Macisle

Thanks for your continuing feedback and the juicy battle report, Heinrich505! I'm really enjoying it. It sounds like you're getting the kind of intense action I want to give the player in this. Yeah, the fallback timing is tricky. After you get a bit further, I'll post about some of the things that have worked in my playtesting. I don't know for sure, but it seems like this scenario has a lot of replay potential, even if I were to put only one AI plan in. The player is spending a lot of time reacting to the AI and the results of micro-events in the game can force the player to change plans quickly. So, on one play-through, you might hold certain good positions for a long time and on another, a curveball might force you to quickly abandon them and fall back further than you expected. That happened to me on my last playtest using the version you are playing. The AI showed up in a place that looked like it might be in a position to slaughter any fallbacks in about 1-3 turns, so I popped smoke and dashed a full platoon a block to the rear. VERY glad I did, though I gave up some good real estate. The left flank (and center in the beginning) will be a weighty tactical choice for the player. Due to the more vilage-like terrain, the player may find the initial ambush punishment he dishes out doesn't pay for his losses--or potentially being the victim of an overrun. It may well be better to hold fire, fall back and monitor the enemy until better terrain and/or more reinforcements can be put into play. I really like the Jagdpanzers. The Marder thing was just me trying to second guess myself. Oh, but be careful. IIRC now, the SU-76's guns have better luck penetrating the frontal armor of the Jagdpanzers than the T-34 does. Oh, I see you posted again. I'll read that before writing more later (gotta' get to work now). Thanks for the compliment on the AI plan, RepsolCBR! There is definitely room for improvement, but I've learned a lot by doing this scenario and will work to make what I have better. I'll be tweaking things to integrate the new playtest feedback and adapt it to new terrain objectives. I just finished a first pass at painting them in the Editor, but don't have time to post anything about it until after work.

Just a few more thoughts that popped into my head... In the early days of the scenario, I had a large rocket barrage on the main town area (but avoiding where the players troops actually were). I don't know for sure, but I think that actually drew ordnance from other artillery modules as the other target areas seemed to be less reliable in terms of presence, amount and duration of arty the larger that the big town barrage got. It would SURE be great to be able to program timed and/or triggered arty attacks in the Editor. While the AI can be pretty good with targets of opportunity during the game, the scenario designer gets one shot at the opening of the scenario for anything coordinated. That especially impacts the use of smoke. That heavily influenced the way the scenario opening evolved. Another thing that this scenario brought home is how quickly 16 AI groups can be used up. I think I remember reading that BF was thinking of expanding that number. That would be AWESOME. As things stand, I'm barely able to get the coordination I want in the scenario. If I had more groups (and objective zones for triggers), I could make the AI much more effecive at taking terrain objectives. Right now, I have to mostly keep things at the company level for infantry. Platoon level would be a lot better for what the AI is up against here. RepsolCBR's comments on shellholes sparked a way for me to fill a plot hole. I may use them to explain why the center and right flank platoons have not gone further forward, while the left flank platoon has fanned out pretty far from the town center. I needed to keep the center and right platoons back to keep the opening action tight and to prevent the player from suicidal initial moves. Pre-game arty would be a good explanation.

