CMx2 WWII Series

[Battlefront.com]

This is a discussion that comes up quite frequently. YankeeDog has a good post about it on the previous page, and there are lots of other great comments too. The short of it is casualties tend to be higher, battle times quicker, than real life. The cause of that is the player and the necessary game mechanics that go along with it. The actual simulation side of things is only a tiny source of the underlying causes. Which is why there is no easy or simple fix to the "problem". I say that with quotes because if you play more-or-less like a historical commanders would at all levels, then casualties are more likely to be reasonably accurate and time to complete a battle longer.

Also remember luck has a lot to do with things. An extreme example is to look back at history and realize France would have been Fascist in 1934 if it weren't for one guy making a bad call based on erroneous information. There's a similar story to tell about the history of Quebec that came down to the luck of a few bullets finding their mark. And an all time favorite... Stonewall Jackson.

More recently the single biggest loss of US personnel and equipment in OIF was because a single air controller made a really bad mistake. Had he not made that mistake the city would have been taken with very few casualties and little loss of equipment.

Point of mentioning these things is that in real life a tiny little twist of fate can have a HUGE impact on the overall results. Such things are simply not possible to simulate directly without making the player a passive entity.

Steve

[Broadsword56]

Another reason why playing with an operational level (like a board wargame) can enhance realism and add those oddball aspects without trying to force CMx2 to do things it can't.

Example that springs to mind -- a Napoleonic game (OSG's "Seven Days of 1809") where the Austrian player can roll a die to check whether the Archduke Charles has a migraine attack -- thus confining him to his tent for a while and temporarily diminishing C2 for a day or so.

[womble]

...France would have been Fascist in 1934 if it weren't for one guy making a bad call based on erroneous information...

Wow. That's a "what if" I've never heard before; any chance of some expansion on it?

[John Kettler]

JoMc67,

Wanted to let you know about a cool feature I discovered in CMBN 2.0 that'll save you a lot of misery. Scenarios are now listed in increasing order of size. Before, they were listed alphabetically, which mandated hunting through the entire stack in search of the elusive 1-man icon and 2-man icon battles (two smallest sizes). Previously, I inadvertently selected battalion sized battle because, being used to programmed instruction from my days playing later AH games, I not unreasonably thought the earlier ones would be the easier ones. Wrong!

Oh, and if you decide to try a QB, be advised that whatever you buy can be looked at by clicking that tiny "+" in front of it. This activates the opening function so you can see what the component units are of the parent unit, say, an infantry battalion. Once at that level, you can buy remove formations as needed to get within your point limit. I practically went nuts trying to figure out that to me bizarre interface. Let's say I liked the one for the CMx1 games better. Easier to navigate and far easier to see what you were getting.

Regards,

John Kettler

Regards,

John Kettler

[Michael Emrys]

I agree, the game is not designed to be that realistic, and if it was - boring.

You would all find you could not make objectives because after about 10% of your men were wounded or dead, no one would be attacking anymore, they would just be sitting and staying alive to fight another day.

Once again, when will people realize we all want to play with hero's, no one really wants true realistic fights, even though they think they do. The game would fail, the company would fail and you not only would have a boring game, but no more of them would be coming in the future.

True, as far as that goes. Which is why for a long time I have been beating the drum for more realistic force ratios. What you say is one of the main reasons why attackers concentrated their forces at what they consider the critical point. They needed to be able to absorb casualties and keep going, but more to the point, they needed to win a decision before the casualties rose to a forbidding level.

For quite some time I have been playing with a self-imposed limitation that I would call off any attack if my cas exceeded 10%, often less. But counting artillery, I was attacking at over 3:1 at the start. Given that the defense is not playing within a similar limitation, that is a larger handicap on me than it might appear.

Michael

[JonS]

But the fact of the matter is, in the ETO at least, Squads, Platoons, and sometimes even larger formations sometimes gave up and raised a white flag when it was clear that continuing to fight was only going to mean taking massive casualties with little chance of causing significant harm to the enemy.

I've had whole sections surrender in CM (or had them surrender to me). Not often, but it does happen, and it's a really nice feeling when it does. Heh. Not so cool when it's your guys surrendering though. Meh.

But mass surrenders are more and more outside the scope of CM, in both time and space. Large units generally don't surrender in the middle of an ongoing battle. Once the fight dies down the higher commander - off the map to the rear - has a chance to assess the situation, and realise that it's hopeless/pointless. Not because the enemy is coming in through the front door, but because they've locked the back door and are looking in through the side windows. Or whatever.

But those assessments take place after (usually, and more usually as you go up the food chain) what happens in CM is over.

It's relatively easy to simulate that 'what happens next' effect with some thought put in to setting objectives for each side. Too often designers put one honking great objective worth most of the points pool right on top of what they deem to be the Vital Ground, and make it the same for both sides. But by breaking terrain objectives down into more bite sized morsels, and placing them in locations that make sense in the context of each sides unique objectives and motivations, it is possible to encourage manoover. Rather than just a bull at the gate going up-the-guts for The Big Flag, the designer can reward players for looping around to cut of the enemy, without necesarily engaging his main force. It then takes but a small amount of imagination to figure out why an attacker that has inflicted few casualties but has gotten into the defender's rear area is deemed to be the winner.

