I got the D covered, but O is hard to get

[barabus]

Been playing the game strait since i got it about 2 weeks ago, it's probably the best stratagy game i've ever played. I have gotten the defense down pat, humans and the AI almost always get smoked, but on O it all falls apart. Usually by the time my forces get near the objective, there dead tired, suffered half casulty loses, and rout when they meet the other guys dug in, well rested troops. How do you get your fighting force in close without getting shot to peices and all ragged. I have been working without armor to develop my infantry tactics so please only post infantry relavent advice, thanks!!!!

[manchildstein (ii)]

ideally you want to have some HE in order to suppress enemy positions while your infantry moves forward. often this HE is provided by armored fighting vehicles (AFVs) which includes tanks.

if you go without tanks try to set your machineguns up in positions where they can see along and beyond the line of advance of your squads... then use the MGs to suppress/destroy enemy defensive positions while your infantry move forward.

the basic idea is that for successful movement of your own infantry squads, the enemy positions have to be either supressed or destroyed.

fast movement of squads under fire is a sure way to heavy casualties... i use a combination of mostly move and advance - move when i'm not expecting any fire, and advance when i'm expecting to move up under fire... and sneak or assault if the distance is short and the enemy fire is expected to be heavy....

[ March 16, 2003, 10:15 PM: Message edited by: manchildstein II ]

[Frunze]

As Manchildstein says, you want HE. And even in an infantry-only game, you can have HE to blast your enemies out of their foxholes and trenches, sending them running in panic across open fields so your MGs can mow them down.

Mortars, I'm telling you. A bunch of 'em, with big ammo loads. The Soviet 50mm is good that way, and cheap. Well, FOs are fine too, if you can identify platoon-or-bigger enemy groupings and wait for the delays.

Scout to identify enemy units, use mortars together with squad fire from the nearest available cover to rout 'em out. Repeat until your scouts get through and verify there's nothing else waiting to ambush you there, then move your whole platoon up to that patch of cover.

MGs deny the enemy maneuverability - sight 'em down lanes of open terrain so they can fire on anything trying to move from one part of the battlefield to another, fall back, counterattack, or whatever.

[tar]

Also, if your men are chronically tired, then you are pushing the pace too hard. Don't use Run or Advance too much. You have to give the men a chance to catch their breath. It will also allow slower, supporting weapons to catch up.

CMBB in particular is much more about waves or phases of the assault. You will normally never take defended positions with a single rush. You have to move up on them, pause to recover and regroup, and then move closer.

For example, see JasonC's extensive reply to the Moving 200m across the open thread.

[JasonC]

The symptoms you describe are a tell tale sign of pushing too hard. That is exactly what happens if you think of the problem as forcing the men as close to the defenders as possible as fast as you can. They get strung out as some break and fall behind, and a few pinned guys get near the enemy, and are promptly outshot.

Instead, think of the problem as grabbing a piece of terrain, any decent cover, 100-200m from an enemy position. From which you intend to firefight the enemy. With an intact formation, with odds, maneuvered into that cover. It does not matter if this happens fast or slow - that depends on the defense (go fast if he is thin and not expecting you, slow if he is prepared).

It is firepower that will eventually defeat the enemy. With squad infantry and against the good cover defenders typically have, you need to get to around 100m for your firepower to be good enough to seriously hurt them. At longer ranges, as others mention only HE will meaningfully hurt guys in good cover.

On map mortars are fine for hitting guns and a few MGs, but for more numerous and robust ordinary infantry, tank HE or high caliber FOs are much better. Light mortars (50-60mm) only suppress things, 81-82mm can break them (on map). Light off map arty (under 105mm) is nearly useless on the attack (except smoke missions).

As for MGs supporting attacks, they will not break people in cover. They mainly prevent repositioning of defenders, by covering open ground between wood A and wood B. You can also have several of them concentrate on one target in moderate cover (wood building, scattered tree foxhole) to pin it momentarily. But they do not have enough firepower to beat a whole defense in cover and at range.