Thanks for the feedback! I agree with your concern and will be looking to make everything easily understandable for the player. I haven't painted the zones in the Editor yet. The pic is just my first Photoshop brainstorming. I had originally intended to have many small objectives, but got caught up in the glow of a really fun playtest that played out in a way that made me change to the one big area that is in the beta 1 version. However, as RepsolCBR first pointed out, that's really not the way to go. It's great to be getting input from fresh eyes. It's easy to get off target on a subjective tangent when doing things solo. Thanks for your continuing help, RepsolCBR! The initial bombardment represents the Soviets attempting use smoke to provide some cover for their advancing troops and HE to either hit likely enemy defense locations (right flank) or block enemy movement in response to initial Soviet moves (center and left flank). On the right flank, it is assumed that they are going for the players ATG/HMG setup zone as a likely enemy strong point, but are a bit off on their arty targeting. They are assumed to be a bit off in one of the center areas as well. I did extensive testing (10 + runs) to make sure that the player doesn't stand to lose more than a few casualites in the ATG zone, if any. Even if not hiding anybody, I think the most lost in testing were single men from various teams and no more than three total on any given test. No leaders, radio men or ATG/HMGs were lost in any of the tests. As the designer, I want to dial up the tension big time in the opening moments and make the player feel like the Hordes of Doom are desending upon him, while not actually inflicting any real losses on him. I initially experimented with larger target areas, but found that even with the amount of arty modules I have lined up, that some were getting no hits and others were petering out earlier than what one would expect at the chosen level of damage. It seemed that larger areas created a question as to whether the arty would show up everywhere or not. Some runs it did, some runs it didn't. The current setup was arrived at after pretty extensive testing and seems to produce a consistent result. There will probably be comments on the flow of things once the ATGs open up. That has been tested a lot, too. I'll save my comments until folks play through that part. That's your map? Well, that's certainly no surprise. You are one of my big map heroes and if your name is on it, it's probably going to be gold. Thanks so much for all your work, Pete! So, at this point guys, I've already identified a number of areas that need attention and improvement. The concept, force mix, opening and action build up are in pretty good shape. However, the objectives and AI plan need some careful reworking to make the mid and end game be what they are intended to be. To do that, though, I need player input to know how the battle is playing out. I have a lot of ideas and there are a lot of tools available (tweaking of objectives and AI plan, potential triggers, etc.). It's just a question of new eyes letting me know where and how much to go for. Two other bits and pieces to mention: I also need to finally solve an annoying AI problem. I've got some runaway MG team groups (the center ones are the worst) that I can't get to stay in place as long as they should. They keep leading the charge, as it were, when they are suppsed to be providing cover fire and moving up later. It's probably some obvious thing that will be embarrassing when I find it, but so far, I haven't been able to. My first thought was a stray painted tile in the AI plan, but I couldn't find any. The composition of the TD platoon was carefully arrived at. The big cats were out from the get-go and I wanted to do something different than Stugs or PIVs, if possible. The current TDs have almost as much HE output as a PIV, at the cost of less MG output/ammo and no turret. And, importantly, they can very often take punch to the front from a T-34/76. Sometimes two or three! I felt they really hit the spot in terms of giving the player a small, but potent (just not kitty potent) armor force in both the AT and anti-infantry role. The player must also be careful about their ammo. There is a very useful loadout there, but it has to be monitored and wisely applied. Having said that, I've been struggling with the desire to mix things up a bit more on the German side and worry that the current TDs may be a bit too resilient in their frontal armor. Just yesterday, I ran a test with a Marder III platoon subbed in for the TDs, followed by a reduced platoon (3) of PIVs later in the game, along with more reinforcement infantry -- a full Straggler formation in staggered arrival, but with no extra panzershrecks. That, and dropping the FOs and mortars in favor of the battalion commander being on map (to call arty) and using divisional light, medium, and heavy howitzers. I just ran it long enough to see how the Marders did. Better than I expected, but their ammo loadout is really small. That would potentially offset by the PIV's loadout, but I feel like my current forcemix is more on target than what I tried yesterday. If it ain't broke... Anyway, thanks again for the responses and interest guys! I really want to make this scenario live up to its potential and am willing to put in the work to get it there. Oh, quick edit: I feel like this scenario really lends itself to having multiple AI Plans that can diverge from the core at a certain point and make variations on it. The current plan is to have a full five Plans. However, I want to finalize a core plan first. Until then, there will only be one.

Some initial brainstorming on revamped terrain objectives for test version beta 2 (Ojbectives 3 and 5 are two painted areas each with the value label in-between): I also adjusted some buildings in area 2, replacing standalone with similar setup in modular form. I think the AI tends to go for the designated front door of standalones, even if that means becoming more exposed to enemy LOS in doing so. Hopefully, my tweaking will encourage the AI to enter the closest door, even if it's a "rear" one. Points are 50 each for a total of 500. I could weight them to be more valuable as they get closer to the Axis/SW map edge, but the AI may have a tough time getting to any of those. My goal is to be fair to the AI, create more defined potential counterattack zones, and perhaps facilitate some interesting triggers.

