simon21

It's just a decision battlefront made a long time ago.  Keep the price high.  A lot of specialist games are like this.  Every so often one of us suggests they get on steam or do a sale and it gets thwacked.  They sorta have competitors.  WeGo though is what I really though, and that's unique.

Realistic does not mean huge.  Realistic does not require special conditions of five times as much clock time.  Green units, 30-50% more time, and less symmetric forces can all improve realism, but none is strictly required (you can have 2 out of 3 e.g.).  
 
As for loss tolerance, the game model issue is that rally is rather too rapid and too complete (which greens do help with, incidentally).  Another approach to that I will describe below.
 
There is also a scenario design issue of designers frequently putting too much into terrain objectives that are all controlled at start by one side - or similar effects with exit conditions - which basically force a push for complete victory.  The better design for loss realism is to have a moderate amount of points for terrain objectives compared to those potentially available from knock out points, and then in addition to spread the terrain objectives around, some being quite easy for the attacker to reach and hold.  So that a normal, probing or tentative attack outcome would split the terrain objective points, with perhaps the attacker getting 200 of them and the defender 300 or 400.  Not 500-600 to nothing, unless the attacker takes the entire field.
 
There is another way to enforce realistic loss tolerance levels by using global morale.  It requires the players to adopt the system and abide by it, rather than any change to the game engine or scenario design (though the scenario design should specify the details).  Each side is given a global morale level that is its "continue the mission" or "critical" level.  If the side's global morale is below its critical level at the start of an orders phase, that side must click the "cease fire" option.  Notice, either side *may* choose to prepare for cease fire, as usual - this global morale just sets an additional "must".  If the defender thinks he is winning, he might voluntarily choose it each turn.  If he then drives the attacker's global morale below its critical level, the attacker will be forced to choose "ceasefire" as well, the two will match up, and the scenario will end, then and there.  This represents a combat broken off, with the attacker ceasing his efforts to try again later or somewhere else or using different tactics or forces, or the defender retreating from the position.
 
This gives a much more realistic way of fighting, in the sense that the force must be kept tolerably intact, in reasonable morale state etc, or it simply will not continue the mission.  If the opponent doesn't want to let it break off, this still won't end the fight early - the other side just won't have picked "cease fire" in that case, and the combat continues.  If both sides are ragged out, however, the fight *won't* continue. So no fighting to the last man on each side, ammo exhausted, trading haymakers at 4 meters with the last dismounted tank crews, etc.
 
As for how to make more realistic scenarios, when I was designing actively for CM1 I took inspiration from operational wargames I was playing at the same time.  I would just log local battles to simulate (at greatly reduced, merely "representative" scale, of course) from the combats that occurred in the operational game.  Those tend to be rather lopsided and to feature combined arms relationships that are not symmetric or ideal.  So e.g. sometimes a full company of German tanks with a few recon infantry on motorcycles attack a pure rifle infantry defense, that has nothing more than a single 45mm ATG as AT weapon, and in open farmland terrain.  On another occasion, such a German force might be called upon to attack through a dense forest along a narrow secondary road, against prepared defenses including mines.  Very different tactical task, that.
 
The point is precisely to avoid any one formula as supposedly "typical", to say to heck with "play balance", and instead just make lots of varied situations that feature only this long suit against that one, in this type of terrain problem or another.  Both sides need to assess what they can actual accomplish in the situation in front of them - which may be only "die gloriously", lol.
 
FWIW.

Small arms fixation, rather silly.  70% plus of all casualties are caused by artillery fire, including the common medium mortars,  but heavily dominated by divisional artillery, where all the fire control and ammunition supply was concentrated.  Of casualties caused by bullets, machineguns are by far the leading cause, both infantry crew served and vehicle mounted.  Maybe 1 in 6 battlefield casualties were caused by all smaller arms combined, and perhaps less.  Those split between close range fire at broken enemies or very rapidly decided knife fights, and long range fire making up in time-extent what it lacked in specific lethality.  Meaning rifles taking isolated potshots for *hours* on end, whenever a target briefly exposed itself.
 
CM players try to use infantry as an arm of decision in its own right, accepting very heavy casualties to mash like on like and trade with similar enemies, at ranges down to point blank.  That did happen occasionally in the actual war, of course, but always as a sign of a fearsome stuff up in the chain of plans and maneuvering and combined arms application.
 
Normally SMGs don't kill many infantrymen because normally friendly infantrymen spend very little time within 50 meters of the enemy.  Artillery and mortars and tanks and such all plaster him at 500 to 1000 yards.  Then MGs, modestly supplemented by aimed rifle fire, mostly keeps him from getting within 200 yards - the MGs rather more effective in the 250 to 500 yard range envelope and the rifles and such kicking in from 250 down to 100 - with few ever getting that close.
 
When infantry does get that close to the enemy it is after the heavier stuff has seriously messed him up, to finish him off or force him to retreat or to take prisoners.  Sometimes it has to threaten that to reveal the defenders by the threat of close approach in far superior numbers - then it mostly gets stopped as described in the previous, and the friendly heavy stuff finds something to "chew on" and goes to work.  In all of which, infantry are targets far more than direct threats, and their firepower mostly defensive, suppressing their opposite numbers long before they can close.
 
Armies went to intermediate rather than full power cartridges after WWII because they had found that infantry only has to deal with the 300 yard and under range, because heavier stuff in the combined arms toolbox completely dominates all fighting at longer ranges.  Everyone with a carbine caliber weapon capable of full automatic fire gave all the benefits of SMGs without their limited range drawbacks, while being fully capable out to the 300 yard mark, beyond which small arms fire was tactically irrelevant.  
 
To get a realistic sense of these things in CM, you just have to play realistic scenarios that make full use of the combined arms "kit", and that reflect the "never fight fair" lopsidedness of real combat.  When instead you artificially force everything to be a short range, even odds, infantry dominated encounter, and in lots of cover, you won't get historically realistic outcomes or importance of different weapons.  You've cherry picked the occasions for automatic small arms carried by each man, to shine.
 
Fight in open steppe terrain and see how important SMGs are.  Give the attacking side 12 tubes of 105mm artillery with 100 rounds per gun and see how important SMGs are.  Give one side an SMG infantry company and the other side a Panzer IVG company and see how important the SMGs are.   That war as a whole was not even knife-fights inside 100 yards between evenly matched infantry companies.  When it was - some city fighting e.g. - infantry loss rates were astronomical and SMGs were highly prized.  That just wasn't the whole war.