Macisle

Thanks for the thanks, guys. Good luck with your work!

I've been working on a scenario for CMRT for awhile where the major bottleneck is trying to fit the AI's force under 16 groups. Having 32+ would be wonderful and is my top choice by a mile for post 4.0 Editor Upgrade features. Once you hit a certain level of comfort, managing more than 16 Groups isn't much of a problem as long as you make notes (renaming formations also helps a lot in keeping track of things). I've done a vast amount of experimentation to try and get around the 16 Group limit (most recent dead end was using Exit zones for temporary Groups to exit and be replaced, but the casualty point system killed that. Aside from the points problem, it worked very well). A technique I'm using that does work is one I call "Snowballing." That is where I use reinforcements to add units to an existing Group over time. So, for example, you start off with a platoon of ACs to simulate recon. Then add a platoon of tanks to the same Group for more firepower. Then later, add a platoon of infantry for a combined arms Group that will take territory. The key is that the first movement Order you want for the reinforcements to use after they enter must not start until after they are on the map. So, the previous Order must not exit until the reinforcements are already on the map. For example, if the reinforcements enter on turn 5 (don't use variable times for this), make sure that the Order you want them to join in on doesn't begin until minute 6. In other words, have the previous Order exit on 6. It can take some practice to juggle the locations and Order times, but it does work. As a rule, I try to keep armor and infantry in separate Groups, but this technique can really help when the 16 Group limit has you in a bind, or you want to throw a curveball. Edit: Here is a CMFB TEST FILE. Play under scenario author test as the Americans. Just keep advancing the turns. Reinforcements show up at 5 minute intervals to join the Group and advance a minute later. Here is a CMRT TEST FILE showing the technique. Play under scenario author test as the Germans.