[PanzerMiller]

Hmmm...reminds me of a rather old, very long, and fascinating thread from the dark ages...

http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=94572

Our old friend JasonC debating the forum on realism of casualty rates...

[YankeeDog]

I've had whole sections surrender in CM (or had them surrender to me)...

Hm. My experience is definitely different here. Best I can recall, the most I've ever had surrender (either my own or enemy) from any one unit (squad/section/team) is three. Generally, surrenders I see in-game are the last 1 to 3 men of a unit where the others are all already hors de combat. I guess this is a "whole section" surrender in the sense that the entirety of what's left of the unit is surrendering, but this is probably not what you meant. Maybe you play with lower quality troops more often than I do? I probably play mostly regulars, with occasional Greens. I haven't played with Conscripts much. Other playstyle differences might also be a factor. For example, I think I probably try to avoid close assault more than most players because the results can be so capricious; I'm generally willing to expend a lot of lead to kill at a distance rather than risk losing men in melee. Maybe I'm often killing enemy at range I might be able to get to surrender if I closed the distance more aggressively.

But mass surrenders are more and more outside the scope of CM, in both time and space. Large units generally don't surrender in the middle of an ongoing battle...

Agree wrt Battalions and higher. Don't agree wrt platoons and squads. Platoons and squads in completely compromised positions definitely happen on the CM scale; I frequently see situations in the game where I'm pretty sure a RL Plt or Squad CO would very either order his men to flee individually as best they could (i.e., a total rout), or put up a white flag and try to surrender as a unit if flight was not practical. And I have definitely read multiple accounts of both of these happening IRL to platoons & squads.

Companies are somewhere in the middle. Probably pretty rare the better part of a Company would group surrender on the CM scale, but also not out of the question -- I don't think I've ever seen an entire infantry Company cut-off in CM, but then again I don't play larger scenarios often; about reinforced Company is my upper limit preference. I imagine those who do play Battalion+ sized scenarios do see the better part of a Company cut-off, at least occasionally.

It's relatively easy to simulate that 'what happens next' effect with some thought put in to setting objectives for each side...

Definitely agree wrt objectives. Objective parameters are a sometimes overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of the art of scenario design. How these are laid out can make a huge difference in how a scenario plays out. It's not uncommon that I read the briefing and then look at the objective points, and realize that they're at odds: The briefing is telling me to play one way, but the objective points are encouraging me to play in a very different style. Definitely a good thing when the scenario designer gets things in sync here.

[Sublime]

Wow. That's a "what if" I've never heard before; any chance of some expansion on it?

I wondered about that, the Quebec thing, and also the specifics for the OIF anecdote. Not because I doubt him, but because I wasn't aware... lol.

Stonewall Jackson is a definite example of bad luck though.

[womble]

My experience is definitely different here...surrenders I see in-game are the last 1 to 3 men of a unit where the others are all already hors de combat.

That's what I see too. Even targets that have been pinned for 10 minutes don't seem to start surrendering til they've taken 60% casualties or more. I can imagine that Low or Poor motivation troops will throw up their hands more often; I just don't seem to fight against them very much.

[dieseltaylor]

I am reading a book by Ken Tout "In The Shadow of Arnhem" and on P.26 he mentions the Black Watch [Canada] who start an advance with 300 men and have 16 left unscathed attacking vainly Fontenay. All within a CMx2 battle time frame. Later, and rebuilt, they are in a stupid attack in Holland and a Company commander starts with 90 men and ends up with 4 unscathed. Obviously the extreme end of suffering. At Tilly in one case only 2 men survived the battle from a 30 man platoon. They were luckier than a 90 man force which was wiped out by the Hitlerjugend.

[JonS]

Hm. My experience is definitely different here.

I didn't say I'd seen it often, just that I'd seen it. this is the handiest example I can think of, although it turns out that in that battle as a whole I only had three Americans surrender to me (and I lost three men to surrender too)(edit: actually, I'm not sure that count of 3 was correct. Hmm.). I'm pretty sure that in that example there were initially more men with their hands up, but my guys weren't close enough to force their actual surrender.

Agree wrt Battalions and higher. Don't agree wrt platoons and squads.

I meant to make it clear that I was talking about a sliding scale of time and size. The bigger the unit, the less likely it was to mass-surrender within the scope of a typical CM battle. That's starting from individual men who were quite likely to surrender within CMs context, up to bns which were very unlikely to surrender within CMs context.

But. Meh. Currently the largest size element that can surrender is below your command-threshold as a player. That is, single or multiple men from within a section or team. You can't individually order them about, and they can surrender. You're talking about changing that so the surrender element is lifted above the command-threshold, leading to multiple sections and teams surrendering together. For one thing I still do think that within the context of a CM battle that'd be a rarity, and would also easily lead to lots of really wonky results, like "oh, damn, 2nd Platoon just surrendered en masse in The Orchard. But, wait a sec - why are 3 Section surrendering too!? They were way off over there guarding The Church, and weren't any part of that Orchard debacle :mad:"

Definitely agree wrt objectives. Objective parameters are a sometimes overlooked and under-appreciated aspect of the art of scenario design. How these are laid out can make a huge difference in how a scenario plays out.

