Destroying overwatch groups

[jtcm]

Heavy weapons groups in overwatch-- HMGs, mortars, guns-- play crucial role in ramming home attacks, by infantry or tanks: infantry spots, overwatch groups pin HMGs, silence ATGs, root defenders out with HE, let the infantry move to effective small arms range or the tanks move on. Fine.

I've never managed to do this, but often wondered: how to silence overwatch groups ? How to ambush them long-range and destroy them, leaving the assault elements to fend for themselves with unfavourable odds ? This must be doable, especially since they often are within command radius of a HQ. Fionn (if anyone remembers him) used to insist on the necessity of locating and engaging overwatch groups, in depth.

Example scenario: I have plt strength defensive position ©. In front of it, good cover at 200 m (; beyond that, covered position with LOS to my defensive line, at 400 m (A). The enemy will scout A, then move up his heavy weapons, while he moves on to occupy B, whence he will move forward to locate my position C, and bring his fire to bear, close and long, concentrated.

Could I open up with a LMG, to pin but sspecifically to give the enemy a target to aim for aas he pushes on, allowing him to set up his support group in A, move forward in leaps and bounds, perhaps with speculative area fire from the support group, until he occupies B-- then activate an "ambush" on A-- i.e. a mad minute of long range HMG and AA fire from specially prepared positions, behind my defensive line C, mortar fire on A, and, if available, one minute of heavy arty registered on A or slighly behind A, to catch any mortars or FOs ? At the least, it should cause discomfort to the support group; this is the moment to open up on the infantry with the plt. in C.

Don't know if it's possible; no idea if it's gamey. But have been thinking along these lines. Since my time on PBEM and TCP severely curtailed since I became a family man, I thought I'd try it out theoretically here, rather than on an opponent. I once did something a bit like this, dyring a game of CMBO (hosing down a likely wood with .50 fire), and it did keep a FO out of the action. I still lost the battle.

[Xavier_1986]

I would think mortars to be the most useful in destroying enemy overwatch positions. The trouble is that more often than not your mortars are not in a position to fire, and they'd probably get decimated trying to get somewhere else.

Artillery is another option, but I wouldn't do that. Best to save your artillery and use it at a critical moment during the enemy's attack. Believe me, all it takes is an 81mm barrage to route a superior infantry force which moments before was overrunning you. So I wouldn't waste arty on overwatch.

If you have tanks they can probably put direct fire on those positions, but this would expose them to it in return.

All in all, your best option is to sit and take it. You're not likely to sustain significant casualties from long range machine guns, mortars, whatever.

I would worry more about attacking tanks.

[JasonC]

You can try to duel the overwatch, but the attacker usually has odds. He welcomes a firepower duel at range, against easily located targets. Overwatch groups are generally in cover. Why would the defender be able to win a ranged firefight against more numerous attackers in cover? What advantage is he supposed to have at it, that the attacker doesn't also have?

That said there are a few things one can do, just applying typical combined arms principles. If part of the overwatch is towed guns, you use the tool-box principle, "mortars asymmetrically beat guns". It is useful to have a few on map mortars in any defense for this sort of thing.

You can try hitting a spotted overwatch position with FO artillery, or predict where one will set up and set a TRP there. You can expect what you can always expect from artillery - pain inflicted for rounds expended, but not enough rounds to stop the attacker completely. It is a trade, not a clean win or a way of stopping overwatch groups. If the attacker bunches up and gives you a nice big target, great. Slower teams find it harder to dodge after the first flight of shells, and treebursts can be nasty.

If on the other hand you spend half a module of medium artillery to beat up 2 machineguns and a mortar, and one of the machineguns rallies in 3 minutes with 2/3rds ammo but full firepower, down a few men - was that a great trade? And that is a successful shoot. The best case is when you catch an FO before he fires, that can pay off. Otherwise, a weaker overwatch group means an intact rifle platoon someplace you didn't put the shells, and it is a "half-dozen of the other" kind of thing.

You can try specific ambushes by HE chuckers. Towed guns are cheap and stealthy. If you've waited until the spot was fully occupied, you can often suppress it with a couple minutes of HE. The downside is, there is probably an HQ there and a mortar out of LOS. If you don't break the HQ the mortar is going to take out your gun in reply.

A 150mm can do it, smacking the group good and making that bit of cover unlivable. But he will work somebody to LOS a few minutes later, and send mortar rounds your way. Again, it works if other defense principles are applied - like plastering the first observable position over a crest line, sheltered from wider attacker overwatch by the reverse slope principle.

