Anyone use a system for the element of chance?

[Zenomorph]

I'm wondering if anyone has managed to implement a system in this game that provides an element of chance or unpredictability. Something like a chit pull system or card drawing. I was reading up on some civil war history and how some commanders pulled some truly nutty moves. Such as how Sickles at Gettysburg decided - all by hisself - it'd be a good idea to move his men forward into the peach orchard and thus create a nice salient that could be attacked from 3 sides at once. I'd be interested to hear if anyone's introduced such an element of surprise as the one Meade must've had watching Sickles create a nice big hole in his lines. Happy New Year to all!

[womble]

There's very little chance of one of your platoons getting "overconfident" wholesale and moving forward. You have almost complete control and the chances of a large number of individuals "going berserk" at once are so slender as to be not worthy of consideration. Let's face it, we're perfectly capable of pulling our own bonehead maneuvers without any extra help from the AI...

 

Your loss of control over your forces in CM is mostly limited to negative morale states. They'll run back without orders much more readily than they'll run forward...

 

Since, in the CM idiom, you are playing the part of both Sickles and Meade, the suggested scenario could be a post-hoc "roleplaying rationalisation" for a mistake you made in arraying your forces that seemed like a good idea at the time...

[__Yossarian0815[jby]]

Surprise is difficult in general in CM., mainly due to having enough time to react in WEGO.

At least with the bigger maps in CMRT you can actually manuever into flank positions.

[Baneman]

Well, you could try giving your units extremely long single orders, crossing any and all terrain features, then sit back and watch the TacAI decide which way to actually go...

 

That's sure to generate some randomness

[kevinkin]

element of chance or unpredictability

 

The editor allows for 5 separate AI plans per battle These are randomly executed depending on the designers settings. The TACAI delivers somewhat

unpredictable fire results and movement. Indirect artillery and air support are not 100% predictable as well. LOS/LOF are difficult to master and while predictable offer a lot of surprises. One thing to try is to play a battle where you only give orders every 3 or so turns and let the AI try to carry out your

intentions. Another thing to try - which can be wild - is to play a battle only from ground level. Take a screenshot of the map at the beginning and try to keep the angle of view down low. (No level 2 buildings). We used to game this way back in CM1x now and then.

 

Not sure where you would like to see more chance/unpredictability but these are my thoughts.

 

Kevin

[Zenomorph]

Thanks for the replies.  I've used some of your suggestions and I of all people know I don't need any help in implementing my own "unpredictability".  But it can be fun to throw in a few twists.  It can even be helpful at times.  I was once long ago playing with my nephew where we threw in card-draw system and he drew a card where a tank platoon commander misunderstood an order and instead of advancing to a particular hill he had to move his platoon right on past it to a second hill.  We got the idea from an actual similar instance in the Korean War I think.  Since I didn't see it coming I didn't have any defense against that second hill (I had a "listening post" in case of a probe but this platoon blew right on past them).  The move had horrifying results for me and I lost...badly.  But most of our cards never worked very well unless your opponent got to choose how to implement them when drawn - which of course removes the fog of war.  So I thought others might have tried it with better results.  Thanks again!

[womble]

That sort of card system sort of only works for a specific scenario, really, where the card designer can know that there is a potential "mistakeable" objective...

 

Though you could create such confusion as you experienced using asymmetric victory conditions and mis-/dis-information in briefing notes. Telling the defender explicitly that the attacker is after hill A and then putting no VL there, or a really juicy one on "improbable" Hill B might disarticulate a defense based on the defender assuming the intel they're handed is accurate and complete...

[kevinkin]

Zenomorph

 

Yesterday I set up a very simple chit draw system with random unit activation. Chits were made for each HQ in the game for the Germans (me). I played the AI in a small QB. In this case the company (Tank) HQ once activated automatically activates all units under its command. If the company fails to activate (one attempt per turn if chit is drawn) then the platoons can try to activate their AFVs if their chit is drawn. In my case there were one company and two platoon chits with one "wild card" chit that can be used to activate any single AFV (or infantry squad etc) that remains un-activated at the end on the chit draw process. So there were 4 chits but only three were drawn per turn. The random activation was >= 50% (0-99.99% using a random number generator) with the -2 to 2 leadership values serving as modifiers ie -10 subtracts 10% while 2 add 20%. So a HQ lead by a -2 leader would fail activation on a random number < 70%. Ideally for the player  the highest level HQ would activate and the game plays as normal. Un-activated units can not target of plot moves but can finish moves and fire as instructed by the games AI.

 

The system works but really only slows down the forces being regulated by it. I imagine rules could be established to activate on map reserves hiding behind terrain sort of like AI triggers. Off board reinforcements will not work - none allowed in QBs and they are pre-set in scenarios by the designer.

 

Kevin