Thanks, Heinrich. I think you can leave off on the version you have--other than letting me know how things go if you play to the bitter end. That version was really an attempt to get something done quickly (though I did put some time into it) and "good enough." The armor orders were woefully out of whack, though it did make fodder for intense play that had some decent fun value in it. Also, my grasp of Order exit timings was off (as my earlier postings revealed). I've grokked them now. The current version has armor providing much more realistic support. Also, I scrapped the canned opening for a more standard freeform one, though with its own "shaping" to overcome AI limitations given the large map and good defensive terrain and thus allow the AI to get a foot in the door it otherwise might not. At this point, I do really need fresh eyes to help me judge if I've hit my difficulty level target of "Defensive Scenario Challenging for Experienced CM'ers." My level of familiarity with things is now such that I think I'm no longer able to judge that adequately. So, I'd love to get your help. I may have you try the first half of the scenario in isolation to save time. However, I need cut the current temporary fire support groups and rework things first. It will be a few weeks. Right now, I don't see any way of dealing with the exit points issue other than having the player only get points for territory. I think the satisfaction value of the human player's earning casualty points outweighs the battlefield value of the temporary fire support groups. Yeah, I could actually barely do the current concept under a limit of 16 Orders, but the limit of 16 Groups really puts an undesirable lid on things. You've identified a lot of the issues created. So, taking the player's company versus, say, a battalion of Soviets... 3 x 3 platoons of infantry = 9 Groups. Divide the MG company to support each company. 3 x MG platoon = 12 Groups. Now, give each company a platoon of armor in support. 3 tank platoons = 15 Groups. That leaves 1 remaining group for things like FO and static units (who may be used to "beam in" to hold taken territory). Since static units are meant not to move, that already creates an either static OR FO conundrum. Additionally, if you go with FOs, trying to get multiple FOs under one Group to reach multiple new locations that are far apart can produce iffy results in route choice. So, as you can see, this puts major limitations on the attacking AI, as the battalion can barely be fit under orders at the platoon-sized Group level, with no room for HQ or single-vehicle separation. Here are just a few of the problems that arise: Once a platoon loses an AFV from the platoon, the AI may not have one where his next order needs it (if there are 2 tanks left and 3 painted location tiles, the AI will choose 2 tiles randomly from the 3). The human player who needs fire support for his advancing infantry will just pull a tank over from somewhere else. Easy-peasy. The AI might well send in its infantry without the tank support, instead sending its tanks to locations with no utility. Not having to worry about the number of Groups available would allow the designer to reduce the impact of the problem by using single-vehicle Groups to "layer" overwatch and take random movement location tile decision-making away from the AI. As a single AI Group, an infantry platoon cannot effectively provide fire support for itself when advancing. While the human player has no trouble breaking up his infantry platoon into fire support and assault elements (and can choose the best tools for each job), the best the AI can do is use Assault movement. This is not adequate--especially if the AI's platoon has already taken some casualties. So, for any hope of effective support fire, the AI must have at least 2 Groups to leapfrog each other at that point of attack. That really compounds the problem of having such a low number of Groups available. As RepsolCBR mentioned, the current Group number limit makes it hard to find units to hold territory that has been taken. The human player can peel off whatever he needs and leave it to hold the Objective. The variables involved with an Attacking AI (how many troops does the AI Group have left? What location tiles are painted? How will remaining units be applied to those tiles?) mean that the designer's safest choice is to have a Group occupy and sit on an Objective for the duration. Otherwise, there may be nothing there when needed later. Yet, once they are in place, that's a Group out of action for any other purpose. Right now, two techniques that I'm using to help mitigate these problems are "Snowballing" and "Beam-ins." Snowballing is adding new units to an on-map Group via reinforcements to expand its utility and allow for a large change of tasks. For example, the group may start out as a tank platoon with responsibility for ranged fire support for advancing infantry. Then later, reinforcement infantry assigned to the same Group as the tanks may beam-in to a safe, nearby location (or one more distant and leg it over) and join the tanks to form a combined arms assault group to advance in and take ground. The snowballing Group can also evolve from light recon elements to recon in force to a strong combined-arms assault group as time goes on. With experience and careful use of Orders and their timing, this technique can bear some very nice fruit, despite vehicles being mixed in with infantry under a single Group. Beam-ins (in addition to being an inherent part of Snowballing) are used to add static elements and/or important units that need to survive a dangerous journey (like FOs) and be guaranteed to be in a location at a certain time (movement that may be simple for the human player, but suicidal when left to the AI). They can also be used to "stretch" a Group's utility by adding static elements after an existing Group has finished its movement on the map. For example, an infantry platoon spends an hour fighting across the map, passing location A and B and then stops for the duration on C. At a point in time after the last movement Order is finished, reinforcements beam in to place elements (infantry, ATGs, FOs, whatever) to hold and defend points A and B. Nobody moves unless pushed out because there are no more movement Orders in the Group slot. Of course, care must be taken and playtesting done with this technique to make sure that the beam-ins are not spawning in an unrealistic location in relation to the human player's troops. So, you can see part of why this scenario is taking so long. It really boils down to me fighting to fit my concept into the barrel of the current 16-Group limit. It's getting there, though. Oh, and FYI, I gave up on the Photoshop planning technique once I reached a certain point in development of the scenario (no surprise for experienced designers there, I'm sure). The changes were just too fast and numerous to make it practical. Also, my mind was eventually able to handle more data without needing it. It did help quite a lot for the first pass, though. Thanks for the responses and interest in the scenario/this thread. Hopefully, it is continuing to provide some brain food and will eventually lead to a pleasing scenario. Edit: I forgot to mention, for future upgrades, I'd love to see the AI Area Fire feature be divided into "Normal" and "Heavy" settings. The Normal would be like it is now. The Heavy would allow the designer to have units make their target orders priority, like the Target and Target Briefly commands do now. So, for example, the designer could say, have fire support groups do a minute of Heavy, and then follow up with Normal for a number of minutes. As things stand, it can be hard to get the AI to provide the kind of fire support a human player easily can, even if the AI has a lot of potential firepower in that Group.