Another option is to use an HE chucker armored vehicle and decamp after delivering the rounds. A StuH for example, keyholing on the known enemy position. Works fine on infantry heavy weapons, works against infantry positions too. If you try it against a towed gun it had better be one that can't get through a StuH front.

This works simply because keyholed thick front armor works generally, not because of anything specific to overwatch groups. The principle is isolating a piece of the attacking force and hitting it with something that isn't the right tool to hit back. You always try for that on general combined arms principles. On average, the attacker is going to get his licks in sometimes in response, getting e.g. his TD on StuH match up instead of the StuH on HMG match up you hoped for. That is tactics, not a grand principle.

Fionn liked to claim that he could smash anything, pretending that only stealth or the unanticipated had any combat value. But when you pressed him on it he said silly things like his infantry could shoot it out with HMGs in cover at range. Or that he'd counterattack with a company of armor. He was a good player and being hard to anticipate was his strongest suit, according to those who played him (he did something different every time).

But I think he overpromised or overgeneralized, when trying to turn that into principles for others. What he really meant was something more like "I'll come up with something, something my opponent isn't ready for". He wasn't trying to reduce those somethings to formulas for others, but to deny the value of formulas, generally. Stay loose, change on your feet, that was the moral.

The specific issue of dueling the overwatch came up precisely because the firepower attack methods I was explaining do not rely on being unpredictable, but on being hard to stop even when they are predicted. And that bothered him. He wanted the equation, "predicted equals failed" to hold generally, reducing the whole conflict to an anticipation "head-game".

I don't think it does, and attrition methods are all about "variance control" that gets its licks in even when seen coming. Yes there are some counters to each item, but each costs something, and collectively they strain the defense. It can spend to stop one, spend to stop two, but if the attacker persists and avoids lopsided losses through mistakes, he wears the less numerous defender out. Naturally, still playing predict the other guy, but not staking very much on it, and only needing an occasional break on that score to balance those the other guy gets.

[Joachim]

1) Local counterattacks:

If there are likely routes of advance - try to position parties outside those routes that can counterattack after the first wave passed. Make sure you can retreat them. Fionn's Sunken Lane AAR comes to mind.

2) Ranged weapons:

Make sure your enemy looses more than you show him if you can't relocate your assets.

a) tanks - best with local armor odds in your favor.

Guns that are out of range from on board mortars and/or entrenched. Keyholing works great - first reduce the overwatch group, then the spearhead. Just imagine a 15cm sIG doing this.

c) Guns that can reposition.

d) Arty - if the overwatch group is close together 30 seconds of incoming from a arty bty might panic or rout parts of the overwatch group. If the overwatch group is in trees (usually the best cover for attackers) even a 81mm mortar barrage might do some killing. If the overwatch group is spread out arty is wasted.

Anything else will not kill but suppress at range. That will not destroy the overwatch group but helps, too:

3) Delay

Try to delay the overwatch group with long range fire. They are usually slower than squad inf. An advance moves at the speed of the slowest element and loses speed or it loses strength. So if you delay the slowest element, you delay the attack. Delaying the fast elements won't delay the attack. It might be better to target the overwatch group at 600m than the spearhead at 400m with an MG (that is out of id range!).

@Xavier: It is enough if the overwatch group suppresses your troops and allows the squad inf to close in. Those will finish the job then.

Gruß

Joachim

[Nemesis Lead]

Here is how I deal with overwatch elements:

1) When in the open, they are priority targets for long range HMG fire and armored HE chuckers (but, as Jason C. says, don't unmask if you don't have good odds). Use forward deployed OPs and units with binocs help to identify these units for your heavy weapons. I usually do not, however, shoot at these guys (or anyone else if I can avoid it) when they are in cover at long range.

2) As Jason C says, always bring mortars on the defense for protection against guns. Put them in positions where a spotter (but not the mortar if possible) can safely move around and spot multiple likely overwatch (especially gun) positions.

3) A defense where much of your force is reverse slope while your heavy weapons (HMGs, AT guns, etc) have larger and more forward fields of fire can make things be uncomfortable for the attacker's overwatch elements. How? Your opponent is forced to manuever more to get into position against your reverse slope main body and they are exposed to your heavy weapons when they have to do their manuevering. HMGs hit enemy mortars/HMGs, Armor/ATRs hit halftracks carrying guns, etc..

