Bozowans

I usually dismount the infantry ASAP. I dismount them out of view if possible, split the squads up and have them spread way out across the map, keeping some good distance between each team. If the map is big and the terrain is open I might keep 100m or so between each team. Then I have them carefully move forward like a skirmish line. I don't know how the real US military does it, but it seems pretty common in Syria today for troops to advance like that (in open terrain at least).
Before long you'll start taking long-range sniper and machine gun fire, and then you can halt to figure out where the fire is coming from and what to do about it. You want to bait the enemy into shooting at you ineffectually at long range, thus exposing their positions without doing much damage. Eventually you will learn which approaches are safe and which ones aren't, and where the heaviest enemy resistance is likely to be. Your infantry should always be probing around like rats, sniffing all over the place for a safe way forward. At least that's what works best for me. Once the enemy is found, you can start concentrating forces together again for an assault.
The vehicles should be kept way back. In the WW2 games I would sometimes have the infantry advance alongside the vehicles together, but that's way too risky in the modern ones (unless you're playing Black Sea and have vehicles with APS). RPGs are just so deadly even out to 500+ meters. I only like to move the vehicles as far forward as they need to be in order for them to see or shoot at something. Otherwise they should be as far back as possible.
On the other hand, I HAVE seen the real-life Syrian Army do mad rushes at the enemy with BMPs packed full of troops, dismounting them at close range for an immediate assault. There are videos of them doing that stuff. I've seen them blow holes in walls, then rush BMPs forward right up to the building, turn around and then disgorge their infantry directly into the hole they made, without even exposing them to the outside at all. They would make sure to do it under very heavy overwatch and tank cover though, with tanks parked right near where the infantry would disembark.
Pulling off maneuvers like that in CM is really hard to do but can lead to hilarious results. Usually I just go the safer route.

I remember doing this for one scenario. I was attacking an extensive enemy trench line + bunkers behind a slope. There were a couple areas that I could sneak some scouts and observers into to look at their positions, but I couldn't do much more than that. I would have to attack it frontally. So I massed my whole force just behind the crest of the ridge, and prepared a smokescreen. Rather than smoke the ridge itself to let my troops go over it, I dropped smoke directly over half the enemy trench line, leaving the other half exposed. Then I went over the top. The smokescreen divided the enemy force and halved their firepower, so I could halt on top of the ridge and then concentrate my entire force's firepower on that one exposed enemy half. If I had smoked the ridge instead, then my force would still be exposed to 100% of the enemy's firepower once the smoke cleared.
I took casualties, but I was able to suppress that exposed half, making sure to concentrate on their heavy weapons first. Once the smoke cleared, I could shift fire toward the other half of the enemy trenches. As soon as the enemy bunkers and heavy weapons were destroyed or suppressed, I sent the infantry forward in a big wave to mop up the enemy riflemen and HQ teams that I missed earlier. It ended up working really well in the end!

Weapon ballistics and munitions. That's the one thing that CM does better than everything else IMO. No game can simulate the complexity of human behavior, but CM does a pretty masterful job with really getting down to simulating the munitions of an actual battlefield and the physics of bullets and shells and shrapnel flying around. It can be almost frightening to watch sometimes when you see companies of men get shredded to pieces with modern weaponry and you imagine what that must have looked like in reality, or how horrifying it would be to be on the receiving end of it. War movies look really fake and silly after playing CM. It's funny that we're living in an age in which video games do a better job at simulating this stuff than movies with real actors. Kind of like how Napoleonic movies do such a poor job of showing what real Napoleonic-era munitions looked like, especially with artillery and whatnot. Yet you can simulate that stuff in video games pretty easily.
With the WEGO mode in CM you can get that absurd, forensic level of detail about every little bullet flying around. You can rewind and watch an AT shell miss its target, fly between someone's legs and then smack into someone's face through a window 800 meters behind the line. Or watch bullets ricochet off a building and hit someone hiding in an alleyway. Or ricocheting into an open hatch. Or you can watch tank shells bounce off armor, fly high up into the air, and then come back down and land on some poor sap's head. Or watch bullets raining down from the sky from a firefight way on the other side of the map. Other games can do this kind of stuff -- I have fond memories of playing Red Orchestra and watching tank shells bounce off armor and then hit some dude nearby, turning him into red mist. No game has ever approached the scale of CM though with the same level of detail, with entire battalions of men running around with authentic orders of battle, visually represented down to the last man cowering in the dirt. CM was like my dream game when I was a little kid playing with toy soldiers.

