attacking trenches?

[freddyg]

I'm new to this game and having quite a bit of trouble.

Specifically, I'm doing the Trig29 scenario and the Germans have lots of trenches blocking my approach.

I have had some luck attacking with mortars, but their are too many trenches and not enough mortars.

Any tips from experienced players?

[MikeyD]

Welcome freddyg!

Oooh trenches. I don't recall Trig29 off the top of my head (too many scenaros to remember 'em all!). Unfortunately, my experience is you'll have to fight for every square inch of trench, unless you can park a tank right over it and blast 'em out. Suppress, suppress, supress, then smoke shells (if you've got 'em) and rush as many men as you can through the smoke into the trench for some nasty hand-to-hand. If you're lucky the nearest suppressed enemy will panic & bolt before everyone dies. Then you rest your men for a few turns and its up over the top to the next trench.

Anyone come up with a more efficient technique?

[blue division]

Approach using cover. Folds in the ground are best, or trees if there are any (I'm not familiar with this scenario by the way). Anything that protects you from direct fire weapons is needed. If you can try and remain unobserved on your approach.

Attack in 'bounds', with enough firepower staying static to keep the trenches under fire. Then use 'advance' with 'rested' or 'ready' troops.

Be patient - it is going to take a while - don't try a human wave - all units in Combat Mission have automatic squad weapons and you will be stopped and slaughtered.

If advancing across open ground in view of the enemy, you may have to use a smoke screen. Although these obviously don't stop bullets, they will at least allow your troops to advance without being picked off immediately.

[Soddball]

Smoke to cover your approach, and 105mm or larger to suppress the infantry in the trenches.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by Soddball:

Smoke to cover your approach, and 105mm or larger to suppress the infantry in the trenches.

How do you know that he has such possibilities in the scenario in question?

[Soddball]

Originally posted by Sergei:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Soddball:

Smoke to cover your approach, and 105mm or larger to suppress the infantry in the trenches.

How do you know that he has such possibilities in the scenario in question? </font>

[GRUMLIN]

have you got any assault guns? or kv2s? large calibre direct fire gets em running.

or...can you go around the trenches at all?

or...flamertanks?

or...quad gun AA halftracks

or...er....thats it

of course, if you were sensible and played german the 150mm inf gun would be your friend

Grumlin

[Falcon988]

If you don't have tanks then you may as well retreat. The only way an unsupported infantry force has any hope of breaching a fortified position is if the defenders are low on ammo.

But if you're a sadist and you don't care about your men's lives... you'll need high caliber artillery. 120mm, 150mm, etc. Don't even bother trying to "soften up" the defense because artillery is rarely ever effective against entrenched infantry.

Get your own men in as close as possible without being in range of the rifles, automatic weapons, and grenades. You'll probably be taking fire from machine guns and mortars but all you can do is keep your men spread out, keep them moving, and soak up the casualties (which, at long range, should be light).

The best use for your artillery is -not- to kill teh enemy and destroy their positions, it's to keep them pinned down during your assault. Coordinate your infantry attack with the artillery fire so that your troops are assaulting -while- the bombs are dropping. This is extremely dangerous and prone to friendly fire incidents, but you'll lose less men than you would attacking the trenches while the troops are manning the defenses. This way the enemy keeps their heads down because -nobody-, not even the most seasoned soldiers in any army, is going to keep his head up so he can fire at attacking infantry while 150mm is raining down all over his position.

If your men can get in close you'll probably breach the line and once you have that you can outflank their entire defense. In theory at least.

What will PROBABLY happen is that your attacking force will be scattered and shot to bits by the defenders artillery. The infantry attack and artillery will not be properly coordinated and the defenders will mow your men down with their automatic weapons. If your troops manage to breach the line they'll probably be forced to retreat by reinforcing enemy troops seeking to close the gap. War sucks like that...

[MikeyD]

On the bright side, if you do manage to dislodge the enemy from a trench and occupy it with some fresh reinforcements it'll be just as hard for him to take it back as it was for you to take it in the first place!

