Real World tactics valid in CM?

[KingOPork]

Now i see a lot of people discussing CM tactics like it was real life. However which would be more efficient in game? A) Learning tactics through rigorous in game play, or Learning real world tactics. I doubt studying up on all these old tactics would be really effective. Now while the game is very realistic...it still lacks much to use real tactics. But there are so many war nuts, it's hard for them not to treat it like a real war. =) So what would be the best for me to learn? Should i overexaggerate and act like it's a real war and hope i'll get favorable results. Or just freestyle trial and error in game?

-KOP

[Mark IV]

"Old" WWII tactics are still kind of popular with modern warriors, to an extent, only the ranges have been changed to endanger the innocent.

Knowing the Game Mechanics has a lot to do with it, so try a little of both. You can afford to lose a couple for the cause, like they did in real life.

[Guest KwazyDog]

Id learnt through playing the game myself, but after I got the hang of it I was suprised just how useful real world tactics are..

For instance I read an article describing how in WW2 the Germans when defending a town often didnt occupy the outer layers of building as they were often easy targets for aliied tanks to tanks down...funnily enough in a game a day or so later I was defending a town as the Germans and defended it from the inside instead of the outside and watched the allied playing demolish the outer buildings...

Another example of a real world tactic I read about and thought Id give a go in CM....playing as the Germans I set up a mine field in trees along either side of a dirt road I expected the allies to advance along. Sure enough they did and as they passed down the road I called in a barrage of 81mm mortars. As the rounds landed the troops took of and headed for cover, right into the mine fields Id say the allied player lost near to 2 platoon in there.

Bottom line is that i feel real world tactics really do work in CM, as long as you can find tactics as the same sort of scale CM represents

[Guest Big Time Software]

While CM certainly isn't 100% realistic, you will find that WWII tactics at this level will work very well.

Picture these two players.

Player A -> solid knowledge of WWII tactics, but never played a wargame before.

Player B -> poor knowledge of WWII tactics, but played lots of wargames before, other than Combat Mission.

If these two were to go up against each other in a game of CM my money would be on the tactics guy for sure. You might say, "gee, of course you would", but in some other game I would *not* do this, instead putting my money on the guy that had played other wargame before. The reason is that most other wargames (if not all) I have played are more "game" than "wargame". Because of this the player using WWII tactics is more often than not frustrated by things not working as they should. Meanwhile, the other player is adept at taking advantage of game loopholes and unrealistic behavior.

My advice is to just play and note what happens. Then pick up some book or article, read it, and think how it relates to CM and vice versa. Picture the problems you might have had and look for similar stuff in your readings and see if you can find a better way of doing things. KwazyDog mentioned a really good example of this, and there are plenty more. There are also a lot of guys who have said that they now look at real world terrain to better understand the 3D nature of the CM maps.

Steve

[MrPeng]

I am one of those Long time gamers without any real world tactical experience (I am also a CM sick-o-fant) and I must agree with KweezyMutt and Steve. My CM gaming has improved not only from simply learning game mechanics, but from (mostly) reading what the grogs on this BBS have to say about how to get things done. If you use squads and squad-types with the different weaponry as they were desinged to be used (not by Steve and Charles, but by the guys that made the real weapons), and use the tanks and assault guns and TDs in the roles they were desinged for then you will do much better than if not.

SMGs are good up close and personal, keep your .50 cals or your MG42 HMGs in the back in good spots to provide suppressing cover, and let the inf and armor protect each other - inf finds bad guys that can get the tanks and tanks cover for the inf - and you are more likely to win and win big than if you muck around. Never use your flame - throwers because they die the instant bullets are fired anywhere at any time from any direction by any nationality unless the flamer is completely hidden the entire game.

Of course If you are the Yanks, make sure you blow the HELL out of everything with your artillery first.

Try not to be seen, while seeing the other guy. Stay in plenty of cover. DO NOT LISTEN TO A WORD MrPeng says. He is a complete idiot. Only listen to people like Mark IV and Steve and Charles and KwayzeeDog and Capt Foobar and guys who have a clue. I repeat. do not listen to me.

Good luck

Peng

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Peng sez "die a lot now."

[KingOPork]

First off, amazing. It's been a long time that i've posted a message and gotten a lot of intelligent posts. Am i dreaming? hmm. Welp as for the tactics, yeah right now i am just blind as a bat. A tank is a tank to me. infantry is infantry. Sadly until i get used to the game I'm gonna be treatin it like WWII Red Alert. Needless to say i'm gonna have to play the hell out of this be4 i can even think about gettin serious. Guess i'll pay more attention to the real world strategies posted on here. Thanks a lot guys.

-KOP

[Mark IV]

MrPeng has eloquently described the concept of "combined arms doctrine" which evolved in WWII and continues to the present.

