New to game - tactics

[Flibby]

Hi all,

I've spent an awful long time finding a game such as this that suits me as well, and it such an accurate representation of combat, so great to be here.

I have a question for you all - what method would you say is the best for learning more about, and improving upon my tactical ability.

I have read a lot of US FM documentation, however i am looking for something a little more practical rather than theoretical. I understand from the Field Manuals the need, for example, to maintain contact, how to flank and the importance of gaining the initiative, however precious little on the application of this in battle.

Many thanks in advance!

Nick

[womble]

There is an excellent tactics primer series on Youtube.

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

is an overview page with links to the components.

[Vencini]

First of all, welcome to the game and forum. I'll give you some links to learn tactics:

- Mr. Bill Handerberger blog: http://battledrill.blogspot.com.es/2013/08/combat-mission-tactical-problems-cmtp.html

- Some youtube videos of Mr. Jeffrey Paulding (retired LTC IN, US Army):

- Wiki: http://combatmission.wikia.com/wiki/Bogging

- POsted by PANZERMILLER (post:Hedgerow/boccage combat real world references):http://www.battlefront.com/community/showthread.php?t=110887

Ask for any questions in the forum. You can also look for specifics treads with the search tool.

Lots of wargame sites:the few good men, The Blitz, (puntadelanza and ostfront (spanish sites he,he), Esprits.net (french forum), etc.

Lots of mods in: Battlefront repository and Green as Jade

READ WITH GREAT ATTENTION any post of JasonC

Hope that helps. Enjoy the game!

Best regards

[Flibby]

Thanks very much guys, much appreciated. I sometimes find learning about the game is almost as rewarding as playing!

How easy is it to find h2h opponents these days?

[Oddball_E8]

Well, I can't speak for tactics, but there are a few things that someone new to this game should know.

1: Tiger tanks are fragile. Yes, that's right. Fragile. Don't expect a lone Tiger tank or even a King Tiger tank to hold up for long against anything bigger than a T-34. (and that includes the T-34/85).

2: Halftracks are NOT APC's... Treat them as trucks with a machinegun mounted on them.

3: Never, and I mean NEVER, clear a forest unless you absolutely have to. Just supress the occupants if they fire on you, but don't go in there.

4: Do NOT move your tanks ahead of your infantry unless it is completely open terrain for several hundreds of meters (remember, panzerschrecks have a range of 200 meters).

5: Don't treat your russian tanks as long range "snipers". These beasts are to close the distance as much as possible and then knock out german tanks by brute force (their guns are massive for a reason)

[Ultradave]

Easy. You can post here and should get a few responses. Also check out

The Few Good Men

http://www.thefewgoodmen.com/

The Blitz

http://theblitz.org/

Both have forums where you can find opponents along with ladders and multi-player campaigns.

Also, for CM - the use of DropBox and CMH greatly eases PBEM play. Both are free. CMH is Combat Mission Helper and is available here:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/jvh9sx2zla2k0eq/S6LZaVAw_7

(I think this is the right place)

[Vet 0369]

Welcome aboard Flibby! All of the suggestions are of high value, especially Vencini and Oddball_E8?!'n (I haven't watched the YouTube vids from Armchair Generals, but if Womble recommends them, they must be good).

My only suggestion is to start slow, find a human opponent for "head-to-head" (H2H) battles, and HAVE FUN! Most of all, remember that it's just a game and don't let it get your goat.

[Squallion]

Welcome to your new life, brother. >

[MikeyD]

From a 'how-to-play-the-game' perspective, I recently pulled out the game manual just for something to read and was surprised to recall how thorough and comprehensible job it does in explaining & illustrating basic tactics. If your a mobile device kind'a guy you could upload the manual PDFs to your device and browse at your leisure.

[c3k]

All the above are good. Experience is the best teacher. Play the smaller battles, repeatedly. Sure, you'll know where the enemy is and what he'll do. The goal is to refine YOUR tactics. Keep playing the same 2 or 3 starter battles until your casualties are almost nil. Then try the next battle. How'd you do? If you lost with a lot of casualties, you missed an important lesson.

Savegames are your friend...

Enjoy.

Ken

[Squallion]

All the above are good. Experience is the best teacher. Play the smaller battles, repeatedly. Sure, you'll know where the enemy is and what he'll do. The goal is to refine YOUR tactics. Keep playing the same 2 or 3 starter battles until your casualties are almost nil. Then try the next battle. How'd you do? If you lost with a lot of casualties, you missed an important lesson.

Savegames are your friend...

Enjoy.

