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As a "would love to have" it would be great to be able to call on reinforcements - at the cost of a Victory Point penalty...

IIRC CM1 Campaigns/Operations had three levels of reinforcements - each would be automatically activated and brought on map if one's situation became bad enough. IIRC there were Battalion, Regimental and Divisional level reinforcements available - all triggered by the player doing increasingly poorly.

IIRC, if you were doing well, these reinforcements were never triggered and would not arrive. Unfortunately, I cannot recall how the scoring was affected by these reinforcements being triggered. It was a very sophisticated concept made useful by the fact that one could have huge scenarios in CM1 - eg a regiment of infantry plus a battalion of armor plus dozens of other asssorted AFV's.

Am really hoping that CM2 East Front will be a return to those sorts of challenging scenarios where mobility and armor become predominant. Am getting very bored with the mostly infantry slog battles we have had in CMBN and CMFI.

Awesome idea, and something that would really help unofficial operations on the larger maps.

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As a "would love to have" it would be great to be able to call on reinforcements - at the cost of a Victory Point penalty...

IIRC CM1 Campaigns/Operations had three levels of reinforcements - each would be automatically activated and brought on map if one's situation became bad enough. IIRC there were Battalion, Regimental and Divisional level reinforcements available - all triggered by the player doing increasingly poorly.

IIRC, if you were doing well, these reinforcements were never triggered and would not arrive. Unfortunately, I cannot recall how the scoring was affected by these reinforcements being triggered. It was a very sophisticated concept made useful by the fact that one could have huge scenarios in CM1 - eg a regiment of infantry plus a battalion of armor plus dozens of other asssorted AFV's.

Am really hoping that CM2 East Front will be a return to those sorts of challenging scenarios where mobility and armor become predominant. Am getting very bored with the mostly infantry slog battles we have had in CMBN and CMFI.

Great proposal -- what I'd most like to see, as a creator of HTH scenarios for PBEM games, is the ability to have a reinforcement become "available" at a set or variable time during play (the game gives me an availability alert). The reinforcement does not come on the map, however, until/unless I select it to "deploy" -- at that point it appears in its reinforcement zone as normal.

This should be set up flexibly enough that scenario designers could set VP conditions for deploying available reinforcements. Better yet, allow the designer to set the VP cost for deploying a reinforcement at specific elapsed times in the battle (the sooner you use them, the more VPs you might sacrifice, and you could have no cost at all if you leave them on the shelf).

This sort of system would better simulate a commander's management of tactical reserves. Or, in longer battles, the tactical commander requesting and receiving reinforcements from battalion/brigade reserve that would have been able to reach this area within the time window of the scenario.

Right now, there's no way to separate a reinforcement's availability in a battle from its physical appearance on the map. So we've had to work around this by creating little "safe" reinforcement holding areas on map edges -- using elevation pits to hide them from LOS/LOF, giving them tiny cover arcs, and all sorts of workarounds and house rules. Once the reinforcements arrive, we have to pretend that "they're not really there" unless/until the owning player moves them, they're fired upon, an enemy moves into proximity, or the owning player fires with them.

Having a more flexible reinforcement system would enhance the decision-making challenge of the game at all levels. It would also better support operational-tactical play using CM with other games. BFC won't implement operational play into CM, but it can nevertheless try to do things that make CM more op-friendly -- as long as those changes enrich the tactical game and don't hurt it.

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Yes, it's the distinctive chit-pull activation and command-control mechanism of Panzer Command and its descendant, the Grand Tactical System, that make those games so excellent for CM op layers, despite the limitations.

I looked over a lot of possible boardgames to use when CM gets to the Eastern Front. Very few seem to have the right scale. Many of the ones that have the right scale use generic/geomorphic maps. The only other one I really think would make a great CM companion is Streets of Stalingrad (also company level counters, 500m per hex). But I'd want to wait first and see how CMx3 improves urban fighting and/or adds features and objects that would make S-grad maps and scenarios work well. The unit density issues mentioned in earlier posts are also a major issue there.

I'll put in a vote for the Grand Tactical System, though I've only played Where Eagles Dare and Bir Hakeim.

One thing I'm interested in simulating in CM on the East Front is that moment in various accounts where the Russians send in their armor "too soon" and it gets bogged down. I find this a little hard to imagine. it seems like it would happen if there was not going to be a successful clean break through rather than a matter of timing.