Another thought - you might want to maneuver to attack their trenches at the short end instead of on his broad front. That will let you concentrate your fire on one-squad at-a-time along his line, plus if you can slip a few men behind him then he'll be taking fire from multiple directions.

[ September 07, 2005, 01:38 PM: Message edited by: MikeyD ]

[freddyg]

Thanks for all the advice.

Maybe I should try an easier, more basic scenario.

Any advice?

[stoat]

Try the same scenario from the other side. Watch what the enemy does to try to take your trenches, and then remember what they did right/wrong next time you come up against trenches.

[JasonC]

You can beat the AI, but two player that one is unbalanced against the Brits. The main reason is not trenches - there are only a few of those - but the fact the Germans have more infantry manpower while defending against an attack across open desert. With twice as many MGs and better ones. They also have god awful guns, which only hamfirsted AI play can help you overcome.

You aren't going to get more than a company of infantry out of trenches with 3 2 inch mortars with 30 HE shells between them. You will be lucky if you pin a couple of MGs with them. Nor will your arty help much against them. It is 25-pdr (that is, rather light) and even heavy stuff is marginal against trenches. It will work on infantry in the open or foxholes, perhaps, and will kick up lots of dust. You have a TRP for it and better use it, because you won't easily adjust fires otherwise.

The only weapon type that really works against trenches is direct HE. Flat or serious mortar, 3 inch or 81mm. The reason is, trenches are hyper sensitive to shell placement, and indirect fire will land outside of them almost all the time, wasting most of its firepower. Only direct shells hit on the trench, about a third of the time or so. Those hits do everything. Small arms fire is hopeless given you have no odds and will be in open desert, or at best 50% cover (shellhole, brush, rocky).

You ace in this fight is supposed to be armor, in the form of 3 Crusaders, 5 halftracks, and 3 Bren armed light armor. The last don't hit hard enough or have enough ammo to do much. Their main role is to scout routes for the other vehicles, drawing gun fire and detecting mines. None of the valuable pieces should drive over a single tile one of them hasn't driven over first. The Crusaders and HTs have effectively unlimited 30 cal ammo, so they can hose every turn they have somebody in LOS.

The Crusaders are CS types, so they do have serious HE. But only enough for a few minutes of fire from each. You will need that to (1) take out guns and (2) to blast enemies out of trenches. A minute of fire by one CS Crusader will pin or break a typical unit in a trench. You then want an MG hitting that unit every turn thereafter, to keep it from rallying.

None of the above would make the attack "do-able" on their own, however. The keys to this one, against the AI, are the night time LOS distance of only 200m, and your smoke. The CS Crusaders have effectively unlimited 3 inch smoke, and your handful of 2 inch mortars can obscure a point shooter each for a few minutes.

The way you are supposed to use those in combination is, isolate a few defenders that you have drawn into LOS range of, while masking anyone else who has opened up. Note, your smoke chuckers do not need LOS to a shooter to put smoke on the LOS line from that shooter to whoever they can see. They can be 250-300m from the Germans, and put smoke 50-100m in front of them. You can also call a blast of 25 pdr on the TRP when you need to enter the position proper - the dust will act as smoke. Vehicles can also generate dust trails to hide your infantry by using "fast move", or slow to "move" to avoid making them.

Don't obscure everyone, leave 1-2 targets "clear" and blow the crap out of them. Crawl up closer and blast another couple the following minute. Use "shadows" from existing smoke locations, the curve of the hill, the burning houses, and dust, to isolate a few defenders until they are dead. Then unmask on the next lot.

Do not get overly aggressive with the vehicles, early. Lead with infantry to scout (think "rifle half squad on move to contact"), with the vehicles close enough to help with smoke when somebody opens up. Every time you find a gun, somebody will get hurt. And sometimes when you haven't - can't be helped. When you do locate a gun, smoke its LOS and put the FO or mortars in position to KO it when the smoke clears.

When you've drawn his gun "teeth", you can get more aggressive with the armor. But beware, even HMGs will make swiss cheese of the thin halftracks. Those are good against pure infantry, only. Keep them alive, and bring them out late to hose everything left. A unit that can move with impunity down to 100m and fire a 30 cal continually is gold, late.