A quick update: I've had to take some time away again for work. The integration of the v4 Upgrade features is going well. Having 32 Orders is great, but the remaining limit of 16 Groups is proving to be a bit of a bear. I've been experimenting with creative ways to "stretch" that limit with reinforcement additions to existing Groups. An additional idea that I thought was going to be gold turned out, after a couple of weeks of work, to be a dead end. I misunderstood the Exit Zone point information in the manual and didn't realize that ALL units with Unit Objective values assigned for Destroy/DA, no matter which group they are in, must exit or have their point values be awarded to the opposing player. I was trying to have AI support vehicles come in at the beginning of the scenario, lay down Area Fire for a period of time, exit by a certain time at their friendly map edge, and then have a different formation replace their group contents to tackle other objectives and stay on the map for the duration. In other words: AFVs roll in and shoot up things for awhile while other friendly units advance under that covering fire. The AFVs then exit off their own friendly map edge. Infantry reinforcements arrive after the AFVs are gone and replace the now empty contents of that same group. The infantry picks up with the next new group order and stays on the map for the battle. I got it all working smoothly and was really happy with what it did for the scenario. But...of course...I now realize that can't do it if I want to have any Unit Objective points awarded for AI casualties--which I do. Major Bummer. Here's hoping that future upgrades expand the number of available groups (32+ please!) and make Exit Zones more customizable for the designer so that ideas like the one above can be used. This sets me back time-wise, but at least I've learned a few things along the way.

Looks like you're going to beat me. I'm working on my scenario as much as I can, but I've bitten off a lot to chew on with the concept and size. It's going to be awhile yet before I can get the next test version out. It makes extensive use of AI Area Fire, with at least one armored "retreat" maneuver thrown in. AI Area Fire is kind of a must for T-34/76s as they have tons of ammo and are pretty much blind anyway . On a positive note on the new troop behaviors, I have seen them end up producing a desirable curveball result on a number of occasions. Also, last night I was working on one part of the map, testing my AI plan there, and leaving my platoons on other parts of the map to die in place. Over the course of my testing, I noticed that the DIP platoons actually retreated on their own to another clump of buildings after being shot out of the first. They then got shot out of the second and fell back to a wooded area. I was surprised at the coodination and low level of casualties compared to pre-4.0. I wasn't giving them any orders and they were just reacting to the AI attacking them. Pretty cool. So, it's a mixed bag. The suicidal route is definitely a problem for the reasons that RockinHarry has skillfully detailed. The general self-preservation behaviors can be great or bad, depending on the situation of the moment. My current feeling is that 4.0 is a huge improvement that just needs some tweaking here and there. From the scenario design perspective, it's a massive enhancement and I can't imagine going back. Edit: One thing that I've been meaning to comment on is the visual enhancement "side effect" that AI Area Fire gives to AI tanks. Their turrets scanning for targets really makes them come alive visually--especially when they are moving. For me, it's noticably upped the immersion factor.

It does seem different. But, like you say, without an engine 3 vs. engine 4 controlled test, it may just be mind tricks. It would be great if someone with both engines installed and the time could run a direct comparison. Actually, one of the first things I did under engine 4 was finish a QB as the Attacker on a slice of Aachen. It was a grind, but I also was fighting 1 to 1.4 as Amis vs. VG, so I expected it to be. Although I noticed the suicidal rout path problem a few times there, I also noticed what you say about the new heightened difficulty of having to find and dig out displacing defenders. However, they had map space with buildings to fall back to. So, the new behaviors making things harder or easier depends a lot on the map situation. If things are more open and/or they don't have a lot of fallback options to locations providing cover, I think things are easier than in engine 3. On urban maps with plenty of space and buildings, then they might be harder. On more open maps in CMBN, I've noticed that displacing AI defenders will sometimes fall back to the player's side of bocage with them facing away from the player. Makes them sitting ducks. I've also seen AI defenders pretty readily swept out of buildings and foxholes on smaller maps. One exception is trenches. I saw some defenders take a lot of 75mm fire and hold up surprisingly well. Trenches may provide better cover now (but I haven't tested). A couple of other things I've noticed under 4.0: Large teams/squads sent to a building will sometimes have men out in the street upon arriving and taking position. In order to fix the problem, squads must be split with a team sent somewhere else (different floor, etc.). Sometimes it is necessary to have the remaining team move to the same building location again to get the men outside to join their team members inside the building. Often, some of an ATG's crew members are spread out away from the gun shield, making them easier targets for small arms. At this point, my time is very limited, so I'm just going to plug away at my scenario and see what thoughts and feelings bubble up in the community. Overall, I love what 4.0 brings. There just may need to be some tweaking here and there on some things.

