Renaud

AH Tactics II for me in 78 i believe - an ancient copy from a garage sale. Then onward and upward to PB, SL and all the others.

Whatever it is I'll buy it just for armor cover arcs...especially anything ostfront. But how I'll ever find the time to play it I don't know. 12 years changes your priorities what with kids and all.

I should correct my prior AAR to say I had 1 infantry PLATOON. Not a company. It was a very small battle on small map, so that might exacerbate the AI auto force pick problem. I used to pick the AI forces in CMx1 too...hmm, maybe i'll go back to that. I wish I could play more scenarios but i've played all the small-medium ones and just don't have the time necessary to do the big ones justice.

I hadn't played in a long while until recently...went back and did a small QB, mixed force on both sides, ME on town map, realtime w/1 hour limit. I had an infantry company + sherm 76 and a .50 MG team. Spent a lot of time planning and executing my carefully laid attack into the town. 20 minutes into the game i'm all over the town, still no sight of the enemy. At minute 25, four MkIV's and 1 HMG42 team appeared. In 5 minutes 3 MkIV's drove right into the main street and were killed one by one by my keyholed sherm 76. I wiped out the HMG42 team with 60mm fire. The last MkIV stopped in panic next to a building. I distracted him with a zook team while the shermy drove around the side and finished him. Total time, 32 minutes, most of it spent waiting for the enemy to appear. 2 KIA 3 wounded. For ME's the AI should be rushing the objectives, at least with the some portion of it's OB. This would probably make ME's vs. AI more challenging on average (certainly in my last game, I would have been in hot water). The biggest problem with QB's still seems to be force selection by enemy AI. The AI force selection is not balanced (often amounts to a load of vehicles you easily KO), and is randomly suited or unsuited to the map type. It would be nice if AI 'mixed' force selection was linked to map type (more tanks in open, more infantry in town/woods, etc.). I'll avoid 'mixed' next time and choose infantry only, but it would be nice if 'mixed' were really combined arms - it often turns out to be mostly one type of unit. ME's are also probably a bad choice, since AI sits around a long time and generally has trouble moving to the objective, often has unsuitable units, etc. I think a QB attack against defending AI in heavy terrain is going to generate the best game. That said, QB vs AI is now at least semi-playable with the patch, as compared to v1.0. I'm looking forward to cranking up another game this weekend.

Yes, 'pre-alpha' is an unfortunate choice of words by the reviewer since it implies the game was released before the graphics were complete or fully functional. As far as I can tell, the game was released with fully functional graphics, complete as per the original design and intent. "Functioning as designed", as we say in the software industry. Not looking like the latest FPS is not the same as 'pre-alpha'.

Another good book on the economic aspect: http://www.amazon.com/Vampire-Economy-Doing-Business-Fascism/dp/B000XG6RRQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311362969&sr=8-1

Try playing US in last defense - elite + real time or wego.

My suggestion is take the arty you know you won't be able to use, and paste likely locations with pre-planned barrages. At least you get some use out of it that way. Certain nasty scenario designers prevent this by having the arty come in as reinforcements... This works even better on the defense, where it's very difficult to predict and hit a fast moving enemy unless you have some TRP's out there and the enemy advances near/between them.

Someone once said Iron mode is like Elite + hitting your thumb with a hammer. I've always found that Iron mode simply amounts to a lot more clicking. If you can't see or select unit 2 from unit 1's perspective, just unselect unit 1 and voila you can see and select unit 2 and all your other units. So in the end it amounts to a bunch of extra clicking for no reason. Iron mode feels like underlying C2 functionality hanging around waiting for a future multi/co-play feature.

