Why is there no tips and tactics subforum for CM:BN

[heyhellowhatsnew]

How else are idiots like me supposed to get help with the game?

[Rocky Balboa]

Ask and ye shall receive.

[dieseltaylor]

Read my tagline for some help.

[heyhellowhatsnew]

Thank you. I am a combat idiot. Right now my biggest problem is WHEN to use tanks and WHEN to use infantry to attack. Like.. if I push in my tanks first they get blown up. When I push in my infantry first they get shot to death.

I am literally the worst commander in the world. I don't understand combat basics. I don't understand when to use the right units for the right job.

[agusto]

Watch tanits AARs - all of them. Most of them are shock force aars, but he explains his actions and thoughts so well that you can really learn a lot about the principles of fire and movement wich you ca also apply in ww2.

here s a link to one of tanits CMSF aars:

use youtube search for others, look for "tanit + CMSF"

and here s a link to some of tanits ww2 aars:

armchair general ww2 tactics tutorials

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/combat-mission-battle-for-normandy-tactics-a-video-series

----------

Some general words on tanks and infantry:

You tanks biggest advantages are speed, a lot of long range firepower and (in general) invulnerability to all small arms fire.

Their biggest disadvantages are that they cant really hide (but they can seek cover though) and that they offer bad situational awareness to the crew (slow spotting).

Your infantrys biggest advantages are their abilitys to hide even when the enemy is nearby, to find cover from direct fire almost everywhere on the battlefield, to be able to enter buildings and woods, their excellent spotting abilitys and their sheer number on the battlefield.

Their biggest disadvantages are their vulnerability to all opposing forces, slow movement speed and short range firepower.

Thus a good general approch on offensive combined arms tactics would be to carefully recon the battlefield with small infantry teams, since they are more likely than tanks to sport the enemys defenses while staying undetected themselves. Once they found the enemy, find the weakest spot in his defense. Move your force into attack positions for attacking that weakest point. Have one element of your force pin him down and another element of your force flank him and destroy him. While doing this, try to exploit your forces advantages and try to avoid exposing their weaknesses.

[Rocky Balboa]

CMx2 rewards real world tactics.

In most circumstances you will not lead with your tanks. Split your squads into teams and maneuver with one team while you keep the other team in support to cover the maneuver element. When you have tanks in your force, keep them in support of your maneuvering infantry (not too close but terrain will dictate how close).

When your infantry have reached and secured a certain terrain objective then move your tanks up to support your next move. For your first few games take it slow and deliberate and as you get more familiar you can speed up. Stay away from scenarios that put you under a time constraint until you get the hang of things.

I would suggest practicing with a few quick battles selecting an infantry platoon or smaller with one or two tanks in support. Practice maneuvering your infantry where one squad/team over watches or provides covering fire for the one that’s moving. Keep your tanks back far enough where they are out of range of enemy squad based AT weapons but can still overwatch/support your maneuvering infantry.

[Vanir Ausf B]

Experience is the best teacher, but you should almost always lead with your infantry because they are more resilient than armor. Tanks should be treated like egg shells armed with hammers.

But don't lead with your infantry in a bunch like a reenactment of Pickett's Charge. Split off a small number of 2 or 3 man scout teams and send them ahead. Yes, they will get shot up, but better that than a whole squad or one of your few Sherman tanks. Position the following infantry in overwatch positions, meaning places that have 1)line-of-sight to the area the forward scouts are moving towards and 2) have decent cover. Bocage is perfect for this. Ideally you will also have some heavy weaponry in overwatch so that when the enemy starts shooting up your forward scouts you can respond immediately. Machine guns are good, on-board mortars even better. Light-armored vehicles can be used for this as well.

EDIT: LOL, ninja'd x2

[Lt Belenko]

Another key to winning is proper use of arty. By that I mean timing. Drop the shells as your infantry start out across an open field. And as the barrage lets up as they are in position to gun down the stunned enemy.

Me? I send my troops to get 50% gunned down by unharrassed enemy. They reach the enemy lines as the arty falls and takes out the other 50% of my men. Timing is the key.

[RT North Dakota]

The mistake most folks make when it comes to tactics is focus on how things are done and not why. If you understand WHY something has to be done, then HOW is pretty easy.

1.) Working out how to FIND the enemy so as you can apply FIRE against him is the basic skill you should work on.

2.) Working out how to move when the enemy is trying to stop you (so do not let him FIND you or apply FIRE against you) is the other basic skill that will give you great benefit.