I've mostly been working on my scenario (The Radzy Award). That is the one I was using for testing and screenshots. I did do some separate testing on a slice of the same map, trying to use foxholes and trenches as fallback points by placing them in the courtyard areas of building blocks. I only ran it a few times. Foxholes didn't seem to attract evading/routing troops much at all. Trenches did a bit, but not consistently enough to make it a reliable tactic. I also ran 4-5 tests lining up a platoon of Soviets with Normal motivation vs. a platoon of German Stragglers in same-motivation sets ranging from High up to Fanatic. Stragglers have 3 SMGs & 7 rifles per squad. I cut the fourth squad and added 3 LMGs for the test. Each side was in a line of facing buildings right across the street from each other. Results had units on both sides taking 0-3 casualties before falling back on their own. Regular units still fell back even at higher motivation levels like Fanatic. It just took a bit longer in the turn for them to start the behavior. Also, units that had not taken casualties still fell back. During the first turn of play, both sides fired and disengaged with fallback behaviors. However, I did notice that a German Vet LMG team that I accidentally had there (I thought they were all Regular) did not fall back (I changed him to Regular after that). So, it looks like the motivation level must be used in combination with unit quality to have a real impact on reducing the rout/evade behavior. I haven't done further testing, but a first impression is that a Vet High unit has roughly the same staying power as a Regular Normal unit used to. Don't quote me on that, though. As for impact on real gameplay, it is difficult to say yet, since there are so many other variables going on. My current feeling is that new scenarios can balance things out, but existing scenarios/campaigns may now be rather easier for the Attacker -- especially on small maps. I haven't done any testing, however. Also, I'm not seeing issues on this mentioned in the forums, other than what we have talked about in this thread (but I'm not able to spend too much time on the forums right now, so I may just not have seen them). As discussed, people playing SP as Attacker are not likely to notice/care. Only people playing as the Defender. And, since there aren't many defending SP scenarios, that largely limits the affected group to H2H Defenders. I haven't done any H2H in ages, so I can't comment. Anybody out there have any feedback on this?

I just finished the audiobook version of Beevor's Stalingrad. He points out that the Romanians suffered heavily from class-based bias and separation/pampering of their officers. German officers who witnessed it were scornful, claiming it resembled old-time aristocrats lording over their serfs. According to Beevor, that, in combination with the Romanian formations' woeful lack of AT assets, was their great weakness. He spends some time showing that Romanian soldiers could, and did, fight bravely and well, when some decent officers and equipment were on the field. This kind of thing always makes me think of the French. Everybody likes to bash them, but if the French army had only had younger, modern-thinking top leadership in 1940, the war may have ended that year. Sure, many French formations had low morale, but many did not, and had they had good leadership, morale might have quickly risen with the fruits of a good operational showing.

Guys, don't be hard on the beta testers. What seems obvious when you have the whole community pushing CM through its paces from every angle is a whole different ballgame than applying the limited resource of beta tester time vs. the vastness of CM. Given the beta tester resource to CM task-size ratio, I think they do a very good job. The questions are: How much of an issue is there? What can/needs to be done about it?

My first thought would be that someone playing SP as the Attacker may not notice a problem and that most beta testing would be done in that mode. The increased fragility of the Defender didn't reveal itself to me until I started playtesting my SP-only defensive scenario under 4.0. A second thought would be that it makes life easier for the new player playing in SP mode (as most will be doing). However, I don't see that as having legs because of the downside for H2H players on the defense. So, my guess is the first reason--beta testers being pleased with the feeling of enhanced play as the Attacker in SP mode, but not spending enough time as Defender in situations that highlight the new issues created. On arty, assuming you can't get away from it, pre-4.0, I thought your best chance was to stop and Hide. I haven't tested it, but I would think that getting your units to do that may be harder now. In that case, if you can mostly get away in the first place, you might take less casualties now, but if you can't and your units won't stay put in Hide mode, then you may take more than before. You might want to do some testing with trenches vs. foxholes. One of the early SP QBs I played under 4.0 as the Attacker saw some enemy infantry bounce back and forth between two close (but not connected) trench formations. They also took a lot of tank fire with what seemed like fewer casualties than pre-4.0. It was pretty cool, as the guys left one trench for the other and then left that to return to the first when the second fell under attack. They stayed in the trenches a lot longer than I'm seeing them stay in foxholes (which makes sense, of course). The trench thing gave me an idea to perhaps create a kind of rally point. For my scenario, if the block of buildings layout allows it, perhaps I can put a square-shaped trench formation in the inner courtyard that will attract fleeing troops who would otherwise head for the streets surrounding the block. I haven't tried it yet. If it works well, then SP-only scenario designers could use a series of trenches (and/or foxholes/bunkers if they do the same thing) to "lead" routing/evading AI units to planned fallback positions. I say SP-only since the number of fortifications required could be problematic for scenarios offering H2H play mode. I haven't had time to do much testing under my new Motivation level adjustments yet. Initial impressions are that a single level jump (above Normal) helps, but units are still not as "sticky" as they were at Normal pre-4.0, especially once their morale state begins to decrease (ie. Nervous, Shaken, etc.). Can't say for sure, though, as that's me just running some turns to test AI Plan/Unit changes with my guys sitting in place as targets. In actual play, things might feel different. I don't have a second install, so I can't test under pre-Upgrade conditions. Time is also very limited right now, weekends being a bit better. I do wonder how this impacts Campaigns and SP scenarios--especially those that feature lower-quality defending troops, like the early scenarios in CMBN's TRTM. If anything, I would hope that Upgrades would make them more challenging, but I can't help but think they just got significanlty easier. New players to the series may like that, but as an old hand who keeps waiting to start some Campaigns until "just one more" Upgrade hits, I may have to keep waiting.