4) Against opponents who do not scout well or who leave open flanks...you can often manuever bypassed ambush teams/OPs/sharpshooters/forward infantry units into place to attack overwatchers. The same guys who do not scout well often leave their overwatch teams without security. Also note that you don't always have to kill the overwatchers--just force them to defend themselves and engage their tormentors instead of your MLR. The BIG challenge is getting close enough to the overwatchers (who have better long range capability) to tie them up/kill them. This is often difficult on more open maps, but I have done it (and others have done it to me) on maps with more cover.

5) Keep in mind that most of the time you don't have to worry about overwatch! For example, when given a choice between using your precious artillery to engage manuever elements or overwatch elements, it is usually enemy manuever elements that you want to engage. The exception might be that 150mm IG that is eating you up, a known concentration of 3 mortar teams, etc. But in general--if you stop his manuever elements, you win the battle. Only engage overwatch elements (in cover) if they really are a serious threat.

A related sidenote--enemy HMGs in cover are rarely a mortal threat and firing at them is usually a waste of ammo. You often have to kill the entire unit to reduce their effectiveness--e.g., if you kill 5 of 6 members of a stationary MG42 HMG team, the last guy still has all the ammo and will lose it only when he moves! The trick for HMG teams is to attrite them before they get into cover. Priority target out of cover, non-target when in cover.

Best Regards,

Nemesis

[JasonC]

Nemesis - useful comments all. I second the point about HMGs in cover. They are great firepower absorbers, especially of infantry type fire. It is a complete waste to throw squad or MG ammo at them and I love it when the enemy duels them that way.

On security for overwatch teams, I urge a standard composition based on an HQ and 2 MGs in part because they have the ability to defend themselves against enemy infantry - whereas mortars, guns, and FOs alone are limited in that respect. The HQ can fast move, advance, use grenades etc.

When the HQ is a company, I will sometimes include a single squad detached from another platoon in an overwatch group. Its main mission is simply to scout routes and positions the weapons intend to use and occupy. It can also look like a platoon when split, along with the HQ etc. The added security against bypassed teams is a welcome bonus.

You don't need to line all your flanks with full infantry platoons, that is a waste. You just want a few "eyes" outside your basic positions: snipers, ATRs, LMGs, light armor, the odd scout half-squad on an errand, a fake platoon "patrol" of HQ and split squad. Those to give warning time and report enemy movements. Then some infantry type firepower (from MGs, HQs, attached squads) anywhere there is something valuable, is the kind of security Nemesis is talking about.

Note that the US HQs are particularly good at this in CMAK. The company has 4 carbines and 4 M-1 rifles for solid squad-like firepower, that surges reasonably well in close. For the Germans, as long as the HMGs are set up (even one) rather than both moving, you have little to worry about from a few teams.

[John_d]

You can always set up your own overwatch groups on the flanks, if you are on the defense. Two groups of ranged weapons overlooking the most likely path of enemy advance, but at a distance and kept well hidden. I've done this a few times to good effect. Your opponent moves between the two groups without noticing them, then sets up an overwatch position for an offensive move on your main position. Now most people don't defend their positions from sides they don't expect to be attacked from, so the chances are that your flanking groups will get clear shots at the enemy's side and rear, catching their overwatch units in a crossfire. If done correctly,you can time it so that your flanking groups open up when the enemy is already committed to the attack, thus causing the main assault to stall and hopefully break. Then the flanking groups get loads of kills as the opponent's troops retreat back through their kill zones. Also, these flanking groups are excellent as recon units

[Bigduke6]

Smoke. Depending on the battlefield, a bit of smoke to shut down the overwatch while the attack is going in can do wonders. You have to have the enemy shooters located, of course, but if you can cut off the overwatch's LOS on your defense when the assault is going in, even for a couple of minutes, then (obviously) you are going to have a lot easier time dealing with the assault.

The sine qua non of course is that you have the assault force to rights, i.e., if they go to ground you can still see them, or have some way of moving them around once they've gone to ground like aimed HE. Otherwise the attackers just hide until you've run out of smoke.

But if you're the defender and you choose the right time to start shooting, you can chop up the assault force while the overwatch is cut out of the picture. Do this and you have won: the overwatch element may be unhurt, but it can't get your guys out of their holes.

If the overwatch is set up in good ground - craters or trenches or similar - then more than once I have gotten more milage smoking the overwatch, than trying to keep its head down with my own indirect.

Not something I would do in every case, but definately something I'll keep in mind.

[jtcm]

The issue is whether the right target for HE is the enemy's infantry, or the support elements. I'm under the impression that the support elements really give the assault elements the necessary bite-- i.e. without support weapons, it's difficult for straight infy to duke it out against defensive positions.