The focus for RO2 seems to be MP. I'm new to the series and haven't done much MP with it yet. My first impression is that the popular style of play is not sim enough for me. If my understanding is correct, the play mode "Classic" is the closest to the original RO and is the most realistic. However, there are literally no servers offering that right now. Even Classic mode is very arcade compared to Arma. Having said that, people do organize teams and I've seen first hand how say, not having a person playing the commander role can make winning very hard. The commander can go to radio positions to call for aerial recon and arty. Last weekend, I spent some time on a commanderless Soviet side and we got totally slaughtered. Basically, I spawned, ran a few feet, died, rinse and repeat. People on comms were complaining that no one was taking charge. After that, I searched for and found "Steam Workshop" mode, which is what they have strangely labeled the offline play feature. Since then, I've been playing exlusively against bots in Classic mode. I just do a full 64 bots and spend time in the various positions. For the last few sessions, I've been the Commander and that is pretty fun. That allows you to control all the squads. You can also be a Squad Leader, which allows you to control a squad split into LMG, Rifle, and Assault teams. SLs can mark targets for arty, but the Commander has to call in the actual arty. The mechanisms, level of control, and troop intelligence leave a lot to be desired. Radios are in fixed map positions rather than being carried by a soldier. Ordering squads is often a case of a quick drop menu selection of which objective to attack. And, squad members are very suicidal in their movement and use of cover. Having said that, it it is fun and there are some nice touches, like being able to use cover (even being able to fire blind over the top of something). The soldier graphics are not as good as I'd hoped, but some maps are very impressive in terms of atmosphere and terrain/bulding graphics. I know the dev team traveled to Stalingrad and walked many of the places in the game. Arma is much more of a sim and some folks really get into it. They organize into formations and do voice comms. Pretty impressive sometimes. However, the flip side is that your play time can be like, an hour of walking around to find the enemy, followed by a bullet to the head from never-spotted said enemy. Arma (meaning IFL1944--same engine and IFL1944 can be played as a mod under Arma 2/3) does have a fantastic Editor, though. I spent most of my time with it trying to set up CM-style battles with all-bot formations and me jumping around to various levels of command. I would set up a strong defense (if you learn the code, you can fill-out the crews of HMG/AT guns and have the other crew members replace dead gunners) and bring in, say a company or two. I eventually gave up on it, though. The problem was that once a squad loses its leaders, it stops taking orders. So, at the beginning of the battle, squads go where you want them to. But once the shooting starts, they start doing their own thing, which generally means lemming forward to suicide. Also, I found that units in reserve would not stay in reserve, even if they still had leaders if the action fell within their awareness zone. Pretty much every time, once I got distracted for awhile with heavy action, I'd emerge to discover that my reserve units had buggered off and gotten slaughtered. That, and things like max-skill ATGs in entrenchments in the woods not being aware of 3 enemy tanks coming over the hill, but those same, minimum-skill level, 2-man turret tanks immediately spotting and killing the AT (like...on the first shot). Anyway, to sum up, both Arma/IFL1944 and RO2 can be played either SP or MP. Assuming the right group of people and play mode, both are probably best under MP. However, lacking that, much fun can be had under SP. You just need to adjust your expectations to the right level. RO2 is more accessible and the action is fast and continuous. Arma can be slow and tedious, but is much more realistic overall. Oh, last problem with Arma...bots have an awareness zone that, if exceeded, makes them sitting ducks for long-distance spotting and killing. On the flipside, they can be godlike in their ability to spot and kill once they notice you, even if settings have been adjusted to be more realistic. I actually like the RO2 bots better. They're dumb about things like taking cover, but their abilty to target you actually seems more human-like (slower, less accurate) than the Arma bots.

I played IFL1944 as a mod under Arma 2 in the early days of that release, but passed on Arma 3. So, I'm not sure of current status. To find out, try a web search for "Iron Front Mission Repository" or "Iron Front Revival Project." I think those groups are still active. People are still producing videos of IFL under Arma 3 for YouTube and some of them are for gaming groups. I've no ideal how active they are, though. For Close Combat, I'd just look for videos or see if you can find a demo. Combat Mission offers so much more that it is hard for me to even compare them now. I haven't played the CC series since CCIV. I think the current one is Close Combat - Last Stand Arnhem. Maybe check that out on YouTube.

