How to minimise casualties.

[Spears]

Exactly, during most games when on the attack i tend to get my infantry shot up rather badly even if i get the flags there mainly dead. I try not to bunch up but to get decent fire onto the enemy the riflemen need to be 100-200m away to be of any effect. So there is need to be close. Any advice on how to minimise casualties without spreading your men all over the show. My point being i dont like losing men and was told to play russians on cmbb so not to appriciate life so much .... which i thought was funny.... hehe. But seriously i like to keep men alive any help?

[MrSpkr]

Use HE and MGs to suppress enemy positions (and suspected enemy positions) at range. Use smoke to mask your movement in the open. Use scouts (half squads are ideal for this) about 50m or so in front of your main advance to draw fire and allow you to pinpoint the enemy positions. Advance from cover to cover.

I'm sure there are many more solutions, but those are good places from which to start.

Steve

[MikeyD]

General MacArthur was known for having significantly lower casualties than his European counterparts despite equally fierce fighting, and one phrase credited to him, though it may be an even older football saying, was "hit 'em where they ain't".

An example of this is the most amazing battle I ever played against the AI (yes, the AI!). I was positioned in front of a set of flags as the defender on a large village map. The AI came straight at me through the woods opposite my position and I was able to easily hold him off. When the game was over I found to my shock that I had suffered a major defeat! I returned to the map and discovered the AI had circled fully half of its forces around me to the flags while using the forward assault as a feint. The AI soundly whipped my butt and suffered very few casualties in the process. And I didn't even realise he had done it!

It seems the most subtle strategies are not the 'body count' strategies but the ones where you can leverage a superior position in your favor.

[ September 27, 2004, 04:45 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[sand digger]

Spears, I sometimes feel the same way. If there is open ground for your infantry to cross and you can't blow the hell out of the enemy at the same time then it seems inevitable. Even one enemy MG can effectively wreck such an attack. The casualty rate so suffered is excessively modelled in this game when compared with the real thing it seems.

On MacArthur, as far as I know he kept a big distance between himself and any place where the action was. The colourful quote, if it was actually made by him, is just that and no more

[MrSpkr]

Originally posted by sand digger:

The casualty rate so suffered is excessively modelled in this game when compared with the real thing it seems.

No, the system isn't necessarily overmodeled. It's more a question of using things like suppressive fire, covered approaches, and combined arms. If you can't use those effectively, and you are follish enough to try to charge an enemy position across open ground, yes, you will get cut up by machine guns.

Just like in the real war.

There was, after all, a reason that WWI was as nasty as it was -- people were trying frontal assaults on trenchlines defended by machine guns -- and getting slaughtered for their efforts.

Steve

[Macphail]

bash the crap out of the enemy any time he pops his lousy head up, and rush in at the last moment, with guns blazing, and murder anyone stupid enough to still have his eyes open. you might lose a few guys, but its statisticly inevitable.

[Guest Sgt. Emren]

If there is no way to cover your approach to the target, if you must cross that open field - then do so with all your squads split. It doubles the number of targets for your enemy, and maximizes your options for providing covering fire. When your units start hitting the ground, getting pinned, ideally you should be able to see where the fire is comming from. Stop most of your half-squads, use them to provide cover fire. Advance with the rest. When your guys become un-pinned, advance them as well. Your front element should now be in a position to fire at the same target(s), providing cover fire for the rear half-squads. Rinse and repeat. Fire (any fire) and movement, that's the key.

[Sirocco]

As a general rule, I split the force I have into three, two up and one back, with the idea that one group suppresses frontally, while the second maneuvers into an area I believe I can exploit through. If that's the case the third group passes through the maneuver group, or alternatively it passes through the first. The goal is simply to avoid a frontal assault, because with that high casualties are pretty much inevitable.

[Vixen]

Smoke....lots of it. It will keep you safe until you can get close enough to hurt the enemy. Also, get down in the weeds so to say. If you take a look from the ground at close magnification instead of the higher level slanted birds eye views, you may see gullys, small bumps in the terrain, dead zones ect, that you may not have noticed before. They can be invaluable to to protecting your forces.

[birdstrike]

Originally posted by KG_Steiner:

you might lose a few guys, but its statisticly inevitable

Now, finally there's something to ease my conscience when sending my men into enemy fire.

[Andrew H.]

Originally posted by sand digger:

The casualty rate so suffered is excessively modelled in this game when compared with the real thing it seems.

