How would you rate the strategy guide?

[Moon]

Redwolf, I am not saying that the desire to know these detailed differences (more like nuances in the grand scheme of things) isn't legit. Certainly it is, and it only goes to show the devotion of some players to the game. But the problem is, like Steve said above, how to bring the different expectations of various types of players with various experience with the game (and wargames in general) within the covers of a book.

CM is, on the surface, a fairly straightforward game, but it gets more complex the deeper you go. The gap is too far to span it with one book, but there was no option to release a series of books, nor was there an option to release a Guide thicker than the bible.

We have chosen to cater to the beginner, those guys who have read the manual but are still looking for additional clues (and need them most). Mark Walker, the author, has done a great job to, essentially, provide a valuable companion to the manual. That experienced players won't be thrilled by page after page is not a surprise, in fact, it's even "advertised" on the product pages for the Guide. But for newbies and intermediates, the $15 provide great value, and allow them to catch up on some important concepts and ideas and game details that otherwise can only be found after 3 years of playing CMBO, or after reading something like 500,000 posts on this forum.

No one Guide can teach military tactics in one volume, where hundreds of books are released each year on the topic. And no one Guide can dissect the details of the CM engine, because due to it's underlying "fuzziness" it's not easy to squeeze it in charts and tables even if you try.

But to be honest, we don't even want to try. The beauty of CM is that you do *not* need to memorize such details, you can play by the seat of your pants and win, by following some basic principles of military tactics, and common sense. We do not want to enforce a certain playing style, so if people want to explore those nuances there's nothing to say against it - but at the same time we do not want to promote a playing style in an "official" product which is, in fact, contrary to the core design.

I guess some people are seeking for details because they hope to gain a competitive advantage for ladder and tournament play, but personally, I am convinced that those nuances do little to achieve this, while on the other hand take away a lot of the "joy" of playing the game. But that is just one man's opinion.

To the specific question you asked above - to be honest, I don't know the specific answer off the top of my head, but I don't feel I'm missing out when I fire my next QB, and I am quite sure that the result I'd arrive at by intuition and some logic wouldn't be too far away from what happens in the game. Could this be 5% higher and that 1% lower? Yeah, maybe. Am I going to lose a game because of it? Nope. Is it bad that you care if it's 5% this, or 1% that - not at all, it's great. There were many battlefield commanders during WWII and many of them had totally different styles of playing this "game"...

Martin

[-E]

Originally posted by Moon:

but you can play and win without knowing if one type of cover is 2% higher than another.

That's just not right. (and the cover should've been 2.25% higher). *grin*

I thought it was a great guide, obviously geared more to the newcomer (it's been said, but should be repeated... no book smaller than the encyclopedia brittanica could satisfy this crowd). I had no problems with the writing style. Although that same style made it obvious to me the author was a professional strategy guide writer. Which is fine too. The biggest problem is the pictures are indeed atrocious, but I think that subject was hashed to death in another thread in a galaxy far, far away.

[moneymaxx]

Originally posted by Moon:

But to be honest, we don't even want to try. The beauty of CM is that you do *not* need to memorize such details, you can play by the seat of your pants and win, by following some basic principles of military tactics, and common sense.

Allow me to partially disagree. While I do think that most of the game can be played by intuition and common sense there are important exceptions. Those exist because of model limitations or simply because the graphical representation doesn't really give a clue what exactly the game engine takes into consideration. I do play CM a lot but I still don't know what flavour of terrain, as Redwolf put it so nicely, is exactly modelled. What is rough? Rocks of 3m height or bigger pebbles? What is brush? A bush from time to time on otherwise open ground or a jungle of brush? My favourite, what exactly is a wheat field?

I just made a little test (with CMBO I have to admit) to clarify this. A Axis rifle platoon has to advance through different terrain (rough, woods and wheat) to a wood patch where a sharpshooter is waiting (July). Since I lived in Western Europe most of my life, common sense told me that crawling through the wheat field would be the safest thing to do. Surprise, the platoon crawling through the wheat field was spotted at a distance of 190m! While the other platoons crawled and crawled and weren't spotted at all. (I know, I only ran the test once, but there should be no need to run it again, someone crawling in a wheat field can't be seen unless he is maybe 10m away from the edge of the field).

Veteran CM players know this by experience, therefore, especially new players would benefit from information about it and not the ladder player who does everything for another win. It doesn't have to be exact information, more like a rough comparison. E.g. a rifle platoon in a wheat field/rough/brush has a x percentage of being spotted from a distance of 100m by a sharpshooter. With this information a new player could really evaluate the different options.