Over the years, various WWII titles, including the boardgame ASL. Since CMx2 came out, my interest in other games has really hit a low ebb. Part of that is getting older and having more RL demands. But most of it is just not being satisfied with anything else beyond the novelty phase. Other games ultimately serve to pretty much just reinforce how awesome CM is. My most recent WWII titles have been Iron Front 1944, GTOS, and just this last two weeks, (5 bucks on sale) RO2/RS. I had a lot of fun with IFL1944, but it has too many realism blind spots for me as compared to the CM battlefield. GTOS has a few nice touches, but isn't what I'm looking for (too much like a 3D version of Close Combat). RO2/RS is fun so far. It is very arcade in many ways, but my expectations are in line with what it is. I'm just using it for a little first-person adrenaline as an occastional break from CM, offline in Classic mode with a full crew of bots. I can already feel the interest fading, though.

Thanks for the excellent battle report, Heinrich505! This is super feedback. The battle is playing out as intended and following a similar arc to some of my playtesting. The player's natural desire to group his TDs to achieve local fire superiority will smash up against the need split them up to put out fires and help his infantry hold the line. Reinforcement groups usually have to plug gaps as soos as they arrive as well. I won't comment more than that at this point, so as not to give spoilers. On the shrecks... It sounds like you've had some back luck on shots taken, but you've got the right tactic now. Using 100m circular armor arcs is exactly what I do. That, and try to have them in buildings where they can take a shot or two and run out the back to hide, rinse and repeat. Your center may have taken more punishment than it needed to in the early stages. The player has to time his fallbacks to avoid high casualties. Believe me, I've had some nailbiters in my playtests! One playtest, my center HQ lost a man and the wounded leader and his radio man got stuck in a building behind enemy lines for the rest of the battle. I put a very short arc on them and they spent the battle feeding me intel and calling in arty. In fact, I've had units get cut off a number of times with them having to hide for awhile to later rejoin their forces. It's kinda' cool when it happens. Don't forget your smoke grenades. Those can really help with the fallbacks. I love your report on the ACs on the left. They are intended to make the player feel like they are actually scouting for the Soviets. Some Soviet armor is tasked with overwatching specific roads. So, that seems to be working as intended, too. The endgame is where I am most likely to need tweaking, so I am looking very forward to your feeback on that. Thanks again for your work on this. It is very helpful and much-appreciated!

Thanks for the playtest and feedback, Heinrich505! The funky sky is definitely an issue outside of the game file. It's never happened to me. The map is a stock map from the German campaign in CMRT with a few very minor tweaks (road widening for the AI in one spot, doors added to some buildings in another couple, some extra foliage at one map edge, etc.). So, I can't take credit for it. I agree that it's a lovely map, though. It's probably my favorite stock map in CMRT. If every turn is a crisis, then things are going just how I planned them! MUHAHAHA! But seriously, the tension gets going quick and pretty much stays on on one form or another to varying levels. That's by design. However, the player's moves will determine if he can hold. Oh, I see you just posted again. Let me read and continue there...

