Kommissar

LOL "The Notebook" is #4 on the IMDB list. Yeah, a real great war movie there .

It sounds like you're describing "Red Hordes". That village on the German right flank is practically guaranteed to be overrun by the Soviets. The defenders are weak in quality and quantity compared to the titular Soviet forces you are facing. The other comments have identified what you need to do in terms of general tactics - keep them at long ranges, drop explosives on them. I would add suppressive "target light" commands to make sure your LMGs keep them suppressed and hopefully panicking.

My hat is off to you sir. After realizing that there were two MGs I had no chance of knocking out and losing a dozen guys, I called off the attack. Given that it was only a probe, I felt justified in doing so, although I guess I would probably be shot for cowardice when we got back to our lines. It reminded a bit of that battle from CMBB in 1941 where you played a cavalry company that charged across the grass into a waiting MG and got obliterated.

I found it quite frustrating to deal with the numerous Soviet ATGs. They would take lots of hits from the 88mm cannons of the King Tigers and be seemingly destroyed, only to have the one surviving gunner (it's always the last guy that seems hard to kill) get up a minute later and start shooting again. Although they could never penetrate the armour, the sheer volume of shots did a number on the optics and tracks of the KTs which left me in trouble when the big Soviet armour showed up.

I think the scenario should have been named "Green Hordes" since you can demolish the limited Soviet infantry fairly quickly but are left fighting nothing but Soviet armour with grenades and panzerfaust, as observed. My experience was fairly similar to OP, except I had the misfortune of having the main gun taken out on a StuG relatively early on by a lucky shot. The other one managed to take out 10 T34s before it ran out of ammo, so I guess it all balanced out in the end.

Agreed Lethaface. I understand the criticism that based on the description, it's a little surprising to find so many Panthers and defenders, but I don't think that there's no place for a balanced scenario, even if "balanced" battles were rare in the time period. There have been several attempts at scenarios that depict actions aside from the balanced slug-fests, like the first mission from the German campaign in CMBN where you have to scout out enemy positions etc. The problem is that it was boring and not what the engine was designed for. The only scenario I've played that falls into this category is Dawn Patrol, which was "realistic" in the sense that there was a massive imbalance in favour of the Germans. Any sane commander would have called off the probe once the strength of the German position became apparent. Still, it's not a fun scenario to take a dozen casualties and then call off the attack, even if that's what would have happened IRL.

I managed to destroy all the buildings with only one StuH (the other got taken out by that pesky T34-85 before it got any shots on target) and the panzers. I think it's luck to some extent, as some buildings when down a lot quicker than others. Great scenario though. It was a mad dash to the exit zone with Soviet armour hot on the trail of my troops.

Well I'm glad to see that we've achieved consensus on the forum (although I suppose there were some early posters who endorse the new UI). I don't know if BFC is going to change the UI (or make it a toggle option as has been suggested) or if it's up to modders.

I agree 100%.

I get that the it's easy to see the number of green rifles. My beef is with the rifles all being yellow, regardless of whether the soldier is still standing or a full casualty. I appreciate that there is a red "Casualty" written across that tells you that, it just takes some time to sort through. I find it's a sea of yellow rifles when a squad has taken some hits, and it takes me a minute to figure out how many guys are out of action versus how many are wounded but still able to do something. Regarding the posts about not being able to see what gun the soldier was carrying on the teal descriptors to the left, you can usually tell who had the LMG because they are described as "Gunner". I appreciate that you cannot tell if a "Soldier" had an SMG or rifle. IMO, a simple fix would be to have a green rifle for OK, a yellow for wounded but still standing, and a red rifle for a casualty. It would make it a lot easier to do the count as you wouldn't have to check which yellow rifles also have "casualty" written over them.

Also, I don't like how the rifle becomes yellow like the walking wounded guys. It means I often have to look closely to see who is still standing (albeit slightly wounded) and who is entirely out of the battle.

You could always check that by looking on the left of the screen at the teal descriptors of what the men are doing. It says, e.g. "Team Leader: Aiming", "Soldier: Cowering" and tells you "Casualty" if they are dead. No need to look for the body on the battlefield. The big writing in the centre of the UI is redundant and distracting as noted by others.

Yeah, in the same vein there was that hilarious US training/propaganda video that talked about why the M1917 Browning was actually far superior to the "inaccurate" MG42:

Although not historical in any way, I admit it would kind of fun to be able to do custom loadouts on a squad to have something like 6 LMGs or all MP44s. It would be interesting to see at what range the MP44s consistently beat out the PPSHs. You could also, e.g., have a pistols-only round between a couple of platoons that might be entertaining.

Well I think the problem is that the troops would be cowering or have fled long before the circumstances that led to their death in the game. I admit it would be funny to have a situation along the lines of The Thin Red Line where your company commander refused to send his troops to attack the hill and the troops just sat there despite your repeated "assault" orders. That being said, you'd probably have a lot of complaints on the forums.