Armor, infantry, artillery, and specialty units were designed to operate together, not as separate entities. Infantry had pretty good anti-armor teeth at close range, by the time represented in CM: bazookas, Panzerfausts, Panzerschrecks, and satchel charges. If your armor is too close to an enemy treeline it will pay the price.

That's why you screen the armor with infantry in all but the most open terrain (and even then when possible). Dump artillery on potentially hostile zones if you've got it to spare. Drop smoke shells in front of the enemy positions and infantry can move up behind it to close in with minimal casualties. Protect your specialty units until they are needed. Avoid dark dangerous spaces and send the smiley faces in them first.

Peng has also alluded to the importance of reconnaissance (scouting ahead with a couple of guys), and using the terrain for movement. Charging across the open will be costly against experienced enemies. Try to find out where he is (the enemy, not Peng) before exposing all your forces to target practice.

You should have a plan, and a big part of the plan is to concentrate your main force on a single point, ideally where your enemy is weakest. This doesn't always mean physically moving them to that point, but positioning longer range weapons where they can blast it in support of the grunts.

von Pengwitz, a noted Military Genius, has also defined the role of machine-guns and another key concept in combined-arms tactics: suppression. You don't have to kill every enemy unit at once. Shooting at them from long range with MGs and other weapons while you advance with infantry will keep their heads down so that they are less effective. Suppress, suppress, and enemy return fire (and thus casualties) will be lessened.

Unit cohesion is really important in real life and really important in CM. Keep platoons together (not holding hands, but within the command radius of their HQ unit). Then they will respond more quickly, behave better under fire, and recover more quickly if they do suffer morale problems. Also, look at the experience level of units and use them accordingly. Green units will not do well on their own in dangerous assignments; a Veteran unit may accomplish the same task easily. If you have to charge something, you could order the Green squad to fire suppression and have the Veterans do the charging.

Observe enemy units closely to see what they are and where they're going. If you're the Germans and you see these individual guys armed with binoculars, suppress and better yet KILL THEM. American artillery is horrible to endure and these guys are its source. Killing one of them is like killing several giant guns.

Keep your tanks unbuttoned in all but the closest, heaviest fire-fights. Tanks can't see diddly when they are buttoned. Tanks must work the hardest to take advantage of the terrain; ideally they engage enemy tanks from "hull down" meaning only their turret and gun are poking over a hill. Even slight rises in the ground can work for this, but you really need the level 1 and 2 views to choose their paths and stopping points.

These are some of the main ideas as I understand them. They could either be straight out of the CM manual or a WWII Army Field Manual. Interestingly, you can follow them all to the letter and still get your ass kicked.

[Berlichtingen]

Got to go with Steve on this one. A solid knowledge in tactics will take you further than years of game play.

If you want a good tutorial, try a PBEM against Sgt. Morgue.

[This message has been edited by Berlichtingen (edited 06-08-2000).]

[Spook]

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

First off, amazing. It's been a long time that i've posted a message and gotten a lot of intelligent posts. Am i dreaming? hmm. Welp as for the tactics, yeah right now i am just blind as a bat. A tank is a tank to me. infantry is infantry. Sadly until i get used to the game I'm gonna be treatin it like WWII Red Alert.

-KOP<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I gotta say, KoP, that your "Red Alert" comparison statement is definitely a classic. This post isn't to rag on you; I think that the statement is quite understandable to make when you haven't played the CM Gold demo and your lead-in notion is that CM is "real-time" in the same way as Red Alert.

But Red Alert, like many other RT strategy games out there, are basically "clickfests" that reward the player who's quickest with the mouse and his mind. In order to enable this, RT games tend to toss out command & control limitations and similar historical constraints as would exist on the WW2 battlefield.

Try to imagine if Red Alert (RA) was played in this way: Give a group of your units a destination to move to, and allow the game to run WITHOUT you being able to touch ANY of those units for a minute. If they fall into an ambush, then it's up to them alone to bail themselves out---you can't help until the minute is over. How many hard-core RT gamers would accept the idea that they shouldn't be allowed to immediately jump into a crisis point?

And that's the notion of CM's combination of turn-based and real-time which is often called "WE-GO", but I will also label as "detached real-time". In the orders phase for which you plan your orders, you can have as much time to plan your movements and targeting as you need. But when you're done, and the turn starts its real-time execution, you then can only watch and cross your fingers. You are now "detached" from your troops, and you hope that your planning instincts are right. That's one of the main differences of CM from RA.