Thank you very much for the kind words and feedabck, RepsolCBR! They are very much appreciated. On the point scoring: That is the design area where I am most concerned about issues at this point, so getting community feedback like yours is super-helfpul. The goal is to create a strong incentive for the player to take back any lost territory in the objective zone. The center and right flanks are easier to hold due to the natural lines created by the more urban building distribution. However, the left flank, while taking longer for the enemy to approach, offers more village-like building distribution, making it very difficult for infantry alone to hold. This means the North Group will often penetrate the objective zone to the north of the central railway station. So, the player must continue to hold the center and right flanks, while stripping assets from them to assemble a strong enough counterattack force to clear out the enemy units that have taken defensive positions in the objective zone. While this may be easy enough for competent players in terms of selecting defensive positions, enemy pressure is likely to continue into the time window when the player must be counterattacking on the left flank. That makes ammo consumption an important dynamic at play. If the player has not kept supply lines open and/or distributed ammo well, center and left flank defenders may have to give up good positions and fall back within the objective zone in their areas. That, or the player may be forced to burn up his counterattack force's resources to hold other flanks. This, along with the AI's deep reserve pool, helps mitigate the AI's poor abilities in the Attacker role, as well as the player having access to some very good defensive terrain. The logic behind the victory point spread is as follows: Both sides have a key interest in fully controlling the objective zone. For the Germans, it is to prevent encirclement of the town and block the Soviets from interdicting their post-scenario general relief forces. For the Soviets, the goal is to encircle the town and prevent the Germans from breaking the encirclement. The German player is very likely to kill A LOT of Soviets. However, the Soviets have a lot of manpower and are assumed to have more on the way post-scenario. Therefore, the German gets far fewer points per Soviet loss. The Germans, on the other hand, are giving up many more points per loss. They have far less defenders to hold the town/objective and are assumed to have less post-scenario forces as well. Therefore, the Soviets can take many more losses without operational breakdown, while the Germans can't. So, my thinking (and I may well be wrong!) is that a failure for either side to fully control the objective should place the ball on the "Draw" line, to be moved according to casualties. If the player has done well with the inflicting losses and preserving his force, then he can pull a better level of victory accordingly. If not, then the Soviets can move up from the Draw line accordingly. The Soviets may still be at an unfair points advantage, given the AI's lack of ability to intelligently organize an actual clearing of the objective zone. However, the player does have a lot to chew on and holding the objective zone is not a definite. There are a lot of variables in this scenario: player tactics & commands, reinforcement arrival times, ammo consumption/distribution, air attack results...etc. Counterattacks by the player mean his losses are likely to go up, which could end up rewarding the Soviet side with more points than the player gains from them, as well as playing to the Soviet infantry's close-range advantage. I don't want to be unfair to the AI. But, my goal is to give experienced players a meaty challenge, not stick it to them. The main problem may be dealing with players who give up on the objective zone early and just try to lay low and inflict as many losses on the Soviets as possible for the points. Then again, there are a lot of variables at play and, depending on the terrain they choose, that may not pan out for them either. I am looking very forward to hearing playtest results and getting post-play feedback on the point scoring. I'm totally open to changing things if folks offer a better way to support the scenario concept and goals. Thanks again for your feedback and help. I can't wait to hear how your playtest goes!

The test thread with a dropbox link to the file is up. LINK here.

This scenario is ready for initial testing. I am using the naming convention "beta" plus a number for the test versions, the first being "beta1." The release versions will be numbered without the "beta." I have submitted the file to TPG2 and will post a link when they have processed it (on hold until next test version). In the meantime, here is a DROPBOX LINK (link removed as of 09/30/16. Will add back when next test version is ready). The scenario is a fictional German town defense vs. AI only and uses the stock Radzymin 2 Master Map, slightly modified. Both sides have combined arms. Here are screens of the briefing & tactical map: This is a long-play scenario that aims to give a decent challenge to experienced players. Thank you very much for your interest and I hope you have fun. I am looking very forward to community feedback! All the best, Macisle

