Small battles are my favourite!

[GrouchoMarxist]

I think I've posted this topic before under an old user name, but once again I must say that I find smaller battles to be my favourite way to play this incredible game.

When you've only got a couple of tanks to mess around with, you seem to value them so much more. And the whole thing just seems so immersive when each squad is an important asset. I find myself really thinking before each move.

Maybe it's because of my small scale attention span, however. When things get sprawling I get overwhelmed and over-ran.

But who's with me on liking the small stuff as opposed to the huge engagements?

[vedder]

I play small battles exclusively. 800 points or so for attacks and assaults and no more than 1000 for meeting engagements is usually what I play (usually = 99% of the time). I think cm gets boring when you get too far past the company sized engagements, because you tend to hold no regard for individual squads, at guns, and ht's.

[Stingray]

Same here. I find small battles more enjoyable...

Maybe because I tend to micro-manage but mainly because I get confused easily...(comes with old age).

In this case, "Small is better" !!!

Cheers,

[Meach]

I have to agree with my fellow posters on this one. Big battles seem to get me a tad confused and I find it hard to co-ordinate an offensive. There is also the sacrificial lamb mentality that creeps in. Around about 800 points is ideal, but if u want to use armour then a platoon of decent tanks can be around 700 pts on there own. Combined infantry worth 400 pts and tanks worth 700 pts makes for a good game cos the tanks are only 4-5 units and not too hard to mangage compared to an entire company of infantry. Does anyone else find that infantry assaults never seem to work? I move to contact and engage in fierce firefights to suppress the enemy, call in artillery and then when the enemy go from infantry? status to the out of sight markers I advance and then assault the last 20m but very rarely do they make the charge due to enemy fire from the supposed suppressed troops. I tend to use regular troops so they should be able to assault an enemy infantry position after all the suppression I throw at them. Any ideas where I am going wrong? I do use cover to approach and get down to the ground view to maximise the cover through dips and rises in the ground. Is it just the fact you need crack troops to pull off an infantry assault?

This has gone a bit off topic but I use small battles to perfect the infantry assault because this could play a major part in bigger battles and if i can do it right may win the day. Any tactical help would be appreciated. Thanks

[SuperHero]

yup, small battles are better

i dont usually play large battles because when i start playing some game, i usually like to finish it without stops

and with large battles it takes hours and hours and hours and it can be annoying :mad:

[Hans]

Gentlemen, yes I prefer small QBs, 300-600 points but on larger maps. I just find knowing and being concerned about each unit is more enjoyable.

In larger battle I tend to use 'group' commands.

600-1200 is ideal for IP and PBEM

1300-3900 can be okay in a well crafted scenario, QBs tend to be limited in this range

Above 4,000-6,000 points it becomes painful!

6,000+ a way of life

[theike]

Happy to hear all this. So its not just me being lazy..)

I dont very often play scenario's, unless they are indeed very small in setting and give me a good feel to what can be happening in general.

(as for that i dont like the one-way-to-go-ones, i need a few options to feel at home, some good flanking options and small journeys under cover...)

As such i never played an operation. They mostly give u tons of stuff to just go storm onto the enemy with. (Numbers rule, indeed, but when i dont know where in the turns comming my new forces wil appaer im not abble to build up a good 'operation-plan'...)

So i stick to playing humans, ore an ai on self made maps, where the ai doesnt have to get to confused. Meaning small !!

But for points to spend; a good 3000 points spend on tanks can make a nice tactical game sometimes.

As for infantery ..pfff company's: yes, if needed. But everything larger is just a pain in the ass. (I usualy just end up with some platoons and some support...to keep it doable)

Im not one that perse likes to get a feel of a historical situation, those who do might tend to the bigger settings, also, probably.

[ April 27, 2003, 08:32 AM: Message edited by: theike ]

[Mud]

On the other extreme... has anybody actually FINISHED "To the Volga", and if so, have they posted an AAR on it?

[laxx]

hoo..i am in agreement with all of ya, especially Hans. I like to play small battles 300 to 500 points with large maps.

at 300 points, every single equipment counts, and there is little wastage. Some hard decisions have to be made, like get a sniper or a motar. And german half-tracks seem expensive...

a question to ask, is at 300 - 600 points, do you guys play combined arms or unrestricted ?

[Snowbart]

Anything over 1250-1500 pts makes it way to tough for me to give the attention I want to my units

[General Tacticus]

Another reasone to play smaller battle (IMHO), is the fact that large numbers of units make the "Borg Spotting" concept very influencial - with 100+ units, someone is bound to spot that AT gun in ambush...and then everyone knows it's there...

[securityguard]

800-1250 points is alright. anything higher and like everyone else said, it becomes too sprawled out. bigger battles are alright and fun, but only on a 'mass' scale. its a lot less tactical.

[MrNoobie]

Originally posted by General Tacticus:

Another reasone to play smaller battle (IMHO), is the fact that large numbers of units make the "Borg Spotting" concept very influencial - with 100+ units, someone is bound to spot that AT gun in ambush...and then everyone knows it's there...

wow this one sentence alone, i finally understand what borg spotting is.

ive always enjoyed small maps but lately ive been playing in larger maps so i have some manuevering ability for my tanks. flanking them Tigers can be a pain

[theike]

Wow, 300 to 600 points on a larger map.

Dont think i ever did that.

But maybe its worth trying.

[IMP-22]

2000 points is about my absolute limit. I prefer to zoom in on each squad and watch the battle take place, rewinding a few times so I catch all the action. I usually play with around 1000-1500, a large sum of those points being a couple tank platoons or something. I like to manage company-sized infantry groups for the most part.