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IIRC CM1 Campaigns/Operations had three levels of reinforcements - each would be automatically activated and brought on map if one's situation became bad enough. IIRC there were Battalion, Regimental and Divisional level reinforcements available - all triggered by the player doing increasingly poorly.

IIRC, if you were doing well, these reinforcements were never triggered and would not arrive.

I don't recall anything like that in any of the operations I played in CMx1, but I didn't play them all, so might have missed that feature. However, allow me to sound a note of caution. What you describe may be a desirable feature from a game play perspective and so of course is one of myriad ways that the game can be played.

However, someone like me who comes to it more from the point of view of the amateur historian might not be entirely comfortable with it. Doctrine varied across armies and practice often varied within armies, but it was usually not thought a good idea to reinforce failure. At least not on the attack. On defense, you might well send reinforcements to a sector of your front where an enemy breakthrough seemed imminent in order to contain it until the front could be stabilized. But on the attack, it makes more sense to commit the reserves where the attack is going well and a breakthrough is either close at hand or already achieved. Between two players, that might not seem fair, but then as somebody said, "Strategy is the art of never having to fight fair."

Michael

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I don't recall anything like that in any of the operations I played in CMx1, but I didn't play them all, so might have missed that feature. However, allow me to sound a note of caution. What you describe may be a desirable feature from a game play perspective and so of course is one of myriad ways that the game can be played.

However, someone like me who comes to it more from the point of view of the amateur historian might not be entirely comfortable with it. Doctrine varied across armies and practice often varied within armies, but it was usually not thought a good idea to reinforce failure. At least not on the attack. On defense, you might well send reinforcements to a sector of your front where an enemy breakthrough seemed imminent in order to contain it until the front could be stabilized. But on the attack, it makes more sense to commit the reserves where the attack is going well and a breakthrough is either close at hand or already achieved. Between two players, that might not seem fair, but then as somebody said, "Strategy is the art of never having to fight fair."

Michael

Your points about doctrine, and not reinforcing failure, are valid.

But the end results would be in the hands of the scenario designer and/or anyone who wants to edit reinforcements in the editor.

The answer to your concern is to use the tool wisely and make sure to consider what's appropriate for the battle in question. Some people make ahistorical scenarios now, and some make scrupulously authentic ones. But making the scenario editor deliberately less functional isn't going to change any of that. It's like saying, "don't allow QBs, because some players might choose to buy too many Tiger tanks." The editor is simply a tool -- it's up to the user to employ it intelligently.

Besides, under the concept we've been discussing you would be able to assign VP costs to specific reinforcements. So if you, the scenario designer, think the Allied player ought to be able to accomplish the mission with the a company-sized force, you would have two options: 1. Give the Allied player no reinforcements -- the only option you have now; or 2. Give the Allied player some optional reinforcements available, but with a VP cost for using them in the battle. Make the VP cost prohibitively high if you really want to ensure that he doesn't reward failure. But now you've added another element of risk/reward that enhances the entire game -- and that ratio of risk/reward would change throughout the battle as the tide swings one way or the other.

Think, too, of the added FOW and uncertainty for the enemy player. He might know there's a possibility of facing a foe suddenly larger than he bargained for, in an unexpected time or place. Even if he knows a certain enemy unit was potentially nearby and able to influence the battle, he can't be sure whether or when it might show up. Now you've put him in exactly the position of Napoleon at Waterloo -- thinking he's got the situation in hand...only to see that movement on the flank -- Blucher is coming!

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Now you've put him in exactly the position of Napoleon at Waterloo -- thinking he's got the situation in hand...only to see that movement on the flank -- Blucher is coming!

And he might even make a prophet of Michael Bentine, if it was in a CM scenario, and arrive in Tiger Tanks...

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Your points about doctrine, and not reinforcing failure, are valid.

But the end results would be in the hands of the scenario designer and/or anyone who wants to edit reinforcements in the editor.

The answer to your concern is to use the tool wisely and make sure to consider what's appropriate for the battle in question. Some people make ahistorical scenarios now, and some make scrupulously authentic ones. But making the scenario editor deliberately less functional isn't going to change any of that. It's like saying, "don't allow QBs, because some players might choose to buy too many Tiger tanks." The editor is simply a tool -- it's up to the user to employ it intelligently.

