SteveP

I am having the same problem. Also no progress bar when resolving turn playing WEGO.

It certainly looks a little scary trying to get your guys into a position to drive out the Germans. But your troops have the fire power to do it without relying on the off-board mortars. I'm no tactical guru, but I try to organize my assault so that I can get 3-1 odds (e.g., three squads vs one squad), and try to hit the defender from 2 or more directions (they hate that!), and also try not to get so close initially that the Germans can make effective use of their submachine guns (I hate that!). I did use one of my MMGs at a certain point to shake up a German squad so my guys could get into a better position. I also made sure my guys were in good morale and rested. It's a good situation to practice on. Just save your turns and try them over again with a different approach. Also, don't worry about the scenario time limits. You have more than enough time to accomplish the mission.

I happen to be in the middle of that scenario right now myself. My plan was somewhat different from yours. My view was that any Germans in the buildings would not be affected by mortar fire. Any Germans out in the open on the approach to Borgo could be knocked out by my onboard mortars. So I decided to save my off-board mortars for the second phase of the battle, after capturing Borgo. I did use the off-board to fire smoke rounds on the approach. I did this as a pre-planned bombardment, with a five minute delay. Probably a waste of good smoke rounds. Where I think coordination is necessary in this first phase of the scenario is getting all the fire power in your platoons working together at the same time to knock out each component of the defense (at close quarters), so that you dominate the fire fight at each point. At some point, your MMGs can help with this. I think this may be a better way to focus your thinking rather than relying on the mortars to help you win this part of the battle. Just my thoughts.

IMHO, it is possible to design scenarios that give the player a pretty good idea what hedgerow fighting was really like (e.g., check out my Bocage aux Foilles scenario). However, scenarios like that tend to attract a barrage of complaints (including the view that they aren't realistic ). I think that if BFC were to improve the defensive capabilities associated with hedgerow terrain, this would not be well-received by players generally. What we have is probably as much as we can expect.

Another thought: I haven't played any QBs because I decided I would have to edit the QB maps (especially the AI Plans) first. However, there have been a lot of threads on how the forces end up getting switched to the wrong side in QBs. If the AI is confused about which side the enemy is coming from, that would explain what you are seeing.

Don't know if this helps but I noticed this problem some time ago when analyzing scenarios. Then I worked on it when I created scenarios myself. If the directionality of the hedge/wall/etc. is ambiguous in relationship to the end of the map designated for the enemy, the AI may set up on the "wrong" side. You have to take special precautions to avoid this in scenario design. QBs are a much greater challenge, of course.

Odd. Your version of Safari is kind of old, but perhaps you are running an older version of the OS as well. Don't have any good reason to suspect those things, but thought it was worth noting. Have you checked the Safari Downloads window (which you should have in that version of Safari) for any info? There is a way to check on what happened with a specific download that way.

Is this still your problem: that you can't find the patch DMG on your Mac? Difficult question for someone else to help on, since it's specific to your computer (I had no problem). Have you tried spotlight or the find option in the Finder, to do a search. Possibly something has changed which is causing files to download to some place you don't expect. If you are using Safari, you can check Preferences to see where the file might have gone. You could try downloading some other type of file just to see what happens. Don't know what else to suggest.

The US army suffered more casualties from pre-registered mortar fire than from any other source during the Normandy campaign. If anything, the game is unrealistic in the general rarity of TRPs in scenarios and campaigns. However, people would probably complain. TRPs for the attacker should be more uncommon and they are that way in the game.

Yes. That is what it does. It does not even have the intelligence to calculate what orders to give to optimize for the one minute intervals. It just gives orders for the next path and then waits for the next turn.

I studied this and the other AI Plan commands at some length not long after getting CMBN (because of the odd behavior I saw when the AI was attacking). AFAIK, you are absolutely correct. With the exception of Dash, all commands will cause the tanks to use Quick. It is also impossible to devise a plan by which infantry will use move or hunt. I also learned to stay away from the Advance command when designing scenarios, because of what can happen with larger groups composed of infantry (HQs and specialist teams racing ahead of the supporting squads).

My choices were based on the assumption that the decision to engage in a battle at all is part of what could make a battle decisive to a war. The Japanese might very well have accomplished their war aims (access to raw materials and dominance of East Asia) without attacking Pearl Harbor. The decision to do that made the specific results at Pearl Harbor immaterial. The US could have lost the carriers. Could have lost Hawaii. Could have been fighting the Japanese on the coast of California. It wouldn't have mattered in the long run. IMHO, there simply isn't any other battle that occurred in the war with Japan that could be considered decisive in that way. Kursk occurred at about the same time that Germany finally mobilized their economy for war (in reaction to Stalingrad). Had the Germans somehow broken the Kursk salient and driven the Russians into retreat, it is difficult to predict how the rest of the war in Europe might have played out. By losing that battle so badly, they made the final result certain, though not the time it would take.