For your own part, though, realize that the defender can fire off every round of ammo he's got at infantry he can see, at 250m, and still not break your attack - if you are in decent cover. Decent means scattered trees, wood buildings, rubble, rough - 25% exposure stuff - or better. Don't fret about taking so much fire without giving any back, if you are still that far away and are that well protected. You'll rally. His ammo supplies won't.

Approach in stages. Think it terms of owning areas, not getting right on top of the enemy. You own an area if you can put 100m and under infantry firepower onto it from whole platoons. An area is worth owning if it has any decent cover, and is on the way to the defenders. Walk the "overwatch" close enough to "own by fire", then push in a platoon and "own by presence". You can clear an area of cover by a high caliber FO fire mission or tank HE, in place of 100m infantry fire, if you can see the target and the support is available.

Pause between moves from one patch of cover to another to rest and to rally your men - but inside cover (unless there is literally none). Use your higher level HQs to patch together platoons from stragglers, command units that have lost their HQs, and to transfer wayward units back up to their platoons. Do not overload small areas of cover with massive amounts of troops. A platoon is fine, several is not, unless the cover area is bigger than the footprint of one artillery barrage and the men are spread throughout.

You should be spending roughly a third of your time worried about rally and rear area reorganization moves, in a typical attack - sometimes half. Slow the advance of the front guys (in someplace with cover) if the formation is getting stretched front to back, to give the rest time to catch up.

If you get shelled by indirect arty (always a problem with pauses etc), retreat 100m or so and rally before proceeding. The falling shells will seperate you from the enemy. You don't want him wading into you with a counterattack while you are broken. Don't push forward through such barrages - you will just isolate a few of your intact guys up front, and lose them to the whole defending force. The defender can hurt you a few times with off map arty, just don't let it be mortal. He can't keep it up all day.

You should understand that throughout the early part of an engagement, attrition is weakening both sides, but it is attrition of different kinds. The attackers are losing a few men from many units, and occasional units are breaking and not rallying rapidly. Defenders, on the other hand, are running down their limited ammo supplies, revealing the presence of more and more hidden units, falling back from weak outposts to their main fighting position. Space, stealth, and shooting ability can all become scarce before a single man is hit.

That kind of "attrition" can be far more damaging than a few men down, in the long run. Pay attention to what you are gaining on those "fronts", not just to attacker losses on the one hand, and ground crossed on the other. Attacking is not a problem of movement. It is about neutralizing the defenders - some by fire (especially late), some by positional irrelevance (e.g. a gun or HMG on a direction you didn't come), some by being out of ammo.

If you look at how your attacks are going now, I will bet you see the sort of "get there but fail" outcome you described, at about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time limit expired. Aim instead to use more like 2/3 of the time limit getting most of your infantry, intact, to decent firing positions close to the objectives, and wherever you expect the defender's final stand to be made.

Twice the time spent rallying, and more of the defender's shots made at longer ranges or into cover, will mean your force should be in considerably better shape. Or, if half of it is still ragged out, the defender will be clean out of ammo from pushing you there. Lean on the defense instead of trying to run it off its feet in one rush. It is strongest early, weakest late.

I hope this helps.

[barabus]

wow, kudos JasonC, i hope your in charge of bashing the Iraqis on wensday :cool: thanks for the info

[Frunze]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Light mortars (50-60mm) only suppress things, 81-82mm can break them (on map

81mm is better, yeah, except for having a smaller ammo load, but I've broken squads with 50mm. Ask Cpl. Carrot.

The quality of the troops being targeted may be a factor, of course, but easier suppression in CMBB can work for the attacker as well as the defender...

Heavy-cal FOs are nice if you can get 'em, I agree, but they're not always affordable for the Soviets in the size battles I usually play, and the delays are long.

[JasonC]

Some elaboration on how to use artillery to aid an attack, for the different sides -

For the Russians, the 120mm mortar FO is the standard type to combine hitting power sufficient to hurt dug in defenders, with a delay short enough to actually target anything during the fight. The delay runs about 5 minutes. The cost is modest, without too much rarity premium.

