SteveP

First: there is nothing wrong with playing against the AI, and if you are satisfied to learn tactics based on what works against the AI, then that is fine too. You own the game, so do what you like with it. Second: ambushing has a place in the tactics toolkit for CM, even against human opponents. My point was that while ambushing was/is a staple of real life combat, the conditions under which ambushes can be effectively created occur much less often in a CM battle than IRL. On the other hand, one of those conditions is having an attacking force commanded by an inexperienced and/or impulsive leader. The AI does a good job of providing that, so enjoy! Third: to the extent that I use covered arcs (and I do, though more often for the attacking force than for defenders) primarily to conserve ammo and/or maximize the results from a given expenditure of ammo, I never forget that whatever distance I set the covered arc is essentially arbitrary (there is no clear dividing line at which the FP you expend becomes "effective" or "ineffective"). There is also an opportunity cost involved. That is, if I set the arc at 100m for example, I am giving up the opportunity to do some damage to a unit that's 101 meters away. And there is no significant difference, in my ability to do damage, in the single meter (assuming terrain is the same). An MG in CM will routinely kill or wound attackers in the open at more than 600m, yet there are knowledgeable players who will routinely keep that MG from opening fire at even close to that distance. My approach to defensive setup and tactics doesn't require setting those kind of limitations, so I don't. Fourth: I posted earlier that the attacker's objective was to get within grenade range. I should have said that the attacker's objective is to get within grenade range in the same or better cover than the defender. For that reason, it is worth it to the defender to save some ammo (in keeping with Jason's point) to stop the attacker from making that last leap, if at all possible. However, it is lot easier to stop that final charge, if the attacker has been beaten up pretty thoroughly while getting there.

Point of interest in this discussion: is everyone assuming that the AI is the attacker? Frankly, I've never understood why a human attacker (assuming reasonable experience) would ever walk into an ambush as it is often described in this forum: i.e., a lot of enemy troops pouring into a kill sack defined by covered arcs, so that you kill him before you are spotted. After all, in a CM game, you know there is an enemy on the map. You know something of the size, composition and general location of the defender. With a minimal amount of testing, you can easily determine if the defender is relying on an ambush (that is, you determine that he is not firing at range, so he must be holding fire for an ambush). A single half squad poked into an area will automatically trigger a ambush if it is set with covered arcs (which is one of the reasons I don't use them all that much). So, once you find out where the ambush has been set, you can deal with it without losing a lot of your troops in the discovery process. There are certainly exceptional situations (in scenarios), and also very clever defensive tactics that you can use to fool the attacker into thinking there isn't an ambush (hard to do in a QB because so much, like setup location, is so rigidly predefined), but as a general rule, I think ambushing is overrated in CM, at least as far as infantry is concerned. IRL, as far as I can tell, it worked primarily when the attacking force thought they were moving through safe territory, or had very bad intelligence about the size and composition of the defender -- neither of which condition is duplicated in a CM battle. AT ambushing is a different story, I think, because you can lose a whole AFV just to uncover an ambush, and ambushing AT guns can have layered covered arcs, rather than focusing all on a single kill sack. But then, that's why tanks need the infantry.

Point of clarification: my own tests have convinced me that hidden troops do not noticeably lose much spotting ability, except in situations where spotting is marginal already (at night, say). The more important impact from the hide order is that your troops won't fire at anything unless they feel directly threatened by an approaching enemy or they are spotted and fired on. This feature can be useful if you are getting very low on ammo, but obviously has to be used with care. Side note: the AI automatically hides all its troops at the beginning of the game, when it is the defender. IMO, this actually reduces the effectiveness of the AI's performance.

One of my strongest memories from playing CMBO was in the Villers-Bocage scenario, in which I killed a Tiger from the side with a Stuart (I even think it was Wittmann's Tiger, but my memory could be off on that one). Not being a WWII grog by any means (and still not), I was nevertheless a bit surprised. When I checked the penetration tables at the time, I remember thinking that it was plausible from that standpoint (the range was short). But it was probably implausible in historical terms. Does any of this matter in terms of game satisfaction? On that score, I have one additional peeve to record. That is, the problem of tanks cowering when getting hit by one of these relatively small caliber AT weapons. The cowering is reasonable given CM physics, but it does create some strange battlefield performances.

