Simple considerations for experienced players

[Joao Perru]

Hi there all, i'm an italian player of CM from the first installments of the serie.

Last and this year i found myself playing CMRT/CMBN/CMBS. I'm a lover of the Eastern front so i played CMRT the most. Always thought that CM is the best tactical wargame out there. The neat graphics, improved by mods, help to achieve the "realism" of the battlefield. For me, it's nothing short of a masterpiece of modern wargaming.

Played a lot of missions, and then i started with campaigns. Read a lot of useful information here on this forum. When i started playing campaigns, with the fear to lose men and equipment, came my first doubts about the realism of the game. I hope they're just doubts. Now i'm here asking to the experienced ones to give me a hand with the matter:

1) Read a lot about it: forest fights. It's very difficult to move and fight in the woods with infantry (against infantry obviously). I've read that you have to see them as mortal traps. To advance if you have tons of covering fire. Do you really think that the game portaits such a thing in a realistic way? I mean, sometimes i've found myself in frustration. I personally think it's a bit exaggerated, but i could and i WANT to be mistaken. I don't care if something is difficult, if i know it's realistic. Would be different if i really find that something is unrealisticaly hard for game bugs or wrong features.

2) Line of sight. Lots and lots of times i wanted to lay covering area fireand  i couldn't  cause i didn't have a damn LOS to a tile, due to a little reverse slope issue. I really hate it. I know that it's written in the game engine and you can't do anything about it, but come on! It's a game heavily based on covering fire, can't be so difficult to lay one on some maps. Just recently i found out that if you shoot at a tile in LOS in the same line, shots go straight and dont' hit the ground, so eventually they reach the tile you want. It's a sort of workaround, but usally it works. I'd like to know if you use this method or have your own.

3) Armor and Infantry. After many missions with mixed forces (Armor+infantry), i've seen that the 95% of the casualties are inflicted by armor only. I know that heavily depends on maps and scenarios, and that infantry often is just a "place holder". But there's really so much difference? (i know... this is just a stupid question, but i wanted to ask anyway). Please share your thoughts and experiences. Maybe i just dont have good tactics to put it to use.

 

Thanks a lot for your future answers, sorry for my english, and... HAPPY NEW YEAR!

 

Edited December 31, 2015 by Joao Perru

[A Canadian Cat]

Hi there all, i'm an italian player of CM from the first installments of the serie.

Excellent and welcome to the forums. If you had not mentioned your English was a second language I would have never guessed.

1) Read a lot about it: forest fights. It's very difficult to move and fight in the woods with infantry (against infantry obviously).

Forest fights have come up a lot. As someone with plenty of experience from both sides I am very happy with forest fighting. Which is  to say very frustrated  . There is some disagreement but I think on balance it is modeled well. So many times I see both sides feeling like they got the short end of the stick in a forest fight. Often I see both sides with men fleeing the line of contact. It feels pretty good to me.

 

2) Line of sight. Lots and lots of times i wanted to lay covering area fireand  i couldn't  cause i didn't have a damn LOS to a tile, due to a little reverse slope issue. 

Well if your gunner or mem cannot see the place you want them to fire how are they supposed to? I know sometime it is a little off but your solution of firing on the location just closest where you can target is probably pretty much correct. On balance this one might be a bit off in some places but I always felt it was not a huge deal and much of the time it is really not wrong. My advice is just go with it and use your work arounds and let the rest just fall in the **** happens and on war lots of bad **** happens bucket.

 

3) Armor and Infantry. After many missions with mixed forces (Armor+infantry), i've seen that the 95% of the casualties are inflicted by armor only. 

There are two things at work here IMHO. One most of the casualties were caused by HE and MGs after artillery which is just HE anyway. And two we are far more aggressive as commanders than those in real life. Plenty of engagements we push to the end would really have ended up with the enemy withdrawing after taking several casualties from enemy armour that they had no way of neutralizing.

Thanks a lot for your future answers, sorry for my english, and... HAPPY NEW YEAR!

indeed happy new year. No doubt this thread will generate some significant discussion and disagreement. Hopefully all in a good spirit. I look forward to reading others opinions.

[Joao Perru]

Thanks for you answers!

About line of sight. Sometimes this happens: the reverse slope is so thin that i could fire to the enemy unit if i saw it,  (say... 1-2 meters above ground), but i cannot fire in that general direction if the unit it's not spotted. And that's kinda weird.

I agree with the fact that many battles would end sooner in real life with an enemy withdrawal.

