Ridaz

Hi everyone! This is not an official AAR cause I was enjoying the game too much to take screenshots during the scenario. I only managed to save after the battle ended so all the screenshots are front the end of the scenario , but I would like to share my recent experience with black sea.
After trying out the Demo and playing the training mission twice (lost the first time) I noticed at the end of the game the AI retreated to the woods when i was closing in on the town. I thought that was kinda cool and realistic. After all, the logical path was to retreat to the woods. Later, after reading more about the game's AI, I was somewhat surprise that it was based on trigger and that the AI had 3 levels. strategic, operational and tactical. I believe the strategic level is the one that is trigger based.
So I bought myself my first CM copy. I played through the training campaign while following the guidelines on the manual which i had printed out. In the last mission I realise that it was the same scenario from the demo so I thought I would do fine but this time I followed the manual by splitting my team and all. First, I noticed when I sent my riflemen scout near the observation post alone they were engaged by snipers from the forest, which I kinda knew was there. However, this did not happened the first time I played in the demo, and I don't quite remember what I did. I made some mistakes on the way and ended up losing my observer, HQ and and 1 squad. 
So I restarted the scenario again but this time I did it my way instead of following the manual. I sent one of my Bradley to to the side of the sunken road to engage the snipers which I know would shoot my guys near the woods at the observation post, but nothing happened I sent the same rifle squad to scout the woods and I got no engagement from the other side, no snipers, nothing. I sent he rest of my assault troops to assault route 1 without incident only engaging 2 squads on the way to assault route 2.

 
By the end of this scenario, I caught the Russians retreating to the woods again just like in the demo, however this time I had 2 Bradleys near the entrance of the woods, getting ready for a massacre. Guess what, only 2 squads came out and after getting shot, the rest of them decided to stay in the buildings surrounding the chapel. They refused to come out until they surrendered, i managed to only take out 1 squad out of 4-5 that attempted to retreat back to the woods, mainly because I believe they turn back after the first two squads were engaged by my Bradleys


 
After this, all I can say is that I am very impressed with the AI reaction to what do in the battlefield. It could just be random luck that i trigger or did not trigger certain triggers but this is the most realistic AI opponent I have seen.  In most games if the AI retreats if that even happens then it will happen no matter what, even if they are running into a meat grinder, but not in CM.
 

All that remains of the Russian forces. 
 

Made a mistake and lost a full squad, I was hoping to get full score. 
 


Some Russians who died to my Bradley flanking them from the back of the town. Bradleys are beasts!

Hi everyone! This is not an official AAR cause I was enjoying the game too much to take screenshots during the scenario. I only managed to save after the battle ended so all the screenshots are front the end of the scenario , but I would like to share my recent experience with black sea.
After trying out the Demo and playing the training mission twice (lost the first time) I noticed at the end of the game the AI retreated to the woods when i was closing in on the town. I thought that was kinda cool and realistic. After all, the logical path was to retreat to the woods. Later, after reading more about the game's AI, I was somewhat surprise that it was based on trigger and that the AI had 3 levels. strategic, operational and tactical. I believe the strategic level is the one that is trigger based.
So I bought myself my first CM copy. I played through the training campaign while following the guidelines on the manual which i had printed out. In the last mission I realise that it was the same scenario from the demo so I thought I would do fine but this time I followed the manual by splitting my team and all. First, I noticed when I sent my riflemen scout near the observation post alone they were engaged by snipers from the forest, which I kinda knew was there. However, this did not happened the first time I played in the demo, and I don't quite remember what I did. I made some mistakes on the way and ended up losing my observer, HQ and and 1 squad. 
So I restarted the scenario again but this time I did it my way instead of following the manual. I sent one of my Bradley to to the side of the sunken road to engage the snipers which I know would shoot my guys near the woods at the observation post, but nothing happened I sent the same rifle squad to scout the woods and I got no engagement from the other side, no snipers, nothing. I sent he rest of my assault troops to assault route 1 without incident only engaging 2 squads on the way to assault route 2.

