SimpleSimon

It was outrageous to me that the Germans had so many tubes and so much ammo for them. That was really where I drew the line and realized the scenario was rigged. Since the briefing alludes to a huge rocket artillery bombardment that clearly didn't happen I felt tricked and this was the first mission of the campaign. I didn't continue the campaign for years until the campaign extractor became available so I could examine closely how ridiculous it was and it only got worse from there as I figured. The Russians, for a crossing a river in bad weather against a sector of front that has been static for months get....some SU-76s and the battalion mortars... Where's the Division artillery with its generous compliment of ZiS-3 or 120mm PM-38s that were standard issue for this kind of unit and the mission it was tasked with? Why do the Germans have so much support and so many men? You wouldn't think this was Operation Bagration. One would be forgiven for thinking the mission took place in 1941 on the Vyazma front...

1. Resist the urge to split your forces. Attack the smallest possible force with the largest possible force. It doesn't matter what title you are playing, WW2 or modern, fire superiority wins. Every time.
2. Holding an objective, or preventing the enemy from scoring any points from an objective, requires only 1 man. If the battle has 4 different occupy objectives, keep your main force moving from one objective to the next and leave a driver, destroyed vehicle crew or an XO team behind to secure the points.
3. Don't underestimate the usefulness of a long duration light or harass artillery mission. Arty keeps heads down, which prevents them from seeing you move. They are also great for area denial. Nothing worse than thinking an arty mission is over, so you start moving your men up and then a round lands in the middle of your platoon. Most light or harass missions will give 15+ minutes of firing time. You can cancel the mission as your men get close to the objective and use any remaining rounds to pummel any strong points.

Something really peculiar to me is the major fixation on arms and hardware that these analysis have. Like don't get me wrong arms and production were crucial but like, there's never any mention of the problems like the mass famines that broke out everywhere or the politics behind apparently irrational decisions that were none-the-less entirely rational to impress coalition partners, keep alliances together, or push neutrals off the fence. 
Absolutely none of the powers could afford to completely disregard their civilian economy or war production would just halt. Yet because so few historians have sought to highlight the importance of this we're stuck with all those awful English histories of the war emphasizing battles and tanks over nations and people and then yeah you get stuff like this. I guess Tooze's book is hard to digest for most. 
 
 

They're underpowered if you ask me. The tank was the war's most decisive ground weapon, and there's a reason Russian Tank Armies crashing through the Fulda Gap were among the greatest fears of Western leaders until the Curtain fell owing to the fact that honestly, there wasn't much you could do to stop  a big enough horde of tanks. The Russians knew that just as well as the Germans who knew it before everyone else in 1940. 
Tanks were literally designed to defeat infantry fortifications. It is legit their most basic job which is why so many tanks were armed with nothing but a machine gun or fixed gun in a casemate. Frontline fortifications were overrun all the time by tanks and yes usually by them just bombarding the enemy position until the enemy was dead. 
Tanks have built binocular vision and radios, these are a pair of two honest to god superpowers compared to Private Timmy and his Mk1 Eyeball and outdoor voice. 
Infantry anti-tank assaults are usually described as heroic events and as a result those are the ones you hear about the most. The reason you hear about the successful ones is because you rarely hear about all the times that failed and the attacking infantry were murdered by the tank's wingman because in reality infantry close assault on armor was a suicidally dangerous thing for infantry to do before shaped charge projectors showed up. 
Most AT weapons are hard enough pressed to hit the tank they're shooting at to begin with unless it's very close to them by which point it's more than likely curtains for your Pak40 crew. Do you know how big something even the size of a Tiger looks in a sight at 500 yards or 1000 even? 
Biggest problem with tanks in CM is that they're overused. Too many scenarios have them and then further that problem by then having too many in the scenario. They're too commonly encountered in most of the games and this sort of a has a fatiguing effect on players after a while but really I think they're too easy to kill or disable in most of the games. In reality there wasn't much 99% of men in an army, armed with a rifle and spade, could do against 30 tons of cannon, machine guns and murder and everyone knew it. During and after the war it was apparent that the only thing that could stop a large enough army of tanks was...another army of tanks and if you don't believe me brew yourself up a coffee and grab some reading on the Fulda Gap and an order of battle for Group Soviet Forces Germany. 

