Fighting in woods

[John1966]

I hate fighting in woods.

That is all.

[Bulletpoint]

I doubt you'll find anyone here who disagrees

[John1966]

OK, that's not all. How do people do this?

Just played a scenario and one company took the village and several hedgerow lines with minimal casualties. Textbook stuff.

But the other company got chewed up trying to clear a single (not very big) wood. They were supposed to clear two woods but they were in no state to to continue and had only cleared half the first one.

I tend to use "Hunt" a lot in woods since we don't know where the bad guys are. But all that happens is a load of grenades go off (not mine) and loads of casualties appear (mine). Effectively there's no terrain to use (as it's all the same) and you can't see anything. Can't use armour support. If the enemy are in the woods and haven't been daft enough to pitch up at the edges, it's a death trap.

Anyone got any tips?

[Bulletpoint]

5 minutes ago, John1966 said:

OK, that's not all. How do people do this?

[...]

Quote

I tend to use "Hunt" a lot in woods since we don't know where the bad guys are. But all that happens is a load of grenades go off (not mine) and loads of casualties appear (mine). Effectively there's no terrain to use (as it's all the same) and you can't see anything. Can't use armour support. If the enemy are in the woods and haven't been daft enough to pitch up at the edges, it's a death trap.

Anyone got any tips?

First thing to realise that "hunt" is not very effective. Even if your guys have an enemy contact marker, walking along with a hunt command will get them cut to pieces. They will rarely spot the enemy first.

So what you do is (if you HAVE to clear woods.. the best is to try to avoid it) is massive suppressive fire. You can rarely target very far into the woods, but in some cases, you can make bullets travel a couple of squares. Then after hosing down, you crawl forward, and rinse and repeat.

No, it's not very fast or efficient. But it's the only SOP I've found for this situation. There is no magic trick. Clearing woods will cost you.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[com-intern]

1 minute ago, John1966 said:

OK, that's not all. How do people do this?

Just played a scenario and one company took the village and several hedgerow lines with minimal casualties. Textbook stuff.

But the other company got chewed up trying to clear a single (not very big) wood. They were supposed to clear two woods but they were in no state to to continue and had only cleared half the first one.

I tend to use "Hunt" a lot in woods since we don't know where the bad guys are. But all that happens is a load of grenades go off (not mine) and loads of casualties appear (mine). Effectively there's no terrain to use (as it's all the same) and you can't see anything. Can't use armour support. If the enemy are in the woods and haven't been daft enough to pitch up at the edges, it's a death trap.

Anyone got any tips?

Split the platoon into fireteams.

Step #1: fireteams on line and within LOS of each other. One team advances a short distance forwards using hunt (about half of LOS maybe less) and then sits for maybe 20 seconds.

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step #2: Other fireteams then advance inline with the sacrifical element and waits 20 seconds or so before repeating.

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It will take a long time but it allows your mean to move forward bit by bit and gives them time to spot and engage any enemies. Once you locate the enemy you can then engage them on your terms. You can make this slightly faster by just having your troops do a similar style of movement but with having them firing into the woods as they advance using target light.

The reason you use hunt is that you want the team to immediately hit the deck should they suspect anything is going wrong. Going prone in woods gives them a lot of concealment and the accompanying fireteams should be close enough to provide supporting fire quickly.

 

[John1966]

7 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

(if you HAVE to clear woods.. the best is to try to avoid it)

Oh, I do. Unfortunately the woods were an objective in this one.

 

8 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

Then after hosing down, you crawl forward, and rinse and repeat.

Interesting. I was wondering whether "Slow" might be the better movement option. (Not that I had the time)

[Bulletpoint]

2 minutes ago, John1966 said:

Interesting. I was wondering whether "Slow" might be the better movement option. (Not that I had the time)

It is. It's just... well.. slow.

[John1966]

7 minutes ago, com-intern said:

Step #1: fireteams on line and within LOS of each other. One team advances a short distance forwards using hunt (about half of LOS maybe less) and then sits for maybe 20 seconds.

|

| -> |

|


step #2: Other fireteams then advance inline with the sacrifical element and waits 20 seconds or so before repeating.

| -> |
.     |
| -> |

This is (sort of) what I do. A sort of very short range bounding overwatch in the dark.

Problem with my recent experience was that it was a narrow strip of woods so it was quite hard to manoeuvre at all, especially as we were taking fire from the other woods if we got too close to the edge. It was like trying to advance down a corridor with you eyes shut

[Xorg_Xalargsky]

Fighting in heavily defended woods, unless you have high-quality infantry with lots of automatics, or the woods are very small and you  have lots of artillery shells on tap is something you want to avoid as much as possible.