Weapon ballistics and munitions. That's the one thing that CM does better than everything else IMO. No game can simulate the complexity of human behavior, but CM does a pretty masterful job with really getting down to simulating the munitions of an actual battlefield and the physics of bullets and shells and shrapnel flying around. It can be almost frightening to watch sometimes when you see companies of men get shredded to pieces with modern weaponry and you imagine what that must have looked like in reality, or how horrifying it would be to be on the receiving end of it. War movies look really fake and silly after playing CM. It's funny that we're living in an age in which video games do a better job at simulating this stuff than movies with real actors. Kind of like how Napoleonic movies do such a poor job of showing what real Napoleonic-era munitions looked like, especially with artillery and whatnot. Yet you can simulate that stuff in video games pretty easily.
With the WEGO mode in CM you can get that absurd, forensic level of detail about every little bullet flying around. You can rewind and watch an AT shell miss its target, fly between someone's legs and then smack into someone's face through a window 800 meters behind the line. Or watch bullets ricochet off a building and hit someone hiding in an alleyway. Or ricocheting into an open hatch. Or you can watch tank shells bounce off armor, fly high up into the air, and then come back down and land on some poor sap's head. Or watch bullets raining down from the sky from a firefight way on the other side of the map. Other games can do this kind of stuff -- I have fond memories of playing Red Orchestra and watching tank shells bounce off armor and then hit some dude nearby, turning him into red mist. No game has ever approached the scale of CM though with the same level of detail, with entire battalions of men running around with authentic orders of battle, visually represented down to the last man cowering in the dirt. CM was like my dream game when I was a little kid playing with toy soldiers.

I remember doing this for one scenario. I was attacking an extensive enemy trench line + bunkers behind a slope. There were a couple areas that I could sneak some scouts and observers into to look at their positions, but I couldn't do much more than that. I would have to attack it frontally. So I massed my whole force just behind the crest of the ridge, and prepared a smokescreen. Rather than smoke the ridge itself to let my troops go over it, I dropped smoke directly over half the enemy trench line, leaving the other half exposed. Then I went over the top. The smokescreen divided the enemy force and halved their firepower, so I could halt on top of the ridge and then concentrate my entire force's firepower on that one exposed enemy half. If I had smoked the ridge instead, then my force would still be exposed to 100% of the enemy's firepower once the smoke cleared.
I took casualties, but I was able to suppress that exposed half, making sure to concentrate on their heavy weapons first. Once the smoke cleared, I could shift fire toward the other half of the enemy trenches. As soon as the enemy bunkers and heavy weapons were destroyed or suppressed, I sent the infantry forward in a big wave to mop up the enemy riflemen and HQ teams that I missed earlier. It ended up working really well in the end!

I remember doing this for one scenario. I was attacking an extensive enemy trench line + bunkers behind a slope. There were a couple areas that I could sneak some scouts and observers into to look at their positions, but I couldn't do much more than that. I would have to attack it frontally. So I massed my whole force just behind the crest of the ridge, and prepared a smokescreen. Rather than smoke the ridge itself to let my troops go over it, I dropped smoke directly over half the enemy trench line, leaving the other half exposed. Then I went over the top. The smokescreen divided the enemy force and halved their firepower, so I could halt on top of the ridge and then concentrate my entire force's firepower on that one exposed enemy half. If I had smoked the ridge instead, then my force would still be exposed to 100% of the enemy's firepower once the smoke cleared.
I took casualties, but I was able to suppress that exposed half, making sure to concentrate on their heavy weapons first. Once the smoke cleared, I could shift fire toward the other half of the enemy trenches. As soon as the enemy bunkers and heavy weapons were destroyed or suppressed, I sent the infantry forward in a big wave to mop up the enemy riflemen and HQ teams that I missed earlier. It ended up working really well in the end!