[Fishu]

Meach,

Grab some mortars, those will keep enemies down

A good setup would be to have a spotter for some high rate of fire artillery piece - like mortars - and then 2-4 medium mortars of your own.

Spotter would be used to generally pin down the enemies and the 2-4 medium mortars would be used to suppress the key defense locations around your assault line.

HQ's comes useful with the in-map mortars.

with shift, select the mortars and then as last unit, select the HQ in the group and then target some spot and the HQ will be used as a spotter. (just take off the HQ's area fire after you're done, since they don't have a mortar and you don't want to have enemies shooting at him :>)

This way mortars can be kept behind cover.

These in-map mortars will keep the defenses key locations down after initial bombardment and they'll quit firing when your men are in the area, smacking down the key defenses by now, hopefully :>

You could try smoke too... but I haven't tried, I always like to watch the explosions :>

Some of the greatest 'suppression' tools available, are the heavy infantry guns :>

As german, I just love the 150mm inf. gun, really chews up infantry and puts up some fight for light vehicles/tanks as well.

Only thing is that it needs about a minute of setup, after it's slowly creeped into a position.

75mm inf. guns are cheap and effective as suppression tools, however they don't cause much casualties, but keeps heads down well and can be setup fairly fast.

[OZ77]

In conclusion: battles with 3-4 infantry companies and 5-10 tanks from the both sides are most popular, but it's also nice to play tiny scenarios.

[edgars]

I'm also a small-battle-believer.

But only recently i've found the small operations very enjoyable. Pity that there's only 8 medium sized operations in the Depot (the best in my opinion was "Gamblers Fallacy" by marc s, try it).

So this serves as a plea for scenario designers to design more small-sized operations.

[PeterX]

2000 points is the 'fun' limit for me. And that's for scenarios only, not QBs. After that it's more work than pleasure.

One reason that smaller work better, I think, is that CM imposes no command discipline above the platoon level. Company and Battalion HQs bond with any neighbor. They should be imparting command and morale bonuses to their sub-commanders.

In a current Allied defense, I 've promiscuously mixed rifle and SMG platoons along the front in a checkerboard fashion; the SMGs occupying the bldg/woods squares and the rifle platoons holding down the more open sectors. Unrealistic, but effective, I hope. (Hehe)

Also, there are no Company HQs for AFVs. Even money says that BFC will tighten up C&C for the rewrite- or sooner.

[ April 28, 2003, 06:26 AM: Message edited by: PeterX ]

[Other Means]

i was thinking of starting a post like this myself.

i've only recently started playing CM and i jumped straight in with the biggest battles i could find.

yeah, they're fun but the don't half take up your time. and i always misplaced a unit. & i tried to do too much at one. and my biggest fault is: not having a good understanding of where will have LOS to my position/axis of advance. i've got the gridded terrain but i've been playing the Soviets so not realising that the tiger on yon hill will be able to see my T34's flanks is a sure way to several smoking wreaks.

so i've been trying to train myself on 800pt QB's. then i found out just how exciting small maps can be.

every unit counts.

you know their ammo status, you know what can see/shoot them. dammit you feel like you know their names.

i think come the rapture (CMX2) if we get massive multiplayer, we could combine these smaller battles with a larger overview. it'd be great to appoint someone overall leader & have them give you some units to command & an overall directive.

to quote the bard "that would be sweet. forsooth. and by sweet i mean totally cool".

[Meach]

Fishu. That worked a treat, thank you!! I got a mortar section and added in some 81mm and all the squad 50mm under one section sergeant, they pounded away for about 3 turns then ran out of ammo, just as my infantry hit the 20m mark from the treeline, assault followed and the battle was short and bloody. I used green troops as I let the CPU pick the quality, and even with this noob platoon I managed to throw back Ivan but the platoon took heavy casualties. To sum up tho the onfield mortars done better than 3 75mm 2 tube spotters. Infantry assaults are fun again!! Thanks for the advice!!

[Fishu]

I haven't found any good use for 75mm arty spotters - simply too low rate of fire along with the weak blast.

High RoF arty is good for suppression and powerful, but slow RoF arty is for killing.

If it isn't either, then I can't find use for it.

I love the 120mm mortars, it is a combination of fire volume and power :>

In latest fin-rus QB I used 120mm spotter along with 4 81mm in-map mortars and killed nearly 250 men with 120mm mortars and the medium mortars also nailed some 13-19 per tube.

Too bad I just didn't have infantry anywhere near, or they would've killed some 100 more with ease :>

but try those infantry guns sometime, they're mean.. especially on defense :>

[ April 28, 2003, 07:16 AM: Message edited by: Fishu ]

[Hans]

To answer Laxx's question, usually armour, sometimes combined arms and rarely pure armour, infantry etc or a special one.

I found that 300-600 point, random vs the same for the computer +50% make for a very challenging game.

Small Operations, hard to do, the smallest map you can get is 1200 x 1200 and they are difficult to do as they can quickly become unbalanced. I do have a small scale Spanish Civil War Operation, "San Miguel Valley", but have never gotten past the initial planning stage. I also have a two battle SCW operation "Quinto del Ebro" in the final stages of design but it comes in at 'huge' and its not really that large.

[V]

I downloaded and played a SL conversion from www.wargamer.com called 'Dangerous Information'

It is very small and can be played in under an hour. I thought it was well done.

[Franko]

I agree. I think designers need to focus on smaller numbers of units, but bigger maps to put them on.

Frank