xerxes

Panicked and broken units won't take any orders, including withdraw. Kindof makes sense if you think about it. It was following orders from the guy who's now telling them to withdraw that got them in the mess in the first place. -marc

I responded with my own massively concentrated 4.2", 3", and 2" mortar stew on another part of the map. Right now I'm in cover and as typical, he's moved his arty barrage on pursuit of jucier targets. My opponent is General Petrovsky and he wields his artillery with a surgeons skill, always adjusting his barrage. -marc

I personally prefer mutually agreed force restrictions to prevent bizarre unit selections that are tuned to the situation. Also, I think bizzare unit selections are a significant part of the "attacker advantage" in CM. The defender should be able to "walk the field" during setup. Heck, that's what the defending commanders actually did. I don't think the attacker should be able to. -marc

My royal canadians move forward smartly to take position behind a stone wall (clear terrain) and commence a firefight with germans 70m away in the woods beyond the wall. Almost immediately 105mm arty hits my canucks hard and rattles them. So...... 1. Do they stay put using the cover of the wall? 2. Retreat back into some scattered trees or some woods (away from the germans and back towards their side of the map)? 3. Decide to rush over the wall, over clear terrain, at a 45 degree angle from the entrenched germans in an effort to reach some exposed woods less than 50m from the german positions? (the germans are probably smgs but no firm ID on them). What's your guess? What would you do? - marc

All great points wreck, thanks. I'm limited in my attack paths which means I don't have another good placement for my stug. Then again, I might be able to move the stug into a position that can't see the vick. Hehe, you just gave me the solution wreck, it's so simple I could kick myself. Wish I'd handled this thirteen 105mm HE shells ago. Thanks. -marc

Allowing people to create their own top x lists and share them through the depot is a great idea. Individuals over averages! -marc

Hardcore CMers I'm sure know this, but for the newbies (like myself) here's a useful tactical placement. _________________________________ I'm playing a pbem with claus from the TH ladder, a great guy btw. I've encountered a very clever mg placement that's caused me all sorts of grief. Let me describe. He's placed a vickers mg just behind the crest of a small hill which still retains LOS to a lot of my advance routes. I've had my StuH fire repeatedly at it. The shots consistently: 1. fly over and impact beyond the vickers. 2. hit the small hill in front of the vickers. result: little or no damage and lots of wasted HE. To prevent wasting HE I've had to use the "ambush" command to control the darn StuHs firing at the vickers. It was a great placement and has caused mucho annoyance to me. It's a "reverse slope" placement for the mg but since it's close to the crest the mg still exerts firing lanes that prevent my movement. The placement also seems to provide protection against my 3 hmgs that have wasted a lot of ammo trying to shut down the vickers. A tactic to use in the future! - marc

Or the trusty 3" mortar if they are more than 450 yards (meters?) away. - marc

You've gotten me curious, I'll have to run some tests. - marc

My men seem more likely to rout and break if they withdraw under heavy fire. Generally though, they were in pretty bad trouble anyway so I'm not sure it really has anything to do with withdraw. Given that, I use withdraw a lot to quickly get out of trouble and it generally works very well. Definitely if I feel the big HE or arty homing in I hit "w" and get out of dodge. - marc

I've also noticed that most of my artillery targeting "errors" are when I get a partial turn of bombardment in and think I can really pound a platoon into the dirt so I leave the barrage targeted. Every time I do that my opponent moves out from underneath pretty much unscathed leaving me cursing. I don't think I've ever caught someone for that second turn bombardment. When I played Jeb he must have done the bombard dodge thing 5 or 6 times. Very frustrating. My beliefs about effective artillery are: 1. never leave a bombardment in place for more than a partial turn. 2. constantly drop spotting rounds near where you think you might need them 3. Adjust, adjust, adjust. It's a lot better to adjust on top of someone. 4. Spot between two potential "targets", make them guess where you are going to drop the payload. 5. Concentrate lighter and heavier artillery together to help pin and than destroy. 6. Adjust to delay a bombardment if you want to hold off for a couple of minutes (this is critical with conscript and green FOs, their delay is so long that you have to start spotting 5-6 minutes before you can FFE). Adjusting can hold off the barrage until you want to unload. 7. Catch the enemy in the woods if possible. 8. Move some FOs up with your advance to target those out of LOS areas in an attack. 9. Wait until the enemy masses infantry for the big attack. 10. Hold some bigger artillery back until late in the game. Running out of artillery allows the enemy to mass without fear. I don't remember to do all these things, but I'm trying. I've learned this from my mistakes and playing with some good people who taught me painful lessons. - marc

If the some cover is trees, the cover hurts more than it helps. Treebursts are nasty, better to let the shells land in the dirt. You might get lucky staying put with 81mm coming down, if you are unlucky, you will get some nearby treeburts which will be painful. Another nice trick is to pin with the smaller caliber arty and then finish with the bigger stuff. Moving to get out from under the arty is generally a good idea unless you have hard cover (buildings). If the arty is smaller caliber (less than 120mm) and you are entrenched I think it's good to wait out the barrage. Then again, I haven't run extensive tests and everyone has their own tactics which is one thing that makes CM so interesting. - marc

Get out of those woods for the sake of your men!! Even 81s will hurt, 105s might shatter them. Woods, your infantry and enemy artillery are a lethal combo (for you). It's better to be in the open. - marc

