SteveP

You are right that I ended up doing the test because of what I wanted to achieve in the scenario. Apparently the test I did isn't interesting because: 1. Normandy doesn't have dirt under their orchard trees, so who cares? 2. It doesn't matter what the mg gunner can or can't see thru the lines of apple tree trunks sitting on dirt, because the trees branches up above his head have lots of foliage. 3. There are workarounds I can use, so who cares? 4. BFC says I can't possibly have seen what I saw in doing my tests, so I must be doing something wrong. I would still like to see, on one of my scenario maps, dense forest on heavy forest terrain having a bigger impact on concealment/cover than orchard trees on dirt. Maybe I will some day (perhaps when I figure out what I am doing wrong).

Well, it's a simple test. Anyone can do it. I had to do it to figure out how to get a bocage scenario to work (which it wasn't). Create an orchard (single trees in grid formation, one on each tile), on dirt tiles, flat ground of 100m by 50m, for example. Put a German MG in the orchard near one end. Have an American inf squad advance thru that orchard from the other end. At what point does the MG spot them and start firing? I expected it to be right away. It was not until the squad got to within about 40m (or five trees away). I have also seen this happen in scenarios created by others, which made me curious enough to run this test. Take the same area, and make the tiles heavy forest and use high density trees and run the same test. I found that the results were roughly the same. I also got the same results for any other combination of tiles and tree option. Since I found no way to get this right for my scenario map, I am either going to not use orchards, or else do the very widely spaced orchard idea. But I still think I should not have gotten the same results every time I tried different combinations. If other people are able to create maps which don't have this problem(?) then more power to them. I can't figure out how to do it.

As I said, I understand people are OK with the way it works. My conclusion is that the choice of foliage is solely cosmetic. It doesn't make any difference tactically. That isn't what I expected, so I thought there might be a bug involved.

The underlying terrain doesn't matter if you have trees. This is true for other "combinations": for example, hedgerows and any other underlying terrain tile. Also, I am not interested in an explanation of how things work in CMBN. I am only interested in whether they work in a way that is realistic.

My test was an orchard (one tree in the center of each tile) on dirt vs dense forest (3 trees per tile) on heavy forest terrain. The results were that concealment/cover was about the same. My other experiments indicated that terrain tile type had no effect if there were trees of any kind on the tile. It also appears that it doesn't matter how many trees you have on each tile: the effect on concealment/cover is the same. The only workaround is to spread the trees out so that some percentage of the tiles contain no trees. I don't believe that one tree centered on a dirt tile should provide the same level of concealment/cover as multiple trees scattered on a heavy forest tile. But I'm not sure I'm winning any converts to this view.

What is important to me is the consequences for a German defense. In CMBN, the Americans are able to use an orchard quite safely to advance. So, these are the possibilities: 1. That is realistic, and the Germans just worked their defensive schemes around that fact. 2. The Germans chopped down the orchards. 3. There just weren't enough orchards to make a difference (seems counter-intuitive, but possible, I guess). 4. The Germans booby trapped the orchards (mines, etc.) rather than defend them. Those are the ideas that occur to me.

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try experimenting along those lines. Edit: That does make a huge difference. Makes for a lot more work, but you definitely can shape the tactical value of tree terrain by thinning out or concentrating the foliage. I still don't understand why an apple tree every 8 meters provides the same concealment/cover as 3 forest trees every 8 meters, but as long as there are workarounds I won't lose sleep over it.

It appears that my last test - single trees, no grid, dirt terrain - was a fluke. My observation now is that all tree terrain provides about the same degree of concealment/cover in CMBN, regardless of the density of the foliage being used or the ground cover (I don't think ground cover matters at all when you have trees). So: an orchard is as protective (or dangerous) as a Hurtgen style forest would be (unless, of course, BFC comes up with new terrain options by then ). That seems counter-intuitive to me, but I have seen what I needed to see as far as how CMBN seems to model these things. Perhaps the only reason to choose one style over another would be cosmetic rather than tactical.

As another comparison: Low density (single trees, no grid) on dirt: attackers getting spotted at around 100m. IMHO, orchards would provide even less concealment because of the regularity of the tree lines. However, I could live with 100m.

Well, I have been around orchards as well. I am pretty sure that if I deployed an MG on a tripod at one end of an orchard on dirt ground, I'd be cutting off the legs of an awful lot of infantry at some distance. Not to mention sending AT rockets into the lower hull of any tanks moving thru there. I also don't think an elevated spotter would miss anyone advancing thru an orchard, though I'd be willing to live with some level of concealment in that situation. IOW, as an attacker, I wouldn't feel too protected crossing an orchard.

I finally got around to doing a little testing on this one because of problems I ran into creating a scenario (orchards are important in Normandy). The test was an orchard (single trees in a grid pattern) on dirt vs dense forest on heavy forest terrain. Flat elevation in both cases. What I found was that the orchard provided more concealment than the dense forest. Essentially, units in an orchard could easily get to within 30-40 meters without being spotted. Units in the dense forest were often spotted within 50-60 meters. A spotter looking down into an orchard from an elevated position could see nothing. Differences in cover are hard to detect at those ranges, but it seemed like the orchard on dirt provided cover that was just as good as the dense forest. In fact, an orchard on dirt would provide a more realistic Hurtgen forest than the dense forest would. I have been seeing this for some time, so I don't think it's a fluke of my test.