That's true. The behavior is not unique to 4.0. It's just that units seem to be evading/routing more quickly now--thus, the behavior comes up more often, especially in urban environments. I didn't mean that it's good that the Defender has been weakened relative to the Attacker. I meant that, taken in isolation, I like what changes 4.0 has brought to the Attacker in terms of casualty reduction and what seem like more realistic behaviors (as you mentioned, taking cover faster when under fire). I definitely want to see the Defender having realistic staying power, though. In my playtest, I got some nice, long firefights early on, but once my men started getting brittle, things went downhill pretty fast. I ended the playtest, as I expected to be wiped out before my reinforcements arrived. However, there were more variables at play than just the 4.0 morale changes. My playtest involved a tighter AI Plan, which, combined with AI Area fire, made things a lot different. For the next playtest, I'm planning to have all the Germans at High Motivation, with all the Soviets at Normal, with a few Low. Then, if needed, I'll keep dialing up the German motivation. I'm also tweaking the force mix.

I would definitely be willing to pay for that.

That's possible. As long as the unit is under command, the player can plot waypoints to help units follow smart paths. Once the TacAI takes over... For my next playtest, I'm going to pump up the defending units to all "High" Motivation levels. That may need to be the lever designers lean on to balance things out. So, for example, if the Attacker has all normal/low mix, perhaps the Defender should have all high or above, depending on the situation. I haven't tested anything yet, though. So, I don't know how much traction this will give. I really like what 4.0 is doing for the Attacker. It just seems to be an issue for the Defender. So, if pumping up Defender motivation solves things, then that's at least a temporary solution. We'll see. Thanks for your continuing detailed analysis, RH. -Very glad you're in the community! One idea that popped into my head for future Upgrades...perhaps the player can set a fallback point (or even multi-waypoint path) in advance, with routing/evading units falling back there when their morale level triggers the action. Prolly too complicated, but a first idea. I know that in RL, things like MG units will have at least one pre-designated fallback point and sometimes two or three. Okay, here are a couple more suicidal rout examples. The first is the one I mentioned previously. Context for unit position and threat locations. The team begins to run for it. They are gunned down (camera view reversed from previous shots to show all casualty positions). I mentioned earlier that attacking units were wading through a lot of fire, but on closer inspection, I realized that some of my men were cowering and that the HMG did a barrel change, so what looked like a lot of firepower zoomed out wasn't when zoomed in. I don't think there is currently a problem with the Attacker's motivation and ability to dodge fire. Rather, the Defender's willingness to hold terrain and what happens when he evades/routs are more in question. The second example (they may make it, don't know yet): The team takes fire. This time, there are no safe movement options, but the TacAI's preference for long paths means the team avoids the first door on their right after crossing the street and continues on. At turn end. No casualties yet! Work is heating up again, so I'm probably going to be in my cave for awhile. What time I have, I'm going to devote to working on my scenario. Like I said, I really like what 4.0 has done for the Attacker--especially the AI. Challenging Defensive SP scenarios are definitely possible now. However, there will be a learning curve to using the available tools to give the Defender what he needs and what feels "realistic" in terms of his units' willingness to hold onto key terrain.