They're underpowered if you ask me. The tank was the war's most decisive ground weapon, and there's a reason Russian Tank Armies crashing through the Fulda Gap were among the greatest fears of Western leaders until the Curtain fell owing to the fact that honestly, there wasn't much you could do to stop  a big enough horde of tanks. The Russians knew that just as well as the Germans who knew it before everyone else in 1940. 
Tanks were literally designed to defeat infantry fortifications. It is legit their most basic job which is why so many tanks were armed with nothing but a machine gun or fixed gun in a casemate. Frontline fortifications were overrun all the time by tanks and yes usually by them just bombarding the enemy position until the enemy was dead. 
Tanks have built binocular vision and radios, these are a pair of two honest to god superpowers compared to Private Timmy and his Mk1 Eyeball and outdoor voice. 
Infantry anti-tank assaults are usually described as heroic events and as a result those are the ones you hear about the most. The reason you hear about the successful ones is because you rarely hear about all the times that failed and the attacking infantry were murdered by the tank's wingman because in reality infantry close assault on armor was a suicidally dangerous thing for infantry to do before shaped charge projectors showed up. 
Most AT weapons are hard enough pressed to hit the tank they're shooting at to begin with unless it's very close to them by which point it's more than likely curtains for your Pak40 crew. Do you know how big something even the size of a Tiger looks in a sight at 500 yards or 1000 even? 
Biggest problem with tanks in CM is that they're overused. Too many scenarios have them and then further that problem by then having too many in the scenario. They're too commonly encountered in most of the games and this sort of a has a fatiguing effect on players after a while but really I think they're too easy to kill or disable in most of the games. In reality there wasn't much 99% of men in an army, armed with a rifle and spade, could do against 30 tons of cannon, machine guns and murder and everyone knew it. During and after the war it was apparent that the only thing that could stop a large enough army of tanks was...another army of tanks and if you don't believe me brew yourself up a coffee and grab some reading on the Fulda Gap and an order of battle for Group Soviet Forces Germany. 

Something really peculiar to me is the major fixation on arms and hardware that these analysis have. Like don't get me wrong arms and production were crucial but like, there's never any mention of the problems like the mass famines that broke out everywhere or the politics behind apparently irrational decisions that were none-the-less entirely rational to impress coalition partners, keep alliances together, or push neutrals off the fence. 
Absolutely none of the powers could afford to completely disregard their civilian economy or war production would just halt. Yet because so few historians have sought to highlight the importance of this we're stuck with all those awful English histories of the war emphasizing battles and tanks over nations and people and then yeah you get stuff like this. I guess Tooze's book is hard to digest for most. 
 
 

They're underpowered if you ask me. The tank was the war's most decisive ground weapon, and there's a reason Russian Tank Armies crashing through the Fulda Gap were among the greatest fears of Western leaders until the Curtain fell owing to the fact that honestly, there wasn't much you could do to stop  a big enough horde of tanks. The Russians knew that just as well as the Germans who knew it before everyone else in 1940. 
Tanks were literally designed to defeat infantry fortifications. It is legit their most basic job which is why so many tanks were armed with nothing but a machine gun or fixed gun in a casemate. Frontline fortifications were overrun all the time by tanks and yes usually by them just bombarding the enemy position until the enemy was dead. 
Tanks have built binocular vision and radios, these are a pair of two honest to god superpowers compared to Private Timmy and his Mk1 Eyeball and outdoor voice. 
Infantry anti-tank assaults are usually described as heroic events and as a result those are the ones you hear about the most. The reason you hear about the successful ones is because you rarely hear about all the times that failed and the attacking infantry were murdered by the tank's wingman because in reality infantry close assault on armor was a suicidally dangerous thing for infantry to do before shaped charge projectors showed up. 
Most AT weapons are hard enough pressed to hit the tank they're shooting at to begin with unless it's very close to them by which point it's more than likely curtains for your Pak40 crew. Do you know how big something even the size of a Tiger looks in a sight at 500 yards or 1000 even? 
Biggest problem with tanks in CM is that they're overused. Too many scenarios have them and then further that problem by then having too many in the scenario. They're too commonly encountered in most of the games and this sort of a has a fatiguing effect on players after a while but really I think they're too easy to kill or disable in most of the games. In reality there wasn't much 99% of men in an army, armed with a rifle and spade, could do against 30 tons of cannon, machine guns and murder and everyone knew it. During and after the war it was apparent that the only thing that could stop a large enough army of tanks was...another army of tanks and if you don't believe me brew yourself up a coffee and grab some reading on the Fulda Gap and an order of battle for Group Soviet Forces Germany. 

