Bulletpoint

[...] First thing to realise that "hunt" is not very effective. Even if your guys have an enemy contact marker, walking along with a hunt command will get them cut to pieces. They will rarely spot the enemy first. So what you do is (if you HAVE to clear woods.. the best is to try to avoid it) is massive suppressive fire. You can rarely target very far into the woods, but in some cases, you can make bullets travel a couple of squares. Then after hosing down, you crawl forward, and rinse and repeat. No, it's not very fast or efficient. But it's the only SOP I've found for this situation. There is no magic trick. Clearing woods will cost you.

I doubt you'll find anyone here who disagrees

Come on, you lost the opportunity to catch a completely fictional fish...

I like the changes to make infantry less likely to run away. It seems more realistic that soldiers will not abandon positions of cover, and it also increases the challenge of many scenarios when you can't just flush out defenders by artillery or suppressive fire. I'm currently replaying the huge scenario 'Mission to Maas' by @theforger, and the different AI is definitely felt. The American paratroopers really put up a good fight.

That's good.

I'd be happy with just flamethrowers burning out buildings. It feels so silly to see FTs attack buildings and nothing really happening. Make flamethrowers great again. Or just useful.

For long ranges, you don't even need to give them the arc. They choose whether to shoot or not based on their weapons as well. So for example if you dismount a scout car crew to scout ahead, and they are only armed with pistols, an arc is rarely needed.

It depends a lot on terrain - both how much tall grass/weeds there are and if you're trying to crawl down a slope facing the enemy, etc. Also the relative experience levels. On this parched Italian hill, there's probably not enough vegetation to be sneaky. In many cases, it's perfectly possible to crawl into position unseen. But in any case, one should not play WW2 with a modern warfare "spec ops" mindset.

They're getting a LOT of free publicity from the good youtubers putting videos out there. People who are interested in military history will get the videos in their suggested feed, and then I suspect a lot of those will end up buying one or more games. That kind of publicity was something that small games companies could only dream of before the internet.

I remember seeing this happen, but it's a long time since the last occurrence. At least in CMFB.

Even I don't think there's an issue here

Hopefully it will be changed in the final version. Several vehicles in CMFB have the same problem with the crewmembers placed way too high. I've been reporting some of them.

I thought I was being all clever, but it seems I was not the only one to figure out what mission it was based on the description It was my first CM scenario too.

Yes, and this assisting soldier is also the reason why it takes extra time for MGs to set up - when you run a team with an MG to a position, they arrive fast but then the assistant has to crawl slowly from one end of the team to the other side before the MG can start deploying. Whereas in reality, the assistant would follow the gunner and go prone next to him, ready to help with the ammo belts. This was one of the first issues I reported six-seven years ago. It was obviously never seen as a priority to fix.

Problem is, AA is pretty much useless. I played a user-made scenario some time ago where the player gets more than 20 AA vehicles (three or four guns each) against only two attacking aircraft. I played the mission several times, and the average result was that after 30 minutes, one of the two planes had been shot down. And there was no notable decrease in the number of times the planes attacked or their accuracy. That a strafing place costs 30 points seems to be a simple typo in the cost table, like when rocket artillery cost way less than they should.

Yes, they will take some fire and casualties, but in a WW2 setting, it's often a trade off worth making. If casualties can be expected to be at reasonable levels, you trade a couple of riflemen for many minutes of time. That time can then be used in the later part of the battle to prevent casualties by having more time to take the buildings. But it always needs a close evaluation. Where do your guys crest the hill exactly? How far do they have to run to cover? How much concealment will they have by the sparse trees? What's the range to the enemy position? How much time do you have in total? Etc.

In most cases, you don't sneak up the SBF element. You gain fire superiority through maneuver elements and then shift to the SBF element to make the rifles able to get closer. I don't think you're gaining any real advantage by flanking right, and the small farm seems to control the low wall you need to take in order to take the big buildings, so here's what I would do: Run the maneuver element through the trees to the first low wall. Immediately fire all rifles at the big buildings. Once they are suppressed, run up your fire element and set up MGs and mortars. Small mortars are nearly useless against buildings, except for (short lived) suppression. Use them to take out enemies behind low walls. MGs now take over suppression while the rifles flank left to take up positions at the low walls left of small farm (which is also suppressed by your MGs). Then the rifles take the small farm and you can then approach the final objective through the trees or along the low wall. Typically in CM scenarios, you never reach the final objective, because the enemies surrender before that.

LOL What @Wicky said the run away to the ground floor too quickly. I like that they changed that. Aways felt it was a bit too easy just to flush out building defenders like that. Or at least force them to the ground floor where they often would have no LOS.

I appreciate them taking the time to get it right. But I often wonder about the TO&E. For example, when HMG teams don't have any binoculars, but flamethrower teams do. Probably there's some logic there that eludes me. But then again I'm no military or history expert.

Thanks for posting the patch notes. Do you know what kind of inappropriate reaction this one is about?

Any patch notes available? Especially for CMBN and CMFB? Checked the website but couldn't find any..

Because CMBN 4.0 has a serious bug making troops do suicide charges.

There's actually an official map in CMFB that has tall bocage, if my memory is not playing tricks on me. Can't remember the name of it right now... But yes, the data for tall bocage is somewhere in the CMFB code, it's just blocked from being used in the editor.

Got the file, thanks

This is definitely one to watch.