Ken

I agree with this. The first time I played the first mission of the tutorial campaign in CMBN I couldn't even complete it. I played it for about the fourth time last night and my force was almost unscathed.

Tactics that seem obvious now were completely unknown to me then.

It's why I can't stop playing combat mission. I feel like I'm developing a skill.

[Flibby]

Thanks guys. Lots to keep me going for some time!

I learnt the hard way about trying to clear a forest - thought it looked like a nice easy concealed route to an assault position, only to find that because i hadn't scouted, i'd walked into the Red Army's antlers!

I've played around with RT and WE-GO, and also read a lot of the discussions on here to and forth, and don't intend to re-ignite them.

My only question is whether WE GO is better for learning the ropes on?

[Squallion]

Thanks guys. Lots to keep me going for some time!

I learnt the hard way about trying to clear a forest - thought it looked like a nice easy concealed route to an assault position, only to find that because i hadn't scouted, i'd walked into the Red Army's antlers!

I've played around with RT and WE-GO, and also read a lot of the discussions on here to and forth, and don't intend to re-ignite them.

My only question is whether WE GO is better for learning the ropes on?

Some people seem to prefer real time, but real time can leave you without the information you may seek.

If someone is hit or dies in real time and you didn't see it, you won't be able to rewind to figure out what it was and where the shot came from.

This is why I think the game actually needs more information in the UI, like a box that details your losses.

We-go will allow you to immerse yourself deeply in the combat, just watch and enjoy. When playing a huge battle, I often watch the one minute turn three times, once for each flank and once for the middle.

[womble]

I'd say that WeGo is certainly better for rope-learning:

• You have more time to think about what you're going to do, and how the interface allows you to go about doing that.
  
• You can watch in horrified fascination as your mistakes scythe your men down in corn rows and you just have to sit through it.
  
• You can go back and try and do that little bit differently, or elect not to do it, and see if that would be any better.
  
• And back on the upside, you get a better, more complete idea of what your tactics have achieved, in terms of effect upon the enemy.
  

For my money, WeGo is the soul of the game. How it's meant to be played. I know that's in no wise true: Steve plays RT most of the time, apparently; there are features that work better for RT than for WeGo. But it's one of the USPs for me.

[Pelican Pal]

I would learn with whatever you decide to play with.

WeGo and realtime have their own idiosyncrasies that subtly change how you give orders to your men.

I know when I give a platoon orders the resulting orders will be significantly different if I am playing WeGo or RT?

Also an armor pro-tip that I feel that is often overlooked. Treat a tank platoon like a squad of men. You wouldn't ever send one guy to secure a house. So why would you send one tank to do something? Your tank's survivability increases greatly when they have buddies around to provide support.

[Ultradave]

I would learn with whatever you decide to play with.

WeGo and realtime have their own idiosyncrasies that subtly change how you give orders to your men.

I know when I give a platoon orders the resulting orders will be significantly different if I am playing WeGo or RT?

Also an armor pro-tip that I feel that is often overlooked. Treat a tank platoon like a squad of men. You wouldn't ever send one guy to secure a house. So why would you send one tank to do something? Your tank's survivability increases greatly when they have buddies around to provide support.

Real time can be fun in some of the nice small scenarios, where you can keep track of what's going on. Once they get bigger though, you spend most of your time panicking trying to stop disaster from striking here, no over there, no over THERE.

[MikeyD]

I learnt the hard way about...

It best not to take your losses too personally playing CM. If you were to grow too attached to pixeltrooper Hartmann from 3rd Platoon it'll break your heart watching him get roasted by a flamethrower.

[c3k]

My opinion:

1. I'm glad that there is a choice for RT or WeGo. (How many games give this same choice?)

2. Real Time: I don't use it much. Maybe a couple dozen hours of total play. I've found it's only good (for me) for 2 or 3 platoons. Anything more, and it turns into a twitch game which I don't want to play. I get swamped.

3. WeGo: I enjoy very much and play 99% of my time with it. I rewind, replay, zoom around, and catch small vignettes of action in odd corners which I never would have seen had I not been able to rewind. It is those vignettes, which I can do nothing about, which I enjoy. The grenade arcing into my foxhole...and I cannot intervene. WeGo keeps you from overcontrolling the game.

All is my opinion...

Play 'em both and play what you like.

Ken

[nathangun]

Welcome to your new life, brother. >

Amen to that :-)

[Buzz]

My opinion:

1. I'm glad that there is a choice for RT or WeGo. (How many games give this same choice?)

2. Real Time: I don't use it much. Maybe a couple dozen hours of total play. I've found it's only good (for me) for 2 or 3 platoons. Anything more, and it turns into a twitch game which I don't want to play. I get swamped.