The engine is technically and visually really impressive in a lot of ways too. Wrecks, destruction, defensive positions, etc are persistent and remembered by the game from battle to battle. More detail is rendered in a space that is bigger than most CM scenarios, though larger scenarios with lots of battling units and smoke can get tough on a mid-range computer. 
The most interesting mechanic to me, implemented in recent years, is the command "bandwidth" mechanism which actually makes how you play the sides different. The Russians use more pre-battle planning and timing cues and the lack of radios and field telephones means changing a plan is not something you can do much of since you can run out of command influence. The Germans can cope with this better, and play a bit more like units in a conventional strategy game but trying to micro them excessively can still "overload" the command network and cause them to just ignore your orders. It really feels more like you're back at an HQ barking orders through a field telephone. It's not a squad or company level game ya know? It's more at the regimental or division level and its a fascinating middle ground that is not often covered. 
Now if only the user interface didn't contain tons of vague and confusing detail of various (unexplained) importance lol. 

Best Way has sort of left everyone in the same boat with Men of War. I want to learn all the finer points of the game's GEM editor but it's tough because few written references (especially in English) exist and YouTube tutorials require you to parse through commentary and replays to find what you need. 
GTOS and GTMF are the true "operational" level games in the Russian sense existing between the tactical and strategic layers most games inhabit. 
https://youtu.be/wwwacMv-IjQ?t=599
About a minute or two into the linked timestamp he starts going over the command system's mechanic for limiting order spam and micro management. 

Best Way has sort of left everyone in the same boat with Men of War. I want to learn all the finer points of the game's GEM editor but it's tough because few written references (especially in English) exist and YouTube tutorials require you to parse through commentary and replays to find what you need. 
GTOS and GTMF are the true "operational" level games in the Russian sense existing between the tactical and strategic layers most games inhabit. 
https://youtu.be/wwwacMv-IjQ?t=599
About a minute or two into the linked timestamp he starts going over the command system's mechanic for limiting order spam and micro management. 

The engine is technically and visually really impressive in a lot of ways too. Wrecks, destruction, defensive positions, etc are persistent and remembered by the game from battle to battle. More detail is rendered in a space that is bigger than most CM scenarios, though larger scenarios with lots of battling units and smoke can get tough on a mid-range computer. 
The most interesting mechanic to me, implemented in recent years, is the command "bandwidth" mechanism which actually makes how you play the sides different. The Russians use more pre-battle planning and timing cues and the lack of radios and field telephones means changing a plan is not something you can do much of since you can run out of command influence. The Germans can cope with this better, and play a bit more like units in a conventional strategy game but trying to micro them excessively can still "overload" the command network and cause them to just ignore your orders. It really feels more like you're back at an HQ barking orders through a field telephone. It's not a squad or company level game ya know? It's more at the regimental or division level and its a fascinating middle ground that is not often covered. 
Now if only the user interface didn't contain tons of vague and confusing detail of various (unexplained) importance lol. 

Best Way has sort of left everyone in the same boat with Men of War. I want to learn all the finer points of the game's GEM editor but it's tough because few written references (especially in English) exist and YouTube tutorials require you to parse through commentary and replays to find what you need. 
GTOS and GTMF are the true "operational" level games in the Russian sense existing between the tactical and strategic layers most games inhabit. 
https://youtu.be/wwwacMv-IjQ?t=599
About a minute or two into the linked timestamp he starts going over the command system's mechanic for limiting order spam and micro management. 