I agree that there may very well have been times IRL where most of the casualties in a battle were KIA, and that CM simulates the types of battles where that was more likely to happen (last stands, etc.). I've noticed, however, that even when you have light casualties in a map (i.e. less than 10%), you still have the high KIA/WIA ratio, as OP noticed, with like 10 dead and 4 wounded. Now I know that there may be a good reason for the 10 dead in a specific instance (e.g. a tank blew up), and that I don't have the hard stats from 100 AARs to back it up, but I strongly doubt that the KIA ratio increases the greater the percentage of your overall casualties, aside from the fact that you may not be able to buddy aid as many fallen if you have no troops to do it with. In sum, I agree that there may be some battles where the KIA ratio would be accurate, but it seems from my experience (and I stand to be corrected) that it is just a random number that is generally too high. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter as, whether the guy is WIA or KIA, the gameplay effect is the same - he's out of action. It's still odd seeing the end of a campaign AAR, where you've inflicted 800 KIA, 400 WIA and 10 Missing (captured) on the enemy, when IRL you think it would probably be more like 100 KIA, 250 WIA and 860 captured. I guess that's the nature of a tactical simulator, where, as has been noticed, battles tend to be a little bloodier than IRL. While we may not be able to do anything about the captured for coding and gameplay reasons (people would be furious if their whole left flank just decided to raise the white flag), it seems that changing the KIA/WIA ratio would be easy to do, and maybe increase the chance that buddy aid saves someone, to simulate the effect you are describing (e.g. when a whole company is wiped out there is no one to take the wounded back to the medics).

It's certainly been interesting to read the posts about casualty figures from the front, and I think everyone agrees with the point that CM battles lead to much higher casualty rates than were typical IRL. The OP, however, was not concerned with this percentage, but rather the percentage of casualties that are KIA.

I think Dawn Patrol would have done well as a campaign mission, along the lines of the "School of Hard Knocks" (mission 2 from Courage and Fortitude campaign of CMBN). After feeling out the German lines, you should be given the option of cease-firing and waiting for tanks/artillery, while incurring some penalty or disadvantage to the campaign.

Agreed with OP and Vanir Ausf B. Using less aggressive tactics reduces your total casualties, but KIA/WIA ratio is still way too high. I also agree that troops do not surrender nearly as often as I expect they would IRL. While the surrendering issue may have good gameplay and coding reasons behind it, I don't get why they don't decrease the seemingly random chance that a given wound is fatal? Seems like a very simple fix. Also, it would be nice if they would add more stats in the AAR - total casualties (for those of us too lazy to add WIA and KIA), percentage of troops that were casualties (including preferably a breakdown by role - support, infantry, vehicle crew etc.). This would be especially helpful in campaigns. On a final note, one thing I do like is how wounded troops can become KIA if subjected to further indirect fire. I would roll my eyes in CMBB when I would obliterate an enemy platoon with very heavy repeated artillery and direct fire such that few would have survived, only to see a KIA/WIA ration of 1/5.

Fair enough. I take your point and agree about the objective being as you've described and not requiring you to go hunt down every last trooper. I suppose "mop-up" was a poor descriptor for the scenario. Broadly speaking, however, I think that OP was really interested in how to deal with forest fights when they do happen. I'm probably as responsible for this as anyone else in this thread, but it seems like we've digressed into been snooty about how bad a commander you must be if you find yourself in a forest fight. I agree that as the German player you should play to your strengths and avoid forests as much as possible, and we can debate to what extent that is possible on each map, but I think given the terrain of the region they are unavoidable in some circumstances. I'm sure even the best players sent some troopers into the woods in Augustow. I think we need to move beyond what we all agree is the best option and focus on what to do if you do find yourself in a forest fight.

Also, you get condition points (and deny them to the Soviets) by causing casualties and breaking their morale, which you need to engage their infantry to do. So it's not only 1/3 of points that relate to causing casualties. Simply bypassing their flanking forces and going straight for objectives will probably give you a win, but not a total victory. Finally, and I am going on memory and don't have access to the briefing on the computer I'm on now, but IIRC part of the idea behind the scenario is that you are conducting mop-up operations. It would seem a little silly to bypass the forces that you have been tasked with clearing, even if you still came out alright in points by simply holding the objectives.

In my playthrough (and there may be different AI plans), there was an SMG company that tried to flank me in the woods. I agree that it probably only represented about 25% of the enemy force, and that there were plenty of forces along the edge of the forest that the tanks could fire on, but I found that the infantry would generally retreat deeper into the woods after taking hits from the tanks, and that a mop up force was necessary. Also, I ended up killing almost all of the flanking SMG company by using a combination of the tactics identified in this thread (target light, carefully driving tanks into the woods), and I don't think you could force a surrender without doing some serious damage to that force. So, in the end, I agree that you can (and should) try to avoid fighting in the forest as much as possible, but you are going to need to to a limited extent. Also, there's a pioneer platoon at the final objective (I never got that far before AI auto-surrendered), so even if you stayed strictly to the map objectives, you'd have to deal with them, and they seemed to be fairly deep in the woods.

JasonC - how do you call artillery in deep woods? You need LOS on the target to call it in, and you're not seeing more than 50m ahead in the forest, which means you're calling it in on your poor spotter more than the enemy.

I was kidding. I guess I should have put a ":P" after the comment about tactics.

I generally agree with this statement, but the Augostow Plague Boil scenario is essentially a "clear the forest of Soviets" where you derive most of your points from casualties inflicted on the other side. The Worborlin Bridgehead scenario also has an objective that is in thick woods, so you've got to roll up your sleeves.