 
By the end of this scenario, I caught the Russians retreating to the woods again just like in the demo, however this time I had 2 Bradleys near the entrance of the woods, getting ready for a massacre. Guess what, only 2 squads came out and after getting shot, the rest of them decided to stay in the buildings surrounding the chapel. They refused to come out until they surrendered, i managed to only take out 1 squad out of 4-5 that attempted to retreat back to the woods, mainly because I believe they turn back after the first two squads were engaged by my Bradleys


 
After this, all I can say is that I am very impressed with the AI reaction to what do in the battlefield. It could just be random luck that i trigger or did not trigger certain triggers but this is the most realistic AI opponent I have seen.  In most games if the AI retreats if that even happens then it will happen no matter what, even if they are running into a meat grinder, but not in CM.
 

All that remains of the Russian forces. 
 

Made a mistake and lost a full squad, I was hoping to get full score. 
 


Some Russians who died to my Bradley flanking them from the back of the town. Bradleys are beasts!

Hi everyone! This is not an official AAR cause I was enjoying the game too much to take screenshots during the scenario. I only managed to save after the battle ended so all the screenshots are front the end of the scenario , but I would like to share my recent experience with black sea.
After trying out the Demo and playing the training mission twice (lost the first time) I noticed at the end of the game the AI retreated to the woods when i was closing in on the town. I thought that was kinda cool and realistic. After all, the logical path was to retreat to the woods. Later, after reading more about the game's AI, I was somewhat surprise that it was based on trigger and that the AI had 3 levels. strategic, operational and tactical. I believe the strategic level is the one that is trigger based.
So I bought myself my first CM copy. I played through the training campaign while following the guidelines on the manual which i had printed out. In the last mission I realise that it was the same scenario from the demo so I thought I would do fine but this time I followed the manual by splitting my team and all. First, I noticed when I sent my riflemen scout near the observation post alone they were engaged by snipers from the forest, which I kinda knew was there. However, this did not happened the first time I played in the demo, and I don't quite remember what I did. I made some mistakes on the way and ended up losing my observer, HQ and and 1 squad. 
So I restarted the scenario again but this time I did it my way instead of following the manual. I sent one of my Bradley to to the side of the sunken road to engage the snipers which I know would shoot my guys near the woods at the observation post, but nothing happened I sent the same rifle squad to scout the woods and I got no engagement from the other side, no snipers, nothing. I sent he rest of my assault troops to assault route 1 without incident only engaging 2 squads on the way to assault route 2.

 
By the end of this scenario, I caught the Russians retreating to the woods again just like in the demo, however this time I had 2 Bradleys near the entrance of the woods, getting ready for a massacre. Guess what, only 2 squads came out and after getting shot, the rest of them decided to stay in the buildings surrounding the chapel. They refused to come out until they surrendered, i managed to only take out 1 squad out of 4-5 that attempted to retreat back to the woods, mainly because I believe they turn back after the first two squads were engaged by my Bradleys


 
After this, all I can say is that I am very impressed with the AI reaction to what do in the battlefield. It could just be random luck that i trigger or did not trigger certain triggers but this is the most realistic AI opponent I have seen.  In most games if the AI retreats if that even happens then it will happen no matter what, even if they are running into a meat grinder, but not in CM.
 

All that remains of the Russian forces. 
 

Made a mistake and lost a full squad, I was hoping to get full score. 
 


Some Russians who died to my Bradley flanking them from the back of the town. Bradleys are beasts!

It would be nice to see this thread getting an update on newest youtube channels. i am thinking about starting a compilation thread of all active CM youtube channels in the main cmx2 forum. 

It would be nice to see this thread getting an update on newest youtube channels. i am thinking about starting a compilation thread of all active CM youtube channels in the main cmx2 forum. 

Now I will disagreee with this to some extent.

First, If CMx1 AI can give you a good challenge, You either have to know how to tweek it to make the odds pretty unfavorable or you are just not a very good player. Because I found the AI doing terrible things with its troops in movement, thus the reason it was only semi good on defence. But even on defence it had a tendancy to want to move its troops from good placement locations to stupid positions.

Now , just for giggles. I played a QB vs the CMX2 AI last night just to see if it would be as terrible as I like to point out it is.

Without spending a ton of time to set up and play, could I get a decent battle.

So of course I selected to be the attacker, since the AI does better on defence. I selected the map and I let the AI pick its forces and I selected my forces and gave myself no arty to help improve the challenge and a nice short time frame so that i could not take my sweet time disecting its non- mobile defence.

For armor I selected a company of cronwells, that should make it interesting and a company of infantry minus about a platoon & the heavy support weapons. So I had a few light mortars plus infantry.

I can gareentee you I had a better battle vs the AI for the first 20-25 minutes, playing Real time on elite than I likely would ever get from the old system.