Tips on things that are working for me: 1. Scouts out: break out 4-8 2-man scout teams from a company (pick from the better squads). Fan them out to ID or annoy targets, moving a little (hunt and slow, 30-50 meters per hop), stopping to listen (use pauses liberally in WEGO). Always have overwatch in position, because it's the overwatch that will actually ID the enemy much of the time (not the terrified scouts). Scouts without overwatch are still useful, because you can find the enemy with your gods-eye view even if your other units don't 'see' the enemy due to C2, but not as useful. Especially vs. Human that will kill your scounts and run off before you can respond. edit: oh I forgot to mention that the 360/30m cover arc is critical to scout team survival. You want them going to ground when fired on, and generally never firing back. Without this they will die almost immediately. 2. At start of game, set short (typically 360/30meter) target arcs around all your HQ's and onboard mortars (if you are going to move them around), this makes these high value units less likely to draw attention to themselves and get taken out early. 3. when moving up units to the next phase line - usually a hedgerow (particularly HQ's and FO's), SLOW them the last 10 meters into possible enemy LOS, combined with HIDE (make sure hide is selected, so they will autohide when reaching the end of waypoint). Then, unhide them selectively, insuring that they have their 30-meter cover arcs set (see #2 above). 4. Always keep a reserve force completely uncommitted - typically 1/3rd of your total force (1 platoon from a company, for instance). Pretend these guys don't exist and play with the other 2/3rd as long as humanly possible. You'll be thankful later. A nice variation on this, if you have a good company CO, is handpick squads/teams and assign directly to the CO. This way you keep 3 maneuver platoons, with an effective reserve force directly under the CO.

I thought the play balance is very tight, considering I was just barely able to take the last objective with my last few shattered men and eek out a tactical victory. On the plus side there will be no one to court-martial except the battalion commander, since the company CO and exec both died at the foot of the church on minute 76 (I used all but 3 minutes of the 1:20 scenario time - required about 6 hours of real time WEGO). On the other hand, it would be tougher to get a total US victory...US would have to somehow sustain far less casualties, so that the germans don't get their US casualty points. If I played it again, which I'm not, I go 100% down the middle and avoid the road entirely. That might actually be worse though, due to additional arty casualties.

Also he's about to blow the fingers of his left hand clean off. Or is that phaser on stun.

I managed to squeeze out a tactical victory (850 to 400 pts), it was incredibly close though, and I had to pretend it was stalingrad: suffered 75% casualties but got both objectives. Elite mode, wego, no saves or restarts, no reading any AAR's or spoilers. Hmmm... 500 meters for 75% casualties...we'll need cloning or undead tech to reach Paris. I've been getting total victories in the disc scenarious without too much trouble, this was a real challenge though. And yes, it could have been much tougher. There could have been a dozen more trp's, every hedge zeroed plus other approach routes and some defensive works, more mines too: if there's only 1 or 2 openings you know the amis have to through, hey why not. On the other hand, I think vanilla GI's should be able to mark mines (and engineers should actually be able to lift them, say 5-15 minutes per action spot, depending on training/experience?). Also I could have used a tank or 2 on the road. With a single sherman, I would have had a lot less casualties. Great (and evil) scenario, thanks SteveP.

I was wondering about that myself...it's in the manual but I've never seen it and I've closely observed a lot of mayhem these past weeks since game release, in scenario author mode too. I think it's not actually something that can happen. Yesterday I was watching a platoon entirely broken and trapped at edge of map next to river, lashed by mg fire in the open for 10 minutes...all thoroughly broken. Global and local morale for that side was about rock bottom. Since no one was real close they couldn't surrender, but also can't rout to disappear and can't exit the map edge. This creates some silly situations. It would be nice if either the map edge could be exited by fleeing troops OR the rout feature functioned correctly.

Each squad appears to have 2 smoke grenades...there is no listing of smoke grenade count in the interface, I infer this from the fact that if you split off a scout team, they can pop smoke once and the leader team can also pop smoke once. Thus, two smoke grenades per squad.

True, it's most useful for ai groups on the defense. Split a squad AT team out and give them separate ambush ranges.

I would think this can be addressed in scenario design by assigning your schreck/bazooka teams to ai groups with short ambush ranges. This doesn't help you in qb's of course, but scenario designers can fine tune.

