Carl Puppchen

What do you think of Mosier's conclusion that the Allies overstated German casualties and understated Allied casualties, particularly the French? Doesn't this call into question who really "won" these battles, to some extent? I agree that in the end the Germans were doomed to lose once unrestricted sub warfare came in and they didn't move fast enough to knock out Russia and concentrate on France / Britain. He also makes the case that many of the "victories" claimed by the Allies weren't really much of a victory, because they didn't achieve the high ground or critical terrain. I am interested in your opinion on that, as well. In his WW2 book the blitzkrieg myth he also says that the French fought hard at Gambloux (sp?) and then lost because the British quit the field of battle. This is an interesting review on the Battle of France but I have seen a lot of mentions of that tank battle recently and seems relatively underappreciated. Back to the original thread of this post I am not going to argue with anyone's view of attrition vs maneuver or the relative power of MG's except to say that infantry isn't the queen of battle in CM and if the enemy has unsuppressed heavy weapons with direct fire HE or MG's then it really doesn't matter what you do with infantry because it is not going anywhere against a competent opponent. It is mainly used after the battle is decided by the bigger crewed weapons in a "mop up" role. The major exception is city terrain where infantry is in its element and it is mainly a bloody infantry on infantry process to win block by block. The Russians have the major direct fire HE on the SU 122 and SU 152 and they have armor to "mix it up" with infantry defenders but other than that armor and arty really don't play as critical a role. This was a very interesting thread!

I tried it and it worked like a champ! Thank you very much!

You are correct in the summary above. However, the issue is that the boats still have MOVE orders even with no one inside them (I can see them when the "all moves" selection is made) and I can't eliminate these move orders by selecting the boat, because the only command available is the "check LOS" command when I select on the boats. River Crossing Tips I put up a picture on my "river crossing tips" page of my cmak site where you can see the boats with no one in them and the green line indicating that they have a 'move' command. I can even move the red block at the end of the move command a bit (waypoint) but I can't cancel it. [ April 03, 2005, 11:03 AM: Message edited by: Carl Puppchen ]

I find this to be a very interesting thread, not surprisingly since Jason C started it. As a starting CM player I always "rushed" to the flags and squatted on it with whatever I could find in QB meetings. This works great against the AI but is disastrous against a good human - now my QB's vs my usual opponent are like boxing matches, waiting for the other guy to move so that you can make a deadly counter-strike while he is exposed. To me the real issue isn't infantry vs infantry attacks. The real issue is that infantry just isn't very powerful in CM terms, just like in real life. I learned this the hard way over many CM battles, but it was driven home hard when a single T34 (conscript, even) with cannister shot (case to the Russians) just leveled an entire company of infantry in "our backs to the volga". It was a slaughter, one I do not want to repeat again. If you get beyond like 1940-1 when there wasn't too much direct fire HE flying around (except for the Russians, who were way ahead on this front all the way until the end) infantry is usually cowering and waiting to take objectives until the battlefield is cleared of enemy guns, tanks, MG's, and bigger mortars with LOS. The real battle for superiority is over these weapons and infantry plays a relatively minor, supporting role in the calculation of supremacy, but in the end they are the ones that move onto the objective after the enemy force has been destroyed (in line with Jason's thesis). The place where infantry is a critical component of the defense and on the attack is in the city where LOS is short and SMG's and squad AT weapons (including zooks and shrecks) make up the backbone of the defense. In this setup the attackers' typical advantage in arty and tanks is much less compelling because of short LOS and then all of the infantry vs infantry tactics become crucial. But to me in a typical game the infantry is sneaking around out of cover waiting for the "big" weapons to clear the field before attacking. At that point, the remaining enemy defenders open up but they are typically routed by direct HE fire and gunfire since the defending tanks and AT guns have been destroyed and it is all over but the shouting. It is rare to see an infantry assault against infantry. It happens, but only rarely in the CM games I play.

The boats aren't in the water. The boats are still on land, they never reached the water. Sorry I wasn't clear in my post.

I created a scenario called "water struggle" that is up at the depot and the proving grounds. In this scenario, some of my boats came under enemy fire. The infantry squads that were moving forward with the boats stopped moving and broke. However, the boats still have the lines indicating that they have "move" orders when I look at "show all moves". But if you click on a boat you only get LOS. Now comes the strange part. My men try to embark the boat, but they can never embark. They spend turn after turn with their little legs moving in place as they attempt to embark. I even gave up on that and had to try to embark different boats, but still no dice. I picked a boat that was "empty" and without soldiers at the start and one of my panicked squads was able to board that boat and try to cross the river. Any thoughts? Is this a known bug?

I have played hundreds of cmak / cmbb games and NEVER seen an auto surrender...