While games like Close Combat (CC) show that a full real-time play of WW2 tactical combat is possible (assuming for the moment that all of the CC combat models are accurate!), it has to be also be noted that WW2 tactical combat involves a wide variety of weapon types and infantry formations----FAR more numerous than most RT games are willing to attempt as a variety. Trying to control a battalion's worth of WW2 troops would be an exercise in futility to manage all of the sub-units in an effective way. And so the CC series doesn't attempt to reach this high. But WW2 battalion-level command (or even higher) IS possible with the gameplay arrangement of CM.

[dalem]

KOP-

I will (less-eloquently) confirm MrPeng's and the others' opinions: real-world tactics definitely lead to maximum success for your units in CM. Not to say that you'll win every time you remember to suppress the enemy before you advance, or whatever.

But your units will perform better and have a greater chance of success, and therefore *you* will have a greater chance of success.

But CM is still a game, and therefore you can play it over and over, and therefore you will gradually figure out what works best for you in the game. Since the units in the game behave, by and large, the way I've read that their real-life counterparts behaved in that time period, then gradually, even if you play it as just a game, you will learn what works and what doesn't.

Should be fun either way.

-dale

[MarkEzra]

A common thought of troops of all nations is that their training, no matter how good, didn't prepare them for the real thing. If that is the case how could any game come close to ACTUAL combat? That being said, CM is by far the best tactical simulation ever created. The 3-D enviroment, the intense effort to accurately simulate weapons effects, and the complete desire of BTS to get it right even if it becomes a programers worst nightmare (thanks Charles!), allows a wargamer to get closer to "what it must have been like".

[Maximus]

KingOPork, this also isn't intended as a flame. But what we tell all new-comers is that you must "unlearn what you have learned" about all previous wargames.

In CM you MUST use real-world tactics or the AI will hand your ass to you on a silver platter. Although the AI is not perfect, it's the best ever written for a wargame. Reason being is that it has THREE levels of reasoning as it responds with. There have been several discussions about the AI, you can use the Search feature to find out more. But in brief, the three levels are as follows:

1. 
   <LI>Operational AI--looks over the battlefield and decides what objectives to go for.
   <LI>Strategic AI--decides about how to go about achieving those objectives
   <LI>Tactical AI--Now this is the cool one. This one is what keeps your units alive. Your units will fire on their own and pick their own targets when need be, pop smoke on their own, take cover on their own, etc.
   

The cool thing is that these AI's will always change their plans according to what is happening on the battlefield. The lower AI's will also over-ride the higher levels to better suit the current condition.

If you want to play a WWII "Red Alert", go play "Sudden Strike". CM's physics and ballistics models put even other wargames to shame. I think, what made you think of "Red Alert" was the fact that CM is 3D instead of the traditional 2D HEX-grid. In fact the 3D is what makes the simulation all that much more realistic. I could go on some more, but I think others already have and others probably will.

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"The greatest risk...is not taking one."

[This message has been edited by Maximus (edited 06-08-2000).]

[This message has been edited by Maximus (edited 06-08-2000).]

[Zamo]

I've been using basic tactical doctrine all along and have had it work great. It always astounds me how this game models combat. Of course as Steve said, it's not perfect, but every time I have a tank back out into an enemies LOS and get toasted, or some squad gets liquidated 'cause they don't react the way a real one would have, I just chalk it up to FOW or bad luck. Lots of little white crosses over seas due to bad luck and plain stupidity. Perhaps this is an excellent "inadvertant" modeling job? I am counting the seconds until I install the full game.

Zamo

[Black Sabot]

Rey del Puerqo,

Use the best tactic known to man...common sense. It's not guaranteed to win everytime, but you will never lose because of it.

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"I do like to see the arms and legs fly"

[Mannheim Tanker]

KoP, everyone in this thread has made some great points. Other than reiterate everything that has already been said, I can add that CM really amazed me when I realized something. I spent a few years in the Army, and while I never experienced combat, I have a good handle on combined-arms tactics training. I've found that if I use "gamey" tactics, I find my self screaming at the screen in agony as my troops get slaughterd before my eyes. When I started using the tactics that the military taught me, I found that I was screaming less frequently, and have even crossed my fingers behind my head in satisfaction now and again. As Black Sabot put it, use common sense, and you'll usually do all right.

[Moriarty]

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

Got to go with Steve on this one. A solid knowledge in tactics will take you further than years of game play.

If you want a good tutorial, try a PBEM against Sgt. Morgue.

[This message has been edited by Berlichtingen (edited 06-08-2000).]<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I'll second that. The Sgt. Morgue school of combat tactics is a tough one to endure in a PBEM game – he's kicked my butt all over the map and I'm coming back for more – but you'll learn a lot in a hurry.

You can also pick up some great lessons from Goanna's School of Defense on the use of big guns and small tubes (schrecks, he's partial to the Bosche).