So you could buy units at 50% of cost but they would enter 1/2 way through the battle or something like that? Sounds interesting. - marc

All factors DO NOT have to be controlled for. In fact, having a large number of randomized factors and still have statistical signficance allows much stronger and broader real-world conclusions. The significant problem would be bias. For example, if germans play as the attacker a higher % of the time. A more complete regression model could get at a lot of this. Given the data, it certainly looks like the germans have a fairly significant advantage. Send me the spreadsheet and I'll give you a statistical analysis and post it.(marcsullivan@excite.com) Could be due to a number of factors but the germans have highly "adjustable" infantry. Depending on what you need, you can get short-range or long-range infantry, you can inf. with or without shrecks, infantry with or without support weapons. Given the importance of infantry in CM it is not surprising the germans come out on top. General armor strength probably helps too. The improved allied arty probably doesn't compensate enough. I'd be interested in the results if games of mixed (reg&paras) allies were looked at separately. Too bad you can't run CM as comp vs comp, you could do a good monte carlo study then. -marc

Don't dismiss direct fire mortar deployment. Direct fire is very fast and responds immediately if a target becomes available. Mortars have great range so if the map allows it you can engage outside of effective mg/squad range. This leaves your opponent faced with using either artillery (inefficient and wasteful) or direct fire HE. Artillery barrages take some time to arrive and your mortar can scoot into a nearby building until the storm passes and then redeploy. If the enemy exposes direct HE you can use other assets to hit back. Mortars are more survivable and moveable then guns. The brit 3" excels in a direct fire or indirect fire role. I really like them. - marc

http://www.tournamenthouse.com/CM/CAL/THCAL.shtml Tournament house rules are a good starting point, also the people I've played on the TH ladder have all been quite fun. They're a good starting point. Personally, I'd recommend getting a little creative so every game doesn't end up with a "standard" unit set. I'm playing a low troop quality, mechanized, computer force pick, meeting engagement and it's really different and interesting. - marc

Does "slope" effect bogginess? - xerxes

I'd have to question 2nd floor placement unless you KNOW that the enemy has no available direct fire HE. That's just too good a target to collapse the building and trash your squad, mg, whatever. If the enemy has multiple HE deliver vehicles be very afraid of the second floor because you might never get a chance to issue a withdraw order. Except: Unless you want the enemy to reveal their DF HE. - xerxes

Bungie started as a Mac-only game developer. As they became succesful they branched out into Dual-platform games. They were extremely innovative in terms of FPS (Marathon-mac only) and Strategy games (myth-dual platform) which were both ground breaking for their time. Much of the "mod" development for myth was done by customers on macs. They have been acquired by Microsoft which will probably prove unfortunate, we'll see. - xerxes

A bren team would be a great addition to the British (and polish!) suppport forces. Is the vickers mg really as weak as CM models it? Wasn't there a better (i.e. more men, tripod, etc.) configuration? - xerxes

450 mghz g4 (via cpu upgrade, love that low-insertion replacement, it's really easy), 256 mb, 32mb vid card. 1. "Designing a game for a mac is bad marketing" - Hmm, Bungie did exactly this and seems to have made out ok. From a pure marketing perspective, designing purely for a Mac is a better idea than it sounds from a small company perspective. It's a similar startegy to that used by some successful convenience store chains that targeted towns under 30k people. The reason is less competition in a much smaller market is a solid business strategy. You just won't ever get to be a top-dog that way and you have to produce your product very cost effectively. Total market for PC games is obviously much (wildly/enormously/etc) bigger but it has proportionally more competitors. PC-only games have an astoundly high failure rate. 2. Graphics rate way below gameplay for me, I download all the cool tricked out mods and then turn off the trees 80% of the time. (I do turn them on just to watch if I have the time). 3. Graphics/Sound are extremely important for bringing in new customers, particularly beyond the well-defined grog market segment. I'll take better chrome. I'd really like to see fire upgraded. 4. A scalable system is a "state-of-the-art" design approach with polygon count adjustments tied to CPU load. I would imagine BTS with it's small development staff (what are they now, Steve + 1?) would be strained to do this so they have to choose a middle ground. 5. When they become wildly successful and hire a platoon of developers we can be treated to the wonders of cutting edge game software technology development. 6. CM should be ported to the playstation 2 so you can get great graphix. LOL, I can't imagine the return rate for that port. 7. If BTS could go scalable, I completely agree with you Panzer. - xerxes

For a city block buster, the Hummel is certainly a great choice. You can identify your targets ahead of time and setup "keyholes" that minimize danger to your SPA. - xerxes

Ack, I missed that one JasonC, you have a very good point. I agree, the StuH(early or late) is a much better buy at 79 pts then the wespe. I was thinking of the sturms. - xerxes

As long as you clearly identify it as "loosely based on" a squad leader scenario you should be in the clear. In truth, it is totally impossible to create a SL scenario in CM without making very significant modifications. That won't stop the corporate lawyer from bullying. To be safe don't use the term SL, just make a reference to SL that is transparent to anyone yet doesn't use the trademark. Note: If a reader/gamer might be in any way confused about this being an "official" squad leader conversion than Hasbro has every legal right to bring out the big guns. Also if any of the images or text from any Hasbro owned documentation, ads, graphics, etc are used that is a direct and clear violation of copyright. Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer but in my work I've had to deal with these issues so I have some knowledge about the issues. - xerxes