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I'm not sure what this is trying to prove? Evidently all the built-in scenarios have an AI plan, since most of the units move, and only a small portion of them fail to do so.

You make it sound easy, but somehow I feel that if it was quite so easy it would already have been done a decade ago. Hence I suspect there is more to it all.

Two scenarios = double the work designing and testing scenarios, so unlikely to happen unless fans start to create modified versions themselves. Maybe in a few years Battlefront will develop a massive supercomputer AI in the cloud, and all the games can connect to it and a mega-AI that uses machine learning and algorithms to create the best AI in the universe will provide a challenge for us. Or, more realistically, maybe the games could collect data on player moves and use that to automatically generate more complex and efficient AI plans. And even this option would be a massive undertaking on the programming side, and considering the scope of the requirements I feel it's quite far outside the budgets and possibilities Battlefront is working with. But it is nice to hope and dream. Oh, I will be testing out the scenarios in Black Sea in the same way in the coming week or so, and posting their results on the Black Sea forum while linking to this discussion. Maybe someone will find it interesting to see a little bit of data on how the AI performs in different conditions and settings, and maybe it might inspire some scenario designers to tweak their plans.

While I see the merit of setting myself extra goals as the defender, I feel this is akin to modding the scenarios myself, which is not what I'm looking for when purchasing a game. I feel this issue could pretty much be remedied by admitting to the shortcomings of the scenarios and engine and AI, and adding a note either in the game description, manual or scenario descriptions that all scenarios are best played as attacker unless the mission is designed and tested to be challenging to play as the defender as well. Multiplayer is a different matter, and I feel nearly all scenarios are perfectly playable as either side with an opposing human player, but as much as I would love to have one, I remain stuck playing with the AI due to the nature of the game making it difficult to approach or maintain focus in for a lot of people. 120 turns, with each turn taking half an hour to an hour or more to set up, is just too much time to invest for my friends. Additionally, in some scenarios there are already such objectives in place in the mission design, with several touch objectives set for the defender far outside of their starting area, forcing the defender to push out of a secure position to capture forward positions before the advancing attacker can reach them. At least in non-historical scenarios, I feel this might be a suitable way to force the defender to be active as well, making it so that the defender cannot simply win by sitting still and being passive. Likewise, in many scenarios a key part of the defenders forces arrive later as reinforcements, but even in these scenarios the attacking AI currently loses due to a failure to advance past initial objectives, meaning that even with the defenders reinforcements sitting at the edge of map and never engaging the attacker, the defender ends up winning. If anything can be done in the current engine and level of AI, I think these tools might be key to creating interesting attack/defend scenarios that are playable as either side against the AI. However, this is speculation on my part, as I've never really studied the AI planning tools in any depth.

I attached an excel sheet with a list of mission and their outcomes when played as the defender, but not giving units any orders. I did not test meeting engagements, and two other missions kept crashing for me, so I ended up giving up on testing them. Out of 18 scenarios tested: Attacker was able to score some kind of victory in 5 scenarios, mostly smaller ones Attacker managed a draw in 2 scenarios, though I feel these were mostly due to the defender having objectives that required them to take on a more active role Attacker lost against a passive defender in 11 scenarios, regularly granting the defender major victories The following scenarios seem to be somewhat suited for playing as a defender, though with an active player most will likely prove easy to win. Die Patrouille Trouble with Siegfried Lanzerath Ridge Hung up and Chenneux Wax Museum I discovered that the mission I had mostly had trouble with in the past was Hung up and Chenneux. An entire heavy weapons platoon of the attacking side fails to move from its starting position, sitting in a neat line at the attackers edge of the map and never joining the battle. This behaviour repeated every time I played this scenario, before and during this particular testing. CombatMissionAnalysis.xlsx

While I understand the challenges of designing AI plans as well as the fact that Combat Mission is less a game and more a simulation of sometimes unfair combat conditions, for some reason I expected the base game scenarios to be balanced out to such a degree that they would provide a challenge no matter which side you played on. Once I noticed this was not always the case, I got curious and opened this thread. So far I see three issues: 1. The attacking force and scenario combined often make it so that even if the defending played does not play and just skips all their turns, the defender can score a major victory or tactical victory. This means that even if the defender tries to actively play on their side, they can only really do worse than if they didn't play, which feels pointless and tells me the scenario is likely not worth playing as a defender. My project to catalogue what maps this occurs on is just a curious effort to see how common this is. 2. Occasionally seeing attacking AI units not move some of its units at all. In the past I've seen entire squads, especially heavy weapons teams, staying back and not moving. In this round of testing I've mostly discovered things like transport trucks, single HQ's etc not moving. In "The Muddy Affair" one of the American tanks had not moved from start, and for some reason the AI had also not dismounted any of the units on top of it, which I think amounted to a light mortar and 2 MMG's. 3. During testing I've also discovered a third problem: the AI seems to run out of planned actions 15, 20 or even 30 turns before the mission time ends. I found that, unless the defender counterattacks, the attacking AI just sits in place toward the end of the scenario, not making any attempt to reach further objectives or to inflict casualties on defender, despite not holding any objectives, or just holding one objective of, say, six. I'm not going to start preaching on how the game is "literally unplayable" because of this, or whine on how we "need better AI". These things are not something easily fixed, and in far less complex wargames than Combat Mission, other developers regularly have to stoop down to having the AI cheat in order to be challenging. Spawning more troops for the AI to just throw into the fray isn't really a feasible idea in Combat Mission, and so the massive challenge falls on the scenario designers to do the best they can with the AI plan. Somehow I've just had this fantastical notion of Combat Mission having way better and more competent AI than its competitors since the days of Combat Mission 2 where I joined the series as a teenager. Now I've learned more of the limitations of the AI, so I guess I feel a bit underwhelmed. I've still got 5 of the largest scenarios left to test, but so far there have been only 3 of the very smallest scenarios where the AI was able to score a win as the attacker (I didn't test meeting engagements). It seems that as soon as the AI reaches the first one or two of its objectives, it either runs out of plan to follow, or the chaos and casualties make it unable to even make an attempt, resulting in problem 3 described above.