I remember doing this for one scenario. I was attacking an extensive enemy trench line + bunkers behind a slope. There were a couple areas that I could sneak some scouts and observers into to look at their positions, but I couldn't do much more than that. I would have to attack it frontally. So I massed my whole force just behind the crest of the ridge, and prepared a smokescreen. Rather than smoke the ridge itself to let my troops go over it, I dropped smoke directly over half the enemy trench line, leaving the other half exposed. Then I went over the top. The smokescreen divided the enemy force and halved their firepower, so I could halt on top of the ridge and then concentrate my entire force's firepower on that one exposed enemy half. If I had smoked the ridge instead, then my force would still be exposed to 100% of the enemy's firepower once the smoke cleared.
I took casualties, but I was able to suppress that exposed half, making sure to concentrate on their heavy weapons first. Once the smoke cleared, I could shift fire toward the other half of the enemy trenches. As soon as the enemy bunkers and heavy weapons were destroyed or suppressed, I sent the infantry forward in a big wave to mop up the enemy riflemen and HQ teams that I missed earlier. It ended up working really well in the end!

The great human wave attack on Hofen! From the scenario "Day of Attrition". This is supposed to be one of the opening German attacks on the first day of the Bulge.


 
In this scenario, the Germans get two battalions of Volksgrenadiers and not much else. I think they have around 700 men in total. They must cross huge areas of open ground and capture two cities with little artillery support and no tank support, and no vehicles except a few trucks. They have some HMG platoons and some mortars, but their greatest asset is their enormous numbers of MP44s. Some squads are outfitted almost entirely with MP44s. So I figured my greatest chance was to attack en masse -- a giant human wave to cross the fields and get within rifle range as quickly as possible, so I can use the superior firepower of the MP44s.


 
To my surprise, the advance goes much more smoothly than expected. Many of the American units are overrun and annihilated, and I take many prisoners.



 
German troops overrun and destroy a battery of AT guns, gunning down the crews with their MP44s:

 
German troops fire at retreating US infantry:

 
About halfway there, some of the Germans halt while they wait for a smoke barrage to come in and cover the final assault on the town. They come under US artillery fire, but for the most part, the Germans are advancing too quickly for the shells to zero in on them.


 
I managed to storm the town and drive the Americans out with ease, but before I could reorganize and move on to the next objective, the game seemed to bug out and it seems I'm unable to finish the scenario. All the movement orders for my whole force stopped working all of a sudden and nobody will move or even fire at the enemy. It's like my army is a bunch of robots and someone hit the killswitch on them, and the whole force shut down all at once. Very strange thing.

I think I'm most looking forward to the CMRT module. It's supposed to bring the game to the end of the war right? Which means the Battle of Berlin. It seems like it would be a daunting task to research and then design scenarios and campaigns around that. I wonder if they are gonna have scenarios for the crossing of the Von Moltke bridge and the assault on the Reichstag. That was such an iconic moment of the war that it seems likely they would work on something like that. Which means they are gonna need to make a big map for the middle of Berlin, which means making 3D models and textures for Berlin architecture and the Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate and all that. And then I suppose they will have a winter campaign in there as well.
That will probably take a while. Oh well, I don't really care how long it takes as long as there is a good quality finished product. I have a million other games to play in the meantime. 

If oil is completely unnecessary for armaments production, then why did Albert Speer say otherwise? I posted a direct quote from him earlier in the thread. The guy in charge of Germany's entire armaments and war production said in his memoir that the Allies' oil campaign meant "the end of German armaments production," and that it was, "effective immediately, and decisive within less than a year." Adolf Galland also said the oil campaign was the single most important factor in the collapse of Nazi Germany.
Looking through this thread again, I still keep seeing people attacking TIK personally for his "clickbait" videos, when he is not the guy who is coming up with any of these arguments. As far as I can tell he is getting his info from people like Anand Toprani, a specialist in energy geopolitics. This guy: (https://usnwc.edu/Faculty-and-Departments/Directory/Anand-Toprani) I posted about him earlier in the thread too.
You can argue about it all you want, but calling it, "Poor constructed reasoning or poor reasoned information, more properly called misinformation" and then comparing it to Trump, like Lethaface did a couple posts above me is rather ridiculous isn't it? This is a topic that professional historians spend years studying and debating, and it's kind of annoying seeing random internet posters claim that they're experts on the topic.