In the situation you described, I can make out or assume the following : 

• there are two small well defended woods that you have to clear entirely and occupy
• the enemy defenses consists of light infantry are equipped with a standard load of small arms
• you have an infantry company plus armored support

In this case, here are some possible courses of action, to mix and match according to your best judgement

• consider using prolonged tank machinegun fire to provide a blanket of suppression
• consider using a lot of artillery before going in, 80-105mm range would be ideal
• consider surrounding the woods as much as possible to be able to intercept any movement
• send scouts ahead to learn of enemy positions, keep them in C2 as much as possible, knowledge of potential enemy positions will be great help for spotting
• split your men into teams and space them out manually
• use what micro-terrain there is, unless we're talking about the deepest most pristine forests of eastern europe, woods usually have terrain features that allow for better spotting, easier movement, good or bad concealment; pay special attention to the underlying terrain tiles, the shape of the terrain, the types of trees, the presence of extra foliage like bushes or small hedgegrows, and the alignment of the trees
• use the slower movement commands and watch out for your men's stamina, it drains extremely quickly in heavy forest terrain
• if the enemy line has gaps, try to create micro-encirclement as engagement (let alone spotting) ranges are very small and troops attacked from multiple directions fare very poorly in terms of defending themselves and keeping their morale

 

[Bulletpoint]

One trick that can sometimes be valuable is the following:

If you have LOS to the woods from a long distance, use area fire from a tank or similar. Even if you can only target a couple of squares into the woods.

The thing is that area fire in this game depends on distance. The farther from the impact point you are, the farther your bullets will go. Many of them will get deflected by trees, but if you are IN the woods, you will only be able to target a couple of squares ahead, and that means most of your bullets will go into the ground. Area fire from farther away will have a chance of penetrating farther.

[John1966]

4 minutes ago, Xorg_Xalargsky said:

• consider using a lot of artillery before going in, 80-105mm range would be ideal

Funny you should mention that. The woods got a two prolonged 25 pounder bombardments. I thought it had done very little. However, at scenario end I noticed my spotter was responsible for 30 kills(!).

[domfluff]

How do you fight in woods? Don't. Or possibly "be the defender, and have lots of SMGs".
 

Failing that:

(This is assuming a squad or platoon is fighting in a wood of infinite size, so you have no access to supporting arms, and you have to actually move and fight through the woods).

Slow pepper-potting is the thing. One thing I do quite a bit is to use Target commands from the supporting elements to get an idea how far they can actually see - the hard limit of advance for each element is where LOS from the supporting elements stops, but should usually be a little closer than that.

Hunt is the command for movement, exclusively. Having the lead element stop when coming under fire is really important, and if you've set up the supporting elements correctly, you should have the best chance of dealing with the contact, whenever it arrives - if they have LOS to the lead element then they have a chance to react.

The general concept is that you need to make contact with as little of your force as possible, whilst maintaining access to fires from as much of it as possible.

Woods ultimately are a randomiser - you're going to get this wrong, and you're going to lose more than you'd like.

 

[John1966]

6 minutes ago, Bulletpoint said:

The farther from the impact point you are, the farther your bullets will go. Many of them will get deflected by trees, but if you are IN the woods, you will only be able to target a couple of squares ahead, and that means most of your bullets will go into the ground. Area fire from farther away will have a chance of penetrating farther.

I didn't know that. My tanks had been pasting the edges of the woods but from fairly close range, partly because of the terrain (it was just over a crest) and partly because I didn't realise it's better from further away.

Edited August 2, 2020 by John1966

[Bulletpoint]

38 minutes ago, John1966 said:

I didn't know that. My tanks had been pasting the edges of the woods but from fairly close range, partly because of the terrain (it was just over a crest) and partly because I didn't realise it's better from further away.

When you do area fire,  your unit target the ground, but some bullets will go high and some low. The farther you are from the point of impact, the bigger the spread, and higher some of the bullets will go. In forest terrain, most of the bullets will get absorbed by trees, but you can manage to get some to travel on and hit deeper if you fire from farther away. When doing area fire from a close unit, they will just shoot into the ground.

Edited August 2, 2020 by Bulletpoint

[com-intern]

Also remember that the enemy within the core of the woods is effectively out of the fight. As soon as you push them deep enough into it that they cannot see out you can leave a small group of men to screen your force from it and move on.