Thank you for the info. I struggled with that a bit in designing this map. It does have an effect on what can be done tactically, though I think the scenario still works in a realistic way. I will keep what you say in mind as I tweak the next Bocage aux Folles scenario.

I realize that CM players are accustomed to thinking they should be able to get a total victory at some point, when playing against the AI. I think the real life commander of Charlie Company would have been happy just making decent progress against the Germans in such difficult terrain. The play balance is reasonably consistent with the QB budgets for a tiny battle -- which is the best metric I had available to gauge that. What makes the big difference (IMHO) are the hedgerows. But that was the point of the scenario, of course.

No doubt I could have made it tougher, but my goal was to make the hedgerows do most of the work for the Germans (as I think they did IRL). Also, I had to figure out where to draw the line so that players didn't think I was giving the Germans too many assets in relationship to the force size for the Americans. I actually kept trimming down the German force as I developed the scenario. Did I go too far?

Most certainly. I created this scenario for my own education and training, and quite happy for others to do with it as they want (as long as they don't edit it and run around making unearned victory claims ). I would like to get any feedback that suggests an error in realism on my part. That is most important for this scenario and for the others I am planning to do. Also, my apologies for the pun in the title of the scenario, if apologies are required. I have no idea how well that works for the french-speaking community.

That's OK. I knew this scenario would not be to everyone's taste (though I did make some effort to get people to try it ). I did not create this scenario to make anyone's life difficult. I created it to better understand something myself: that is, why the American infantry considered bocage fighting to be about the worst thing they had ever experienced (or at least comparable to Guadalcanal, which was the worst thing they had every experienced). I wanted to figure out if a CMBN scenario could be so constructed, and the AI programmed to defend something like the Germans did, that I could experience what it was like for an infantry company in that situation. I figured that there were others who played this game with similar motivations: to see what the reality was like, even when the reality was pretty depressing. There is nothing contrived about this map or scenario (IMHO). But this is the first scenario I have ever posted for a CM game, so I am open to anyone who might see something that doesn't appear to be consistent with authoritative sources on fighting in the bocage. I also plan to create scenarios that test how the Americans adapted to this awful terrain (and maybe one from the German side after things got difficult for them to hold this ground). I hope they will be as realistic and challenging as I can make them.

Another hint: If you are thinking first of how to use your mortars, you are making exactly the same mistake that the American troops made. Their instincts were to advance only far enough to spot the enemy and then let the artillery do the heavy lifting. It didn't work in the bocage. That is why the Germans were somewhat contemptuous of the American rifle company soldiers they faced during that 3-4 week period. Food for thought.

Well, the bottom line is that there is nothing which happens in this scenario which did not happen to American troops in the bocage. For example, there is documentation for the effectiveness of snipers in this terrain. And, yes, I meant that the Americans can deploy into the field without being shot while they enter thru the opening in the bocage. I had to allow that as a side effect of allowing the Americans to use mortars (complicated explanation, but that is the reason). If you find this scenario to be frustrating, think of it as training for CM:Guadalcanal, whenever that comes out (assuming that BFC doesn't wimp out on the realism factor )

Spoilers (although I don't think any of this will help you ... ) . . . . . . . . For the sake of clarity, there are 3 ways in which this scenario is biased to one side or the other (IMHO): 1. The Americans have unhampered use of their mortars, which was not the case IRL. Defenders in the hedgerows in CMBN are very vulnerable to mortar fire, which may or may not be realistic (because the Americans could not use their mortars effectively, so we don't know. 2. The Germans are spread out and for almost the entire scenario do not have C2. Plus they can be defeated in detail, which RL German commanders would not have allowed. 3. The Americans can, for the most part, deploy into a bocage field unmolested. In reality, the Germans had every opening in the bocage dialed in for their MGs. Just food for thought.

Keep in mind that I was not trying to make anyone feel bad. This was my way of trying to understand why fighting thru the bocage was so difficult. I did this for myself. But I thought others would be curious about the same question, so I posted the scenario (my first in CM, I should note ) I do plan on creating scenarios based on how the American adapted (and how the Germans adapted to them ...)

Realism, sadism. Tomato, tamahto.

The shortage appeared after the army figured out a method for deploying explosives to create openings for the tanks. Keep in mind that even then they had to figure out a way to protect the engineers while they were preparing the section of hedgerow for blasting. That meant they had to fully suppress the enemy on the other side first. It is very difficult to make this realistic in CMBN. Also, they never considered blasting holes in the hedgerows so infantry could get thru. However, if anyone wants to go into the editor and change any of the existing openings to be larger, feel free to do so (I don't think that would mess anything up, but I haven't checked). You may run into some unintended consequences, however. The small gaps do make it easier for you to deploy safely behind your own hedgerow.

The fact that you can use artillery at all is what is unrealistic about this scenario. Keep in mind this is a prepared defense. There is a serious underuse of TRPs in bocage defenses in other CMBN scenarios/campaigns (IMHO). In reality, the Germans had every inch of a bocage field figured out before the Americans ever got there.