And as far as Berli's concerned ... haven't won a game against him yet. But, WTF, I'm having fun and school ain't out yet. Besides, I get to use some of this stuff on the inscrutable MrPeng.

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We are both men of action. Lies do not become us. — Westley

[Moriarty]

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

In the orders phase for which you plan your orders, you can have as much time to plan your movements and targeting as you need. But when you're done, and the turn starts its real-time execution, you then can only watch and cross your fingers. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

You can also scream unprintable epithets uncontrollably at the screen as all your carefully conceived and plotted plans go up in a hail of gunfire, explosions and running like a scalded dog for a friendly edge.

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We are both men of action. Lies do not become us. — Westley

[Lorak]

You've got to hate that dreaded friendly edge. Had an FO(105) in VoT that got targeted. Eventualy panic set in and then they broke. One guy went down and they other kept running behind the hill out of LOS.

I was yelling "thank god he made it!!" which quickly turned into "damnit stop! damnit stop!" as he went awol on his way home. Lost him after only firing 2 shells...

You know whats funny about CM though? I actualy feel for the guy and was glad that he made it. Even if he did retreat off the field.

rambling again.

Lorak

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http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/combatmissionclub

Lorak's FTX for CM <--Proud member of the Combat Mission Webring

[This message has been edited by Lorak (edited 06-08-2000).]

[iggi]

auf gehts!!

I'm playing CM too much

[This message has been edited by iggi (edited 06-08-2000).]

[GriffinCheng+]

Can anyone pass the email addr Sgt. Morgue? Yep, I want to join his "lectures". Thx in adv.

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"+" is just the beginning. Expect to see "GriffinCheng76", "GriffinCheng(105)" or "GriffinChengA3E8" more should Forum problems occur again

[KingOPork]

First off, thanks for all the responses. It's great to see how willing you guys are to help. Definately the most giving community i have seen so far. Not a single 1337 trash talking bastard. =) But as for the game tactics, yes i find the game frustrating for me, because I'm not used to having to think so on the ball and inovatively. I guess I'm too used to stuff that takes a set formula, where the more you practice it , the better you are. this takes broad range of knowledge from how to set up yer guys, where to tell them to go, when to tell them to go, how to tell them to go. Add on to this the random variables such as fires etc and it gets frustrating. =) BUT, it adds so much more replayability that makes it all worth it. I will try to start thinking with my brain instead of my RTS\Quake brain. I can't hope to be amazingly good at this game, however, I can hope to get good enough not to be laughed at. =) I really hope that when this game catches on, these forums remain trash free as it is now. My respect and thanks goes to all of you. Keep up the tactics on the page, cuz you know i'll be readin them. Maybe some day I'll actually know enough to jump in. =) /me waits for a post about Half-Life\Quake1-3 jumping tricks.

-KOP http://www.merc-guild.com

[Lorak]

In half-life the jump trick you need to practice is the jump/kneel combo. You'll need this if your trying to jump into a Pipe.

Sorry couldn't help it.

Lorak

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http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/combatmissionclub

Lorak's FTX for CM <--Proud member of the Combat Mission Webring

[Moriarty]

King,

One of the best ways to learn is to jump into a PBEM and learn from your opponent. There are a lot of people on this board who have a great deal of experience in gaming and tactics. I've been beaten soundly by a bunch of them. (resisting urge to smiley).

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We are both men of action. Lies do not become us. — Westley

[aka_tom_w]

Hi All

With regard to real world tactics, I would like to point out that all players new to this game should know that All units (except vehicles that are KO'd and smoking and flaming) DO NOT block any LOS or LOF. I'm not sure if this is a valid real world military tactic but the VERY first thing one of my 2D Boardgame wargaming buddies did when I played against him in the Beta Demo was to attempt to advance his infantry in the LOF shadow behind that Tiger tank in Last Defence. He was totally disappointed to learn that his infantry received absolutly no cover or benefit from advancing behind his big tank, and could be easily targeted RIGHT through the big tank directly in front of them.

All new players should be told that live vehicles and units do not Block LOS or LOF and should play using real world tactics with this in mind.

(sorry about the nit-picking, but this feature/behaviour should be known to all)

-tom w

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<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR> "Have you thanked BTS by buying your SECOND copy of CM yet?" <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

[This message has been edited by aka_tom_w (edited 06-08-2000).]

[KingOPork]

Heh loriak i was talkin more about boot_camp double gauss jumps, curve gauss jumps, ledge long jumps, Slope exploit lift up-type long jumps etc. =) Moriarty: Yes i firmly believe experience comes 100% from real opponents. All a AI player can do is get you comfortable with what units do\ what the level is like. I'm just too unaware of my units to have my ass handed to me now =) AKA: That'll safe my arse from tryin to be smooth and hidin behind somethin, thx bro. heh. =)

-KOP