Hi All,
New to the forum. Although I've been enjoying the three CM's for over a year now, consider me a noobie and an aspiring Grognard.
I have two questions I need advice on regarding scenario and operations design for CM. I am an above average map maker and create scenarios popular with gaming buddies. Until now, I have always created 'Fictional' battles, and I am looking to create some 'Semi-Historical' scenarios (initially Italian campaign)
1.) Despite a number of attempts to search the internet for material, I have been unable to come across any website reference material that covers events from a tactical level. I have recently seen the CM reference book advertised, and it looks good! But, if anyone has any links to historical / tactical / geographical websites to add a bit of historical impact to my scenarios, it would be appreciated. Although a fan of the series, I just don't have the time to invest in extensive research.
2.) A question that has occurred to me (since the days of the old Close Combat game series) is scale. If a CM scenario used say a 1km wide by 2km long map, what is the number of units one could (historically) expect to see on it? Would it be something like battalion strength infantry, and a company (9 - 12?) of tanks? Anyone know how many battalions to a division? More to the point, if you were going to include an entire battalion in a scenario, how big should the map be to be a proper historical simulation?
What I would like to do is to have a rough guide to estimate actual map scale of an historical location, and estimate what number of troops would be present on a map, say per kilometre-wide front.
I read about operations where they (a division) take a large town. Would 1km of an historical town perhaps look like a dense city map if accurately portrayed in CM? Would a blob of forest on an operational map actually be a carpet of woods in CM? I downloaded a nice illustration of the Lirry Valley (spelling?), and it was great as a visual reference for map creation, but I realised that at that it was probably many kilometres wide, making it useless as a CM map, except perhaps for 'artistic inspiration'.
Any tips, guidelines and links would be much appreciated. I plan to upload the maps / scenarios / ops for the CM community to test (perhaps the "Proving Grounds"?). Thanks!