The engine is technically and visually really impressive in a lot of ways too. Wrecks, destruction, defensive positions, etc are persistent and remembered by the game from battle to battle. More detail is rendered in a space that is bigger than most CM scenarios, though larger scenarios with lots of battling units and smoke can get tough on a mid-range computer. 
The most interesting mechanic to me, implemented in recent years, is the command "bandwidth" mechanism which actually makes how you play the sides different. The Russians use more pre-battle planning and timing cues and the lack of radios and field telephones means changing a plan is not something you can do much of since you can run out of command influence. The Germans can cope with this better, and play a bit more like units in a conventional strategy game but trying to micro them excessively can still "overload" the command network and cause them to just ignore your orders. It really feels more like you're back at an HQ barking orders through a field telephone. It's not a squad or company level game ya know? It's more at the regimental or division level and its a fascinating middle ground that is not often covered. 
Now if only the user interface didn't contain tons of vague and confusing detail of various (unexplained) importance lol. 

Crucially I think the video highlights the fact that combat in both World Wars tended to be clearly divided between "movement" and "non-movement" states. It was pretty novel to fight and move at the same time and for the most part it sounds like it was limited to dedicated Assault/Shock troops. 
I think for the most part most infantrymen in most armies were pretty unwilling or unable (or both) to engage in the sort of tactical footwork and evasion that we picture today and anchor on...modern portrayals of today's infantry or police SWAT teams. Training and standards were actually really uneven throughout the war, sometimes even among units in the same Army or branch even. We today have access to news, games, movies, books etc of a weight and ease of reach unfathomable in an age where many towns had only a telegraph station if that. Sure a lot would become evident pretty quickly at a front, but this among other factors is probably why the divide between experienced and green troops was so sharp and why veterans were such gold. 
I think this is worth considering when playing CM by the way. Lots of guys, new and old, post here all the time about why they're taking heavy casualties in scenarios and blame it on the game's formation keeping or AI or etc. It really isn't those things, it's just that their picture of infantry in WW2 has been "poisoned" by depictions of SWAT teams and special forces, etc without any context. 

These are a pair of important notes for scenario designers to keep in mind if they want to make campaigns and scenarios for the Red Army. Turns out even my own assessments as to what the Russians were using to support attacks with was low-balling it. Seven to one in artillery and guns!       
Exactly how German commanders were describing Normandy, the Falaise Gap, etc. 
And since this was the main effort the fire support for it should be suitably commensurate. There is not much dispersal of force since the Russians lacked the sophistication in command and control for it. It almost looks to be something out of 1918 but since the Germans in defense would lack the manpower or support or both to stop it, it was going to work. 

In the end I did not feel that Red Thunder was a waste because while it contains the single worst campaign I've played in a CM game it also contains the single best campaign I've played so far, "Blunting the Spear". That was worth the price of admission alone. To me it also just highlights how much more accessible German sources were about the war, and also influential they were over the history of the Eastern Front. 
Most of the scenarios are pretty good and I believe it was the first game in the series that had master maps? I'm working on my own campaign for it now that I should finish sometime before the year ends maybe but the master maps were crucial for that. 
EDIT: I also used the campaign unpacker to "rescue" Hammer's Flank by rebalancing the campaign in the scenario editor. I feel the missions were much more interesting with more artillery support for the Russians, I also redesigned the German defenses so they were less spread out and more concentrated on individual "nodes" or "outposts" to make them less vulnerable to the huge bombardments I made use of. This presented more opportunities for flanking out German defenses but also made unexpected run ins with strong points more punishing although it was difficult for me to find anything "unexpected" when I knew the changes I had made. 😁
 

I think the issue they had with the Bradley was that it cost more than many tanks, western IFVs generally did though. There would've been no way to keep the Bradley's costs down too with the broad set of mission capabilities that were being demanded of it. The media of course went to no effort to explain any of this. That wouldn't make it a story and many journalists' careers hinge on making this molehill a mountain! 
That was my attacks for years too until I stepped back and soberly evaluated exactly what was happening. That I was demanding a bunch of nervous, barely literate farmhands armed with late 19th century repeating muskets to seize and plant my nation's flag upon a given knoll or izbas,. It took stacks of bodies before I realized that this was not reasonable and if the game was real I would have either been relieved and sent back to Iowa/Vladivostok/Lincolnshire for a desk job by my superior or fragged by one of my own men the next time I thought the latrine was safe. You could say that the Germans/Americans/Russians just put up a tough defense but honestly if it that knoll had been held by the Italian Mafia or the Zulu even, the results would not have been much different.
So step back and think about how badly you really need it and why you do. If you do, then you also need to remember that you are wielding the resources of a nation and should not send men, average men, to achieve Hollywood miracles when instead you could detail it to a mortar or send a tank instead. The men can go after that and then go around telling everyone what a pitched battle it was afterwards, just look at all those smoking craters I made with my bayonet! 
The point is they're alive to tell that. 

