, but attacked by several panzer divisions, shelled, etc. Did they give up? Hell no.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by JasonC:

The 101 was surrounded in Bastogne for a week. And not left alone, but attacked by several panzer divisions, shelled, etc. Did they give up? Hell no.

But a Division is quite a large force to discuss here. Even more so with a Soviet Corps or Army.

Usually when encirclements or mottis were destroyed, it meant that thousands of men slipped out of the bag to their own side.

[JasonC]

At Mortain, a single US battalion was bypassed and left on a hill in the middle of the German main effort. They called in artillery on everything they saw for 3 days. Tanks crawled through their positions at night, and they were attacked repeatedly, without all of them ever being fully located. They never gave up, never stopped fighting, and were instrumental in stopping the attack.

Armies do not surrender because somebody drove around them. It is a maneuverist myth spread by "win without fighting" gurus, and believed by wargamers used to tracing lines of supply in old ZOC systems. If you cut someone off, shell them repeatedly, run them out of ammo, and roll them up, then sure you can bag prisoners. But it takes military effort and serious use of force, and those surrounded can be counted on to fight back as long as their ammo lasts. There is no reason to have isolation-induced-evaporation effects in a CM campaign scale game.

[Hunter]

JasonC,

What about armoured units that run out of fuel (thinking Russian units early war for example). Is there a case there for having them abandon the vehicles, effectively wiping out the ME as a fighting force?

Hunter

[stoat]

Wouldn't they try to dig them in, and use them as pillboxes?

[Little_Black_Devil]

I'm not saying that the simple cordoning off of a group of enemy troops unto its self should insta-poof that body of troops under the guise of a "mass surrender".

That = gamey.

The Germans took hundreds of thousands of Soviet Prisoners in 1941 and 42 - and these prisoners on the whole, were not a collection of "hold or die" survivors taken into captivity by ones and twos.

They also were not always the subjects of protracted siege warfare encirclements - but in many cases worn out from a long running battle where they were constantly attrited.

Their positions become untenable. They had little food, little ammunition, short on fuel, sparse communication and were subject to superior enemy attack almost at will - which further demoralized them.

Many times they had little transporation left availble to get them out of harms way. As many would successfully flee on foot - many more would not be so successful.

Thus - when these preassures were too much, they surrendered en masse rather than fight to the last man, because further resistance was futile.

Inevitably, some larger formations simply broke under the preassure - and mass surrendering was the result, either by broken will to fight or direct orders from the ranking officer(s).

This happened countless times in pretty much every theatre in WWII from Tunisia, to Smolensk to Hong Kong.

I simply believe there should be a way to simulate this in game - and that players should not have to fight every little skirmish accross the whole of the Eastern Front against troops who would have realistically - surrendered.

Troops do surrender, and sometimes lots of them surrender.

Some means to simulate this should be made available.

The real question is - how is it to be done?

It should not be an easy or worse yet - a "gamey" tactic one could readily execute with forgone results every time.

But it should at the very least - be possible, and to some extent - subject to some degree of influence so as to facilitate its possibility.

So provided that it is possible - but neither easy or even predictable per-se - I don't see what the problem is.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Little_Black_Devil:

I simply believe there should be a way to simulate this in game - and that players should not have to fight every little skirmish accross the whole of the Eastern Front against troops who would have realistically - surrendered.

Just wishing to point out that your frontage in most cases is not likely to be over 14 km (if I guess correctly)... CMC is not Gary Grigsby's War in Russia.

I think that if a platoon was attacked by a battalion, it shouldn't try to fight but retreat, and if it couldn't retreat, it should surrender.

[Ardem]

Originally posted by JasonC:

The 101 was surrounded in Bastogne for a week. And not left alone, but attacked by several panzer divisions, shelled, etc. Did they give up? Hell no.

Keeping on the subject of battalions and not Divisions, totally different concepts. How about the 1st and 3rd Ranger Battalions surrendering near town of Cisterna. Italy. They were ambushed then surrounded and didn't last the night. Admittedly this was through a lot of pressure by the germans.

How will CMC cope with this or do we need to destroy every last jack of a man.

Or lets look at Operation Market Garden, surrounded and cut off yes fighting did happen but surrendered was due to being cut off.

Or we could talk about the Italians surrendering in droves, there is heaps of stories of Italians battalions surrendering to a handful of Aussies, simply cause there supply lines could not cope anymore.

Funny we always remember the wins and conviently forget the losses.

But if a unit is surrounded and they walk off the CM battlefield into a enemy hex (square) is it considered that the unit has surrendered? Otherwise it be a gamey approach just to walk your units off the map not to be killed by the opposition

[ November 20, 2005, 07:46 PM: Message edited by: Ardem ]

[JasonC]

You can certainly have a surrounded unit have no friendly edges to exit through. You can certainly treat men who run off map while surrounded as captured. You can even enforce global morale levels that force a player to hit is "offer ceasefire" button, ending a fight early if a side is driven below its "loss tolerance" and the other sides wants to let them go, and can consider this a forced retreat or breaking off of an attack. You can interpret forced retreats without any op-square to go to as surrenders.

[juan_gigante]

I like the last idea. If a force has been hit hard enough that it otherwise would be retreating and cannot, it makes sense to me that it would surrender. This also takes into account many other factors - a more experienced, better supplied, etc. force would be less likely to have a forced retreat, and hence would be less likely to have a forced surrender. And it also means that guys wouldn't mass-surrender just because. But if they have nowhere to retreat to and are pushed very hard...