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City Fighting in CM


Guest PeterNZ

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Guest PeterNZ

been reading a lot of MOUT stuff as I'm sure lots of people have been.. and i'm wondering, does it work in CM?

Any beta-dudes got examples of tactics they used that worked or mistakes the enemy made that they exploited?

Because, as much as I love CM, the cities i've seen seem so nice and open, lots of wide streets.. kinda nice place to live i'm sure.. but not hte blasted rubble filled streets and tightly packed buildings, (Close Combat did city fighting quite well i think.. lets not talk tank ai tho ok! smile.gif

just questions looking for comments!

PeterNZ

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Peter,

Well, while CM doesn't feature rubble in the streets etc (due to VRAM issues) and mightn't "look" like Berlin in June 1945 the mechanics are right.

Street fighting works very well. Casualties are high. There's a premium on indirect approaches. Isolating buildings is essential to success, MGs can dominate entire axes of advance if set up to fire along main roads or into intersection.

Basically, I've PBEMed quite a few MOUT scenarios ( Bil and I are actually doing a whole series of PBEM MOUT scenarios to "prepare" ourselves for MOUT fighting in the CMMC) and I think we both feel that city-fighting works pretty much as expected.

Obviously addition of sewers, roof movements, rat-holing etc would add to city-fighting modelling as would the ability to have rubbble from destroyed houses fall outside of the building tile and onto surrounding tiles.

However, those are issue for CM2 at this stage and only became obvious to myself and others after prolonged playing and discussion on this forum.

IMO MOUT operations are much more realistically represented in CM than in any of the CC iterations. Just saying that for comparison purposes.

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by PeterNZ:

(Close Combat did city fighting quite well i think.. lets not talk tank ai tho ok! smile.gif

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

PeterNZ does the word "supersniper" fresh your memory ? One shoot and everyone drop on their bellys in the middle of the street ?

I think you suffer from memoryloss ! smile.gif

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In relation with city fighting, how is close combat simulated in CM? There is an extra "firepower" at 0m ranges related to bayonettes?

In Close Combat series, soldiers change their weapons for knifes and begin a sort of ping-pong match resulting in death to the loser...

Salut!

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Close combat is extrapolated a little. The guys kneel beside eachother and blast away with their guns. Every so often you hear slapping sounds from hand to hand combat.

In CM it is EXTREMELY rare for a squad vs squad close combat to last more than 20 seconds in my experience. Within 20 seconds one or other squad is either dead or panicked.

City fighting is VERY bloody and it will chew up your infantry like you wouldn't believe.

I just had the AI beat me in a cityfight DYO today.. The AI bought my forces and bought me a Panzergrenaider platoon complete with HTs... Well, the AI brought a massive barrage down on my 4 HTs and immobilised all of them. Then I was left to face a Sherman, 3 M8s and an M3 with only a 250/9. 2 schrecks and 1 platoon of infantry (the US had 2 platoons of engineers).

I got all the enemy vehicles and 1 platoon of US infantry but in the end I had to run since I was just totally outnumbered.

If only it hadn't given me 4 HTs.. I could have used those points to buy another 2 platoons of infantry wink.gif.

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Guest Big Time Software

Although some of the finer details of urban combat aren't simulated in CM (Fionn listed a bunch above), the end result and feeling remains true to history.

In my city PBEM game against Fionn I was hurt BADLY in an ambush then later a surprise when I entered a building that I thought was lightly defended (er... not quite true frown.gif).

I started off using textbook urban tactics. I walked my troops along the sidewalks on opposite sides of the street and had the armor follow a safe, yet close, distance behind. Every so often I would detour a squad into a building to make sure nobody was in there hiding. Then Chaos smile.gif

I had crappy little Shermans and Fionn parked a Panther 1000m down the main street I was advancing along. I quickly figured out that I had to take the next intersection in order to get my armor out of danger, so I threw caution to the wind and rushed my troops up to take the next block and hold it. That, of course, was where Fionn was hiding out! I got into nasty small arms and hand to hand combat real quick and without the effective use of my armor thanks to the Panther. It was not good... yet not fatal.

One thing I found out at the end of the game was that Fionn roughly had the same balance of infantry as did I. NOT GOOD!!! Successfull urban combat is all about going in with about 4:1 infantry, yet I had 1:1. It was a blood bath but I wound up doing fairly well and we declared the battle a draw.

Lessons from this battle were old news to me:

1. Have PLENTY of infantry. After I identified his strong points I had trouble getting him out because I simply didn't have the manpower. So even when I had local 2:1 superiority, and a Sherman backing the assault, it cost me too much to take.

2. Don't rush it! Ambushes are very easy to set up and execute in urban settings, and haste on the attacker's side plays right into that.

3. Section off and bottle up resistance "nests". After I got my act together Fionn paid a heavy price as I consolodated my positions. He found that most of his troops were cut off in one large city block. I knocked out pretty much all of his supporting units (MGs, tanks, and if we continued... a nasty pillbox). Attemps to reinforce had mixed results as I had a Sherman, an MMG, and some troops blocking the main access route on one side and the other side was where the bulk of my forces were. He did rush a platoon into his center of resistance, but I cut down about a squad IIRC in the process for no losses.

Had we played the game out to the bitter end he would have found that I controlled the whole map except for the one city block he was in, which contained no objectives.

4. It is better to receive than to give. When you find yourself in a delicate balance of forces like in our game, attacking is very often the WRONG decision. I learned this during the middle of the battle when I tried rushing one of his strongholds and got my butt handed to me because it turned out there were way too many guys in there. So after that it was containment and reduction, no more assaults.

5. Ammo... damned ammo! Ammo levels decline RAPIDLY, especially if you find yourself in an ambush situation. Both Fionn and I were largely out of ammo by the middle of the game and after that pretty much just exchanged occasional small arms fire while our tanks went after each other. After I neutralized Fionn's tanks I was able to beat on him with HE and there was pretty much nothing he could do about it. This is another reason why you need lots of infantry smile.gif

6. Units break and shatter easily. There is nothing special in CM's game engine to do this, but the close proximity of combat means that units are put under more stress than they are in the open. Close combat is pretty rough on even the Vets. Another reason to have lots of infantry smile.gif

7. Vehicles without infantry support are dead meat if there is any opposition lying in wait. And since the nature of urban fighting is not knowing where the enemy is and isn't, moving vehciles through streets that haven't been secured is very risky.

Well, that's about all I can think of for right now.

Steve

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Guest PeterNZ

o yeah! The super sniper! I remember him.

My first ever game of CC2, a bren team rushed a sniper in rubble and every single one of them died.. that was kinda frustrating! :>

MOUT operations sound good don't they. But in the CMMC.. why not simply circle and cut off the cities all together.. those damn cities are too yucky :> Leave em for the arty wink.gif

PeterNZ

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Peter,

Well, sometimes you NEED to secure a city to secure your supply route for your soft-skinned, wheeled trucks wink.gif.

Anyhows, this is why you'd better hope your ops officers and commanders don't send you into every cityfight possible. You just have to hope they can bypass the ones they don't really have to fight for and preserve your forces for the important fights.

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