First the enemy was not on the objective, it had made a good battle line between it and me. Second it held its position well and even at one point in the game counter attacked with a stug to get itself in a flanking position to the other flank in which i was pushing.

I lost two tanks before I could even get a spot on a enemy location. (Surely something that would never happen in he old game). Which included taking out my one and only firefly.

I lost two more tanks one to a unseen unit as i was pushing the flank and the last was a cronwell that I rolled down the enemy flank once I had control of the battle, he was trying to mop up and take out any remaining armor that might be on the battle line. I knew a stug would have its flank exposed to it. As I moved it in position to take it out. I opened the hatch to take a better spot and My commander was killed by a hidden infantry unit i had missed in a area i had mopped. The tank lost command control so i watched helplessly as it rolled into a spot that likely could be spotted by the stug and was and watched my tank go into flames.

In the end. I lost 3 cronwells and the Sherman, The AI lost 4 Stugs and a Pv4.
It did not have any infantry to say, just a few scouts that I located and keep me busy early on and a FO with arty that tried to hit me with 3 fire missions within the game.

Now if I knew how (which I dont) give the enemy more units than the preselected point value. Because i had a 2-1 advantage almost in that game. So if I could have tweeked it to give it 50% more units, it might have been a real challenge. Even so, I did not win the battle, I played a battle that the outcome was given since I had the advantage and it would show. I felt the AI played me pretty even and for its limitations, thats not bad.

The things that gave it the ability to do that to me was the spotting and fog of war aspect that is within the CMX2 engine that you will never see in CMX1.
Either you like it or you dont. But it adds the unpredictability of battle (Of course i played the game in a way to make sure that the enemy might get the game engine advantages of that part of the engine)

But I set up played and finished the game in about a hour and a half.

So even with all the complaining, I will still point out, it is a game, learn to use the tools and you might find it is useable after all.

I do smile how we all love to complain about things the game lacks and what it should have, but it is up to us to make the most of what we have also.

Another method for getting a "decent" AI force pick while maintaining some FoW is to cycle through "Suggestions" until you get a set of "headline picks" that looks like it might make sense. You'll know what general type of unit your facing, but not what specific elements might have been elided.

Very different beasts, despite some similarities. Compared MoW has clear roots from a popular RTS subgenre (without the base building) where you gather "resources" and "build" units. That it also tries to have any realism is certainly a plus - but in the end it's the same easily disposable nigh-unlimited troops that will sacrifice themselves at your mere click, arbitrary point capture and hold and roster being more or less balanced to not give any side an unfair advantage e.g. gamey. It is certainly a very fun game and surprisingly nice to play. My favorite "gamey" RTS together with Wargame.
Combat Mission on the other hand is clearly inspired by Close Combat (the 2nd generation CM more so than the first) - your troops are limited, they matter and they don't want to die, having morale or even names. And the game couldn't care less about being fair. A German Koenigstiger will murder a dozen Shermans without blinking before their subpar optics will even spot one. Abrams will eat T72B3 and T90A for dinner at 2km+ at night because of its advanced FLIR resolution. It will provide you with challenge you never hoped for from typical RTS games and every dead soldier will hurt (especially in modern era titles where soldier roles are clearly defined versus WW2 era where you just had 12 dudes armed with samey bolt action rifles).
That you lost all your men in MoW is exactly because of that. in CM your troops know better than to rush the enemy and help you not make mistakes through staying away from trouble as best as they can. In MoW it's very easy to lose if you will just rush your squad at a static enemy's one which can easily break your whole dynamics for the whole game due to you having to wait while you get those arbitrary purchase points back.

AI in CM games works much the same as they do in games like DCS or ArmA. A simplified explanation would be that they have a set of waypoints and goals they have to reach and they would do just that. So they won't suddenly adjust the major plan to your actions (unless scripted in triggers but no triggers in QB)
However along the way they still have a microAI working which will react to immediate issues - that would cause them to stop, retreat, take cover or take a detour.
A well scripted mission can be very challenging and unpredictable. And there are enough of those in base games and from this community. QB however is more like a skirmish in more common RTS like Men of War but still fun

Judging by a lot of the questions that pop up here - you've done more than many people who already own the game and have set yourself up for success. I wish you many years of happy gaming.

What about teh battle pack? For a "pack" it seem to have quite alot of stuff almost like an expansion IMO