Erwin

Good.  Seems more realistic to have some intelligence of where enemy positions are.  Otherwise it seems that we're playing recon missions with main force units. 
And yes, the scouts are for finding out routes where the enemy is absent or weak for movement (esp on a large map), but also for locating main defensive asset positions when one has to overcome them to gain an objective. 
While it's always better to not let units get tired, running scouts ahead may require them to get tired.  In most scenarios there is a time crunch so it's better to have some scouts get hit, then run out of time at the end and suffer heavier casualties cos one is rushing.
In CM2 HIDING units are literally putting their faces in the ground to hide.  So poor spotters.
 

Graphics are ok.  But wish we had better UI and more useful "auto-commands" to reduce the click-fest eg:
Hide in place in ambush, then shoot, then scoot to a safer location. 
Road convoy command.  
ACQUIRE or SWOP ammo and weapons with adjacent units including vehicles without the cumbersome need to split squads, mount vehicles, resupply, then disembark and join up with original squad...  (Yes, there would be a suitable time delay and limitations of what or how much could be swapped or loaded.)
We used to have a very useful "one-click" 180 degree covered arc in CM1.  Bring it back to CM2.

Good.  Seems more realistic to have some intelligence of where enemy positions are.  Otherwise it seems that we're playing recon missions with main force units. 
And yes, the scouts are for finding out routes where the enemy is absent or weak for movement (esp on a large map), but also for locating main defensive asset positions when one has to overcome them to gain an objective. 
While it's always better to not let units get tired, running scouts ahead may require them to get tired.  In most scenarios there is a time crunch so it's better to have some scouts get hit, then run out of time at the end and suffer heavier casualties cos one is rushing.
In CM2 HIDING units are literally putting their faces in the ground to hide.  So poor spotters.
 

It sounds like one scenario... and then any others would be very similar.  A trench is a trench.  And then rest would be hard to traverse mud with huge holes.  There are quite a few strategic or operational WW1 game - at least cardboard games.  That may be a more appropriate scale.

I wouldn't sacrifice for no reason deliberately.  But, in the vast majority of scenarios one doesn't have time to have guys with binocs sit around for 5+ minutes to spot things.  My experience is that it's faster to send out numerous 2-man teams all over the map to quickly get a sense of enemy locations.  However, it's very very hard to keep em alive.  I always move em with numerous waypoints with 5-20 second pauses and HIDE commands.  However, usually, if they spot an enemy, they are already quite close and tend to get shot up even when hiding.  

Have often commented that the C2 system does not work "as advertised".  Have experienced mortars surrounded by units with radios with no C2 - ie no HQ can contact them - cos the "right" HQ is not present.  Other times, it seems easy to contact the mortars even when there does not see m to be any radios nearby.  In  a multiple Battalion scenario, have seen squads having contact to other higher level HQ's, before their own HQ etc.  Have offered to send savegames, but no one was interested.  Get the impression that if one spots too many bugs, you become persona non grata.

Have often commented that the C2 system does not work "as advertised".  Have experienced mortars surrounded by units with radios with no C2 - ie no HQ can contact them - cos the "right" HQ is not present.  Other times, it seems easy to contact the mortars even when there does not see m to be any radios nearby.  In  a multiple Battalion scenario, have seen squads having contact to other higher level HQ's, before their own HQ etc.  Have offered to send savegames, but no one was interested.  Get the impression that if one spots too many bugs, you become persona non grata.

I wouldn't argue with that.  I was thinking of the HQ Support, XO's, Co CO's.  Some battery commanders are required to be close to their mortars to enable C2.  Not sure why since other units with radios should be able to keep the mortars in C2.

Scouting in CM2 is dicey.  Yes, there are usually a lot of apparently extraneous HQ's.  However, for "realism" sake I try to avoid sending out 2IC's and extra HQ's etc as I figured that in RL they would not be used like that.  In RL one would send out the FO's as well.  But, I find that whoever gets sent up front/scouts have a short life, no matter how careful one is (unless one has enuff time to SLOW move them and let them sit and watch for several minutes when getting close to a possible enemy).  A few designers (looking at you GeorgeMC) are wonderful in creating 2.5 hour missions where once has enuff time to do very careful scouting.  Most designers put time pressure on one, and in those cases, one has to run the scouts as (dangerously) far forward as quickly as possible so that one does not run out of time at the end.
Also, as previously noted, the more scouts, the more info gathered asap the better.  I often will break 2/3 of my inf into two-man scouts to "saturate" the map.  The problem with CM2 is that one is generally left with a bunch of 7-man teams which cannot be broken down.
 
 

No.  It's useful to split squads so that one can manually do assaults, one team assaulting while supported by other teams MG's.  However...  Casualties to one team or squad are felt/suffered by the whole platoon no matter how far away on the map they may be. 
Heavy casualties to a squad will cause all the other squads in the platoon to immediately get "cautious" or "mentally disturbed" whatever the term is these days no matter how far away they are on the map.  Brille pointed this out but it was buried in the middle of his post.
It's another of those CM2 weirdness/oddities/bugs that I listed elsewhere.