Another quick post to say that, having cooled down from a bad turn, it's too early and there are too many variables at play to make a judgement on problems with Defense vs. Attack balance yet. This is, after all, only one playtest and my troops are at the mercy of the decisions I'm making, which may not always be the best.

Thanks for the detailed analysis, RockinHarry. I follow a similar SOP regarding the altering/cancelling of evade/rout paths. In recent months, I have also been using the Evade button to see where the TacAI might go, but only occasionally, not systematically. I can't give any new information on the issue of building facing and how it impacts rout paths. In recent turns of my playtest, I've had several units rout intelligently within their blocks. On the other hand, in my last two turns, I had a unit that had been given a safe, multi-WP fallback path take fire and choose the worst path possible, being wiped out in the street. I may post pics of that later. It's probably the worst instance so far among the pics I've posted. While I'm loving 4.0, there is a creeping feeling that the Attacker's job, which I believe general opinion thinks is somewhat easier in CM than in real life, has gotten still easier under 4.0. Since the first half of the scenario I'm testing (SP only) is an intense, defensive situation, it is a useful tool for analysis here. I'd say the scenario is playing about 10-15 minutes faster than pre-4.0. Meaning, I'm having to give up positions that I would have held onto longer before because I am following the line of thinking that RockinHarry mentioned--falling back before the TacAI does it for you. (Edit: tank fire under the new AI Area Fire feature is a significant part of this as well, since I can't use some key positions as effectively as before--or at all). Using that technique, I can avoid excessive casualties, as along as unexpected fire doesn't throw a team into suicidal rout/evade and I have real estate available to fall back to (currently running out). However, this still means that a Defender may not be able to defend key terrain as well as his real life counterpart can. And, it also may mean that the defensive AI is now at a greater disadvantage because it lacks the intelligence to shift units to plug gaps and restore a defense as routing/evading units recover. I'm also wondering if attacking units might be a bit too brave now. While their not taking casualties as quickly as before is a good thing, I'm noticing some fairly impressive ability of units to shrug off defensive fire when crossing streets, etc. That may just be a product of my feeling under the gun in my defense since the cavalry is probably going to be too late now. But maybe not. I could grab some screenies of that, as the last turn offered two examples. It may be a day or two, though.

Here are two shots of a vehicle rout. The Opel took a burst of fire on its way to the building to pick up an HMG team and the Co. HQ. At turn end, there was no damage to the Opel and it's morale seemed okay, too. So, I gave it a face command order (in place, no movement) and told the infantry to run beside it and then mount up. However, when the turn ran, the Opel decided to drive around the corner to the S and the infantry followed it. The turned ended as below. Luckily they got away, but it could have been bad. Alright, that's it for the screenies. These are food for thought and conversation. Like I said, I'm not seeing too many howlers as I put in more hours. Usually, what happens is reasonable, and sometimes, the rout path is quite good. It's only occasionally that something happens that is very hard to rationalize.

Here's what lead up to the desperate, smoke-covered fallback in the previous post. I was going to try and hold part of a strongpoint, ambushing any Soviets who came through the center. Although it has been stated that the new Peeking Around Corners behavior does not apply to wall openings, I thought I'd try to use them anyway, as I've had some recent luck with them. However, like a complete idgit, I forgot about my exposure to enemy units moving up to the second floor of buildings with a view of the courtyard. Note the enemy positions and threat directions. Needless to say, I was a sitting duck. The northernmost team took four casualties and the remaining man ran down the L to the south, turned W and ran out the wall opening at the bend right into the Soviet fire (you can still see the cross for him). Then the next team took a casualty and ran out the wall opening it was covering, again right into Soviet fire, getting wiped out. At which point, the LMG team ran out the building heading E, getting mowed down in the street, while the HQ team ran S (a smart move), and the remaining team, rather than running into and out of the building to their S, followed the Blaze of Glory exit paths of the other teams, heading N out the wall opening right into Ivan's loving arms and death. However, the HQ team still didn't take the safest route, which would have been the closest door right across the street. They decided to risk more and longer exposure to go two doors down the street around the corner.