[Bud Backer]

My own experience with forests is that they are indeed difficult terrain to fight in. Neither side has great LOS, so it's a bit of cat-and-mouse trying to ambush one another, or pummel with mortars and artillery. I'd agree with IanL that they work quite well to represent a lot of the challenges of that terrain.

Welcome to the forum, great questions!

 

[RockinHarry]

Welcome and happy new year, Joao Perru

Forests in CMX2 can be almost modelled to anything you see in mother nature as well. From thick almost unpenetrable wildernesses to well cultivated plantations that offer fair but limited line of sight. The usual doctrines were to avoid forests if they are small ones and go around. If they can´t be avoided they´re considered as "special" combat situations (like MOUT) and need special preparations and tactics. Some main points to consider in the game is that trees and forests provide lots of deadly tree bursts when plastered with mortars and artillery. A defender in a forest is in a bad place if he can´t afford to buy log bunkers, as foxholes and trenches do not offer noticable overhead cover (if any at all). A pure infantry force without artillery support relies heavily on careful recconaissance. First to find the enemy positions within a forest, but also the best spots to bring supporting weapons (lMG, rifle grenades, Zooks) fire on identified enemies. LOS/LOF within forests can vary greatly, but sometimes a sweet spot can be found that enables at least some heavy area fires on a particular enemy position from not too close range. It´s quite a time consuming affair to move a reccon screen forward and keep the bulk of the attacking forces behind, in order to maintain flexibility unless a "weak" spot in the enemy positions is found. Generally that requires a good morale and good experience force to succeed this way, but otherwise and if one does not care for casualties, a concentrated human wave attack and wearing down a defender this way should also work most the time. So with regard to realism I figured that most the real life tactics in forest fighting, work sufficiently well in the CMX series.

When using target area fire, one always needs to consider that it has a rather wide dispersial not just in width, but also in depth. If one does not need the "depth" factor, one gets more bullets/shells into an area, by targeting an area just in front of the actual target "area", which oftenly is the only way to get any fire into a location that does not provide direct line of sight to the shooter. This is the workaround you mentioned and what Ian already explained I guess. With regard to "realism" I´d say that with the given lack of friendly fire perils from small arms in the game, a number of exploits and advantages exist that are absent in real life, although these apply to both opponents alike.

[Aurelius]

Forests are deadly. I like to avoid them. If I have to go through it I tend to leap frog through it, very slowly. Right now I am in a PBEM game where I have to clear a forest full of remnants of Soviet SMG company. I shudder when I think about it.
As for combined arms - the side which chooses more tanks and uses them tactfully usually wins. It is well established in my gaming group to surrender when your last tank is destroyed.

[Vanir Ausf B]

 

1) Read a lot about it: forest fights. I mean, sometimes i've found myself in frustration.

If you are frustrated just think how the US First Army felt in the Hürtgen Forest As with most things CM-related forest fighting is not exactly correct in all the details but I think it's general accurate. Truth be told, if anything it's probably easier in the game since the C2 problems don't have as severe penalties as they do in reality.

2) Line of sight.  I really hate it.

Well, yeah. Most of the time you can work around it. The method you mentioned is a good one. But sometimes you can't and it can be frustrating.

3) Armor and Infantry. After many missions with mixed forces (Armor+infantry), i've seen that the 95% of the casualties are inflicted by armor only. I know that heavily depends on maps and scenarios, and that infantry often is just a "place holder". But there's really so much difference? (i know... this is just a stupid question, but i wanted to ask anyway). Please share your thoughts and experiences. Maybe i just dont have good tactics to put it to use.

I have given this some thought over the years and my opinion is that the power of armor may be somewhat exaggerated in CM but not to an extent that blows realism out of the water.

"One thing has become very clear to me: we can win the war here only with massed Panzers and with nothing else. Therefore the cry: Give us Panzers and more Panzers! The Panzer-Waffe is the weapon that will decide the war, nothing more and nothing less! I have now seen the truth of this statement with my own eyes."

-- 4, November 1943. Hauptmann Markowsky, III. Panzer Regiment 24, 24th Panzer Division.

 

[akd]

1. Missions in CM tend to draw heavily on scenarios where tanks were present, because both scenario authors and players tend to gravitate towards including armor in scenarios.  The huge numbers of infantry-only engagements where tanks couldn't be brought to bear are consequently underpresented.

2. Combined infantry-armor is much easier in the game than reality due to player's ability overcome C2 limitations and because terrain does not restrict armor operation nearly as much as it did in reality.  Imagine if the tanks showed up and then just sat there totally ignoring what the infantry were doing (a common complaint in Italy.)

Edited January 1, 2016 by akd