For RL I's agree.  For a game, it's a bit boring - all cookie cutter.  What I like about playing the Germans is that there is a wide variety of quite different vehicles.  But, obviously not good in RL.

It always feels like the US side has very few interesting armor units - nearly all various models of Shermans which are nearly identical, whereas the Soviets have a lot of different armor units - so there is more variety on the Eastern Front.  
Am not a fan of playing the Brits, but they do have a variety of armor as well - especially their large armored car (AC) garage.  It's unfortunate that there are hardly any scenarios and no campaigns that I can recall that feature the large variety of Brit AC's.

When I graduated from CM1 to CM2 in 2007 I also was horrified at how hard it was to keep the troops alive.  CM2 is a very challenging game with steep learning curve.  If you are a new player you have to expect that you need to gain experience.

While all the CM1 games, well certainly CMBB and CMAK. are still fun to play and if well-modded can look almost as good as CM2 from level 3 and higher, there are huge numbers of features in CM2 that CM1 does not have as one would expect since CMBO was released around 20 years ago.

My apologies to Lille.  Great campaign!

I think it is amazing that BF/Steve are willing to spend so much time responding personally to customers who are making the same points as have been made since the CM games were first released - ie: virtually identical requests/ideas/concepts for the last 20+ years.  
Try getting that kind of customer service response from other established game software developers.  
The discussions are wonderful, but for over a decade I have wondered how many hours has BF spent on responses to essentially identical customer comments that could have been spent on developing more content etc.  

My apologies to Lille.  Great campaign!

I think it is amazing that BF/Steve are willing to spend so much time responding personally to customers who are making the same points as have been made since the CM games were first released - ie: virtually identical requests/ideas/concepts for the last 20+ years.  
Try getting that kind of customer service response from other established game software developers.  
The discussions are wonderful, but for over a decade I have wondered how many hours has BF spent on responses to essentially identical customer comments that could have been spent on developing more content etc.  

I think it is amazing that BF/Steve are willing to spend so much time responding personally to customers who are making the same points as have been made since the CM games were first released - ie: virtually identical requests/ideas/concepts for the last 20+ years.  
Try getting that kind of customer service response from other established game software developers.  
The discussions are wonderful, but for over a decade I have wondered how many hours has BF spent on responses to essentially identical customer comments that could have been spent on developing more content etc.  

I think it is amazing that BF/Steve are willing to spend so much time responding personally to customers who are making the same points as have been made since the CM games were first released - ie: virtually identical requests/ideas/concepts for the last 20+ years.  
Try getting that kind of customer service response from other established game software developers.  
The discussions are wonderful, but for over a decade I have wondered how many hours has BF spent on responses to essentially identical customer comments that could have been spent on developing more content etc.  

I can highly recommend Road to Dinas campaign.  I recall having a real hard time with a couple of the missions, but it taught me a lot re Red tactics and force preservation.
The fact that they were tested (and presumably ideally played) in RT explains a lot.   
It's great to have another designer with similar xnt skill set to GeorgeMC.  Welcome home!
 

All good here.  Glad you are back and hope you get your design mojo back soon. 
 

Have always thought that the Taiwan situation, just like Ukraine, are battles in a much wider war with much larger implications.  As with Vietnam we have too many people obsessed with winning all the battles militarily, but failing to see what the enemy's actual objectives are, so that we risk losing the war.
The "war" has been quietly going on for a couple of decades or more.  The goal of the "war" is to determine which power bloc will have the mantle of controlling the world by having the world's reserve currency.  China and ME nations, Iran plus more and more countries that are not happy with US hegemony are banding together to threaten the dominance of the USD. 
The danger we in the west are facing is the same that Great Britain did between the 1920's and 1950's when the pound was replaced by the USD and the British empire essentially imploded.  Half a century later one can observe that GB is well on the way to becoming a 2nd world nation.  At least it's hard to see much difference between life for the average person in London and (say) Buenos Aires.
For example, if one looks at the Ukraine situation another way, Russia's persistence is demonstrating weakness in the west and more and with Chinese support more countries are quietly cheering Russia on.  The west is in as much danger of running low on weaponry as is Russia.  Our lackluster reaction to Chinese spy balloons being sent to many places in the world sends a bad message. 
 

Agreed, there probably should be no delay at a waypoint on a bridge.  But so long as the vehicle is lined up on the exact same axis as the bridge b4 it enters the bridge, any waypoints on the bridge itself should not alter its direction.  All I can say is that I very rarely have bridge crossing issues.  

FWIW there are some extra MG scenarios not listed above.  eg: MG Westerbouwing Heights; MG_Bunker's_Rout_GD etc.