Why I hate Boccage

[History Buff]

BOCCAGE

A real pain.

The story

Last night I was playing a batle as apart of an operation and I sent one of my platoons forward on my right flank to see if I could scout out any advance by the enemy. Suddenly I came across a squad of Volks and decided to eliminate them. (It was a night scenario they hadn't seen me). So I advanced up to what appeared to be a hedgeline and told my men to cross it to get as close as possible to the enemy, within 50 metres. But the hedge turned out to be Bocage and i thought it was a hedge from abacked up view. Needless to say my silly men decided to stick going through the boaccage and came under fire from the volks and were systematically wiped out as they were trapped.

Now thats realism and command stupidity on my part

[Lt Bull]

Unfortunately, of all the terrain types included in CMBO, bocage terrain has probably been the most poorly modelled terrain type. It just does not offer the defender the kinds of benefits it did in 1944. In effect, it really acts as just an oversized hedge that blocks LOS to some degree, that exists on open ground, making any infantry trying to fight from behind it scramble like mad for "better" cover terrain when fired upon. They may as well be in open ground (techniquely they are anyways). The TAI doesnt see (and rightly so) that fighting from behind a bocage is a good place to be.

This is rather unfortunate as it can tend to rob a bocage based battle (much of what the early western front fighting was all about) of much of the kinds of stubborn firefight "realism" you would expect from say crack SS troops defending behind/within/around the bocage.

BTS have mentioned that bocage could have been better modelled using "composite terrain", something which might be seen in CMBB. This basically would involve combining say the current bocage 3D terrain with a flat terrain type, so that the area beneath the bocage and immediately around it is its own terrain type that would offer the same kinds of cover/concealment as units in foxholes in woods for example.

I have also had bad experiences with infantry advancing through or stationary and deploying weapons fire from within wheatfields in low light conditions (at least). When they come under fire, the TAI tends to make them run towards where the fire is coming from (generally (but not exclusively) terrain better than wheatfield) or run very short distances in random directions achieving nothing except offering no return fire and getting slaughtered. Could be intentional to model the effect of being fired upon at "close range" in poor cover (<80m or less in the case I was refering to). In the scenario I was playing, there was no chance for my infantry to attack outnumbered enemy positions in buildings/fox-holed scattered trees/woods when they had to advance across/attack from wheatfields.

Lt Bull

[Mikael]

Exactly, Lt Bull, and the TacAI also has some problems when it is getting fired at behind a small wall. It doesn't understand that the small wall offers cover and so it runs back to the open and gets slaughtered. I hope this is one of the things that they get right in CMBB.

[CombinedArms]

In its current modelling, bocage can sometimes work to the Allied advantage, in that their tanks can penetrate the bocage freely, while Axis tanks can't. So you can slip in on a Panther's flanks and knock it out, etc., with any Allied tank, instead of the 1/4 or less of US Sherman's that were actually equipped with Rhino gear.

As was said above, the modelling of bocage is possibly the weakest terrain feature in CMBO.