It is that simple as tactics at the CMBN level are mind numbingly simple, BUT actually doing them is almost impossibly difficult.

[WinOrLose]

The armchair general tutorial videos are probably your best starting point.

As Dakota says the main aim is to get maximum fire power on the enemy whilst receiving minimum in return.

[womble]

Find him

Fix him

Flank him

F...insih him

Forget him and move on to the next enemy.

I knew there were more Fs...

[Wodin]

Use area fire on anywhere you feel the enemy maybe hid in, esp when moving troops..sometimes hitting buildings if they have someone in there will make them move and you'll see them..if you've fired off a few rounds and nothing then change to another area.

[A Canadian Cat]

The armchair general channel has all five tutorials: http://www.youtube.com/user/acgmagazine?feature=watch

Episode I to get you started:

It is a challenging game especially once you start playing Human opponents. Don't get discouraged (or at least don't stay discouraged:-). I remember back in the CMBB days when I finally started figuring things out it was an amazing feeling coordinating my platoon and their supporting tanks to suppress the enemy positions and close the distance to eliminate them.

[MikeyD]

I just counted, BFC hosts some 34 different discussion forums (not including restricted internal ones). Not much going on in the Drop Team and PT Boats forums these days. I think people are experiencing forum fatigue.

[Michael Emrys]

I think people are experiencing forum fatigue.

More likely they are still hung over from the holidays.

Michael

[Father Ted]

A more "gamey" tip: make sure that your infantry advancing to contact have a short, 360 degree cover arc - this makes them less likely to open up on the first enemy they see, and get mown down in response. You want them to see the enemy, but not have the enemy see them, and muzzle flashes are a give-away.

This is specially important for high-value elements like HQs. You want them to be in place to rain down HE, not have a few potshots with their sidearms and hence get demolished.

Also, check out the quality of your pixel-troops at the planning stage and assign the better ones to the more difficult tasks.

[Pak40]

How else are idiots like me supposed to get help with the game?

How are we supposed to beat you in a multiplayer game if you're as good as us?

[Smeel]

I would love to have a specific cmx2 tactics forum. It feels like to start a new thread in the main forum everytime you need help or is curious is a little unneccesary. And it would be great to see all tactics threads in one place so you could read up a little on it.

Would love to hear what you're supposed to do when you start a scenario and find half of your infantry in HT. Should I screen with the troops on foot and reinforce with my mounted infantry when I've located where the enemy is the strongest?

[Snowbart]

Definitely watch the Armchair General Tutorials (5 of them), and watch some of the AAR vids on youtube. But there is no substitute to having experience playing the game. You have to put some time in and learn the hard way sometimes.

[heyhellowhatsnew]

You have no idea how amazing this thread has been for as a beginning grognard. Whether its games like this or hex based games. You taught me the basics of attacking and i'll never forget it. I owe all of you a drink.

Keep the tips coming please. I love you all.

[JasonC]

The decision is achieved by fire.

Firepower kills.

Firepower is delivered by effective forces continually. The longer they last in contact with the enemy, the more firepower they deliver.

In order to deliver their fire effectively, your forces must survive.

To survive, your forces must be protected from enemy fire while still being able to deliver their own.

The main thing protecting your forces from enemy fire is not terrain or their own armor, but their fire.

The fire of your whole force protects each separate element of your force.

Fire protects your forces by making it deadly-dangerous for enemies to remain in positions that your forces can reach with their fire.

Enemies that challenge your main forces are melted by the firepower of your main forces, so rapidly that they can inflict little loss on your own force.

The protective function of the firepower of friends is called "overwatch", and friendly forces whose specific mission is to protect others by firing at anything that challenges those others, are called an "overwatch" force or component.

The effect you want from overwatch is that even a previously unknown or unseen enemy, challenging your maneuvering forces, is shot to pieces in seconds as soon as it challenges them.

Powerful overwatch can only be achieved by massing of firepower. To mass firepower means to arrange your forces so that nearly all their weapons "bear" on points from which you expect danger - whether there are any enemy spotted there yet, or not.

To mass firepower it is not necessary to physically mass your forces into a tight bundle - it suffices if they can all *see* the same locations.

The reason to avoid physically massing is enemy "area effect" weapons, especially artillery. But forces largely immune to such weapons can mass together - e.g. a tank platoon staying in a tight "fist", buttoned up. You can occasionally risk it with other forces when the danger from enemy area effect weapons is low.