Take all the time you need as far as i'm concerned. I would also speak, if only for myself, that I would be willing to stomach higher prices for your games. 
If any member of the team is not making enough money to support a comfortable life then as far as i'm concerned you all should be. 

Take all the time you need as far as i'm concerned. I would also speak, if only for myself, that I would be willing to stomach higher prices for your games. 
If any member of the team is not making enough money to support a comfortable life then as far as i'm concerned you all should be. 

You must've meant to this for Sgt. Squarehead who's reply to my post was that I was "talking out of my posterior". I agree he did seem quite angry.  😂

Terrain objectives are ok as long as the scenario designer doesn't place them in a manner that forces the player to adopt a foolish strategy. I often saw lots of terrain objectives that were placed on things like open road junctions or required you to clear out an entire 1000mx1000m forest.... No commander, even the stupid ones, would actually put men on some of the Clear objectives we've had in these games. It's also insane to expect the player  to clear out really big forests with so little time and so few tools to do it. Especially when in many cases commanders wouldn't even bother, they'd just cordon the forest off and move on. The given objectives are often placed in such a way that no one would value them. 

No doubt. I think however much of this came down to misunderstandings and usually if men actually engaged eachother with small arms they were on a relatively peripheral sector of the front or someone screwed up. This is part of the reason why field officers just falsified AARs so much. Many officers simply could not and would not send their men into situations knowing a full blood bath was inevitable. The reasons were varied, sometimes for politics like not wanting loss of a company to endanger that promotion or get you sent back to the states for "stress". Not wanting to piss off an angry and armed party representative of the Nazis/Arrow Cross/NKVD/Black Shirts/etc demanding more attacks. Other times and more frequently that anyone seems to admit, the reasons were more empathetic, like just not wanting to see people you know get massacred by a pair of MG42s overlooking the road they're supposed to advance up. Those MG42s are now a pair of Panzer IIIs and it was "obviously insane to press on against that" etc etc. You know this is where all those phantom "Tiger Tanks" kept coming from. 
Force preservation was on everyone's mind more than CM scenarios like to imply I think and yes even on the cataclysmic Eastern Front I think this was the case much more frequently than European authors believe. Certainly disasters happened, certainly forceful commanders or incompetent commanders or forceful AND incompetent commanders existed but I chalk these guys up to a minority overall, especially as the war went on and idiots were either re-assigned or...expended. 
So when we're playing CM this is the line I take now. I'm going to evaluate the situation and the tools at my disposal to solve it. If I conclude those tools are inadequate then i'm adjusting the scenario. The way I see things we're in a post S.L.A. Marshall world of military history now. CM and its scenarios oriented toward action and confrontation can still work, they just need adjustment sometimes. 

There's an MG-42 lighting up my squads advancing through a field! I don't have 5 minutes for spotting -- I need direct fire NOW! That's when you want a light mortar (glorified grenade lobber), most likely company asset, with your infantry, on overwatch. 2 or 3 shells should obliterate any heavy weapon that is giving your infantry a hard time. Meanwhile using a light mortar for saturation fire is as effective as throwing french insults at the buggers.
80mm mortars are much more effective in saturation fire. It's good for them to have LOS on some of your mental targets, but moving them is a hassle, deploying them takes time and they are fairly vulnerable. If you're playing as Jerry, you have garbage light mortars but fantastic medium mortars, so the medium mortars are more likely to be pushed into direct fire role. Heavy mortars are even more precious and capable in bombardment. Off-map has the distinct advantage of your mortars being 100% safe. No counter fire or ambushes -- just bombardment.
Recently, I fell in love with mortar half-tracks. I often saw them as novelty vehicles of questionable utility. When I got to play with them, I acknowledged them as the superior mortar platform: a tin can that carries all your ammo and your radio. I'd park them on the reverse slope of the cliff, just to give the mortar guys LOS, and they can let off a few 8cm rounds and collapse a building that's bothering your guys. Then you can instantly relocate, get a better position with almost 0 setup time.