I have not downloaded any extra scenarios. I am only testing the ones by Battlefront, that are provided with the game. So far I've tested 7 maps and only on 3 of them the AI was able to attack effectively.

It says the same thing in the scenario notes for the Germans. Depending on how the Americans move, they can come under MG fire from the Germans during turn 1, even if the Germans don't move. That warning is visible on the image on your previous post, too.

I've decided to run a test on all the attack/defend maps in the games to see if they all produce a similar result if the defender is just passively sitting in place and shooting on sight. Will take me a bit of time, but I'll report back and, as BornGinger suggests, report the issue as a bug if it seems to be one after this testing. As for the scenario, I don't think I can start any more cautiously as the defender than sitting in place and waiting for the Americans to come up to me. If anything, I'd expect the AI to attack more eagerly if it doesn't see any defenders even as it moves up, though maybe this is a misconception on my part?

If that really is the state of the AI, even with a plan provided for it by the scenario designer, then I kind of feel cheated here. I'll do some more research in Final Blitzkrieg and Black Sea, as those are the only CMx2 games I own, and see what I come up with.

You make a fair point, sure, and the AI is never going to be on part with a human player. However, since the game has the option of playing single player on either side, and only some scenarios have the "best played as X" warning, I'd have imagined there was some standard to ensure all the scenarios that are included in the game are at least somewhat playable on both sides unless otherwise stated in their description. And if ASL Veteran above says there is an AI plan to enable its attack in this scenario, I wonder why it seems that it's failing so badly?

Wait, are you saying that if the scenario type is "Allied attack" then it is only suited to be played with the player as the Allied side, and if it's "Axis Attack" then it should only be played as the Axis side? Since all of the scenarios that come with the game say they are either a meeting engagement, probe, attack or assault, that would mean there are no scenarios where a human could play as a defender against an AI attack? I must be misunderstanding something there, right? EDIT: I just quick-played through the scenario again. Single player, turn based, elite difficulty. Human as Axis defender, AI as Allied attacker. I didn't give any orders, I just hit end turn and fast-forwarded to the end, through all 60 turns. SS Tactical victory again, and the AI seems to have made even less progress than the last time, with none of the American infantry reaching the buildings on the edge of town. The AI reached its first objective (D'hutt outskirts) and managed to drive the Germans off their first objective (Western D'hutt). In conclusion, it seems that at least in this scenario playing as the defender is kind of pointless, but then: if that's the way Final Blitzkrieg is designed, with the AI never being able to attack as chuckdyke above suggests, then I've thoroughly misunderstood the point of the game series despite having played since CMBB2. Image link to final map state: Ey36zbS.png (2560×1440) (imgur.com)

Nothing in the "Drive them Out" scenario description indicates that it should only be played with a human as the Allied player, and hearing that there is an AI plan for it indicates that it should work (really neat to hear someone who worked on the scenario is in the thread @ASL Veteran!). The reason I raised this thread is that I keep seeing similar issues in multiple scenarios. I took some screenshots of the game as I played. I've attached one image below, taken about 15 minutes into the 60 minute scenario. The blue line indicates the movement pattern of the American Sherman tank. The red line indicates the extent to which most of the American forces had advanced up to when time ran out after turn 60, and the green line indicates an area where a few American squads moved up to in the last 10 turns. A rough outline of how the battle went: - The ridge I defended on the left received constant mortar fire, but no other attempts were made by the AI to attack it. I had to retreat troops off the ridge to preserve them, and just walked them back out there near the end of the time limit. - The 2 MG's on the right flank came under heavy MG and indirect fire, and ended up retreating after suffering considerable casualties. American forces never got close to the buildings. - The recon force on the western edge of town held out until about turn 30, then collapsed and retreated into the woods and toward the rear. The American AI shelled the forest with artillery and drove up the Sherman onto the road as if daring my MG's to fire on it, but then just sat still there for about 20 turns straight. At the end of battle I inspected the map and found the forests behind that red line crawling with 200+ Americans. Four different HQ units had stacked up in one of the buildings, with the rest scattered among their men. I think maybe 20-30 men crossed that red line, advancing toward the green line. If the AI's objectives are at all in line with mine as defender, then it seems to me that either I managed to get the AI so off-balance that it did not feel secure enough to advance, or it somehow just failed. Battle outcome was an SS tactical victory. If nobody else is having similar issues, I can only wonder what might be causing this to occur for me? I might replay the scenario later this week, or some others, and see if I can get the issue to repeat again.