So (to revise my scenario) perhaps it's not so much a question of duelling overwatch elements (as JasonC writes) with a hope to knock them out, as putting enough HE and area fire on them to suppress and disorganize them, and hence deprive the forward elements of the crucial "oomph" during the first minutes of the firefight-- to delay the folw advance, and inflict serious losses on the enemy's lead plt-- and also to dismay and surprise the attacker. Sidewinder (if anyone remembers him) excelled at the multiplying shock effect of unexpected ambushes. But I digress.

Again, I'm not sure if this will work during a real battle; but often, on the offense, when I'm setting up my admittedly highly stereotypically arranged overwatch elements (2 HMGs, HQ in middle, mortar within command radius but behind ridge or LOS block, I wonder why my opponent isn't dropping one salvo of 105, 120, 150 or 152 mm on me, to spoil the day. Perhaps the men would rally after a few minutes; but a knocked-out mortar or immobilized HMG or panicked FO seems to me as much of a loss as if the HE had been spent on a bunched-up plt.

[RockinHarry]

Isolating any enemy units by use of smoke is highly effective. Works on tanks as well as on everything that you don´t want to shoot at you, in particular those units that you can´t really hurt with HE anyway (direct hit required or sufficient armor penetration ability). "Blenden" (blinding) was a common defensive artillery tactic employed by the germans and surely not just by germans, against enemy OP (FO´s) and overwatching heavy weapons. Requires not too dense terrain on maps and suitable weather. As already said above, recconing the enemy map side and anticpating the likely enemy overwatch points was standard doctrine to set up the defensive fire plans for artillery and heavy weapons. Those are the map spots where the defenders TRP´s are to be placed.

Beside that, one never should miss the opportunity of causing tree burst on soft enemy units located in any sort of woods! It always works on the AI which is stupid enough to think woods is the best available cover to move to (missing to properly use terrain contours intstead) With this in mind in my own scenarios I would either try to avoid woods completely or place a lot of it on the map. Everything in between gives the most predictable AI infantry movements unfortunately.

[JasonC]

jtcm - predictable decent targets are fine for a minute and a half of HE. As for the timing, sure the begining of a firefight is a great time. But is it going to stop an attack? If the attacker wants to he can just back off for a few minutes. If he tries to press it unprepared, that's an unforced error on his part.

Firepower attacks are patient things. The whole idea is to present the defender the problem, "you don't have sufficient firepower to get all of us, in cover this good, this far away." Then if he waits, a few at a time get closer, and eventually the attacker's firepower onto the defender positions is too heavy to survive in them.

3 minutes after the shells hit the heavy weapons group, maybe they KOed a single on-map mortar, probably not. There are a few less men in the teams. The position is still occupied by the attackers. It still spits fire. Defender ammo available to break the attack is lower. What progress has been made, on the ratio "attacker firepower vs. defender depth"?

You might easily gain a few minutes of delay, but an FO can achieve that anywhere sensible you place him. Unless those minutes shift a reserve or allow a reinforcement to arrive, it makes no progress on the critical relationship, the aspect a firepower attack is deliberately "stressing".

Against a firepower attack, the defender needs to avoid fire by use of terrain and differential intel, and needs to inflict outsized losses by catching men at their most vulnerable, or getting perfect combined arms match-ups, or exploiting low cost, high potential impact weapons ("Davids" vs. "Goliaths"). Those make progress on reducing attacker firepower without expending all the defenders or their ammo in the process.

[jtcm]

I hotseated a little test scenario: 2 Cos Soviet Rifle infantry, 1943, attacking over sparsely wooded terrain, against 2 plts of German standard rifle infantry + 2 HMGs in trench + 1 on map 81mm + 1 FO 120mm + 1 Flak 20mm + 3 TRPs

Soviets set up 2 overwatch groups: a small one in a patch of rough (officer + 2 HMGs). a larger one in a patch of woods (officer +sniper + ATR + 2 HMGs + 4 50mm mortars).

Germans: HMGs in trench in front of patch of woods with officer, + FO and mortar in command range; 1 plt in cover in centre of map; 1 plt scattered as "reinforced LMG" nests'; 20mm in back of map. TRPs on likely (well, I knew which, since I was playing both sides) overwatch positions.

Soviet "firepower attack" ground forward, came into contact with the first German plt. At this point, I threw everything I had at the "large' overwatch group (which I had some spots on)-- 2 minutes of 120mm, 81 mm, area fire by HMGs and 20mm Flak. The area fire by weapons not terribly effective; the arty panicked one HMG, depleted another HMG team, killed sniper, ATR and 2 out of 4 mortar teams.