This is an interesting thread and a discussion with lots of good points. Since beginning to use the Editor not too long after CMBN came out, I've largely spent my CMx2 time making my own "play once and delete" SP scenarios. That, coupled with a steady increase in RL time demands has meant that I actually feel swamped with the amount of unplayed stock content that I have. I keep saving the stock stuff until I am "fresh" or have time to comfortably play H2H, but that increasingly seems elusive. At this point, I think I'm going to just go with what seems to be my natural "flow" -- that is, using stock/community maps to make the kind SP scenarios that I most enjoy, along with the occasional original map project. It's been said many times, most players play against the AI, so why not put my limited time towards giving them material to (hopefully!) enjoy? Having said that, my stuff is likely to be on the niche side, serving mainly players who want slow-paced, extended-play battles with ample opportunities for simming, micro-managing, and "noodling in the weeds" a bit. That, and as much of a human-like challenge from the AI as I can reasonably manage. I finished up all the graphics/briefing work for The Radzy Award yesterday. After work today, I'm going to wrap up my last private playtest and, barring any major issues, will upload it to TPG2 and start a testing thread for it over the weekend. The origins and evolution of the scenario touch on a few things talked about in this thread. The map is the Radzymin 2 Master Map that comes with CMRT. I've just tweaked it slightly in a couple of places for things like AI-friendly road-widening ala JonS from the Scenario Design AAR. To dovetail with something that JonS mentioned a few posts back, story is very important. I tried to keep the briefing as short as possible, but make the fictional situation and scenario flow feel as real as I could, as well as using them to facilitate tactical issues, unknowns, and curveballs that help the AI get more traction. Speaking of the Scenario Design AAR, part of the reason TRA has taken so long is that what started as a "quickie" scenario turned into a full-fledged one, due to my scrapping initial work and rebuilding it using some of the planning and AI-structuring techniques presented by JonS in his wonderful guide. I can't recommend that fantastic resource enough and let me add another THANK YOU! to the ocean of thanks he has rightly received for it. Armed with what I've learned (and continue to learn) by doing this scenario, I might focus on defensive SP scenarios for awhile. I play very few of them--and there are very few of them for obvious reasons. So, maybe I can do some work to fill a niche within a niche, within a game that is within a niche within a niche, as it were. He-he. Anyway, I had better shut up and get back to work so I don't cry wolf again this weekend. Thanks again for all the input in this interesting thread!

I have some skill, but only up to a point. My strong area is photo manipulation, so making "cover art" using blended photos is okay. llustration and from-scratch artistic design are my weak areas. Luckily, I found a historical map of the area via a Polish train history site a few days ago that works for what I need. I can paint out some unwanted areas and copy/blend in spots to make it work. It is pretty much exactly what I wanted. Yay! Now, all the graphics are done except for the tactical map text and easy map notations like finalizing enemy movement arrows. Whew! I may go ahead and open it up for testing before I solve the AI problem. Basically, I can't get two MG team groups to wait to move. They always jump ahead of their orders--even with time limits that should block them from starting the next orders. Weird. Them getting shot up doesn't really change the scenario and isn't a definite anyway, so I may just save that for the beta 2 tweak list. So, I hope to finish up my playtest and get the graphics done this weekend. Hopefully, finishing this CMRT scenario (The Radzy Award) will recharge my batteries for finishing my White Manor SP scenario for CMBN. I'm really happy with where that one is so far, but for some reason, I got completely burned out on Western Front stuff and haven't been able to touch it in ages. There is something about Red Thunder. I never did much with CMBB and have always been a WF guy, but CMRT has really captured me and it has become my home base. I'm hugely looking forward to the next module for it. Godspeed, BF!

Then again, starting new projects isn't always a bad thing...

I've got a handful of scenarios floating out there in various stages of completion--two of which I've cried wolf on a couple of times on the forum. The last two years has seen my game time vastly reduced and I frequently hit burnout and shelve things for awhile to just play the game. Also, the burnout stage usually spawns a new project which makes it even harder to get back and finish earier things still in limbo. That's a bad habit I need to stop. For me, the big road block has been feeling the need to get a scenario to a point of polish where I feel it will make a good enough first impression. Along those lines, I want to have the graphics done. The tactical map part is something I always put off as long as possible, as I don't have the skill to make the map I see in my head. That slows things down a lot. The one furthest along (a German-only defensive SP scenario for CMRT) just needs for me to complete my current playtest, solve one AI problem, and finish the tactical map. At that point, I think it would be ready for community playtesting. I haven't used it yet, but I assume TGP2 is the best way to go and intend to post it when ready. It still may take awhile, as the playtesting is slow going and...the tac-map...

Thanks for posting the link, George MC!

The bunching up happened on maps with lots of buildings. But again, it may have been when I was trying to use a map with only the buildings painted for setup in the actual QB system of the game, rather than playing it as a scenario. When that happened, I don't think any AI troops set up in buildings, despite the painting. Yeah, if Santy could give me one AI tweak for Xmas, I think I'd ask for "make the AI use buildings on its own!" He-he. My current AI tar baby is a couple of cases of runaway MG teams. For the life of me, I can't seem to get them to follow their AI plan orders. That's holding up an actual scenario I'm working on. The most likely culprit is a stray painted action square somewhere that I am unaware of, but I can't find any. I may have to just make them reinforcements arriving later.