[Moon]

I actually agree, Moneymaxx, there are exceptions and/or situations which are not so easy to get the right answer for by simple intuition. The problem is that listing them in any meaningful way is nearly impossible to do. Do you really expect the guide to deal with such specific examples like a sharpshooter spotting a squad in this or that type of terrain at this and that range? What about other units? What about the various types of optics? What about units on higher elevations looking down? The charts to deal with those various questions would fill so many pages, the Guide would look like a Baseball Stat Yearbook. I am not sure if this would help any one newbie out there.

Crawling through wheat undetected isn't easy, because (just to name a few points off the top of my head)

a) keep in mind that you are talking about a squad (8-12 men) doing that

depending on the season, CM models such fields with more or less concealment (nearly zero in winter for example)

c) a sharpshooter has a magnifying scope which makes detecting movement at fairly short range (190m viewed through a 2.5x scope is fairly close) quickly

Now, why is this not in the guide? Because it's a very specific question, one of many many hundred similar ones, and I don't think anybody can reasonably expect the Guide to come up with all this kinds of answers. Not for a game like CM where the number of game situations is nearly endless, there are no puzzles to solve or a set number of canned missions to play.

Again, no one Guide can satisfy everybody 100%. To be honest, an average score of 4-5 out of 10 from the seasoned bunch of CMdiehards that are hanging out on these forums is actually a great achievement, as it shows that even they found half the book interesting, which is more than one could have hoped for.

Martin

[moneymaxx]

Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I don’t want a list of spot percentages by a sharpshooter Just, like I said, a rough comparison would be great, e.g. a rifle company, better infantry, is better concealed in: First woods, second scattered trees, third rough ..... (btw, the rifle platoon was crawling in a wheat field in JULY, there is no way anyone can spot them who is at the same level, but that’s off topic).

Now that you mention it, it WOULD be interesting to know how a higher level affects spotting. Common sense would tell me that it is easier to spot infantry in a wheat field from above, while in woods it wouldn’t make a difference or they should be even harder to spot. Do you know? I don’t, therefore I would have to run a series of tests to find out. But NOT to gain a little advantage over my opponent but to see if common sense fails me in my tactical calculations.

All this information would fill maybe a quarter of a page, and would be interesting for Newbies and Veterans.

Anyway I don’t want to start a heated discussion, I just wanted to explain what I wanted to say.

And if someone else is reading this thread where do I get more concealment in brush or in rough ?

[Battlefront.com]

moneymaxx,

I don't think anybody would try and say that the Strategy Guide, as tten, has everything it could/should have. But my God folks... how many hundreds of thousands of posts have been made on CMBO/CMBB since we started up this Forum? Is it any wonder that the Strat Guide doesn't have the answers to all these questions and more?

Again, the simple fact is that this book was NOT written for the CM grog who wants to know the couple dozen factors that go into determining if a round penetrates or not. It was written for the gamer that is new to CM and perhaps new to wargaming (real wargaming, as opposed to Warcraft III ).

Therefore it should be no surprise to anybody, least of all us at BF.C, that the ultra CM grogs are not happy with this. But that doesn't mean the Guide itself is a disapointment. No, it means the expectations were not in line with the product delivered. Some people who try the CM demo hate it because they were expecting it to be like Close Combat. Each to his own, but don't knock something which is clearly not designed to cater to what you are looking for. This is something that early CM fans should be painfully aware of since many slammed CM for being something it never was intended to be (i.e. cheesy, shallow, shoot 'em up).

Steve

[Biff]

Although I haven't bought the Strat. Guide I must add a vote for the person that wants to see more info about cover/concealment details for various types of terrain. There are a number of occassions where I just can't tell via graphic representation what sort of cover I have. I don't consider myself a grog but I would hope that having a section in the Strat. Guide discuss this sort of thing in detail would be nice. And more specific detail on movement commands would also be nice.

[lcm1947]

All I asked was in your opinion was the book any good. So there seems to be some differences of opinions I see. Imagine that. Well, heck now I've got to buy it just to see for myself. Thanks for the opinions everyone and BFC, pretty slick of you getting me to buy it like that.

[Redwolf]

I think after reading this thread you will have a good enough idea so that you won't be disappointed.

As for the tables with too "basic" (screendump) data, not everyone has a laptop with wireless ethernet to take to the bathroom

Maybe we should start our own strat guide instead of just dumping info over a gazillion of threads. We had something like that for CMBO with the thforums

THFORUMS CMBO tactics section

[ June 27, 2003, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Jack Carr]

Good light reading. I felt it was worth the money. Goes into detail on some tactics which I would never have tried otherwise. Not to kiss up or anything but I also bought it to support Battlefront. I started playing other games recently, "Day of Defeat", "Diablo II", and just found that after half an hour I was bored and wanted to go back to CMBB. Personal opinion but it seems to me that so many other games on the market are real garbage. The other games I mentioned were birthday gifts. Looking forward to CMAK.