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Infantry canonfodder in CMRT


Pike

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I find the assignment of points related to causalities too absolute i.e. it is all or nothing once/unless the set % is reached. That being said, and to Jason's point, a combination of lower than normal experience, sufficient scenario time, friendly causality penalties and asymmetric terrain objective points might produce battles where careful play is rewarded and the company sized battlefield does not turn into into major field hospital. (What a mouth full). The only way to change player behavior is to instill a fear of losing if they press too unrealistically near the "end game". So a draw become battle well fought by both sides and a perfectly laudable result. Does it matter if you capture the town and its warm beds if there is no one left alive to sleep in them? 

Kevin 

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Kevinkin - we get the goal. But sorry, "penalties for own side losses" just do not have the effect you are ascribing to them.  They would only have that effect if a scenario is only meant to be played by a human vs the AI with the human side fixed, and that side only given such own loss penalties.  As soon as both sides have own loss penalties, they necessarily have other guys loss bonuses to match any and every such penalty, and annihilating the enemy regardless of cost becomes a clear path to victory.  You can't change this by fiddling with the loss dial.  The reason it doesn't work is there is no "up" direction that isn't a "down" direction for the other side.  Victory is zero sum.  No matter how large the penalty is, both sides can't lose, and being marginally less far in the penalty direction is still being ahead, and only that relative performance can matter.  VCs therefore *cannot* achieve the intended aim of actually making players avoid high losses to both sides - unless there is only one player (the AI game alluded to above).

Besides the morale and cease fire mechanisms I've outlined above, the only other with any tendency to induce a rational player to lower his personal loss tolerance, is needing the forces involved to fight tomorrow, as in campaigns.  Even there, the same logic as above applies, unless the enemy force isn't subject to the same constraint (e.g. If he gets the same force regardless, or is reinforced more if his losses are higher).  Even in that case, one doesn't achieve a *symmetric* loss avoidance incentive.  The freely replaced force has every incentive to tolerate total friendly losses to wreck the irreplacable campaigner's force in the early scenarios of the campaign.  In practicd this is going to reduce to the AI like situation above, therefore.

I ran a number of operational campaigns in CMx1.  In early fights, players did show loss avoidance, but fairly soon they staked all their best armor in all or nothing fights seeking to destroy the enemy's main body.  Those were then pushed to total wipeout for the losing side, because there was effectively no tomorrow.  Win that one with a total kill, and the rest of the campaign would be easy; lose it and the rest would be hopeless.  The logic of decision symmetry is much harder to get around than you suppose.  

FWIW.

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Jason

I was thinking only H2H. Wouldn't  the type of defensive terrain available to each side affect behavior? That is. Given equal play, wouldn't the side with better defensive positions be less likely to reach the friendly threshold if they stay put instead of leaving to seek and destroy? Or perhaps if the other side needs to capture a few objective buildings, wouldn't they want to try some form of low risk stab? If that fails - call it a draw. I do not think an all out cage fight is always the ultimate behavior since no one wants to be ambushed by an opponent awaiting in a prepared position by leaving your own. I understand what you mean by zero sum in a perfectly systematical scenario. But when you consider other combat factors and the potential for unequal losses based on those and player tactics, it's not zero sum every time. 

Kevin 

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Kevinkin - I am talking about loss tolerance.  If the enemy can't stand losses, then I can afford nearly total losses as long as I inflict equal or higher losses on him.  There is simply no requirement to pay any attention to the VCs that supposedly apply to my side, when I can focus instead on those that supposedly apply to the other side.  I never need to win, it is enough to make the enemy lose - in any terms you set.  Dialing higher the points docked for getting men killed just has no tendency whatever to restrain aggressiveness or going for total wipe out.  We can't both lose.

