Czechmate Battle- baffled by map design (vague spoilers)

[IMHO]

1 hour ago, Artkin said:

And I thought I was the only one that was pizzed over the Soviet reinforcements hahah! Except my encounter was during the March or Die campaign.

Did you play the Blue side first?

Edited August 3, 2021 by IMHO

[Artkin]

1 hour ago, IMHO said:

Did you play the Blue side first?

Nope. Balls to the wall ill play the hardest scenario and beat it. 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I thought this had been looked at?

All the damned reinforcements seem to been placed with the deliberate intent to get them shot at before the player can ever use them.

Seriously, how much effort would it be to put them in a bit of dead ground? 

It's all very well saying it's for the shock effect of Soviet doctrine, but that cuts no ice at all when you have an AT platoon in BTRs spawning in front of a bloody tank!

PS - Just out of interest, what difficulty level was this tested at?  It's immensely difficult to relay information.

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Sgt.Squarehead

[ASL Veteran]

What are you going on about?  I deliberately added very tall trees to the Soviet deployment zone to keep it free from enemy fire.  Nothing spawns in front of enemy tanks.

[Artkin]

3 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

What are you going on about?  I deliberately added very tall trees to the Soviet deployment zone to keep it free from enemy fire.  Nothing spawns in front of enemy tanks.

It might be about the first mission in the soviet campaign. Thats what my last post was about

[ASL Veteran]

Oh okay.  Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see what he says - but yeah, I had nothing to do with the Soviet Campaign.  BFC Elvis, if it's possible to split out all the back and forth about the Soviet campaign from this thread can you do that?  It's very confusing because people are talking about two different things (one of which I had no part in creating)

[BeondTheGrave]

RE: Czechmate, there are dead areas behind the trees and buildings you can hide behind, but you have to be careful because you ARE in TOW range. There are also some really unfortunate sight lines along the road by the map edge, an M2 is set in the EXACT perfect spot to snipe things moving to the mill. In the several times I've messed with the scenario I've lost tank treads, BTRs, and so, so, so much infantry to that guy just plinking 30mm between tree branches. I ended up changing my own version of the scenario to put tall leafy trees blocking that specific sight line. IIRC in the deployment phase you can actually plop units down within this 'danger zone' and if you dont move them the first few turns, eventually theyll start taking fire. 

RE: SovM1 I find that design choice both supremely frustrating and also a bit unrealistic. Its pretty simple for the CRP to figure out Americans are up on that hill. What was the Sov commander thinking to deploy in that field like that? 

Edited January 3, 2022 by BeondTheGrave

[dbsapp]

Soviet initial spawn points are vulnerable to enemy fire both in Czechmate and SovM1. 

[dbsapp]

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

15 hours ago, ASL Veteran said:

What are you going on about?  I deliberately added very tall trees to the Soviet deployment zone to keep it free from enemy fire.  Nothing spawns in front of enemy tanks.

AT Assets (BTRs with SPG-9 Teams).....Spawn up on the right side in direct LOS to a (in my case previously unspotted) M60, I got to give them a sum total of one order before they were effectively hors de combat!

I can see you added some extra trees to the initial deployment area, but it still doesn't fully block LOS.....TOWs (& possibly tank rounds) were still being fired into the deployment area in my most recent play through (I can only assume the US force doesn't have artillery, or that the units with LOS to the Soviet setup area don't have access to it, or our deployment area would be shelled to pieces in a few turns).  Once again a TOW (miraculously, given its guidance) eventually got through all those trees and hit a T-62, wounding several nearby TCs into the bargain.

Then there's the traffic Jam when the main reinforcement arrives.....As the player by now knows that the area is under observation, disentangling these units becomes a rather fraught task.

I'm finding this scenario very frustrating, You just don't have enough mass to push down the main road until the reinforcements turn up.  But when they arrive you have to spend several turns unpicking the units from the traffic jam, with TOW (& possibly tank rounds) whistling into the area all the while.  Maybe I'm just having bad luck, but it's very consistent bad luck, through over half a dozen play throughs of two different versions of the scenario.

Scouting is also difficult with the forces at hand (the BRDMs still lack recon teams & a HQ and thus any proper C2 links to the main formation).  While it's easy enough to get spots on US units on the left hand hill from the buildings on the right, it's extremely hard to report it up the C2 network as vehicles with radios dare not approach many of the better spotting locations.....I had a platoon commander dashing back & forth in an attempt to keep higher units informed.

@ASL Veteran Please don't take this as an attack.....It surely ain't that.  I know how much effort goes into making something like this, but I'm equally aware that as a designer it's possible to miss the obvious because of sheer over familiarity with one's own project.  This is my absolute favourite map in CM:CW (thus far at least) and I'm just finding it very frustrating that I'm having such a **** time with the stock scenario set on it.

I'm probably going to make my own modification of this scenario, with almost exactly the same forces, I'm just going to restructure the deployment and reinforcements, nothing more.  I won't even look at the AI as I have absolutely no problems with what I'm seeing there.

Edited January 3, 2022 by Sgt.Squarehead

[Halmbarte]

Spoilers:

The easy way up the road is a death trap. 

It takes a long time but the BRDMs and BTRs can drive thru the forest on the left and right and drop your ATGM teams and GMG teams in locations overlooking the town in the forests. Tanks can support by fire from the right hand forest. You can then do a BTR supported infantry assault from the left rear of the town once most of the US vehicles have been taken out. 

It's a long wait for the vehicles to drive ever so slowly thru the woods but you have enough time. 