"Bugs are temporary, but bad tactical thinking is forever." That almost gives me a reason to have a sig...almost!

Not the battle of this topic I know, but has anyone read Osprey 'Campaign 189: Sevastopol 1942: Von Manstein's Triumph (Campaign)'? Reviews on amazon are promising. I'm always looking for more stuff on the Crimean campaign. Right now my primary references are Manstein's memoirs, Tieke's 'The Caucasus and the Oil', Bidermann's 'In Deadly Combat', Jentz 'Panzer Truppen' and various translated Russian stuff on the web here and there.

Check to see that your mg team is deployed...that's something new for cm2.

The two man recon teams in and of themselves won't spot much. My tactic is to insure there are other units (with field glasses) in stationary positions watching the scout teams advance. The scout team advances in cover (if possible) using 'hunt' so they go to ground immediately when fired at. The overwatching elements will then spot the firing enemy (usually as just ? markers). Then you can pound the spotted enemy positions with area fire. Rinse and repeat. Isolated scout teams without overwatch will almost always be spotted first if they are moving, by stationary enemy in LOS. And then become casualties. I haven't played missions where you are supposed to actually move into an area to 'recon' it. Also don't forget the 2-man scout teams are unique in that they will be assigned one of the squad smoke grenades. (The leader team gets the other one).

There is a known issue with FFE being called even if none of the spotting rounds were in LOS of the observer. If the observer can see the spotting rounds, he will walk them toward the target. If not, he just keeps calling for more spotting rounds, eventually followed by a call for FFE even if he never saw a single spotting round. This makes it impractical to fire at tiny spots you can see such as church steeples, etc., without LOS to the surrounding area. The work around is to cancel or adjust the mission to somewhere where you can see the spotting rounds.

I experienced the same thing only just last night. 75at behind low bocage, gun had Los to many targets for 15 minutes but could never fire. Gun barrel was clearly over the bocage, Los was blue...I noticed the crew was furiously pointing the barrel back and. Forth at various targets, but could never fire. The loader was having some kind of fit and his animation was stuck in a nonstop loading cycle, but the animation never completed. Finally i had to pack it up and wheel it 16 meters away and unlimber it again...that took like 7-8 minutes total. I made it but never got more opportunity to fire. I tried various area targets in plain view before and after but he would never fire. I have save game if anyone wants it.

In my experience with cmbn engine so far, small mistakes can result in big losses, much more so than cmx1 where your soldiers to some extent took care of themselves in an abstracted way. So radical results were much less likely. Some of the stories on the forum have been outright comical. Your's is kinda sad...but awesome if you are the guy playing the allies, hehe. Suggestion/questions: 1. Did you move your squads in with hunt command, or assault? If normal, quick or fast move toward a known enemy position (known to you, not to the unit moving) especially in woods, they will usually run to their doom and be wiped out to a man while inflicting no casualties in return. 2. I can't remember if shermy crews have one, but don't a lot of armored vehicle crews have 1 grease gun or tommy gun? That's more firepower than 5 pistols together, especially point blank in woods. It would be nice if crews bailed due to hits on their vehicles were shaken or pinned for at least a bit, but this could cause undesired side effects like not being able to run away and getting machine gunned.

That's elegant...one of those in your face solutions that no one thinks of. I wonder if any of the scenarios that come with the game have implemented the offmap btn HQ. It must be in the manual...but what's the advantage of having C2 to a battalion HQ (on or off the map), vs. say just having your fighting squads/teams having C2 up through their Company HQ? I'm guessing this can eventually transmit spotting information from Company A troops to Company B troops, through the battalion HQ. If that's true, then I can see ALWAYS wanting to have a battalion HQ (on or off the map), anytime you have 2+ company HQ's on the field. I guess the same applies for platoon to company...even if you only have 2 platoons on the field, an on or offmap company commander would give a C2 benefit. Anything other benefit, like some combat or morale bonus that propagates down from the battalion HQ all the way to fighting squads/teams?