I always play the axis and my usual opponent always plays the allies. Since he played the russians a lot in CMBB he had a lot of conscripts. Conscript russians are even harder than typical conscripts because their command delays are enormous. This is partially mitigated by the human wave command, but this command certainly has its detractors, as you can see on the forum if you look it up. He had a very interesting analysis. He considered any conscript a huge success if it shot off all of its ammo before dying. That was a sign that he did it right! I also use this rule of thumb on my italian truck-gun things I tend to get stuck with by the computer (we play random games for fun sometimes, damn I never pick those voluntarily) - if I shoot off the ammo of those things it would be a miracle! As far as attacking with conscripts, it is very hard, don't let the posters on this site mislead you. They get panicked easily and take a LONG time to reform, and then you have to give them new orders. Certainly the company commander is absolutely critical since he can rally anyone. It goes without saying but the longer you can keep the conscripts from being fired on the better off you are. I have little / no luck attacking with conscripts, or even green infantry. I find that they can defend OK in some circumstances (reverse slope / low visibility) and give them short covered arcs so they shoot off all their ammo quickly (especially if they have SMG's). Of course, you can't even use covered arcs with some conscripts so you have to "hide" them or just place them where they can't see the enemy until they are REALLY close. Good luck!

Also water struggle which I posted up at the scenario depot.

B

I just finished our backs to the tiber against my usual opponent and it was a draw after some of the most NUTS fighting ever. It even had the "super bomb" bug which didn't impact the outcome but made the final map of slaughter even more desolate. Go to the "what the heck happened" thread in the main CMAK forum to see it or check out my site at What the Heck Happened?

If you look at the timing, the "flattening" occurred at about 15 seconds and the bomb that destroyed the JPz tank happened about 17 seconds. Does this happen a lot? It destroyed about 100 hours of plotting.... grrr... I haven't seen this before.

I was playing a scenario I created called "our backs to the tiber" modelled after "our backs to the volga". At about 15 seconds into a turn, a huge single explosion occurred and blew up (rubbled) about 46 building squares and docks across the entire left side of the board. These are all heavy building hexes, and it happens at the exact same time so it was basically 1 shell or 1 bomb. Neither side has heavy arty - the allies do have 2 planes but one is making a bombing run at 17 seconds elsewhere and I have never seen a bomb do anything like this. At the site (link below) I have shots of the explosion and the aftermath. I also posted a copy of the movie that you can watch as the axis player (no password required, I am very trusting ). If you don't believe me that there is no weird super heavy arty you can open up the scenario and look at it under the editor. CMAK- what the heck happened?

Uhhh.... what about the 88mm FLAK? What about commander Bach? What about Hellfire Pass? Also snipe with the 6 pounder guns. If the enemy has little / no HE on armor AT guns are in hog heaven. After the Sherman with 75mm direct HE both sides can dish it out and the defensive stuff is proportionally more vulnerable.

Well for my scenarios I play them PBEM against my "usual opponent" before I post them at the depot. So at least I have some idea of whether the scenario is remotely cool / balanced or not. I will start posting them up at the proving grounds too - I have 2 up there - our backs to the tiber and water struggle - and no feedback yet, but it is early. If you are playing HTH or PBEM I highly recommend our backs to the tiber - it is NUTS and a lot of fun.

Are you talking about the cmbb scenario? It is up there - has like 60 downloads.

It is a good idea for posting at the proving grounds. I just joined and put "our backs to the tiber" up there. I will put some of my other ones over there, too. Hans - if you have any recommendations for games 1) vs AI as axis 2) as PBEM let me know and I'd be glad to trade. [ February 20, 2005, 08:28 PM: Message edited by: Carl Puppchen ]

I have posted 9 scenarios under carl puppchen for cmak over at the scenario depot with ZERO reviews. The 2 reviews up there are from my "usual" opponent. I did receive an email tip about a bug in my scenario that I fixed and reposted and that was much appreciated. I know that there is a big thread about the depot here but... come on... I'll take one lousy review Try "our backs to the tiber" - I am playing that against my usual opponent and we are having a blast. It has a lot of action and is only 30 turns with the objectives in play very quickly. Maybe some of it has to do with the fact that my scenarios are kind of weird (or maybe not very good) in that they are all for PBEM play (or HTH) and have random reinforcements to spice things up. Oh well. Any help appreciated.

Hello. I am the person who wrote the artillery section for the CM Wiki. I am going to paraphrase this WAY down for the site, to say that if the spotting round goes out in the times indicated it will always be on target, else you probably have a 1/6 chance or less of it being on target. Recommend that you cancel the strike at that point or resign yourself to a crapshoot (sometimes you don't have time to retarget, especially if you have Russian / Italian arty which takes FOREVER to bring down). This reinforces the "target ahead" theory (I need a better word for it) which means you pick a target 5-7 turns ahead of your movement and try to get your spotter in LOS 1-2 minutes (1 minutes or 30 seconds is all you need, but this is cushion) prior to the strike arriving. This is a bread and butter CM tactic especially when you are attacking (lots of times on defense you will have TRPs). I wish that there was more randomness in this... but that is for another thread. Thanks for all the work in figuring this out.