BigDuke: the charge of being "notably out of line" can indeed be a consequence of whose ox is getting gored. However ... This thread has now somewhat bifurcated into two topics. The topic that I launched had to do with the over-modeling of the Stuart/Honey gun. Inasmuch as my interest in these games is historical simulation, it requires the constant exercise of self-discipline not to be too anal retentive about historical "accuracy" in the simulation. From that perspective, if I found in playing CMAK that Honey's were killing PzIIIGs at 600-700m, while IRL Brit tankers wouldn't bother shooting until they got at least under 600m, I would decide that this discrepancy is hardly worth consideration, even if I thought I knew where the "error" lay. However, in CMAK those PzIII commanders had better start worrying when they see Stuarts getting to with 1200m of them, while they can safely ignore the Cruisers at the same range. To me, that's not only out-of-whack historically, but it's disturbing because the discrepancy is radically affecting decision-making in a CMAK battle. Now, if anyone thinks the Stuart's performance in CMAK is not notably out of line, and/or not an indicator of a more than trivial problem in the CM physics model (sorry for the double negatives), then any comments along that line would certainly be consistent with the basic theme of this thread. The other topic which has arisen in this thread is the putative under-modeling of Russian guns in CMBB. This started, obviously, because Jason -- in the course of explaining why he thought all or virtually all high velocity/small caliber guns were over-modelled in CM -- decided to point out what he thought was a notable exception to this rule. There's nothing wrong with that, per se, although I for one had to study his analysis for awhile to parse what he saying about how CM treated small caliber vs large caliber, from what he was saying about the overall treatment of Russian guns vs German guns. Since I play CMBB from time to time, I do find this second topic interesting. Is the performance of Russian guns notably out-of-line in CM? I don't know. I guess I'd ask the question this way: if German tankers IRL regarded the Russian 45mm as being about as dangerous as the Brit 2 pounder, then I would say CM has it close enough. If, on the other hand, German tankers regarded the 45mm as a threat at least as great as German players in CMAK should regard the Stuart, then I think CM has it wrong. How's that for keeping it simple?

Since you want to speak in general terms, I would say that this is the situation in virtually every scenario or QB. Are you focusing on a reduced ammo scenario/QB in particular, or are you more concerned about the fact that infantry tends to expend ammo faster in a close combat situation? I think you will find it hard to get a "general" answer. One consideration I can offer, however, is this: one of the prime objectives of an infantry attacker is to get within close combat range (more specifically, to within grenade range, which is about 40m). I tend to feel that if you are letting an attacker get that close relatively unmolested, you had better be sure you are going to plaster him. On the other hand, if the situation is such that you can't stop him from getting that close, then consider the possibility of a fighting withdrawal to keep a wider distance while you buy time and slowly reduce his numbers and momentum. I think that ammo expenditure is a secondary consideration.

Whoops!! Hope I didn't end up trashing my own thread by raising the question of "German physics." I was already aware from other posts that Jason had an abiding concern about the performance of Russian guns in CMBB. I was only interested in whether he detected some system to it. I guess the question I'm trying to raise in this thread is in fact about BFI's relative success in replicating the physics. I would not have raised the question, if the problem were one of what happens in a "gray area" situation. I wouldn't have raised it because I wouldn't have known enough to. I raised it because I was observing something in CM that was dramatically out-of-whack with real-life experience. If the Brits could kill PzIIIs from the front with their Honeys at 1000 meters, as they can quite easily in CMAK, then they wouldn't have been risking their lives to get to within 600 meters, or racing around under fire to get a side shot. Jason was basically telling me that, in my ignorance, I hadn't realized this sort of ahistorical result was common in CM with high velocity/small diameter AT guns. I don't have any interest in complaining about any of this, since I admire these games so much. However, it does seem to me that there is pretty compelling evidence that BFI's attempt to "replicate the physics" could use some fine-tuning. After all, the test of a computer simulation's validity is that the results aren't notably (i.e., more than gray area) out-of-line with real world experience. It's anyone's guess as to whether Steve and Charles are even thinking about this issue for the next version of the engine, since I don't think this has been addressed in any of the relevant posts in the CM2 thread.

I've tended to prefer playing primarily infantry or infantry-dominated combined arms (since I think this better fits the scale of the maps in CM). So I haven't been confronted with these anomalies often enough to be sensitive to them before (also, I just happened to be reading accounts of the N. African campaigns while playing CMAK). It was frankly easier to live with when I didn't know any better. As I understand it, you are saying that the CM physics are out-of-whack in two respects. The first has to do with the relationship of shell diameter, muzzle velocity and the actual energy hitting the armor plate. In this area, you are saying that CM gives the smaller diameter shell disproportionately too much penetrating power -- or the larger shell too little. And, if I understand correctly, you are saying that, with the exception of Russian guns, this bias exists throughout CM. In other words, even the 2 pounder is over-modeled. The second problem is that the Russian guns are almost all given a degree of "discount" from the standard calculations, in some cases quite large. Do you think this is the result of an extra factor (i.e., representing shell quality) added to the formula -- that is, everyone else is get a 1 for this factor, and the Russians get a .8 or whatever? From the raw numbers alone, it seems that this discount is more arbitrary than that. Any opinions or guesses? Is it only the Russian guns? The references to "German physics" are a bit unclear. Do you mean that the WWII era German engineers had this misconception of AT physics, or are you talking about some sort of pro-German bias built into the CM modeling of AT physics? If so, it sounds like more of an anti-Russian bias.