I think no single event proved more catastrophic for Italy than the Invasion of Greece, a campaign which goes to show victory can be a defeat all its own. Despite eventually succeeding (with German assistance) the complete debacle it degenerated into confirmed OKW perceptions that Italy was an inferior, and thus they were entitled to whatever they needed from it. Being a junior partner to Nazi Germany was always bad for your health, because at their best the Nazis weren't going to help and at their worst they would cannibalize nearby allies when they were weak. Without any political or military currency to influence Germany, Mussolini was doomed to become "Our Gaulieter in Italy"  in the words of German troops and Italy another expendable Axis pawn.
The irony is Italy possessed a number of assets Germany ended up badly in need of, a navy, large manpower reserves (!!!!), bases with close proximity to vulnerable British ones, etc. Of course converting a lot of these things into useful tools for the Axis war effort was just completely beyond the Frat-Boy Prussian Officers of the OKW, who revealed on multiple occasions that coalition warfare and all of its importance completely eluded them. They simply assumed that Hitler was managing Germany's allies and in turn Hitler assumed they were working up plans all the time to incorporate those allies into Axis strategy. For how well this was working reference: Operation Uranus. 

It was a crippling bottleneck. Italy was indeed a rural nation known for its citrus and wine production. On the one hand, some of the world's most famous automotive, arms, and aero firms were there. Maserati, Beretta, Fiat, Ansaldo, etc were world wide brands and made considerable profits on international sales. Italian industry was capable of making high quality products, it just clearly was not capable lots of quality products. All of Italy's best hardware was generally limited production run stuff, and manufacturing was always slow. Even small orders were ridiculously expensive owing to the need for them to import raw materials, and because the Italian government would generally take private firms on their word that they were getting the best deal. 
There were some silver linings. Italy had a large population for its size and could put millions of men in the field, but arming all these men was problematic due to the industrial bottlenecks and even cases of corruption. Many men in the Italian Army never got uniforms or boots, much less weapons or rations. The Italian Army's ration during the war was of such notoriously bad quality that Italian troops referred to it as "dead donkey". 
The Italians inherited lots of weaponry from the defeated Austo-Hungarians in the last war. Much of which were quality artillery tubes by Skoda works. In fact Italy's artillery may well have been its most functional arm during the war and both World Wars were artillery wars. However it had the classic limitation of needing to rely on pre-planned fire missions because radios and field telephones were so scarce. The Italian Army did not have enough trucks or movers for all of them and i'm sure there weren't even enough horses to meet the artillery's requirements for mobility. Even if there were, ammunition shortages had to be frequent events because of the next major issue, the Italian Navy.
On paper the Italian Navy looked very impressive. Lots of relatively modern capital ships with impressive throw weights. I believe the most modern of which the Littorio class actually overmatched the most recent British and German designs in firepower at least until HMS Vanguard appeared. In many ways German capital ships were markedly inferior to Italian ones, and it was in Regia Marina the Germans placed the most hope in an Italian partnership by far. The Italian Navy also had impressive sealift capability, operating a large merchant fleet. However, the Italian Navy was remarkably deficient in escort vessels, the lack of which was so egregious that when the Italians launched Littorio and Vittorio Veneto  in 1940 they had to withdraw ships from outposts like the Dodacanese Islands to protect them. This meant that the safe perimeter the Navy could operate within got that much smaller leading to an overall decrease it capability. The Italian Navy actually lost effectiveness by having too many capital ships since it had to shut down bases without so much as a shot being fired. Since the Navy was pressed to protect its own assets from destruction it's natural to imply that they would find it extremely difficult to protect Italy's communication lines to its Empire and all those issues caused by industrial bottlenecks are now magnified tenfold because what little they do manufacture is unlikely to end up anywhere it will have an effect on the war. 
That last bit really sums up the whole war effort. Everything in the Italian war effort was a circular mess of self perpetuating failure. The failure of one element led to the failure of the others and then vice versa.