H

[Sgt.Squarehead]

I had two infantry platoons and a weapons platoon plus all the BRDMs over the river, advancing in parallel along the lower two roads through the woods.  

I had to race my message relay platoon HQ back to his BTR to warn them of a Bradley on the lower road as one groups was in danger of blundering into it (I play by very strict C2 rules), fortunately the message got through in time and to my amazement they took it out with a point-blank Saxhorn shot.

I was in dire need of man portable AT systems to clear the left side (firing from the right) so when my AT assets appeared they were ordered to advance to known dead ground ready to begin deploying.....They never made it!

Two of the BTRs dumped their move orders when they realised they were looking straight down the bore of a L7, but BTRs don't have smoke and they were already on the map edge so fat lot of good that did, it just made them easier targets!

In the same turn (it always happens like that) a TOW got through all the trees hitting a T-62 in the turret.....As there were now eight T-62s in that location (through no choice of mine), all unbuttoned (that was my mistake) it didn't end well at all!

With my freshly delivered AT assets now cooking off inside their transports and a third of my tanks half blinded, before I could ever develop my main plan, I rage quit. 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Sgt.Squarehead

[ASL Veteran]

If you guys are having trouble with the scenario you can watch this series of videos.  He wins the scenario quite handily.  In the modified Steam version, I actually modified the original AI plan a little bit based upon this video and I then added a second plan since this seemed to be one that people are trying multiple times, so the AI is a little different than when this video was made.  The American force is also weaker now.

 

[Sgt.Squarehead]

It's not a problem with the scenario per-se, it's the disposition of the initial units and especially the reinforcements.

I really want to play this through, I can feel there's a complex and well laid out defence to pick my way through and all the assets to do so are provided (the AT teams turned up just as I was thinking, I could really use the Battalion AT Assets right now).

There are just some (IMHO easily fixable) issues with getting those assets into play.

Is it OK to chat by PM?

[ASL Veteran]

3 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

I had two infantry platoons and a weapons platoon plus all the BRDMs over there, advancing in parallel along the lower two roads.  

I had to race my message relay platoon HQ back to his BTR to warn them of a Bradley on the lower road as one group was in danger of blundering into it (I play by very strict C2 rules), fortunately the message got through in time and to my amazement they took it out with a point-blank Saxhorn shot.

I was in dire need of man portable AT systems to clear the left side (firing from the right) so when my AT assets appeared they were ordered to advance to known dead ground ready to begin deploying.....They never made it!

Two of the BTRs dumped their move orders when they realised they were looking straight down the bore of a L7, but BTRs don't have smoke and they were already on the map edge so fat lot of good that did, it just made them easier targets!

In the same turn (it always happens like that) a TOW got through all the trees hitting a T-62 in the turret.....As there were now eight T-62s in that location (through no choice of mine), all unbuttoned (that was my mistake) it didn't end well at all!

With my freshly delivered AT assets now cooking off inside their transports and a third of my tanks half blinded, I rage quit. 

I tried everything I could to make the initial deployment area along the road a safe zone.  There isn't much else I can do with that honestly.  It's as good as it will get - which incidentally is probably the reason why it's harder to exit that area.  I had to add all sorts of heavy forest tiles which block movement through them unlike the original where you could pass through relatively freely.  The game giveth and the game taketh away.  The tank is part of the variation that I added to the original AI plan, and I specifically checked LOS from that location repeatedly since I actually only wanted the tank to see in one specific spot.  I even planted extra trees to his right to help block LOS to the east.  So long as he isn't seeing directly into the area where the reinforcements arrive then I'm fine with it.  I seem to recall that the ground slopes back a little bit in that direction too where the reinforcements arrive so between all the extra trees I planted and the slope they should be fine when they arrive on map.  What the player does with them after they arrive is up to them.  There is only so much I can do.

[ASL Veteran]

1 minute ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

It's not a problem with the scenario per-se, it's the disposition of the initial units and especially the reinforcements.

I really want to play this through, I can feel there's a complex and well laid out defence to pick my way through and all the assets to do so are provided (the AT teams turned up just as I was thinking, I could really use the Battalion AT Assets right now).

There are just some (IMHO easily fixable) issues with getting those assets into play.

Is it OK to chat by PM?

You can send me a PM if you want to, but I would encourage you to watch the video first.  I don't anticipate making any further changes to this one though - I am working on other projects at the moment.

[Sgt.Squarehead]

7 minutes ago, ASL Veteran said:

I don't anticipate making any further changes to this one though - I am working on other projects at the moment.

No worries, I sincerely wish you well with them and look forward to playing them.

I was proposing making a minor tweak to the scenario myself and then forwarding it to you for your approval.....As I said it would be purely cosmetic, no changes to the force structure or AI (this would probably have to be a Red Only variant, at least initially, as changes to the reinforcement timings and locations would obviously profoundly affect any Red AI). 

Edited January 3, 2022 by Sgt.Squarehead

[ASL Veteran]

4 minutes ago, Sgt.Squarehead said:

No worries, I sincerely wish you well with them and look forward to playing them.

I was proposing making a minor tweak to the scenario myself and then forwarding it to you for your approval.....As I said it would be purely cosmetic, no changes to the force structure or AI (this would probably have to be a Red Only variant, at least initially, as changes to the reinforcement timings and locations would obviously profoundly affect any Red AI). 

That's fine - if you want to make changes to it and then upload your version to the scenario depot thing, I'm perfectly fine with it.