To make the 5 minute delay livable, it helps to have 2 FOs, and call a mission on an anticipated target well ahead of time. When the time gets to 2 minutes, cancel it if you don't see enemy where you expected them, and "lift" to another target farther forward. If you do have a target, let it run and then walk the shells around as needed.

Working this way, you can have a 120mm barrage ~3 minutes away indefinitely, along your main avenue of approach. That is quick enough to hit things when a firefight starts, and will hit them hard enough to make a difference (which 76s and 82s will not do, against defender cover). Obviously in smaller fights you can't afford the second FO and just have to make do.

The other way to get heavy stuff as the Russians works best with variable rarity and low unit quality. You pick the biggest module available with modest rariety by the random rolls, 152mm and upward (132mm rockets in a pinch). The corps and army level 152s and 203s are particularly useful when the rarity happens to be low, because their long inherent delay reduces their price. Then buy them as conscripts, and buy several of them.

Don't try to use them for called reactive fire (the delays are 15 minutes). Just make a fire plan on turn 1 and base your maneuvering around it. You need some terrain analysis to figure out where enemy infantry is likely to hold you up, but that isn't too hard.

Harder is getting the timing right - you want the barrages to land a few minutes before your infantry can realistically get to the area. When it doubt, give yourself ample time for the infantry to get close. It is easier to slow an attack than to press one rapidly.

You can use wider sheafs if you can't figure out where the enemy will be. One slowly landing high caliber wide sheaf across the whole enemy rear can seriously disrupt repositioning attempts. Harder to dodge in the later minutes of the shoot, too. Whether it hits many people if they sit still in cover is pure luck. One treeburst can kill a squad easily. If you need to know a given area will be cleared, use the normal "tight" sheaf, just one module firing at a given body of cover.

The barrages last several minutes, and you may want to target more than one at the same time to get a reasonable number of shells coming down because the delay between salvos is pretty long (particularly with 203s). Particularly if you choose a wide sheaf. E.g. 2 wide 203s firing at aim points about 100m apart.

To use this tactic, you have to accept green infantry quality. With "normal" unit qualities you can use "green" FOs, but they aren't as cheap. You really need the combo of seriously low prices per shell, and seriously big shells, to make map fire like this (without a known target beforehand) pay off. Big sheafs and unlocated enemies (or dodging, the other horn of that dilemma) always result in plenty of wasted blast. So you can't afford to pay full price for them.

Plan on tanks also for direct HE and have the fire plan cover the areas they won't be able to plaster from the front, at range. They also become your "reactive" HE (supplimented by a few on map 82s for enemy guns, if you like).

For the Germans, it is all much easier. In a large enough fight you can use a 150mm FO. In smaller ones, the 105mm is strong enough (barely) to still be effective on the attack. Both are reactive enough. 81s are for defenders or smoke, only.

Just get the barrage a minute out and retarget each turn to "walk" a few shells onto IDed targets. With the 105s you need at least a full minute and change to hurt anybody with cover. 150s can hurt people with a few shells, if any happen to land close.

[ March 18, 2003, 12:57 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[barabus]

Thanks again JasonC, with coordinating HE and not wasting my small mortor fire on offense i have done much better. I just smoked my friend by danceing around and long range and letting him cap off all his rounds, in my three platoons i only took 2 casultys from this long range fire, then marching in was easy, they were't really fire too much and when i got close i called in a pair of 120mm on his troops in the forests and watched them run, total axis casulties 150, allied, 43, I PUNKED HIS ASS!!!

[Lawngnome]

Artillery helps a whole lot..

I usually wait to identify where the main concentration of the enemy is, then I set up positions on a small front. I will then spend 3-5 minutes suppressing the defenders and using any FO's I have... When advancing also use any forests as cover, and pausing when you reach a village to use the cover of buildings is very helpful.... putting MG's on the second floor in houses can have awesome effects...

The main thing is... dont run until you are less than 100m away, and for heaven's sake, dont advance through the open!