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So what if you don't pay attention to your VCs and attack your opponent but don't cross the threshold you expected to because he is positioned better and not on the move etc..? So say the threshold for friendlies is a very bloody 50% and you loss 80% and your opponent losses just 20% due to combat factors like better use of terrain. I believe things things like terrain along with loss parameters can restrain aggressiveness. I mean I would rather be on the tactical defensive in good terrain if the forces are not too unequal. Sometimes maybe the best result is a draw given the tactical situation presented.   

Kevin

Edited by kevinkin
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It certainly is difficult to achieve some kind of reason for a player to be concerned about his VCs, but good designers can manage it.

Eg. If you combine a reasonable friendly casualty % with a carefully considered time limit, a player has to risk one to achieve the other (granted, a "reasonable" time limit was easier to calculate in CMx1). 

 

Edited by Baneman
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Baneman - I don't care about my victory conditions.  I care about the enemy's victory conditions (especially his loss victory conditions, because those are a "two-fer", making my in-game job easier).  If I take his "survival" victory conditions and smash them into a million pieces by murdering his force, he will lose.  If he loses, I will win.  Simple.  Again, this is much harder to get away from than the last few commentators here suppose...

Edited by JasonC
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And if you only retain a small fraction of your starting force at the end you may not win as well since you are also blown to a million pieces in the process. Your enemy's conditions are a two-fer also. In fact both players may only deserve a draw or less at that point since they lost their entire command. 

Kevin

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Kevin - I can't say it any slower. The entire issue we are discussing is the tendency of players to fight the battle to the death. Of course one player will necessarily do so somewhat better than the other does - and he will win as a result.  You can't force him not to press to death or killing to enemy by docking both players for losses, and no you can't make them both lose by changing either's victory conditions.  There is no tendency of the side that decides to fight to the death to take higher losses than he inflicts.  And it only takes one player making that choicd for it to apply to both of them.  Only if both back off do losses stay lower than total for the losing side, and the VCs cannot provide the slightest in encentive for them to do so.

Not giving them enough time, not giving them effective weapons, lowering their men's morale to the point where they stop obeying orders to fight more, before one side is dead - those can have a tendency to lower overall losses.  Trying to tell the players not to get their men killed cannot, because you are simultaneously telling then to stop at nothing to kill the enemy.

 Yes those two directives are directly opposed to each other - that's the entire point.  "Don't get your men killed" = = = "kill the enemy".  Triple equals, by definition, same statement, no distinction is possible between them.  Because they are exactly the same statement, just viewed from each side of the hill.

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A designer can't force them to eat their vegetables either. But if a player cares at all about a successful result in a given tactical situation they will plan their fight according to expected loss ratios based on  experience with combinations of combat factors like the defences they face. But if I am playing with monopoly money i can draw for an inside straight ... what the hey. But if a player has a reason ensure their best result ... they will and may not decide on some foolish throw of the dice manuver.

Lose ratios are rarely as equal as you think. There are too many factors. Every walk into a well set up ambush? A player does not have to actively moving around trying to kill anyone to be more effective at killing than their antsy enemy.

Kevin

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Kevinkin - the players do not harm themselves or their victory chances in the slightest degree by ignoring such a directive from the scenario designer, proving they aren't the fools in this picture, he is.  He is telling them to chew their water and breath their vegetables - nonsense directives that simply do not mean what the director wants them to mean.  He has failed to view his own wishes from both sides, and does not see they refute themselves.  His problem, not theirs.