Very interesting analysis. From what you say, I would conclude that the problem is more specifically one of over-weighting shell velocity as a factor in the physics calculations rather than that CM is giving some edge to smaller guns generally (because there are small caliber guns in CM which are as ineffective as they were IRL, AFAIK). Another aspect to this: from what I've read, the Brits and others were very impressed with the accuracy of the Stuart gun compared to what they were used to. This would be a characteristic of high velocity guns, obviously. The interesting point is that the gunners evidently felt that they had a greater chance of crippling a PZIII or IV (say by aiming at the tracks) as much or more than they had a chance of killing it. Perhaps because CM design focuses to much on penetration, it is also shortchanging the possibility that a gunner might deliberately choose a different objective. Of course, AT fire does immobilize tanks in CM, but I assume this is more a matter of random combat results calculations than anything else.

Thanks Jason. You have confirmed what I could only intuit. Any theories as to why CM over-models small AT guns (which I assume is what you meant ). Not trying to point fingers here, but I noted in a previous post a question about the type of AT ammo that the Stuart/Honey carried. I admit that I've never fully absorbed previous explanations about the different types of ammo, so I am shooting in the dark here. But if this is common, then perhaps it has nothing to do with the type of ammo. Also, are you saying that in CM the Russian 45 is actually less effective than the 2 pounder? That's a hard comparison to make from just playing the game, so that had never occurred to me.

Then, another question would be: are you definitely talking about routing, or about troops that are pinned and sneaking (what has been called cover panic)? I have seen instances in which a unit will truly be in rout condition and run toward the enemy. I'm not sure why but it may be a FOW effect. That is, the routed unit may be confused about where fire is coming from, or where it is dangerous to run, and is simply making a bad decision. Why that would be happening a lot in particular scenarios is beyond my ability to guess.

Very interesting insight. However, it doesn't entirely explain that the accounts I've read seem to be concerned with penetration. That is, the tankers seemed to believe they needed to get to the side or rear of the MKIIIs and MKIVs, or at a minimum to within 500-600 yards, to be effective with the Stuart, just as with the 2 pounder tanks. My own experience with the Stuart in, say 1941 N. Africa CMAK, is that the Stuart can fairly readily kill a MKIII or MKIV at much longer ranges from the front. I particularly noticed this first in a scenario (or maybe it was a QB) in which the British had a mix of Crusaders and Stuart/Honeys against a German MKII/MKIII/MKIV mix (Nov 1941, I think). At first, I had the Honeys hanging back, like the Germans did with the MKII, on the grounds that they were both light tanks. Then I discovered that the Stuarts were the most effective tank killers on the map in that particular situation.

What I've read suggests that the British for example were very impressed by the Stuart's speed, maneuverability and durability, but not much by its gun -- generally thinking it as pretty much on a par with their two-pounders. On the other hand, I have read a few accounts which were more impressed by the Stuart's gun in that 1941/early 1942 period. My experience with the Stuarts in CMAK, and also looking at the penetration tables, is that they seem quite able to go toe-to-toe with the Mark III and IV of that era. That is, they don't have to limit themselves to side and rear shots to be effective. Don't know if this is reasonable or not. Of course, there's the standard problem with CM, in that the ranges that tanks fight are so short, which helps the under-gunned machines. Also, the Stuarts are equipped with the different type of AT ammo, and I don't how much that might account for the overmodeling, if that's what it is. Anyway, just thought I'd see if anyone knowledgeable had an opinion.

AFAIK troops will almost always rout in the direction of the "friendly" map edge, as defined in the scenario parameters. In some cases, troops will rout in the direction of a neutral map edge, if the edge happens to be quite close. Check your scenario parameters to see how they are setup for friendly map edges, and that may answer your question. There are default friendly map edges that are used every time in QBs and are the default setup for new scenarios. For example, in N Africa, the Axis always have the West side and the Allies always have the East side, even if it's US vs Germany.