3. WeGo: I enjoy very much and play 99% of my time with it. I rewind, replay, zoom around, and catch small vignettes of action in odd corners which I never would have seen had I not been able to rewind. It is those vignettes, which I can do nothing about, which I enjoy. The grenade arcing into my foxhole...and I cannot intervene. WeGo keeps you from overcontrolling the game.

All is my opinion...

Play 'em both and play what you like.

Ken

Interesting as I play Elite Real Time vs AI 99% of the time. Maybe this is why I like smaller scenarios - 2 or 3 platoons - as it is easier to play with as few pauses as possible.

The allure to me is it seems the immediate dynamic flow of the game feels unbroken in Real Time. When I see I screwed up with an order I don't watch the next 58" of carnage being able to do nothing about errant order.

In Real Time as the force size increases Mr. Pause is your friend. When the force size increases even more Mr. Save is your best friend:D

As the scenario force size increases you do have to pause to get some synchronization of order in the forces at hand. If you don't mind missing some action you are good to go. You can always tap Mr. Save and restart the game to focus on what you missed.

As Ken said, "Play 'em both and play what you like."

What he left out was his best advice... when in doubt.... Attack!

[LUCASWILLEN05]

Use Fire and Movement tacticas at all levees/ Remember to use combined arms. For instance you might be best off preparing an assault on an enemy strongpoint with artillery or mortar fire (smoke can be used to conceal movement.

Tanks may start the assault on overwatch using their gun and machineguns to support the infantry. Don't forget anti tank guns are a real threat at his stage of the way. It is largely he job of your infantrry to close with and defeat enemy ant tank guns though tank fire and artillery are also useful for this task. Once the AT Gun threat hasbeen eliminated or a leas significantly reduced your tanks can lose in relative safety o give close support to your infantry.

Regarding infanry orders, when attacking a house or a trench I prefer to give an Assault Order. This way a squad will employ Fire and Movement tacics against the position I wish them to secure. Amother squad or a machinegun might be positiomned to give the assault squad some additional close fire support. If you are able to suppress a defendig unit it is less likely o fire at you or at least do so effectively.

This is actually quite a difficult game requiring you to implement real world tactics so doing some research and figring out how to implement these in game will help you a lot/

[Franko]

This sounds silly, but old period tactics manuals are helpful. The best phrase, and completely true and useful: "Find 'em, fix 'em, flank 'em, finish 'em."

[Maarten]

This sounds silly, but old period tactics manuals are helpful.

Not as silly as it may seem. I'm pretty sure if this wasn't the case BFC would have ditched the CMx2 engine a long time ago

[bobo]

Learn to view the battle from the unit level to see what they can see. The whole map is visible to the player but only pieces are to each unit. Learn to see what they can see and make decisions as if you were them.

That sounds good but I am struggling to get it right in my games.

Go slow! You have time to find them, fix them, flank them and finish them...

Play other humans! The experiences will vary greatly.

Bobo

[Jock Tamson]

I play RT against the AI mainly, but in a WEGO manner ie I issue a lot of orders during Pause, and then watch a few minutes play out. I find the movie review process a bit tedious when I am playing the AI and want to get through a scenario in a couple of hours.

I do think WEGO is the soul of the game, and I would use it in multiplayer, but ultimately I would like to see a few additions to increase the allure:

- A dedicated server executable for hosting WEGO games on your PC, which your client game and opponent connect to. Playback movies created by the server which all players pull down at turn end. Server defineable options such as time window length for turn submissions.

- 2v2, 3v3 etc - scenarios where one player commands allied armour, one commands allied infantry etc. Even in small scenarios where everyone is a platoon commander I think it could be a lot of a fun. Combined with C2 so that each player only gets spotting contacts from their own command and other players' contacts are dripped through via C2 (or not).

- Friendly AI forces and friendly AI plans

- Some tidying up of some of the processes in WEGO which require workarounds at the moment eg stopping vehicles for disembarkation but not being able to plot subsequent moves until disembarkation has taken place

- Not specific to WEGO: enabling the AI to use suppression, new AI SOPs for assaulting occupied buildings etc

- Force compositions in XML which can be imported into Quick Battles. Would allow player to create eg a 1300 point Wermacht July 44 NWTO combined arms force which could be downloaded by others.

- Add ability to give elements of the AI's QB force a % chance to appear, so you don't know exactly what you are facing

There is much that is very good about CM but I long for a paradigm shift of the kind that we got when we went from CMX1 to CMX2.