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The fact is that the current set of choices for a scenario designer with regards to victory conditions gives the designer the option to make casualties the primary means of determining victory or defeat.  Anyone who thinks otherwise either doesn't understand the victory choice options available or hasn't fully thought out how to implement them.  For example, let's say you have a battalion sized attacking force and you want to allocate them 1000 possible victory points.  I can set a casualty parameter of say 5% and assign that parameter 800 out of the 1000 possible points.  I can then set a terrain objective - say a bridge or something - and assign that bridge 200 points.  Okay, so if side A captures the bridge with less than 5% casualties 1000 points are possible.  If side A doesn't capture the bridge and takes less than 5% casualties then side A gains 800 points.  If side A captures the bridge but takes more than 5% casualties then side A gets a maximum of 200 points.  How about side B?  Let's say I assign side B, the defender, 1000 total possible points and I give them four terrain occupy objectives valued at 250 points each with no other victory conditions and none of the terrain objectives are the same as for side A (or rather the bridge is not an objective for side B)?  Side B must sit on the occupy objectives in order to gain points for them so even though side B could theoretically fight to the death without penalty there is no incentive to because they must occupy the four terrain objectives to win and they are defending.  Side A could theoretically fight to the death in order to capture the bridge objective, but unless side A dislodges side B from side B's occupy objectives side A can't win.  Here is the interesting part - I can make side B's objectives unknown to side A and side A's objectives unknown to side B so side A may not even know what is important for side B to occupy and thus side A may not even be aware that side B needs to be pushed off of those objectives.  So you see, in order for side A to fight to the death and secure a victory, it is actually more important for side A to push side B off of side B's objectives when those objectives aren't even known to side A.  I could even place one of side B's objectives such that side A could capture that location without taking heavy casualties which would then allow side A to gain 1000 points for the casualty parameter and the bridge while side B would gain 750 for the other three terrain objectives.  Granted, it probably wouldn't be a very interesting scenario because of the heavy incentives for side A to play cautiously but it could be done.

Having said all that I get what Jason is saying because if both sides have friendly casualty parameters to keep casualties low and both sides ignore those parameters then neither parameter is having the desired effect, but that only assumes a situation where the victory conditions are symmetrical or nearly symmetrical.  The beauty of CMx2s victory conditions are that they can be as asymmetrical as the designer wants to make them.  I can even award one side or another bonus points that have no objective or condition assigned to them if I want to.

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ASL veteran wrote in relevant part that his side B "has no incentive to do so because they must occupy their terrain objectives to win".  This is simply not true.  They have a different strategy available - focus on ensuring that side A busts their loss victory condition.  They could use the objectives as a pure artillery trap and exceed those narrow loss limits, for example.  The designer's *desire* that side B statically defend four spots in place is simply not any requirement at all, that side B do so.  Even that side B defends is up to the player B, and what he thinks will work, not up to the designer.  If the easiest way to inflict over 5% losses on A is to ambush well off the objectives, or to counterattack on the left flank, those become perfectly viable strategies for B.

The side A loss VC simply is not, objectively, something that only matters to or influences side A.  It is, objectively, part of side Bs VCs, to just inflict 5% losses on A *at any cost* to his own force.  The designer intends a loss avoiding fight.  But the means he must use to tell that to A, equally tell B to go all kamikaze and banzai to death into A, if doing so can inflict even very lopsided losses against him.  As long as A bleeds. (In the example given, B may also want to hold one terrain objective out of five, his own or the bridge, but that's trivial compared to the 800 he gets just for busting As loss limit).

And no, you can't make VCs as asymmetric as you like, because I can always play to my opponents VCs instead of my own. Everything you tell him he must do becomes something you are telling me to prevent him from doing, and vice versa. You cannot make the items in my briefing more important to me than the items in his.  That just isn't how *strategy* works.  I am *always* fighting to wreck my enemy's plans, first and foremost.  (Frequently by wrecking his forces, and thus his ability to accomplish anything, but that is a separate, additional discussion).

As for Erwin's comments, he clearly just hasn't followed the point of the discussion, and he woukd appear to be imagining scenarios played always on one side by a single human player.  It is of course trivial to set VCs for only one side that have whatever incentives the designer likes, and then to rely on the AI having no brain and therefore having no reaction to anything.  But otherwise, no none of this was addressed in any way in CMSF, nor since.

Edited by JasonC
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The better CMSF scenarios didn't seem to have a problem "forcing" players to limit friendly losses.  For one, I really miss those.  Can't quite understand the previous discussion here re what is or isn't possible, when it was already accomplished in CMSF.