Here's another example from my fresh playtest. This one is easier to rationalize than the last, but still seems a bit counter-intuitive to trained soldiers and self-preservation. The German platoon is falling back under the cover of two lines of smoke, as a Soviet Maxim has a fire line down the street they must cross. Things go well and no casualties are taken by the initial group of teams. However, the HQ, who stayed behind to place smoke, lags behind. The HQ team's destination is the closest door, but just as they approach it, the Maxim sends a burst past their ears and they become flustered. I would expect soldiers in a similar situation to dash right into the door, as fast as they could. However, with the smoke starting to clear, the HQ team decides to keep running down the street covered by the fire lane to a door further away. The second door down offers escape as well, and is out of the LOS of Soviets flanking the street from the west. But, the HQ team decides to keep running to the third door down. At which point, the smoke clears enough for the Maxim to get a bead on them and drop a member of the team (thankfully not the Platoon leader, but the team's morale drops to broken).

Here is a more troubling, potentially-suicidal rout example. This was from a turn that was saved pre-Upgrade, but processed post-Upgrade. All the other examples and pics are from my current playtest, which is a fresh playtest under 4.0. First, some context: my German platoon recently fell back a block to the south, to its current position. Prior to falling back, they were in the L shape of buildings immediately to the north of where they are in the pic below. You can clearly see directions of threats, as well as the protected inner courtyard of their block, which is being kept further warm and cozy by the HQ unit there. The SE team takes intense fire from the SE and goes into rout mode as a result. As you can see, the rout path is far from ideal. Ignoring the obvious safe zone just to the rear of their building (the one where both the Plt and Co. HQs are waiting with cigarettes and open arms), they decide to run across the street to the north, potentially exposing themselves to fire during movement and placing them right back in the block that the platoon just fell back from. This is the kind of thing that is hard to rationalize, even from a panicked unit.

Okay, here are some rout shots. First, two showing that units don't always go for the front of buildings/independent buildings. Sorry about the yellow, I was going to show the team status, but Fraps doesn't seem to capture the stress level graphic correctly, so I went ahead and cropped the shot. This forward team comes under fire and the turn ends with an evade dash waypoint plotted by the TacAI. I change the order to a quick move across the park to the team's rear, ending in one of the buildings in the block on the other side. However, the TacAI ignores my order and has the team run into a commercial building along the way I wanted it to go. The street in front of the building was an enemy fire lane, so I was very thankful that the TacAI chose the rear entrance. I got the team to the destination I originally wanted the next turn.

Here are two shots of a firefight that has been going on for 5 minutes and counting. This was earlier on. So far, I've lost 2-3 men and the Soviets have lost about twice as many, with a few attempts to push through the courtyard towards me being repulsed. Some teams on both sides have fallen back and been sent back in after recovering their nerve. Closer up. Lots of SMG ammo has been burned up and some are running low now. The AI also attempted to flank along the E-W road on the southern side of the Soviet-held building block. I have a veteran HMG team covering that and it quickly wiped out the first squad that attempted it. Here are pics of the second attempt: My HMG had to change barrels as the Soviets started their run and stopped firing for a number of seconds, allowing the enemy to cover some ground. However, I had six riflemen and 2 SMGs also covering this and the Soviets did a quick about face. No casualties were taken until my HMG came back online. It inflicted 3 casualties with the remaining Soviets running back into a building (I think the same place they started from).