1 more minute of 120 mm on the "small" overwatch group panicked one HMG team (which ran off the map), killed the officer.

It's true that the overwatch groups rallied. But the "strike" gave the Germans time to switch fires on to the Soviet manoeuver elements-- and rout those which were in the open. Worth bearing in mind, i think.

[JasonC]

You wouldn't put 4 50mm mortars in one overwatch group. 2 is plenty. The reason to separate them is partially to avoid excess loss from things like this, but more importantly just to get LOS from and therefore to, different locations.

On switching fire to the maneuver guys and getting the ones in the open, surely you could do that with the squads and perhaps HMG/20mm stuff. And surely you can mess them up in the open regardless, those that are at the moment of firing.

The test continuation would be for the maneuvering guys to hold up (resting, rallying, straggling elements can close up) while the overwatch rallies. And once it does, continue.

I also notice 1 MMG, 1 sniper, 1 ATR and 2 50mm dealt with its about 100 points, maybe 120 if the panicked MMG is counted (though I assume it rallied, the one in the main group that is). Which is about the cost of the 120 FO. (Also paid for TRPs). 1 to 1 trade, against an attacker's 3:2 odds.

As I said initially, any decently clumped target is a reasonable one for an FO. But the only way you are going to get outsized returns from this is if you happen to hit an attacking FO before he gets his own shells off. Otherwise, you are just trading.

A target that big under one barrage footprint, I'd undoubtedly hit myself, for a minute and a half or so. I just wouldn't expect it to stop the overall attack.

[jtcm]

JasonC--

Like a good professional cardplayer or gambler, you're a good spread-sheeter. You're right, of course, that the overwatch rallied, the manoeuver platoons unpanicked, and that the whole machine could have ground on say 10 min. later (at which point i got bored with playing against (with ?) myself.

You're also right that fire against the elements in the open was possible at anytime; it's just that the "local counter-battery' strike against o'watch made it that bit more difficult for the Soviet to supress the German fire elements-- in other words, the Germans got say 5-10 minutes of "turkey shoot'. I suspect that in real life (to pick up on something you wrote in an earlier post), that might be enough to make an attacking force pause for thought, and extend the timeframe to the half day or so that real life AARs seem to show for this sort of action. In CMBB, if the attacking player keeps his "gambler's nerve" and presses on once things have settled down, the attacker will come back and grind forward to make contact, with a defender this time without 120mm or 81 mm. Psychologically, I'd say that's the right time to unveil the next trick-- if only I knew what it was.

[76mm]

This is a very interesting thread, although I'm surprised that there hasn't been more discussion about reverse-slope defenses. If done correctly--and terrain permitting, of course-- doesn't a reverse-slope defense go along way toward taking the overwatch element out of the attack? In my own (rather limited) experience, reverse-slope defenses have either succeeded brilliantly or collapsed like a house of cards. My experience with "urban reverse slopes" (ie setting up in the interior of an urban area rather than on the edge, to avoid devastating long-range direct fire from attacking elements), has been almost uniformly dismal.

[JasonC]

Sure a reverse slope minimizes overwatch fire. It also lets the bulk of the attacking infantry get quite close to the defenders, unmolested.

The doctrinal way to defeat a reverse slope defense is first to close with it, "owning" your side of the hill or other LOS blockage, then to locate the main body of defenders on the other side (with minimal forces). Then you either drop arty on them and cross behind the arty, or you turn the position by crossing the LOS block away from the enemy main body.

Some reverse slope defenses are blessed with entirely bare crests, but most are not. When the crest is bare, a turning movement is the right answer. When there is cover along the crest, one can instead try inserting attackers into that cover and outlasting the defenders immediately beyond.

The reason you've found holding within a town does not work is it lets enemy infantry into the first ring of buildings, after which both the LOS blockage and the cover differential have evaporated. You can try to deal with this by keyholing direct fire HE on the first buildings you let the attackers into. That can work just as any HE trap sometimes works. But the attackers have an easy response once they have taken their licks finding out about it. They just enter someplace else, behind HE of their own.

In my experience well conducted reverse slope defenses are indeed harder to deal with than "up" defenses. But they need to be actively and imaginatively run, shifting where the main body positions itself behind the crest. Using it more as a center of maneuver than as a static position. Such fights tend to come down to head games between attackers and defenders.