Oh, I accept that entirely. But I do have a concern—perhaps too much—for CM as a teaching tool being twisted to promulgate or reinforce false ideas about how the war went. Probably nothing I can do about that...if not CM, people would seize upon some other means to fortify their illusions. So play it however you wish. Just think of me as a still, small voice...carping, carping, carping.

:D

Michael

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Not to be bloodthirsty, but for tactical reasons I wish enemy personnel could be crushed by AFVs in the game. I say "enemy" because with pathfinding challenges, we'd want to make sure our own troops aren't the ones getting accidentally crushed :-)

Maybe the arguments against it would be technical (much harder to do in the CM engine that it would seem) or just that it's too low a priority to be worth the time to do it. But are there any game reasons not to? I don't see any potential for gamey abuse. If a player dares to put AFVs close enough to crush infantry, the infantry may also have the means to kill the vehicle. But it would be good for overrun situations.

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However, someone like me who comes to it more from the point of view of the amateur historian might not be entirely comfortable with it. Doctrine varied across armies and practice often varied within armies, but it was usually not thought a good idea to reinforce failure. At least not on the attack. On defense, you might well send reinforcements to a sector of your front where an enemy breakthrough seemed imminent in order to contain it until the front could be stabilized. But on the attack, it makes more sense to commit the reserves where the attack is going well and a breakthrough is either close at hand or already achieved. Between two players, that might not seem fair, but then as somebody said, "Strategy is the art of never having to fight fair."

Michael

Yes, theory. There's so many variables that on CM's tactical level it's not worth worrying about whether reinforcements to keep an attack operation game viable is viable historically.

Shooting from the hip:

Theory- hey even the best most widely accepted theory/ principals are far from universally practised.

Fog of War. Who knows that an attack has truly failed. The next echelon will surely break them now.

Some theories conflict.

Overlapping levels of conflict. Keeping the 'failing' attack going on the tactical level, is paying dividends on the operational level. eg keeping their unit tied, a communication route unusable, or the diversion feint going.

We can implement that exact theory with the newly released reserves. On the tactical level we will not reinforce that costly failure area of the map, but the area where we've been having success.

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Not to be bloodthirsty, but for tactical reasons I wish enemy personnel could be crushed by AFVs in the game. I say "enemy" because with pathfinding challenges, we'd want to make sure our own troops aren't the ones getting accidentally crushed :-)

Maybe the arguments against it would be technical (much harder to do in the CM engine that it would seem) or just that it's too low a priority to be worth the time to do it. But are there any game reasons not to? I don't see any potential for gamey abuse. If a player dares to put AFVs close enough to crush infantry, the infantry may also have the means to kill the vehicle. But it would be good for overrun situations.

I forsee someone putting an infantry battalion in two action spots and driving a tank regiment over it.

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Doctrine varied across armies and practice often varied within armies, but it was usually not thought a good idea to reinforce failure. At least not on the attack.

I'm not really a historian in this regard, but I recall accounts (both German and Soviet) that the Soviets would regularly hit defending Germans with one unit and, if they held, again with a second unit within the same tactical fight. It seems to me pointless to use echelon attacks if you aren't actually going to attack with those follow-on echelons.

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Its not until the ubiquity of modern communications that battlefield commanders had much realtime impact of the outcome of battles. Often all they could do was put their plans in place and set the ball rolling down hill. Often a commander panicking over what little he could (mis)perceive of a battle would only throw the operation into confusion, grasping defeat from the jaws of victory, you could say. CM players are used to hovering Godlike over the battlefield directing the operations. If you stuck to ground level, only occasionally tabbing through units to see what they could see, you'd find tactical decision making much more problematic. Do you interpret event X as a genuine setback or do you grit your teeth and keep with the plan?

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If a player dares to put AFVs close enough to crush infantry, the infantry may also have the means to kill the vehicle. But it would be good for overrun situations.

Certainly true in the time frame CM is currently depicting. In the early Blitzkrieg years, say 1939-41 it was more common for AFVs to use physical overrun to kill and destroy. We already have been told that it is going to be a while (maybe a couple years or more real time) before the game has regressed back to that time frame. Maybe by then, BFC will have worked out a way to acceptably implement this feature.