The single most important tactic used to defeat enemies without loss yourself, is *differential LOS*. Differential LOS means most of your force can see a few of the enemy, while only those few enemy can see any of your force, and most of the rest of the enemy force cannot see anything and so cannot (yet) engage.

We say such an enemy force is "disarticulated". Divided to be conquered.

In contrast, when a force can all see the locations where enemies can appear, we say they possess "firepower integration". They are effectively united into one massive weapon that can shoot anything that threatens any portion of that integrated force.

An integrated force fighting disarticulated pieces a few at a time, can smash them lopsidedly, in sequence, with minimal losses to itself. We call this effect when achieved, getting a "many on few". Differential LOS from choice of positions and formations strives to achieve "many on few" firefights with the enemy, while denying him the same.

If you are the underdog in a given firefight, don't commit to it. Get out. Maneuver. Live to fight later on more favorable terms. So e.g. do not commit weak forces into a firefight you are losing, and just lose them too. Instead, break contact, and set up a better firefight against only the leading enemy units when they try to follow up. That is the place to use your weak reinforcements - there they might be enough, and will help your losing force break contact cleanly.

Combat is the art of not fighting fair.

Besides many on fews, there are also specific types of weapons that "trump" specific types of enemies. We call these "combined arms relationships". Like paper beating rock which beats scissors, these offer lopsided victories without loss to the side using the proper weapon against the proper target.

Examples are tanks fighting located infantry that lacks heavy anti tank weapons. Or artillery fire called down on infantry in woods. Or a mortar, spotted for remotely, firing on a located enemy gun position. Or a gun firing from hiding and from a flank on a tank that it can reliably penetrate. Or a tank with particularly thick front armor dueling tanks inferior to it, that cannot harm it from the front. There are lots more. Pretty much every weapon on the field has some specific "counter" that deals with it efficiently.

When fighting is conducted by meeting the enemy arm with the same from your side, tanks on tanks, infantry on infantry, and without a major edge in odds or similar advantages, we have "mindless mashing of like on like". It results at best in even attrition to both sides, and it is to be avoided unless no other means of dealing with a given enemy is available.

It is preferable to instead search for lopsided match ups and achieve them - while denying them to the enemy by avoiding contact when he has such an edge.

Battle is about "not fighting" fair. and that includes flat out not fighting when the enemy has the edge. To avoid the enemy, to deny him battle, is an entirely valid and necessary tactic.

When forces by a short movement break LOS to the enemy (so that neither can see or harm each other anymore), we say they have "skulked". They are waiting for a superior match up. They are drawing the enemy in, closer, to where other parts of the force can be brought to bear against him.

Notice, the emphasis throughout is on fire and survival. Terrain is used to enhance survival and to disarticulate the enemy force, and to "skulk" away from his firepower where he is too dangerous to challenge.

Movement is used to change these match ups. It is not an end in itself. You will win nothing by scoring a touchdown in the enemy backfield, or crossing that open field successfully. The problem is not one of movement, or one of surviving while moving. Movement is used to shape the firefights, not the other way around. That is what it means to say "the decision is achieved by fire".

Not movement, but firepower, takes ground. Any piece of ground that you can saturate with so much firepower that the enemy cannot stand there and live, you own. Where you are standing yourself, is irrelevant to that - it matters only because many forces have great firepower at close range (notably infantry in numbers and in good shape).

To seize ground means to establish fire dominance of that ground, so that nothing enemy can live there, then to send a very small component of your force to that location. This will spot any enemy hiding there, and scout the route to determine its safety from enemy fire. You only occupy the spot with major forces after any enemy discovered this way has been located and destroyed by firepower. And even then, you only go there if it helps you to put firepower on the next target.

A key tactic in achieving disarticulation is "keyholing". To keyhole means to peek through a narrow gap between LOS blockages, so that only a thin pencil of ground is visible across the battlefield from your location. At the end of the pencil there should be one and only one enemy you want to kill. You can only shoot one enemy at a time, and there is no sense in taking reply fire from the whole enemy force to deliver it. So for example, when one of your tanks wants to murder an enemy infantry unit, find a "keyhole" to do it from - that way, every hidden antitank gun on the enemy side of the field won't be able to open up on your tank in reply.

The weakness of a single keyholed position is that it can be safely approached by the enemy, if he sticks to the "shadows" created by the LOS blockages. The remedy for this problem is to *cross more than one keyhole "fire lane"*. This creates a "network" of dangerous strips of ground - preferably including open ground with no cover - that the enemy would have to cross to approach any of your keyholed forces. The approach to position A is stopped by fire from position B. And vice versa.