The defender problem is that he has given up most of his cover differential and the attacker's closing problem, in return for his crestline effect. He needs to make the latter pay, seriously pay, for that trade to be worth it. It has to pay in live defenders getting in multiple licks and living to tell about it.

[Joachim]

There where some ideas on taking overwatch out of the battle or to suppress them to delay the battle, yet the main focus of the thread is on actually destroying them. That's what made it kind of "new".

Gruß

Joachim

[76mm]

JasonC,

thanks for the response, but let me ask this:

I agree with what you say about the disadvantages of defending urbanized areas from their interior, but I thought I'd read somewhere that at least in the latter stages of the war, it was German SOP to do so--presumably to avoid getting crushed by long-range fire from guns, tanks, MGs, etc. This would presumbably also allow German infantry to destroy more Soviet armor with shreck/faust weapons.

So the question is whether this was indeed German SOP? If so, it sounds like the Germans had to choose between a rock and a hard place, and chose the hard place...

[Joachim]

An up defense in late 1944 would mean that you get melted away without causing casualties.

Let's examine real world tactics when fighting from there. The squad is perfectly placed to cover most approaches. Some up, some to the rear.

Enemy comes with one point man crossing the street. He enters the building and finds the enemy - usually that in the rear as up defenders are not near likely entrances. Recce by death. How many are in there? Enough to bring in the tanks and/or waste ammo?

Enemy comes with many across the street. Defenders hear it. Grenades fly, some short bursts of automatic fire on those exposed. Many casualties. Defedners withdraw or cease fire. Head game with enemy - does he follow (ito a trap?) or bring in tanks long after the inf is gone?

Leading with tanks leads to lots of destroyed tanks.

Drill the soldiers their lives depend on strictly following the "withdraw" or "cease fire" command. If one idiot continues firing after cease fire, withdraw. Pretend to run when you stay, retreat in silence. If an idiot pins when retrating - tough luck. But if he believes propagande, he will run.

Now imagine the situation in CM:

You have teams or squads that are in one point. LOS to the whole team decides whether you can fire or not. Not scouts with automatic weapons up in the 2nd floor and the rest a bit to the rear of the ground floor. Unable to run immediately after the first volley as in the real world. In CM it takes about one minute where you can receive some incoming and pin... the whole team, not just one single man who will know that if he stays behind he'll die and thus run, too.

The whole unit marker shifts when retreating, giving intel to the attacker. An attacker has to fear a second unit in the building, but he knows that the first defender retreated. How many scens are there where the defender can afford 2 units per building? How many men fight from a house in the real world? Divisions vanished in Stalingrad on maps that feature a btn in CM.

Urban combat ain't the focus of CMx1. It is entertaining to try, but far from actual tactics as CM ain't detailed enough for it.

Gruß

Joachim

PS: Try defending with SMG-heavy units placed so they see half into the street. Have one plt per 20m, in depth. Set ammo to max.

PPS: Using only LMG, HQs, tank hunters and snipers might do, too.

[JasonC]

76mm - yes it was SOP for the Germans to defend inside a town, well away from the edges, especially in the west (and Italy). On the east front, up defenses were more common.

In a town interior defense, a few MG nests or snipers might contest the approaches but not for long, and not the main body. The main body was typically in cellars in the interior of the town or village, as protection for HE. If not under fire they would set up urban ambushes, somewhere inside the town.

The thing they were trying to exploit was the intel differential, more than the cover one. Though they also expected to get some initial cover difference from the attackers still being moving. If you are at the edge of a town the attacker knows where to expect you. Inside, they don't.

You also need to understand there are a lot of built up locations in western Europe in particular. Not all were defended. The western allies advanced long distances through village after village. Sometimes there were Germans, sometimes there weren't.

Then, they did not remain passive. They moved about within the interior. In large towns especially, modest attacking forces could not garrison every building, or clear the places in full lines through every house in a ring. Instead they marched in columns, necessarily leaving many houses unchecked.

At the time of contact, therefore, and shortly afterward, the allies might have Germans around them in any number of directions. In CM, you typically know there will be men there, the force to space is typically high (not all that much space, not all that many buildings), etc.

Some of the better custom maps show realistic villages, with many streets of small houses, and a lot more room and cover than defenders or attackers. QB maps don't - there are way too few buildings per squad, to reflect realistic town fighting. The QB "large town" maps give very small, heavily built-up areas surrounded by open areas. Such natural forts are not realistic depictions of most real towns or villages, which have wide areas of houses around any part that built up.