It managed to get players to limit friendly losses by having scenarios that the US was expected to win overwhelmingly by wiping out all the Syrian forces, for the most part. The only variable in how well you did was how much of your force you lost.

It didn't do anything to achieve what is being argued about here: the players isn't going to back off an attack when they start taking casualties in a way that would happen in the real world. They're going to keep pushing. And either they managed to keep their losses low enough to win the scenario, or they lose the scenario and play it again.

The closest you get to real world behaviour is when the player gets a full loaded Stryker blown up by an ATGM in the first five minutes and restarts the scenario. That's about as close as you come to calling off an attack, in game terms.

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The closest you get to real world behaviour is ... That's about as close as you come to calling off an attack, in game terms.

I'm not seeing why people have an issue so much with players not behaving like they would as commanders in the real world. They're not in the real world (thankfully), they're just playing a wargame. If that's how they want to play it that's how they're gonna play it. There shouldn't be some great effort to make the game such that the player is forced to make more conservative decisions. I one wants to play imitating more real world behaviour then he is free to do so. Sure that might mean he/she will "loose" the scenario but what does that even mean except the words at the end. If you are happy with how you fought and what you achieved then who cares what the end title says. Heck often you see the AAR guys talk about how they had a tactical defeat or a draw but they're actually really happy with the outcome.

If the problem is playing against other people and them not behaving enough like they were in the "real world" commanding "real people" then there's two things to say. Firstly, one can always try and find someone to play with who would be happy to play not for winning with points but performing the best as if it was a "real battle". You can even arrange your own objectives on a map if you're not happy with the ones the scenario designer picked and just toggle the objectives off. Secondly, if you want to develop your tactical abilities to a higher aptitude then you should try and be prepared to fight against people who may be less predictable then a "real" enemy by taking more initiative and not  holding back when sustaining losses that might well make a real commander second guess themselves.

I realise this might not be exactly what the discussion has been about so far but i just thought id chuck by two bux worth in. Also, what a perfect example of a thread going completely off topic (very interesting though don't get me wrong).

 

Edit: @TheVulture I quoted your post for context, this wasn't an aimed attack on your point or anything.

Edited by Luka
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ASL veteran wrote in relevant part that his side B "has no incentive to do so because they must occupy their terrain objectives to win".  This is simply not true.  They have a different strategy available - focus on ensuring that side A busts their loss victory condition.  They could use the objectives as a pure artillery trap and exceed those narrow loss limits, for example.  The designer's *desire* that side B statically defend four spots in place is simply not any requirement at all, that side B do so.  Even that side B defends is up to the player B, and what he thinks will work, not up to the designer.  If the easiest way to inflict over 5% losses on A is to ambush well off the objectives, or to counterattack on the left flank, those become perfectly viable strategies for B.

The side A loss VC simply is not, objectively, something that only matters to or influences side A.  It is, objectively, part of side Bs VCs, to just inflict 5% losses on A *at any cost* to his own force.  The designer intends a loss avoiding fight.  But the means he must use to tell that to A, equally tell B to go all kamikaze and banzai to death into A, if doing so can inflict even very lopsided losses against him.  As long as A bleeds. (In the example given, B may also want to hold one terrain objective out of five, his own or the bridge, but that's trivial compared to the 800 he gets just for busting As loss limit).

And no, you can't make VCs as asymmetric as you like, because I can always play to my opponents VCs instead of my own. Everything you tell him he must do becomes something you are telling me to prevent him from doing, and vice versa. You cannot make the items in my briefing more important to me than the items in his.  That just isn't how *strategy* works.  I am *always* fighting to wreck my enemy's plans, first and foremost.  (Frequently by wrecking his forces, and thus his ability to accomplish anything, but that is a separate, additional discussion).

As for Erwin's comments, he clearly just hasn't followed the point of the discussion, and he woukd appear to be imagining scenarios played always on one side by a single human player.  It is of course trivial to set VCs for only one side that have whatever incentives the designer likes, and then to rely on the AI having no brain and therefore having no reaction to anything.  But otherwise, no none of this was addressed in any way in CMSF, nor since.