It's been a long time since I tested it, but to my recollection, I wasn't getting consistent troops in buildings. Also, I seem to remember instances of massive bunching up of troops, but that may have been when I tried painted buildings only for actual QB maps (using the QB system, rather than making a scenario). If my memory is correct, I discovered that painting a setup blob first and then moving to painted buildings (only) makes the AI more consistently use the buildings. I haven't gone back to test the other method since then.

IIRC, I tried painting the buildings only as setup zones first, but got weird results. Maybe because of what George MC mentioned. The setup blob and move technique seems to work pretty consistently. Variation for replayability can be added by adding more plans with different painting (assuming map allows for it). Also, I would guess that the AI won't put the same troops in the same spots each time, so there may be inherent variation--again assuming the map allows for it. I generally don't play these more than once each. Just 15 minutes or so to set up, go, and delete. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you need to allow time for the AI to get to the buildings without being spotted. So, I add some extra time and then wait out of LOS in the setup zone until I think the AI is likely finished.

Thanks for the thanks! I've had some very fun battles using it.

Here is a QB technique I sometimes use that seems to work well for infantry battles on maps with plentiful buildings: Open a QB Map (can be a scenario map, but you need to clean it up first) you like in the Editor and save it as a scenario. For the enemy side, make a clean AI plan and turn off all the others. Paint an enemy setup blob near the bulidings in the AI plan. Add a second order and paint individual dots only inside buildings. Paint them all this way and make it a Quick move. Choose say, a company of infantry for the enemy, plus arty. Give yourself a company of infantry, plus whatever support you want. Setup the initial deployment of your side to make sure the units are in the correct setup zone at launch. Make sure the enemy is deploying on its side of the map (but the initial setup blob should put them in the correct area anyway). With this technique, you know what the enemy has, but you don't know which buildings he is in and you have to find him and dig him out. The normal QB system almost never puts units inside buildings, even if the buildings are blob-painted in the Editor. I've experimented (a bit -- not trying to be definitive) and it seems that the only way to reliably get them inside is to make the battle a scenario and either set them up yourself with no moves, or use the technique above with a setup blob followed by move orders that lead inside buildings only. I usually go with 1:1 infantry ratios and maybe give myself a bit of armor, like 2 tanks/some HTs. Adding ATGs and enemy armor is of course, possible, but that makes things more complicated to set up and requires testing, so I've kept it simple for a truly "Quick" battle. You can be ready to play in under 15 minutes this way. Oh, and I don't usually bother with victory locations. The enemy is either wiped out, or I run out of men.

Let's pin that one and revisit it about every ten years.

Yes, that's good (and important!) advice. I use that too, but forgot about it (has become second nature) when I posted. Thanks for adding it!

Some tips for bringing out the best in the QB AI: Be the Attacker and choose Probe as the battle format. If you have reached a comfort level with the game mechanics and basic tactics, give the AI a numbers advantage. 40% or more is best if you are an experienced player. Choose the AI's units for it so you can make sure that it has adequate armor, if you are going to give yourself armor. By "adequate," I mean give it an armor advantage in quality and/or sufficient numbers to give you something to chew on, despite your tactical advantage. Also, give the AI higher quality infantry than what you are going to get. (EDIT) See MOS:96B2P's post below for important info on how to group the AI's units when you select its force. Despite your being the Attacker, give the AI at least as much infantry as you are going to have--maybe more. Give the AI multiple FOs and lots of artillery. If you are going to play as the Defender on a map that is easy to defend (like an urban map), give the AI a 3:1 infantry advantage and a beefy armor advantage as well. Adjust this down depending on how Defender-friendly the map is. IMO, the two main issues that currently hamper QB vs. AI play are the AI's tendency to choose inadequate armor/vehicle assets (would be great if the game would scan what the player has chosen and choose accordingly when using Automatic selection by AI) and its general avoidance of buildings. Choosing the AI's units for it takes care of the first problem (at the cost of some FOW, but it's worth it). The second is a bigger problem, but can be somewhat/largely alleviated if you give the AI enough of a numbers advantage. By following the above "house rules" I usually have a lot of fun with QBs vs. the AI.