I think I'm most looking forward to the CMRT module. It's supposed to bring the game to the end of the war right? Which means the Battle of Berlin. It seems like it would be a daunting task to research and then design scenarios and campaigns around that. I wonder if they are gonna have scenarios for the crossing of the Von Moltke bridge and the assault on the Reichstag. That was such an iconic moment of the war that it seems likely they would work on something like that. Which means they are gonna need to make a big map for the middle of Berlin, which means making 3D models and textures for Berlin architecture and the Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate and all that. And then I suppose they will have a winter campaign in there as well.
That will probably take a while. Oh well, I don't really care how long it takes as long as there is a good quality finished product. I have a million other games to play in the meantime. 

I was watching some Youtube videos earlier, and came across this compilation of footage from the Battle of Berlin. One of the things I noticed was the lack of helmets, especially among the Red Army. I don't think I saw a single Soviet soldier wearing a helmet in this entire video. They were either wearing ushankas or side caps, even among the front-line infantry fighting in the city. 
 
I've also been reading a memoir from a Soviet soldier called Tank Rider by Evgeni Bessonov. He mentioned never wearing a helmet throughout the war and almost no one in his unit did either. He felt they were too heavy and cumbersome and that he couldn't see as well. I've also read that some Soviet soldiers thought it funny how everyone in the US Army wore helmets 100% of the time. You can find loads of pictures of Soviet troops with or without helmets in large numbers, and it seems the Red Army had no rules or regulations about helmet-wearing. The Germans seemed to wear a lot of helmets of course, but not always. Does anyone here know about any specific rules in the Wehrmacht about helmets? I suppose it would make sense that the Germans, with their fascist aesthetics and nice-looking uniforms, that they would be into a totally uniform look for their soldiers and make everyone wear a helmet, but I don't know for sure.

 
In CM, everyone always wears a helmet, unless they are a really high-level officer or something. I'm hoping that with the upcoming Red Thunder module, with the addition of winter combat, that we will see lots of ushanka-wearing Red Army troops running around.
Meanwhile, I started using this mod that replaces all the Soviet helmets with side caps, which I think looks really cool:
http://cmmodsiii.greenasjade.net/?p=638
If anyone hasn't seen that mod yet I would check it out.

I remember that in CM1, the game would fool you about the location of distant shooters. At very long range, you might get a "?" mystery contact that is several tiles away from their true location. Then after you've blasted that spot with area fire, you discover later on that their real location is 50m off to the right or whatever. That was a pretty cool way to handle the problem. Whatever happened to that? I've always felt that CM2 gives you way too much info about the enemy. Not just with the sound exploits, but with other things as well, like being able to tell who is an enemy HQ team and who isn't at 1000+ meters or whatever. Or the game telling you the exact moment that an enemy MG or AT gun position is destroyed or abandoned. Or always being able to tell the exact type of enemy tank. I liked how in CM1, your troops could mis-identify enemy tanks, thinking one is a Tiger when it really isn't or whatever.

I always play on Iron. Even on Iron, if you click on an enemy soldier then it will tell if you they are part of an HQ team or AT gun crew or whatever. It would be better if it just told you nothing.

I remember that in CM1, the game would fool you about the location of distant shooters. At very long range, you might get a "?" mystery contact that is several tiles away from their true location. Then after you've blasted that spot with area fire, you discover later on that their real location is 50m off to the right or whatever. That was a pretty cool way to handle the problem. Whatever happened to that? I've always felt that CM2 gives you way too much info about the enemy. Not just with the sound exploits, but with other things as well, like being able to tell who is an enemy HQ team and who isn't at 1000+ meters or whatever. Or the game telling you the exact moment that an enemy MG or AT gun position is destroyed or abandoned. Or always being able to tell the exact type of enemy tank. I liked how in CM1, your troops could mis-identify enemy tanks, thinking one is a Tiger when it really isn't or whatever.

I couldn't agree more...Did I mention +10

There, fixed it for you, domfloff and Erwin

One time I played a pretty extreme version of coop, where each side of the battle was controlled by a different big group of people. There were platoon and company commanders and so on, and each tank would be controlled by a different person. I was a company commander and had 3 people under me. It was absolute chaos and kind of hilarious, and honestly seemed more realistic as well. You had orders being confused or misunderstood, people arguing about orders or not responding, and then the collective trauma of seeing their units get blown to bits, and the overall morale of the group rising and falling with each turn.
I never played any kind of coop with just one other person before. That actually sounds pretty fun.