Teamwork is everything in combat, as you may be beginning to appreciate. Every isolated element, even the heaviest tank, is powerless against the whole enemy army, without the protection provided by the firepower of other friendly forces.

Anything isolated, the enemy just picks the perfect "counter" from his combined arms "kit bag", avoids presenting any target vulnerable to your isolated element by "skulking", and waits until he has the perfect "counter" in position. Then he springs it, "hunting" your isolated element with its "natural bane". He can do that all day without loss or breaking a sweat. Moral - nothing stands alone.

All of this would be relatively straightforward if you always knew where the enemy was, exactly. But you don't. Nor does he know where you are. The vulnerability of any isolated and known element has a contrary, that the enemy is never really ready for something he didn't know was there.

Surprise is thus one of the fundamental principles of all combat. Everything is five times as effective when the enemy doesn't see it coming than when he does. Conversely, if your own force announce themselves, so that the enemy clearly sees them coming with plenty of time to adapt, we say you are "telegraphing" your blows. Telegraphed blows are weak blows, and die in ambush, often as not, or "hit air" if the enemy prefers to "skulk" away instead.

You want to be inside the other commander's mind, thinking his thoughts as he thinks them, and acting 3 moves ahead - that is how surprise is achieved, at bottom. Terrain and arrangement of forces are just implementation details that can help bring that about.

Formation is another fundamental principle of combat, that follows from the previous. Formation is the arrangement of your own forces on the ground in relation to each other.

You control the placement of your own forces. You know it. You do not control the placement of the enemy's forces, and often do not know it, either. But you can arrange the match ups that *can* occur, *whatever* the enemy does, by controlling just the formation of your own.

To see this, consider that fundamental tactical measure, an advanced screen. This means a small portion of your force - 10%, 20% at most - is detached somewhat ahead of the rest, in an arc around them, toward the enemy. Now the enemy cannot get close to your main body without disclosing himself to this screen, somewhere.

Or consider that equally fundamental tactical measure, a reserve. In an otherwise linear fight matching the deployment of the enemy, you have a quarter or a third of your whole force behind your own line, roughly centered, with LOS to the enemy blocked completely. Now this element can maneuver, free from enemy fire, interference, and above all enemy knowledge, to any point behind your formation you select, when you select, and intervene there.

The enemy cannot interact with your force without "entering" your formation in some sense. But that means you control where he must come to achieve anything, and you can ensure the rest of your force will be ready for him if he reaches those places. If he does not, he cannot hurt your force very much.

These measures work because they manipulate solely the configuration of your own forces, over which you have complete control, and do not require perfect knowledge of the enemy's dispositions or plans. We say, they are "flexible". Flexibility multiples effective combat power. Any force that could be in two places depending on what is learned next, is twice as powerful as a force committed to one place based on one perhaps mistaken assessment of the enemy. They give you "moves" in response to the enemy, that he may not be able to see beforehand. That gets him out of your head (you are less predictable) and helps get you inside of his (you can act as though you had predicted him correctly, whether he did A or .

Those are some of the basic principles of tactical combat. I hope they help.

[womble]

Would love to hear what you're supposed to do when you start a scenario and find half of your infantry in HT. Should I screen with the troops on foot and reinforce with my mounted infantry when I've located where the enemy is the strongest?

Yep. But always remember that your HT are primarily a means of getting your reserve from where they're completely safe and out of sight of the enemy to where they're probably safe and only visible to a few light elements. At that point, they dismount and fight on foot (while still being fresh), with potentially some support from the tracks' MGs if you can find some keyhole positions where the vehicles can lay suppression without being in danger from even the lightest anti-armour weapons or any plunging small arms fire.

Treat half tracks like trucks, and trucks like your own children...

[agusto]

The decision is achieved by fire.

Firepower kills.

Firepower is delivered by effective forces continually. The longer they last in contact with the enemy, the more firepower they deliver.

In order to deliver their fire effectively, your forces must survive.

To survive, your forces must be protected from enemy fire while still being able to deliver their own.

The main thing protecting your forces from enemy fire is not terrain or their own armor, but their fire.

The fire of your whole force protects each separate element of your force.

Fire protects your forces by making it deadly-dangerous for enemies to remain in positions that your forces can reach with their fire.

Enemies that challenge your main forces are melted by the firepower of your main forces, so rapidly that they can inflict little loss on your own force.

The protective function of the firepower of friends is called "overwatch", and friendly forces whose specific mission is to protect others by firing at anything that challenges those others, are called an "overwatch" force or component.