I don't think it's exactly accurate to say that the casualty rate is overmodelled. I think that certain types of high-casualty battles are overrepresented (in comparison with how often they occurred historically), but that's a different issue. But I think that the casualty rates we see for the types of attacks we do in CM (small unit actions against an approximately equal force that require taking or holding a particular objective) are realistic. It's probably also true that: (1) many real commanders would avoid a CM-type fight because of the casualties if at all possible; and (2) these battles are probably the most interesting to play.

[General Bolt]

JasonC had a great tutorial on the subject. What remember from his dissertation and try to do is:

1) Use the MG and mortars provide covering fire/smoke. Use concealment/cover as mentioned above - look for the gullies/craters.

2) Use the ADVANCE command at 30-40M distances for some (1/3) of your men.

3) In a few minutes rest the tiring/shaken units and advance another 1/3 of your force. The resting squads can either hide for a minute or add to the supressing fire.

4) Keep advancing in stages. The TAC AI will shift fire often enough to allow your shaken/tired units to recover and rejoin the assualt.

5) The remaining 1/3 of your attacking force advances thru the other squards and while saving their ammo (short arcs) for the final assault.

Of course keep everybody in command radius of the leaders

[Wicky]

Just finished reading The Battle for Hortgen Forest which was nicknamed the death factory for tragic reasons.

This is an example of what went on, time and time again.

In early December 1944, Lomell's company was ordered to assault Hill 400, named for its height in feet. The attack on the German position began just before dawn.

The enemy saw the soldiers coming. Artillery shells burst among the treetops 70 feet above, showering down pieces of rock, metal and wood.

Lomell, 84, a retired lawyer who lives in Toms River, N.J., recalls running 100 yards across a slippery field of ice and snow, zigzagging to avoid the mortar and artillery fire. Only 20 of the 68 men who started out with him made it to the top of the hill. Then it got worse... More

So many fell, and so many replacements were rushed in to take their places, that some companies had casualty rates technically exceeding 100 percent.

[tar]

zigzagging to avoid the mortar and artillery fire.

How does zigzagging help you against mortar or artillery fire? I can see it helping against aimed fired, but indirect?

[MrSpkr]

Perhaps its one of those deals that does little physically but is a source of comfort psychologically because you are at least doing something.

Steve

[sand digger]

'Overmodelled' is perhaps too simplistic a comment but the rate of casualties in time seems excessive in certain circumstances. Particularly considering the reaction gap ie the time which may elapse before a player may react to a fresh threat, a gap which the TacAI cannot be expected to cover.

If you attack across open ground in the game you can get virtually wiped out or effectively immobilised in seconds. In the real thing it of course varies immensely. But the time frames were usually minutes, at least several, and sometimes a lot more before an attack was stopped.

It also seems, unlike the game, that casualties did not dramatically increase as the attacking force got close to the defence, distances roughly around 50 meters or less. There is some sense in that, the defence can become rattled and less effective as it faces imminent death and their bullets are no more lethal at 30 meters than at 100. It also seemed to happen with some regularity that it was no easier to hit a closing target at say 30meters than it was to hit the same target at 100 meters.

These are all impressions, impressions which are hard to convey in few words because of the infinite circumstances that may apply in such situations. And as far as I know there has never been a study made of the subject.

[ September 29, 2004, 04:26 AM: Message edited by: sand digger ]

[Joachim]

To avoid serious losses, you need lots of covering fire. A classic is the 3:1 attacker odds to win the battle (and I don't mean a victory like those Pyrrhus suffered vs the Romans). In CM, you get less than 2:1. Too little for decent support. You either need a map big (or dense) enough to get 3:1 local odds for a breakthru or to be able to outmaneuver the enemy and grab some ground you will actually defend vs counterattacks.

If nothing like that works, you will suffer casualties.

Gruß Joachim

[tar]

One also needs to keep in mind that not all the CM "casualties" are necessarily killed or wounded. They just represent being out of action for the remainder of the scenario. This could be because the troops in question have decided they've had "enough glory for one day" or because they are tending to the wounded and evacuating them, reporting back to headquarters that their unit has been wiped out or various other causes.

Something else that would tend to keep casualties down would be if there were something like an auto-ceasefire (similar to the auto-surrender) that kicked in at a higher (preferably scenario-specified) global morale level.

Of course, one can easily implement just such a feature by agreeing in advance to offer a cease-fire whenever one's global morale drops below 50%. One could also extend that so that the attacker will cease operations if morale drops below that level.

That will certainly result in fewer casualties, and perhaps more realistic ending or pause points for games. It is likely to be a lot less satisfying as a pure gaming experience, though.