Yup, and I think that's the most fruitful area to explore in dealing with this. Mainly because the tools are already in players hands, requiring nothing from BFC.

It's not uncommon that I read the briefing and then look at the objective points, and realize that they're at odds: The briefing is telling me to play one way, but the objective points are encouraging me to play in a very different style.

I hate that.

[LUCASWILLEN05]

A scenario designer can set up really quite sophisticated victory conditions using the scenario editor feature. For instance the parmeter window lets you set victory points fo overall friendly/enemy casualties (anong other things) And we can identify key units as objectives under the unit objectives window. W e can select one of three options: Destroy, Destroy All and Spot and assign points for achieving those objectives.

Losses in WW2 could be quite high. For example I was reading Fatal Decision recently. TThe Sherwood Foresters went into their first attack of the Anzio campaign on 31 January at Campoleone Station on 31 January 1944as a full strength batttalion. They finished the day with 8 officers and 250 OR. The strongest company had only 40 men left. The battalion CO was killed, every company commander was killed or wounded and even the battalion MO was captured trying to rescue the wounded

Things got even worse for the Forestersand by March 3 the battalion was down to one officer and 40 men. The Foresters were not the only ones to suffer badly at Anzio but they do seem to have been the worst case.

We can also set Experience and Motvation for individual units. And we can set the value for any leader down t squad level. If you have, for example conscript with poor motivation and a -2 leader those guys are very unlikely to put up much of a fight. i would expect most of them to be cowering after taking a little fire and they would probably surrender at the earliest opportunity. Elite Fanatics with a +2 leader would very likely have to be killed in their foxholes. A typical unit of regulars with Normal Morale and Average leadership could be expected to perform credibly but won't go beyond the call of duty. Often, when one looks at a squad that comes under heavy fire we see several soldiers cowering and the morale of the squad changes and we see descriptions such as "Nervous" and these can get worse.

So it is not just the number of dead and wounded we need to consider when assessing the realism of the gaming simulation. It is the morale model as well. In my experience the gaming simulation seems to be quite accurate. If you are highly aggressive with your troops and take too many chances and/or prepare poorly then the chances are you are going to take high losses which, again, reflects the historical battlefield realities.

[YankeeDog]

@JonS:

To be clear, I'm not really advocating for any change wrt to surrender modeling. In a pipe dream world where BFC had unlimited development resources to apply to the game, sure. But as I noted earlier, I think larger formation surrender is probably too complex a thing to hope for. The only practical way I can think of getting something like this into the game would be to add an umpire function, which would give a human referee omnipotent observation of a battle, allow the referee to take control of units away from a player and force them to surrender or rout, etc. However, such a feature is probably of very limited appeal to the civilian market, so I don't think such a feature will ever be added to the game unless BFC gets a significant contract to modify the game into a bona fide military training tool (in which case, such a feature would probably be essential).

My primary motivation in bringing up the whole subject was to point out that broader, hard-to-fix gameplay issues like surrender/rout modeling are probably often a significant contributor to "casualty inflation" in the game. People seem quick to blame high casualty counts in the game on what are actually fairly minor technical issues like artillery/HE modeling, or small arms effectiveness, etc., and I don't think the primary cause lies in areas like this at all. Ultimately, CM is a game and no matter how "hardcore" we imagine ourselves to be as wargamers, we're still buying the game as an entertainment product. As long is this the case, I think "unrealisms" like casualty inflation are going to persist.

[A Canadian Cat]

People seem quick to blame high casualty counts in the game on what are actually fairly minor technical issues like artillery/HE modeling, or small arms effectiveness, etc., and I don't think the primary cause lies in areas like this at all. Ultimately, CM is a game and no matter how "hardcore" we imagine ourselves to be as wargamers, we're still buying the game as an entertainment product. As long is this the case, I think "unrealisms" like casualty inflation are going to persist.

Spot on. Pretty much ever game I have played I am aware that I have gone further than a real force commander would go (or indeed the squads themselves would go). But it is fun and I do it anyway because it is a game.

One thing that I would like to do to reduce our tendency to push to far is have the ability to play campaign's head to head via PBEM*. I think that would allow the creation of campaigns where pushing your troops too far would be a bad thing for your long term success. The fact that you, as a commander, know you and your troops must fight another day would put a natural damper on you willingness to sacrifice them.

* I realize that there is some support for head to head play but I (and my regular play partners) really cannot play anything other than PBEM when it comes to head to head play.

[JonS]

To be clear, I'm not really advocating for any change wrt to surrender modeling. ... My primary motivation in bringing up the whole subject was to point out that broader, hard-to-fix gameplay issues like surrender/rout modeling are probably often a significant contributor to "casualty inflation" in the game. ... the game [is] an entertainment product. As long is this the case, I think "unrealisms" like casualty inflation are going to persist.

Yeah, I think we're in violent agreement on this, albeit coming at it from slightly different angles