The effect you want from overwatch is that even a previously unknown or unseen enemy, challenging your maneuvering forces, is shot to pieces in seconds as soon as it challenges them.

Powerful overwatch can only be achieved by massing of firepower. To mass firepower means to arrange your forces so that nearly all their weapons "bear" on points from which you expect danger - whether there are any enemy spotted there yet, or not.

To mass firepower it is not necessary to physically mass your forces into a tight bundle - it suffices if they can all *see* the same locations.

The reason to avoid physically massing is enemy "area effect" weapons, especially artillery. But forces largely immune to such weapons can mass together - e.g. a tank platoon staying in a tight "fist", buttoned up. You can occasionally risk it with other forces when the danger from enemy area effect weapons is low.

The single most important tactic used to defeat enemies without loss yourself, is *differential LOS*. Differential LOS means most of your force can see a few of the enemy, while only those few enemy can see any of your force, and most of the rest of the enemy force cannot see anything and so cannot (yet) engage.

We say such an enemy force is "disarticulated". Divided to be conquered.

In contrast, when a force can all see the locations where enemies can appear, we say they possess "firepower integration". They are effectively united into one massive weapon that can shoot anything that threatens any portion of that integrated force.

An integrated force fighting disarticulated pieces a few at a time, can smash them lopsidedly, in sequence, with minimal losses to itself. We call this effect when achieved, getting a "many on few". Differential LOS from choice of positions and formations strives to achieve "many on few" firefights with the enemy, while denying him the same.

If you are the underdog in a given firefight, don't commit to it. Get out. Maneuver. Live to fight later on more favorable terms. So e.g. do not commit weak forces into a firefight you are losing, and just lose them too. Instead, break contact, and set up a better firefight against only the leading enemy units when they try to follow up. That is the place to use your weak reinforcements - there they might be enough, and will help your losing force break contact cleanly.

Combat is the art of not fighting fair.

Besides many on fews, there are also specific types of weapons that "trump" specific types of enemies. We call these "combined arms relationships". Like paper beating rock which beats scissors, these offer lopsided victories without loss to the side using the proper weapon against the proper target.

Examples are tanks fighting located infantry that lacks heavy anti tank weapons. Or artillery fire called down on infantry in woods. Or a mortar, spotted for remotely, firing on a located enemy gun position. Or a gun firing from hiding and from a flank on a tank that it can reliably penetrate. Or a tank with particularly thick front armor dueling tanks inferior to it, that cannot harm it from the front. There are lots more. Pretty much every weapon on the field has some specific "counter" that deals with it efficiently.

When fighting is conducted by meeting the enemy arm with the same from your side, tanks on tanks, infantry on infantry, and without a major edge in odds or similar advantages, we have "mindless mashing of like on like". It results at best in even attrition to both sides, and it is to be avoided unless no other means of dealing with a given enemy is available.

It is preferable to instead search for lopsided match ups and achieve them - while denying them to the enemy by avoiding contact when he has such an edge.

Battle is about "not fighting" fair. and that includes flat out not fighting when the enemy has the edge. To avoid the enemy, to deny him battle, is an entirely valid and necessary tactic.

When forces by a short movement break LOS to the enemy (so that neither can see or harm each other anymore), we say they have "skulked". They are waiting for a superior match up. They are drawing the enemy in, closer, to where other parts of the force can be brought to bear against him.

Notice, the emphasis throughout is on fire and survival. Terrain is used to enhance survival and to disarticulate the enemy force, and to "skulk" away from his firepower where he is too dangerous to challenge.

Movement is used to change these match ups. It is not an end in itself. You will win nothing by scoring a touchdown in the enemy backfield, or crossing that open field successfully. The problem is not one of movement, or one of surviving while moving. Movement is used to shape the firefights, not the other way around. That is what it means to say "the decision is achieved by fire".

Not movement, but firepower, takes ground. Any piece of ground that you can saturate with so much firepower that the enemy cannot stand there and live, you own. Where you are standing yourself, is irrelevant to that - it matters only because many forces have great firepower at close range (notably infantry in numbers and in good shape).

To seize ground means to establish fire dominance of that ground, so that nothing enemy can live there, then to send a very small component of your force to that location. This will spot any enemy hiding there, and scout the route to determine its safety from enemy fire. You only occupy the spot with major forces after any enemy discovered this way has been located and destroyed by firepower. And even then, you only go there if it helps you to put firepower on the next target.