Ivan: "Hmmm, this big German tank just rolled right up to us! It's only a few feet away!"
*scratches chin*
Ivan: "Evgeni! What should we do? Should we run away?"
Evgeni: "Nyet! If you put your hands up to your face like this, they can't see us! You see? It's working!"
Ivan: "I don't think playing peek-a-boo with the Germans is going to help us!"
Evgeni: "You have a better idea? Don't just stand there!"
Ivan: "I'm thinking...."

Ivan: "Hmmm, this big German tank just rolled right up to us! It's only a few feet away!"
*scratches chin*
Ivan: "Evgeni! What should we do? Should we run away?"
Evgeni: "Nyet! If you put your hands up to your face like this, they can't see us! You see? It's working!"
Ivan: "I don't think playing peek-a-boo with the Germans is going to help us!"
Evgeni: "You have a better idea? Don't just stand there!"
Ivan: "I'm thinking...."

If people are whining and demanding to see new content or screenshots, it means they are emotionally invested in the product and enjoy it and want to follow its development, which is not a bad thing. 

If people are whining and demanding to see new content or screenshots, it means they are emotionally invested in the product and enjoy it and want to follow its development, which is not a bad thing. 

If people are whining and demanding to see new content or screenshots, it means they are emotionally invested in the product and enjoy it and want to follow its development, which is not a bad thing. 

If people are whining and demanding to see new content or screenshots, it means they are emotionally invested in the product and enjoy it and want to follow its development, which is not a bad thing. 

Do you have a source for your claim that Germany didn't ration oil in 1941? You put that claim in bold even. You've been vague with the sources you've been using in this entire thread so far. According to the sources I've seen (In TIK's videos, he's mostly just quoting directly from books as far as I can tell. He uses the money he makes from videos to buy more books, then makes videos on those books.) Hitler himself ordered severe rationing of oil in 1941. Their economics minister said the economy was receiving less than 18 percent of its peacetime oil quantities. Before that even, in the early days of the war it seems you needed ration stamps to get access to any kind of oil (like cooking oil). And what exactly do you mean by not being "fully mobilized for war" even in 1941? Germany had already conquered most of Europe by that point. You make it sound like Germany was in happy peacetime mode with few problems at all. You mean not fully mobilized compared to the Total-War-Entire-Country-At-Arms-Facing-Complete-Annihilation Mode they were on later? And what do you mean by "bad management of industry and bad policies in general"? That's very vague. What policies?
You're also comparing Germany to Britain, which is not a good comparison because Britain also lacked essential supplies of oil. At that time, almost all of the oil in the world was coming from the USA, Venezuela, and Russia. Anand Toprani argues that Britain ceased to be a great power not during WW2 or after, but before WW2 even began, due to their inability to achieve energy security with the dawn of the oil age. Britain had to import all of its oil, and was under U-Boat blockade itself. Nazi Germany, in order to win the war, had to defeat not only the Soviets, but the USA as well, which would have been impossible without Germany achieving its own energy security.
Now, with the claim I made on mortars, I got that from the thread's favorite Youtube guy. Look at the chart at the 21:40 mark:
 
This is a pretty good question and I'd like to do more research on this myself when I have more time. Petroleum is found in practically everything today. The global economy is hopelessly dependent on it and would utterly collapse without it. I imagine it would be less so back in the 1940s, but to what extent exactly? For war production, oil would of course be very important, not just for gasoline for vehicles and tanks and planes, but for the production of the industrial infrastructure itself. For construction equipment, road building, for the production and maintaining of machines used for producing other machines, for machines for producing weapons, and for chemicals and explosives production and so on. Germany was probably the most powerful industrial country in the world in 1900. What changed from 1900 to WW2? Was it because Germany lost WW1? But Germany's infrastructure was pretty much intact after that war, and that war was devastating for the Allies just as it was the Germans. And then the Great Depression was a worldwide thing. So could it be the dawn of the oil age then? If Germany was awash in cheap oil like the USA was, I think things would have been very different.