Kursk for the Germans. After that, the Germans no longer had any practical ability to return to the strategic offensive, even though they had finally mobilized the entire economy for the war effort. That made it decisive. Pearl Harbor for the Japanese. They had no chance to win a war against the economic might of the U.S. Having attacked Pearl Harbor they were going to lose. The (belated) invasion of France for the Italians. After that, the Italians could only lose a war they had no good reason to join.

Having designed three scenarios, I would not try to design one that could be played either direction against the AI or H2H. Programming the AI is difficult and time consuming enough without having to worry about whether I am making it too easy for the Player if he decided to play that side himself. I also prefer to play scenarios that have been designed for play against the AI in one direction only.

I think there should be three versions: H2H, AI on Defensive, AI on Offensive. I think that is the only way you can deal with the limitations of the AI and still have interesting battles in any configuration (plus limiting perfect intel if you play against the AI a second time from the other side). However, there seems to be a strong bias against this sort of arrangement.

Here's a contrasting view: Conscript: minimal or no training Green: training but no battle experience Regular: some battle experience Veteran: more than one battle/significant mission experience Crack: born to be soldiers, take to it like ducks to water Elite: Crack with specialist skills

I'm sure this isn't a new topic, but would like to know if anyone is up-to-date on this problem. I'm referring to the fact that the AI doesn't take account of the fact that some units, such zooks and mortars, can't use their weapons in a building. I can appreciate the programming challenges, and also that scenario designers can mitigate this to some extent with defensive setups, but it seems like some improvement ought to be possible.

Actually, the US troops should be green for the most part (unless the unit fought in North Africa -- or has been engaged in Normandy for several weeks). This was another reason why figuring out how to get tanks into the bocage battles, and also how to better use small mortars, was so important -- the infantry just didn't have the experience to tackle such horrible terrain on their own. Also, the green infantry needed to be trained in working with tanks, which they weren't when they arrived in Normandy. You could make a similar observation about much of the German forces, at least in the first days after the invasion.

Only the Germans could do this, because they had time to prepare their hedgerow defenses to create firing lanes. The US Infantry could not do this. They had to advance into the bocage field and fight it out from there. They also could not use their mortars because of the likelihood of the shells dropping into those fields (especially spotting rounds). They also couldn't spot the German defenders until they were right on top of them (i.e., grenade range or less). Tanks were also useless until they could get the tanks into the bocage field, or else give them an open field of fire at the hedgerow itself (using demolition, rhino attachment, etc.). Needless to say, bocage fighting in CMBN tends to be less of a brutal challenge for the attacker than was true IRL.

I think that the "sweet spot" formula is also highly dependent upon the resources provided to the defender (especially if the defender is the AI). Snipers, mines and TRPs are essential to a bocage defense, especially if the attacker has a wide variety of possible lines of attack. For example, any place where the Germans decided to defend would have anti-tank mines located where there were vehicle sized gaps. OTOH, if the area wasn't defensible with the available resources, the Germans wouldn't try to defend it.

If tanks could get into the bocage fields without demolition (which was difficult and dangerous to do) by the engineers, the bocage would not have been such a nightmare for the US army. Tanks were restricted to the road networks (where they were easily ambushed),

Some specifics related to how I played this one: 1. Smoke at the beginning to help redeploy out of the setup zone and begin forward movement. 2. Barrage with the 75s on the back line of hedgerow as soon as I could get LOS to do so. You won't kill the bunkers, but you can mess up other units back there, and the AI isn't smart enough to redeploy. 3. Using the MGs and LMGs to suppress (and sometimes kill) the bunkers. 4. Using mortars for knocking out MGs and other stubborn defenders (60mm in direct fire mode most of the time). Otherwise, it's a standard fire-and-move advance in the chosen hedgerow fields. One of the curious things about these types of battles is that wheatfields show up more often than would be realistic for Normandy, and they tend to be better choices for advancing. Hope that helps.

I still don't understand that viewpoint, though it appears to be one shared by a lot of players. Restricting orders to one minute intervals doesn't seem too realistic to me. Also the AI is handicapped by that restriction, since it doesn't know how to optimize orders to deal with the one minute intervals. In RT, the AI is constantly able to update it's orders as needed (as you are, but only if you pause -- the AI doesn't need a pause). To me, that is the most cogent advantage to RT if you play against the AI. The only disadvantage is the inability to replay a turn over and over again. But I don't find that to be a problem as far as giving orders is concerned.

Edit: OK. I looked at the briefing for this mission again. There is a suggestion there that the Germans may be attempting to exit and part of your mission is to stop them first. At least, I can interpret it that way now. Assuming that is the explanation, my apologies for the confusion.

Actually, it appears to be something even more strange. I had saved the game 3-4 times while completing this mission. For some reason, between one save and the next, almost all the Germans disappeared off the map (or more likely, something happened to corrupt the second save perhaps). I would have to go back and play it again from one of the earlier saves, to see if it happens again, but it would be interesting to know if anyone has seen something like that happen.