Michael

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Yes, theory. There's so many variables that on CM's tactical level it's not worth worrying about whether reinforcements to keep an attack operation game viable is viable historically.

I think we also need to get clear what a commitment of reserves on the CM scale is going to look like. Local reserves, which are the ones most likely to show up at all during a CM fight, are probably not going to amount to more than a platoon, even in a battalion sized defensive battle. You aren't very likely going to get a Panzer battalion coming to your rescue. You aren't in most cases going to get any armor at all in less than several hours. In the case of an offensive battle, you might get all kinds of stuff, but that would be a matter less of committing reserves to salvage a deteriorating situation than the preplanned second echelon putting in its scheduled attack. No triggers needed. The scenario designer can already implement that. Unscheduled commitment of reserves, which in the case of needing reinforcement to keep an attack going would have to come from a level higher than regiment/brigade, would take a lot of time to order and get moving. Then after they get moving, it would take some amount of time for them to get where they are needed. Even granting the time compression that occurs in CM, this looks to me like more an operational than a tactical issue.

What the creative scenario designer could do is to begin the battle with an already faltering attack that has suffered heavy casualties, is low on ammo, is weary, etc. and than have the reinforcements show up some length of time well into the first hour and then take it from there. You could also have the defense getting a small reinforcement of fresh troops a little sooner so that the battle might see-saw back and forth.

Michael

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I'm not really a historian in this regard, but I recall accounts (both German and Soviet) that the Soviets would regularly hit defending Germans with one unit and, if they held, again with a second unit within the same tactical fight. It seems to me pointless to use echelon attacks if you aren't actually going to attack with those follow-on echelons.

Of course they did that. See my earlier post. But this was all part of the operational plan. It wasn't some company commander calling battalion and saying that things weren't going well and could he please have a platoon of SU-122s?

Michael

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Certainly true in the time frame CM is currently depicting. In the early Blitzkrieg years, say 1939-41 it was more common for AFVs to use physical overrun to kill and destroy.

From what I've seen it seems very common on the Eatern front till the end of the war., at least with the SP guns. Given their lack of MGs and lack of a turret, it makes sense that these vehicles would find overrun of AT guns a viable tactic.

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From what I've seen it seems very common on the Eatern front till the end of the war., at least with the SP guns. Given their lack of MGs and lack of a turret, it makes sense that these vehicles would find overrun of AT guns a viable tactic.

T-34s also certainly engaged in the practice:

http://www.ww2incolor.com/d/32891-8/russian+T34+overran+a+PAK+40

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I think we also need to get clear what a commitment of reserves on the CM scale is going to look like. Local reserves, which are the ones most likely to show up at all during a CM fight, are probably not going to amount to more than a platoon, even in a battalion sized defensive battle. You aren't very likely going to get a Panzer battalion coming to your rescue. You aren't in most cases going to get any armor at all in less than several hours. In the case of an offensive battle, you might get all kinds of stuff, but that would be a matter less of committing reserves to salvage a deteriorating situation than the preplanned second echelon putting in its scheduled attack. No triggers needed. The scenario designer can already implement that. Unscheduled commitment of reserves, which in the case of needing reinforcement to keep an attack going would have to come from a level higher than regiment/brigade, would take a lot of time to order and get moving. Then after they get moving, it would take some amount of time for them to get where they are needed. Even granting the time compression that occurs in CM, this looks to me like more an operational than a tactical issue.

What the creative scenario designer could do is to begin the battle with an already faltering attack that has suffered heavy casualties, is low on ammo, is weary, etc. and than have the reinforcements show up some length of time well into the first hour and then take it from there. You could also have the defense getting a small reinforcement of fresh troops a little sooner so that the battle might see-saw back and forth.

Michael

Yeah, that sew-saw, or at least keeping the battle competitive is a good idea. Could really make long battles interesting.

Another idea about reinforcing apparent non success occurred to me. The different scales of analysis. Say operationally the attack is looking successful, but a tactical component is taking heavy losses. However that territory is important to the overall attack, and within that territory there are key terrain that costing a heavy price. The heavy price is bitter, and can look like failure but that key terrain still needs taking so reserves are committed to pay the price. Tractor factor in Stalingrad springs to mind.

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