A key tactic in achieving disarticulation is "keyholing". To keyhole means to peek through a narrow gap between LOS blockages, so that only a thin pencil of ground is visible across the battlefield from your location. At the end of the pencil there should be one and only one enemy you want to kill. You can only shoot one enemy at a time, and there is no sense in taking reply fire from the whole enemy force to deliver it. So for example, when one of your tanks wants to murder an enemy infantry unit, find a "keyhole" to do it from - that way, every hidden antitank gun on the enemy side of the field won't be able to open up on your tank in reply.

The weakness of a single keyholed position is that it can be safely approached by the enemy, if he sticks to the "shadows" created by the LOS blockages. The remedy for this problem is to *cross more than one keyhole "fire lane"*. This creates a "network" of dangerous strips of ground - preferably including open ground with no cover - that the enemy would have to cross to approach any of your keyholed forces. The approach to position A is stopped by fire from position B. And vice versa.

Teamwork is everything in combat, as you may be beginning to appreciate. Every isolated element, even the heaviest tank, is powerless against the whole enemy army, without the protection provided by the firepower of other friendly forces.

Anything isolated, the enemy just picks the perfect "counter" from his combined arms "kit bag", avoids presenting any target vulnerable to your isolated element by "skulking", and waits until he has the perfect "counter" in position. Then he springs it, "hunting" your isolated element with its "natural bane". He can do that all day without loss or breaking a sweat. Moral - nothing stands alone.

All of this would be relatively straightforward if you always knew where the enemy was, exactly. But you don't. Nor does he know where you are. The vulnerability of any isolated and known element has a contrary, that the enemy is never really ready for something he didn't know was there.

Surprise is thus one of the fundamental principles of all combat. Everything is five times as effective when the enemy doesn't see it coming than when he does. Conversely, if your own force announce themselves, so that the enemy clearly sees them coming with plenty of time to adapt, we say you are "telegraphing" your blows. Telegraphed blows are weak blows, and die in ambush, often as not, or "hit air" if the enemy prefers to "skulk" away instead.

You want to be inside the other commander's mind, thinking his thoughts as he thinks them, and acting 3 moves ahead - that is how surprise is achieved, at bottom. Terrain and arrangement of forces are just implementation details that can help bring that about.

Formation is another fundamental principle of combat, that follows from the previous. Formation is the arrangement of your own forces on the ground in relation to each other.

You control the placement of your own forces. You know it. You do not control the placement of the enemy's forces, and often do not know it, either. But you can arrange the match ups that *can* occur, *whatever* the enemy does, by controlling just the formation of your own.

To see this, consider that fundamental tactical measure, an advanced screen. This means a small portion of your force - 10%, 20% at most - is detached somewhat ahead of the rest, in an arc around them, toward the enemy. Now the enemy cannot get close to your main body without disclosing himself to this screen, somewhere.

Or consider that equally fundamental tactical measure, a reserve. In an otherwise linear fight matching the deployment of the enemy, you have a quarter or a third of your whole force behind your own line, roughly centered, with LOS to the enemy blocked completely. Now this element can maneuver, free from enemy fire, interference, and above all enemy knowledge, to any point behind your formation you select, when you select, and intervene there.

The enemy cannot interact with your force without "entering" your formation in some sense. But that means you control where he must come to achieve anything, and you can ensure the rest of your force will be ready for him if he reaches those places. If he does not, he cannot hurt your force very much.

These measures work because they manipulate solely the configuration of your own forces, over which you have complete control, and do not require perfect knowledge of the enemy's dispositions or plans. We say, they are "flexible". Flexibility multiples effective combat power. Any force that could be in two places depending on what is learned next, is twice as powerful as a force committed to one place based on one perhaps mistaken assessment of the enemy. They give you "moves" in response to the enemy, that he may not be able to see beforehand. That gets him out of your head (you are less predictable) and helps get you inside of his (you can act as though you had predicted him correctly, whether he did A or .

Those are some of the basic principles of tactical combat. I hope they help.

Very valueable posting IMHO. It clarified things i had either thought of or experienced in CM games myself and put them into logical connections with each other. I really can see the "big picture" of tactical combat better by now. Thank you very much, JasonC.

[WinOrLose]

and trucks like your own children...

...cheap slave labour...?

[WinOrLose]

As Jason says above, "skulking" is a much underused tactic. If your unit on the "line" is not doing anything useful hide it or bring it out of LOS.

The longer it stays visible the more likely it will die and usually by an unseen enemy.