Should intact building count as victory points?

[Snow Leopard]

I had been wonder if in real world, generals prefer keep building intact for shelters even will cost to force enemy out building or go ahead and blast buildings out with big cannons or flamethrowers. I still bother why generals feel must send sqds fight in by floor and floor then by room by room in urban/city. I could have seige around town and use rest of good soldiers to go keep toward as use "security force" to siege the "pocket" town with enemy soldiers inside.

Sometime I was tempting to ordering tank to turn small building into rubble to be safe to send units arcoss field without machinegunning by hidden MG in that building even sometime it was empty. Should that cost victory point for use up good HE ammo even lost good shelter or have food/warming clothes inside for their need. Should we bring up that topic to new game CM-X2 to use victory points for intact buildings?

[Slappy]

Well, in the East, there were plenty of areas that were bypassed by the advancing armies, particularly in the beginning of the german invasion and toward the end of the german collapse. Large groups were either cutoff by rapid advances on their flanks or designated 'fortress' areas by their command and tasked to hold out for as long as possible at all costs. Some held out for weeks or longer. There were still german pockets sticking it out in polish cities when Berlin fell.

In general, commanders did avoid house to house fighting, but sometimes it was unavoidable, usually for strategic reasons. Stalingrad sat astride a river, making it difficult to bypass. Berlin was stormed in order to prevent the Allies from having any chance to take it (at the cost of thousands of needless russian casualties). Many towns sat on important roads or raillines that were needed to bring up supplies.

As for points in CM2, I'm not sure. I definitely believe that there should be more and more flexable ways to 'win'. 'A Warm Place to Sleep' (sic?), one of the BB CD scenarios depicts two small forces fighting for a building to spend the night in. Now, I agree that having both sides if the building is destroyed makes the scenario more interesting and the narrative a lot better. I just don't know how often that would come up. There have been a number of discussions on the boards about civilians, civilian casualties and the destruction of property in the game. They're probably pretty easy to search for. I generally come down on the 'leave this out' side of the argument. Too much to deal with that doesn't relate to the tactical challenge of the game.

Also, I just don't think that the commanders cared that much about civilian property. Read any account of the war in the East and you'll pick that up pretty quick. I don't know if you remember this from the US move into Baghdad in 2003, but an Abrams put a round into a highrise hotel, killing several reporters, because they thought they were under small arms fire from the hotel. Now think about it. If the US in 2003, about six days into a cakewalk of a conflict, was willing to crank a 120mm round into an occupied hotel in front of live TV cameras, what do you think the average regard for local property was in the back country of Poland in 1945 after four years of brutal warfare?