[Erwin]

It definitely takes time to clear woods "economically".  Usually, if you leave teams to spot as they enter the woods, you will get "Sound" contacts.    In CM1 those sound contacts were vague, but in CM2 they are a good and accurate indication of where enemy units may be lurking.  You can then TARGET LIGHT (or TARGET) those sound contacts for a minute or two to suppress em while you use maneuver to get closer with other teams which then also TARGET the contacts.  Eventually the enemy will be ID'd and one can TARGET them while assaulting.  

On has to be careful in the approach to try and attack one enemy unit at a time and ensure one doesn't run into too many enemy units at the same time.

If the design does not allow you sufficient time and you don't have the HE to devastate the woods, then it's going to be bloody.

 

[com-intern]

iirc the reason the contacts in CMx2 are better is because they are not sound contacts but poor visual contacts.

"was that a man or a bush" as opposed to "I heard metal clinking"

This is sorta linked into why we dont have vehicle misidentification

Edited August 2, 2020 by com-intern
spotting

[IICptMillerII]

23 hours ago, com-intern said:

iirc the reason the contacts in CMx2 are better is because they are not sound contacts but poor visual contacts.

Its both. There are sound contacts. Enemy vehicles moving around in earshot but out of line of sight, such as at night or when terrain is in the way, will give an unspotted contact icon. 

[fireship4]

Two man scout team out front if possible using hunt and I would advance using fast, one or two action squares each time, in platoon wedge and using bounding (as opposed to travelling) overwatch, moving the centre two squads first and in line.  You will be spotted first in terrain like that so best to be running and already down and in cover by the time you are.

[Bulletpoint]

The main difficulty with woods is that they don't work like you'd expect. You'd expect each unit to have a chance to spot enemies in a circle of some radius (depending on tree density). What actually happens is that LOS in woods is more like a chessboard, with a pattern of some places having total LOS and some having absolutely no LOS. This happens even if the ground is flat and vegetation is uniform.

I find the best way to approach it is to advance in a line abreast, since then there will usually always be one unit that has LOS to any enemy that might pop up.

[Bozowans]

I'm always torn on whether to try rushing the enemy en masse or not. On one hand, sometimes it can end up with me taking enormous casualties, but on the other, sometimes it works fantastically well and I end up completely overwhelming and overrunning the opposition while taking minimal loss. Each enemy soldier can only shoot at one guy at a time, so it is very difficult for them to deal with lots of guys rushing them from multiple directions, running over and through their positions and alongside their flanks as well.

If you try engaging the enemy on a 1:1 basis, like having one fireteam creeping through the woods until they run into an enemy fireteam face to face, you are gonna lose. If you have an entire full-strength platoon aggressively and suddenly rushing that one enemy fireteam all at the same time, then things might be different. Of course, that doesn't mean you just wanna mindlessly charge into the woods though. You still wanna have an idea of where the enemy is and in what strength, so you wanna send in scout teams first, do small probing attacks, area fire into the woods in front of you for a while, and THEN charge in for a final assault once you have a good picture of the enemy positions.

It reminds me of urban combat sometimes. I don't want to split my squads up into smaller teams all the time and spread them out inside urban areas. Instead, I want a much higher soldier density than normal in order to completely and ruthlessly overpower the opposition at close range.

[A Canadian Cat]

Good advice here in this thread. I'll add my 2c - I like @Bozowans overwhelming force idea but you have to make sure that you are using that force with full information. If you just rush in and then discover that there is a strong force in the woods things will end very poorly. I tend to use split teams and use leapfrogging hunt movement. Once I find some enemy then I try to get as many fire teams shooting at them or near them as possible while another team waits a bit before assaulting them. But this is done where I can find an enemy team that I can isolate at least a little. I'll break contact in other places to concentrate on one location.

Remember that if you find the enemy and pull back a bit if they decide to come at you then all the problems we are dealing with become their problem. I find breaking contact in the woods very effective.

[Erwin]

Since bullets/HE will penetrate much further than one can see, one should also AREA FIRE into locations where one has evidence of enemy positions.  That should keep the enemy's heads down while while your other teams work their way closer until they have a positive ID of a target.

[Bulletpoint]

1 minute ago, Erwin said:

Since bullets/HE will penetrate much further than one can see, one should also AREA FIRE into locations where one has evidence of enemy positions.

They don't penetrate that much farther though. Woods in CM are really good bullet sponges.

[Erwin]

All I can say is that I had the opportunity to try many different tactics when repeatedly playtesting scenarios and this AREA FIRE tactic worked the best in most situations (vs the AI).  Area Fire will penetrate beyond visual range and that's what is needed here - to suppress enemy that one cannot see (and they cannot see you). 

Of course if playing H2H, your human oppo can Area Fire at you if he gets any kind of sound contact as you approach his position.

Edited August 6, 2020 by Erwin