People with more expertise may know the answer, but I don't think the Germans had a higher than "normal" casualty rate. As I understand it, the Germans followed their standard practice of having the panzer grenadiers advancing in the wake of the panzers, and eventually they overran the position. Unlike a CM player who already knows about Tigers and knows to expect them, the British were taken by surprise and couldn't do much more than try to slow down the German advance. Also, as I mentioned before, I don't believe the British were blessed with tank reinforcements IRL. They had to make do with the 2 lbers.

I think it's fair to say that the British put up a brave fight, but they didn't hold up the German advance very long. The British simply weren't prepared for anything like the Tiger tank at that point. Also, I don't believe there were any British tank reinforcements in the real battle. My guess is that the scenario is designed to be a more "balanced" fight than to be a completely historical recreation. Also, there's always the problem of designing something that the AI can manage without falling apart too quickly.

Bannon: nice post and interesting, especially about the minefields. I will have to read your analysis. However, upon further review, I'm not sure there's a good case for this practice in a standard CM scale game. My key assumption was that in some QBs (and this is a result of how QBs are constructed, which resembles real life situations haphazardly) there are no definite targets for a pre-planned barrage. I was thinking that creating shellholes at least gave a basis for choosing one potential targeting area over the many other possibilities that might exist. At the time, however, I'd forgotten about the Target Wide option (which, by the way, might also create some useful shellholes) which is probably a more logical choice most of the time. Also, it does not give away anything about your chosen route. I think things like the D-Day example don't really make the case, because there you had a surfeit of big HE. You had the luxury of using them for a variety of tasks. This may also explain my sense that this tactic was used in WW1 -- again, lots of artillery focused on a single point of attack, not to mention the problem of advancing under fire. It would be more interesting to know if company or battalion commanders in WW2 ever ordered up some larger mortars or howitzers specifically to crater up some turf -- probably not, although I could see it in connection with obstacle removal. Shmavis: obviously I'm not going to give the enemy a free pass if I have some basis for estimating where he has concentrations. While the AI may concentrate around the flags, a good opponent is not going to be so clumsy. Also, I wouldn't do this if there's an area that needs to be hit because it could (if there's a strong defense in that location) block my chosen route. However, as noted above, I think my preferred third option most of the time would be a Target Wide.

JK - very interesting insight! I have recently been playing a lot of desert QBs and have come to appreciate what an amazing defensive position the rough terrain provides. Units there can eat a lot of ammo before being driven out. Also, unlike with woods and heavy buildings, everybody in the rough terrain has LOS/LOF to the attackers. If, in fact, this terrain should be more dangerous to the defender than is the case in CM, then I think that's a significant issue. My understanding had been that the large rocks (boulders?) tended to provide useful protection from blast, and that was why CM was modeled that way. coe -- don't get hung up on the ACs and the HTs. The ACs don't have much of a role in a battle like this. I think they are there for historical reasons -- it was the ACs that ran into this defensive position and alerted the Germans. The ACs mostly stay out of the way until the panzers make things safer. Same with the HTs -- they can ferry infantry around late in the battle, but don't have much to do until then. The HMGs are useful in supplementing the work of the panzers, but that's all. Think of your infantry (in the first phase of the battle) as basically spotting for the panzers. The infantry can get close enough to do that (and it doesn't matter if they've taken some casualties in the meantime -- they can still spot). If you want to use smoke, wait until after you cleared away part of the British front line, then use smoke to mask the other part while you rush your infantry into the grove. Once you are in the grove and around the flank of the British, the defense collapses pretty quickly (at least against the AI )

I think this may have been discussed some time in the past. If so, my apologies to anyone who finds this to be old news. I tend to play smaller, infantry dominated battles, and particularly like the challenge of open terrain situations for the attacker (grassland, desert, steppe, etc.) Something I've started to do from time to time is deliberately target a medium (105mm say) FO (pre-planned barrage only) so that there's a good chance of creating craters I can use for cover in getting across, along with (hopefully) doing some damage to the enemy. Of course, doing this wouldn't make sense in a situation where there is a clear need to thoroughly plaster a particular location. But in a lot of situations, there is much less certainty about where to direct a barrage when you have no intel as yet. It also seems to me I've read that this was a tactical ploy IRL, though I associate it in my mind more with WWI than WWII. Anyone know? Even so, there may be a question as to whether it is gamey, since it's taking advantage of CM's rather questionable equating of a shellhole with the foxhole (which is really an abstraction for a group of foxholes in a location, whereas the shellhole is not a grouping of craters). Anyway, just thought I'd throw that out for consideration.