This link works just fine, thank you kindly! I tried IE11, Edge and Chrome on the original link. All 3 browsers still give me the same "invalid link" error page, so no idea what's going on there. Out of curiosity: does it still work for you if you try it in incognito mode on your browser? Maybe you guys have something in the browser cache from an earlier visit that keeps it alive, but for newcomers it fails? If it still works, then I've no real idea, but I got the file now, so at least I'm good. Cheers!

Tried on my work computer now, same result. "The link you are trying to access does not exist." along with a button to go "back to sign in". Am I supposed to log in to download the patch? I tried the login button on the page https://battlefront.sharefile.com/ but I don't seem to have credentials there. At least my main battlefront account credentials don't work.

I was playing scenarios that come with the game, and the scenario notes for these scenarios do not have the warning for being only suitable for attacking or H2H. As noted in the original post, the last encounter with this issue was with the "Drive them out" scenario (Allied attack, 60 minutes) that comes with the base game. Sadly I lack suitable human opponents for H2H, so I am trying the game out with the AI, but the issues I am seeing are downright weird.

It works for you? I click on the link and it loads for a bit, then forwards me to this: Invalid Link (sharefile.com) I'll try again tomorrow on a different PC since I'll be at the office, in case it's something to do with my internet or something. Odd.

The link to the patch download seems to be broken, at least for me.

Hey folks, I've been trying to play Final Blitzkrieg on and off, but I keep encountering a weird issue at a frequency that has me wondering if I'm encountering a bug or some weird situation that only affects me. Whenever I play a scenario with the Germans as a defender, the attacking US AI seems to be passive to a fault. I've seen an entire game go by, only to discover at the end of the game that all of the AI's machine guns and mortars are sitting in a neat line back at their spawn, or the infantry just stops advancing before even reaching its first objective, aside from perhaps a few loose squads that enter buildings I've abandoned. Is this just a known "feature" of the game, as in the current state of the attacking AI? I notice most scenarios recommend that the human player take on the attacker role, but I've noticed the issue even in scenarios where this is not the case. My most recent encounter with this situation was playing the "Drive them out" scenario. As the time ran out, the US still had their tank and 250 infantry, but only some 30 of their infantry had even entered the first objective, and none made any attempt to push forward to later objectives. For the last 20 turns I just hit the end turn button and hammered the fast forward button repeatedly, since there was nothing else to do.

That's interesting. I seem to recall having done that in the past myself with no issue, so currently my best guess is some combination of graphics hardware and driver.

Hey folks, just a quick general question: is there a way to store a camera position that is not tied to a unit? Or a reliable way to repeatably get the camera to move into the same position? I'm working on a battle report video again, and being able to get the camera to the same spot after loading each PBEM file I am recording the videos off of would help me make the video massively clearer and more pleasant to watch.

Yup, can be worked around. I use the Nvidia capture tools for the same effect, but it still seems weird to me to see a game produce a screenshot from several minutes ago in time, so I was curious to know if others are seeing the same effect, or if it might just be something to do with my rig.

I wasn't able to find a discussion of this on the forums, so... Am I the only one encountering a persistent issue with CM2 games (Black Sea and Final Blitzkrieg specifically) where attempting to take a screenshot of the game almost always fails? For example, I might zoom into a unit and take a screenshot (either pressing Print Screen or Alt+Print Screen on my keyboard), but when I paste the screenshot into an editor I have an image of the games main menu or the mission briefing screen on my clipboard instead. Alt-tabbing in and out of the game a few times occasionally allows me to take a single screenshot, but if I move the camera around, I keep getting the same screenshot over and over again.

The very same! I've been around here for a long time, but rarely have anything interesting to post. As for the fix: I also discovered that the bug does not repeat if the FIRST player takes the role of the germans, so we have been able to work around the issue.

I am trying to get a friend of mine into the Combat Mission series, and though I'd get them to try a demo of one of the games. They picked Fortress Italy and we started a PBEM game so I could coach them. We chose to start with the first scenario: Fight at Vallebruca File 1: I created the game and set my password as the allies File 2: My opponent set a password File 3: I made a setup and gave my first orders File 4: My opponent had made their setup and given their first orders. After I loaded file 4, entered the password for the Allied side, reviewed the 60 seconds of action, the game then loaded me up as the Axis player, with all Axis forces in view and with me able to give them commands. I've played CMSF and CMFB in PBEM before and never seen anything like this. Could it be an issue with the demo? Or something else entirely? Has anyone had success playing the other demos via PBEM?