It's hard to say on better use of cover. As there are no new animations and we cannot see the interior layout of buildings, we have to accept a certain level of abstraction in terms of what our eyes see the soldiers doing at the time that bullets are hitting or missing. I think most of what is going on is a reduction in small arms accuracy in combination with more dispersed soldier spacing, interacting with a tweaking of suppression levels and morale-based behaviors like rout/evade. My AI Plan attempts to maximize approach paths for safety, but it was made under the pre-Upgrade limit of 16 Orders (Area fire has been added,though). I could add new orders to further try to curb AI carelessness (like "leading" them to a building side with one Order and then putting the next Order inside the building), but I'm not sure if it is worth it. The AI is fighting much better than before and that could end up putting AI troops in bad spots as they hang out in the street longer when there is no way to know where the player might have troops placed to fire on them. I think it would be a good idea for me to let others playtest with the current moves as a baseline to see if I should add more movement Orders to help the AI keep casualties down. The AI troopers in the firefights I'm mentioning are operating under Active stance, which means they will stop and shoot more readily than under Normal stance. IIRC, they are also usually using Assault movement, as opposed to Advance. On the question of how they respond to incoming fire vis-a-vis trying to close the distance to cover nearer the enemy, I can only give limited impressions, since the code surely has curveballs up its sleeve and it's still early days. I've seen AI troopers who encounter fire not too far from their start point fall back, try again, rinse and repeat a few times. Others who are more than halfway to their destination have continued on. And, the same group that fell back a few times eventually started crawling across while their buddies in the building at their start point provided covering fire that achieved fire superiority over my guys attempting to keep them at bay. Here is a screen of the first crossing attempt by an HQ unit and squad. The small cloud of smoke is from my LMG, with a rifle team also firing from another buidling just behind and out of the picture. The transparent building in front only has a casualty in it, with a Soviet tank Area firing on it. The Soviets turn back quickly and are able to fall back with no casualites. Again, they tried this (sometimes only the HG unit, I think) a few times, eventually making it by crawling under overwatch with fire superiority. One other thing to note: despite much lower casualties for the AI, (aside from one very dumb decision that cost me half a platoon, my casualty rate is about the same), the scenario is playing faster than pre-Upgrade. I've had to fall back faster and am running out of real estate while waiting on my reinforcements--who may not arrive in time. I'll post more pics soon.

Man, I'm having some epic extended firefights in my playtest. Casualties are much lighter than they used to be. Aside from getting caught in the street by an HMG or SMGs at very close range, teams are generally surviving encounters that would have wiped them out before the 4.0 Upgrade. And I'm mainly talking about AI troopers on the attack here. I've seen some teams make multiple attempts to cross the street, only to fall back and try again--without losing any men! I'm feeling a lot better about the new TacAI evade code. Even when they take a bad path, they are most often either making it to safety or only losing one or two guys. And, a few times, they've ended up choosing a better path than I originally wanted for them. One downside is that they are tending to tire themselves out faster than I'd like due to the speed and distance of their rout paths. But, I can't say that it's unrealistic, so it id what it id. My LMG fire seems to mainly be getting the enemy to fall back for a bit than causing casualties (the AI is moving from block to block trying to force me out). A few times, AI troopers in ones and twos have gotten caught in the street, had a shootout with a team of mine, and buggered off into an alley with no casualties. I'm LOVING this! Anyhoo, pics over the weekend.

I just finished a reread of A Time for Trumpets and there are quite a lot of accounts of night/poor visibility causing things like the two sides bumping right into each other or mistaking enemy for friendlies until they had passed by or even stopped to talk then received a reply in the wrong language. One time, an American commander leading his men down a narrow backroad found that his path forward was being blocked by a group of parked tanks. So, he went up and rapped on the first tank to tell the crew to get the hell out of the way so his column could pass. When the hatch opened, the response was, "Was ist los?" The tanks were Panthers. Another time, soldiers in a passing American convoy waved to a sizable group of tired soldiers resting in a ditch along the road. It was daytime and they were Volksgrenadiers. The VG didn't want a fight and just smiled and waved back. The convoy left without twigging what they had seen.

I don't play any of those games because they just don't do it for me, no matter how good elements of them might look. I'm actually happy with my purchase of RO2 as a shooter with tactical elements, though, despite the "arcade" mechanics of things like artillery. I accept it for what it is and it delivers on that level. I actually prefer the bots there to Arma bots, as RO2's bots seem more human-like overall. Arma bots tend to alternate between vegetable stupid and alien predator. But of course, that's not directly comparable to CM. I just mention it because I'm suprised that I prefer it to Arma (for a short first-person play session when I need a break from CM), and it is an example of a more mainstream game that I enjoy. One other point to mention on trying to open CM to a wider audience... The more you move the goal post away from the uniqueness and real-world fidelity that CM's micromanagement-style play brings, the more you are directly competing against games with bigger graphic budgets. It's a lose-lose. Lose what makes you special. Lose your core player base. Compete against a much larger field of competitors for players with less and less vested interest in what you have to offer. Now, there's a great strategy for success!