Not only can guys get killed by traffic, I am always frustrated at traffic jams when I try to move a few vehicles down the road at once. The tac AI gives them all insane waypoints and they just kind of poke around. Where are the MP's directing traffic Now I resort to giving the most important units move fast orders and leaving the other units stock still.

Folke - I was thinking about setting up a wiki related to project management. Can you send me an email (in my profile) with any tips you might have on how to get one hosted externally (I am not much of a programmer) and anything else that I might learn from your experience? I added some more on artillery and am helping out in the armor section. Don't care much about the super bowl since my team is out of it anyways [ February 06, 2005, 07:50 PM: Message edited by: Carl Puppchen ]

GLK - did you see that Dean Wormer died? Might want to put an RIP for him in your signature

Wasn't scrounging somewhat modeled by the fact that you go to "low" ammo and don't run out entirely? I think scrounging in ASL was for pulling MG's off dead vehicles but I could be wrong. Need to find my old manual Someone mentioned flexible victory conditions - we do have a bit of that in CMAK in that some units might exit for points, and you have dynamic flags, but I instantly remembered the "take 3 stone buildings" or also some sort of loss limit on forces, although this can be modified in CMAK too.

By the way, what does Green as Jade mean?

I did design all of my games for PBEM or human to human. I enjoyed "a thousand ways to die" but since I spend 95% of my CM time against a human opponent, I wanted to start building versions of these scenarios for face to face play. The first thing I'll admit is that it is HARD to create a balanced scenario. I try to pick situations that I find interesting and that usually isn't a meeting engagement with roughly equal forces on both sides. Thus if it is hard to create a balanced scenario normally, it is twice as hard to create a balanced one with random reinforcements, and really it is just a wild guess when you throw in dynamic flags. I play each of these scenarios against a human opponent that is a good even match. If one of us is stomping the other, I usually go in and change the forces for one side or the other before I post it up on the depot. In these scenarios it is usually me who gets the stomping The random aspect certainly impacts play balance. In the scenario with the most downloads called "heavy traffic" I as the German player received way more reinforcements (reins as we call them) way sooner than the Allies. One item that kind of makes up for this is that when you get reins you tend to hurl them at the enemy because their forces are building up, too, and thus time is against you. If you have an advantage, you should use it as soon as possible! This behavior rewards higher risk attacks (compared to a plodding attack designed to minimize casualties, which is what I would typically do in a CM scenario) which, in turn, leads to more interesting and fun situations. When you play a reasonable opponent at the end of the scenario you typically adjust your expectations for the reins. In that heavy traffic game it was a draw but really this was a victory for the Allies because my opponent played a better game than I did to earn that draw. The way I design a scenario tends to be self-correcting. The reins come in near your "defense" flags, so your opponent has to cross the board and mix it up on your end of the field while your reins only have to motor a bit and they are in the thick of things. Thus even if you are losing and have gotten the short end of the "luck" stick, you still have a chance as long as you know that there are some reins that MIGHT show up to turn the tide or at least allow you to contest an objective. I think that the random reinforcements cause more realistic behavior. The fact that your opponent could be reinforced at any time adds a lot of uncertainty to the mix. A real-world commander never knows what they are up against, they could be heavily outnumbered or it could be a walk-over. In a typical CM scenario as a defender you can usually tell what the enemy has in a few turns and as attacker you have a good idea of the defense facing you after you probe it effectively. In the random scenario, you know what you can see, but you can also bet that it will change, and the force balance could tilt in or away from your favor at any time. Now that I have played so many random scenarios I honestly get a bit bored when playing a "typical" scenario because it seems too structured. As a commander I feel that I know too much about what I have and what my opponent probably has. In a random scenario I know that both of us have to keep on our toes! As far as balanced, I would say that - heavy traffic - a bridge too far - random - khamsin are the most balanced. A bridge too far has some of the most intense combat this side of the volga! - bloody beach - water struggle are a total crap shoot because of the random nature AND dynamic flags. Water struggle also has boats! - bulge - tobruk 1940 - abbey hill - our backs to the tiber seem to be reasonably balanced but bulge also throws in "exit for points" which makes it more of a crap shoot. Abbey hill is such a slaughter that you are exhausted by the time it is 1/2 over. Tiber probably will approach Abbey Hill in terms of dead and if the Allied player is blundering around it will be a fiasco for them (my Allied opponent is very meticulous). I hope this answers the question and I hope it helps. Down load the scenarios and try them against a human. Feedback is welcome - use the scenario depot or send me an email at my profile. Check out my web link for articles, background and other stuff.