I'm sorry that you didn't understand the most important part of what I wrote Jason because that's really the most important part about victory conditions in CMx2.  The most important part is that each side's victory conditions are unknown to the other.  Each side's terrain objectives can be different and unknown to the other side.  Each side's casualty objectives, both parameter and destroy, can be different and unknown to the other side.  Therefore if the defending side doesn't know about the casualty victory condition for the attacking force, then the defending force doesn't know to pursue that as an objective.  The only objective that the defending force has is to occupy the victory locations - that's the only objective that the defender knows in my example.  The parameter victory condition for the attacking force is unknown to the defender.  If the defender doesn't know to pursue an objective the player generally won't pursue it.  Why?  Because that player doesn't know it exists.  Therefore the amount of casualties produced in this example will be dictated by how aggressive the attacker is in pressing his attack.  You are also making some assumptions about the relative strengths and make up of the two forces.  What if the defending force is a reinforced company in size and the attacking force is a battalion in size?  5% of 400 men might be a heavy lift if the defending force is only 50 men.  What if the defending force has a high percentage of its forces as static equipment like bunkers, AA, and Field guns?  It could be impractical for a defending force to actively pursue a casualty strategy against the attacker if the attacker doesn't press the attack both from mobility concerns and from a firepower concern. 

I'm not going to get into a huge circular argument with you about this though.  If you choose not to understand or to cling to your misconceptions then that's your business after all.  The game can achieve what a designer wants it to achieve for the most part.  The only victory condition that is relatively difficult to work with is the exit condition because of its lack of flexibility.  Other than that you can pretty much accomplish what you want to get accomplished.

Edited by ASL Veteran
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ASL Vet - I don't need to know where you set the loss threshold.  I can act as though hurting the enemy severely with lead to victory pretty much regardless of its cost to me, and unless you deliberately set the VCs in a truly perverse manner or tried to make victory for me impossible, that will work.  Either through the enemy having a loss VC that I do trigger, or simply by preventing him from fulfilling his other objectives through defeat of his force.  Dead men hold no ground.  Entirely independent of the designer's intentions and set VCs, there is always already a case for fighting to the death of the enemy force.  The question was and is, precisely, whether there is any knob or dial the scenario designer can turn, in the VCs alone, that will provide a compelling reason for the players *not* to do this.  *Both* of the players, because it one player decides to fight "to the death", the fight *will be* to the death.  I claim that if the players are rational, you cannot (by setting VCs alone).  If you fool them or if they were disinclined to fight that way to start with, sure games can result in which both sides don't press home.  But one or both of the players is hurting himself by that decision, in the VCs that you set, regardless of how you set them - that is what I am claiming.

Luka wrote in relevant part "If the problem is playing against other people and them not behaving enough like they were in the "real world"..."

Yes that is precisely the issue.  I claim that it is a rational, near optimal, robust and rewarded strategy in CM scenarios to fight every battle as though it were "to the death", focused on the utter destruction of the enemy force.  This is not realistic, but it is favored by the game situation and its abstracting a little subcombat out of the whole war and making it a zero sum, you or I win thing.  I claim that most players in nearly all fights can and will - and rationally so - order their men to press so hard that total losses on both sides combined greatly exceed actual losses in comparable real world engagements.  As in, it is utterly normal for losses to single companies in one hour in a CM game, to exceed the losses of entire divisions fighting for an entire day, in the real war.  Not a small difference.

I happen to think that happens largely because unit morale is too high, and confusion and command stuff undermodeled and too coordinated and godlike, not primarily anything to do with victory conditions.  When people tell me I can just play differently, they are missing the point.  My opponent won't play differently and his play will be *better* because of it.  When people tell me I can just set the VCs differently and it will solve the problem, I claim they are just flat wrong, and changing the VCs has no tendency to address this issue, whatever.

Clear enough what I am claiming?

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