This is one of my favorite scenarios. I remember playing it several times (mostly hot seat) to try out different approaches. As JasonC (among others) points out often (and justifiably) knowing how to advance infantry across open ground is a key skill in CM, and that's certainly true here. I won't repeat his advice about how to do that. In this scenario, I found the best approach is to use your tanks and ACs as overwatch. The Tigers can obviously move in closer, the PZIIIs have to stay back more, and the ACs have to be in partial defilade (from the ATGs). As the British open up on your advancing infantry, you pound them with HE from the tanks (the MGs can help, but mostly to keep the British pinned down once the HE has done its job). The infantry can also get some protection in that wadi in front of the olive grove (which is a good distance for a firefight). Eventually you wear down the British front line so you can advance into the cover of the olive grove with them. There are other things going on, of course (e.g., exchanges of FO artillery, knocking out the ATGs, dealing with the British tank reinforcements), but I think that the essence of the scenario for the Germans is advancing infantry in front of overwatch. The scenario is actually more interesting from the British side, I think, though not if you are playing the AI. Hope that helps.

Crews are treated differently since CMBO. Crews that abandon vehicles are given low ammo status. This was to prevent players from using these crews in a gamey way. Crews that abandon guns or mortars (for example) have an allotment of ammo and can act as normal infantry in that regard. What I have not been able to observe yet is a situation in which such a crew fires its pistols before abandoning the weapon, and then seen the reduction reflected in the ammo total afterward. I have to assume, however, that this reduction would be there if I did. The other thing that I have noticed now is that not all pistols in CM are created equal (surprise??). German (and German allies) have pistols which put out more FP than other pistols. A reasonably sized unit can, at short range, put out a respectable FP given those weapons!

A particularly "interesting" example of this that I detected after discovering that crewed weapons did this: A light mortar (German 50mm, I think) was in cover about 100m or so from a previously undetected enemy unit. The enemy uncovered near the end of the turn and began firing (not at the mortar). The mortar crew's first reaction was to fire their pistols at the enemy unit rather than immediately start firing mortars! One can only speculate on the reasons for this. It's worth noting that since I've observed this, I have never seen a unit become spotted as a result of doing this. Perhaps that explains the mortar crew's behavior??

I realized when I posted that this might prove to be one of those situations in which everyone was "in on the joke" but me, but that's one of the things that makes CM so addictive -- there's always something new to learn!. I realized after looking at it a little more that it works like the dual weapon system on tanks. The only difference is that with tanks you can track what is happening by following the ammo counter on the MG(s). With these infantry type units there is no separate counter for the ammo they are expending. Also, of course, they do not have the same impact on the enemy. Still, it is useful to know they have this characteristic.

Don't think this has been posted before. It's for those like me who find the little quirks in the CM design to be interesting. Here it is: Take an AT unit which does not have any real AP capability (an ATR for example, or a pure AT gun). Have an enemy infantry unit move into the area, in the open, at no great distance from the AT unit (100m say). If you look closely, you will likely notice that the AT unit is firing pistol shots at the enemy. Apparently, the TacAI is set to make use of the available small arms ammo that is allocated to the AT crew even if the crew is still manning its weapon. What's particularly curious is that this also occurs with AT weapons, like an ATR which cannot be abandoned by the crew. So apparently the model allocates some small arms ammo to these as well. I have not tried to determine how widespread this is among these types of weapons (for example, a bazooka or a schreck with HC). It is clear to me, however, that this pattern of firing is not just when the unit is threatened with being overrun, but anytime the TacAI thinks it has a suitable target at a suitable range. Not clear to me yet if this is useful tactically all that often, although it does tend to be pretty stealthy firing. It has inflicted damage to enemy squads on a couple of occasions when I was looking.

I don't believe that cover arcs were created with the aim of controlling ammo expenditure, though there are clearly players who want to use them that way. I believe they were created as a modification of the ambush command in CMBO: the idea being that one could tailor the size of the area over which you could trigger an ambush. The TacAI does not just fire away until the unit runs out of ammo. IMHO, it will run to low primarily at short ranges when the unit is in a life-or-death situation or (not too much different) when an attacking unit is caught out in the open trying to suppress a defending shooter. I very seldom use covered arcs for the defense, except for ambush situations, and I almost never find that running out of ammo is a problem if the defense has been well constructed. I do use covered arcs more on the attack, particularly in crossing a long open area and also when using Move To Contact. As for setting covered arcs in order to make the fire more "effective," I have never quite understood the rationale for this, especially for the defense. After all, why is shooting at 150m significantly more effective than 151m? The TacAI has some formula that it uses to decide if its fire will be "effective." Though I don't know how this formula works, it appears that this formula takes into account the amount of ammo available to the shooter, as well as distance, terrain, point value of the target, etc. Also the TacAI makes those calculations on the fly, which is something I can't do and the WEGO system won't let me act upon.