The other limitation the Germans have is ammo depth. They have a few nasty guns that you have to kill, and a few HMGs with lots of ammo. But if you take those out, the rest can't keep it up as long as you can. If they catch your infantry in the open they won't need it - they have more than enough squad ammo to break your entire force with its brittle night morale and lack of cover. But you don't have to charge into the same foxhole with heads up enemies. Just fire at 'em until they are down or dry, first.

The reason it is largely unwinnable against humans is they are much more careful about when to open up with their guns, and they can coordinate their arty fires in particularly effective ways. And the Brits simply do not have the infantry numbers to maintain attack momentum after one solid shell-acking.

Bottom line - you can only win by *obscuring* the battlefield to isolate a few defenders at a time and take them out. Using 200m night LOS, your mobility vs. their rootedness in place, and all your smoke. To get a unit out of a trench, send a minute of Crusader CS HE to pin them, and keep them under continual MG fire afterward to prevent rally.

I hope this helps.

[von Churov]

Originally posted by GRUMLIN:

have you got any assault guns? or kv2s?

Grumlin

Hm,hm...Trig is in Afrika.

KV2's in afrika desert?

This is CMAK scenario that he talks about.

[MikeyD]

That's one of the funnest bits about CM. These aren't so much 'game engine' question, they're more in line with what you'd REALLY need to REALLY assault a trench! Losing shooter game 'run-&-shoot-first' tactics in favor of real world common sense (don't walking into mg fire) can take you a long way in CM.

[Olle Petersson]

Thread hijacking here...

Trench or foxhole?

When setting up a defence I generally have the option.

A test I made came to the conclusion that when approaching dug in stationary troops that are neither "hiding" nor shooting you'll spot, in order:

1) Trenches.

2) Foxholes.

3) Troops in foxholes.

4) Troops in trenches.

If the terrain is other than open the spotting distance will be very short for the last two, but well beyond 100m to spot a trench.

The trench provide very good cover for troops as well as the concealment, on the other hand it's quite easy for an attacker to spray the trench with area fire whereas an unspotted foxhole won't draw attention.

Personally I slow down and approach really slow if/when I spot a trench ahead. Perhaps empty trenches should be used as decoys...

Any comments?

/Olle

[YankeeDog]

I always buy extra trenches for alternate positions/ decoys when I can, especially if I'm playing Allies against Germans. Actually, often they're not so much as decoys as alternate positions. I pick and choose which ones I fight from, and for how long. The ones I don't choose to fight from effectively become decoys.

As Jason notes, the best weapon against trenches is DF HE. But DF HE is also fairly expensive, especially for the Germans. So trenches, occupied or unoccupied are "HE sponges", if you will.

Nothing makes me happier to watch my opponent throwing HE at an empty trench. I also sometime put a low-value unit like an LMG team in a trench -- even better players who won't use valuable HE on a trench until they've confirmed it's occupied, will often overreact to a few rounds of LMG fire from a trench, and spend a lot of time and resources.

Cheers,

YD

[JasonC]

The only problem with using unoccupied or lightly held trenches as decoy positions, is they become fortresses for the attackers once they are captured.

While trenches can be spotted a bit farther, the range at which they are seen is almost always a range you want to fire from, anyway. And in open or nearly open terrain, they give 4 to 5 times the protection (!) Way too huge an edge to pass up. Foxholes only act as decent cover if they are in woods or pines.

[michael_wittman44]

Trig29 is a battle on the CMAK Cd if I remember correctly??

[YankeeDog]

Originally posted by JasonC:

The only problem with using unoccupied or lightly held trenches as decoy positions, is they become fortresses for the attackers once they are captured.

Absolutely. Which is why it's very important to only use this tactic when you can situate the trenches so that they are useful to you, but of marginal value to the attacker once he takes them over.

This is one of the few times I find forward slope deployment useful, since a forward slope defensive deployment is of very little use to the attacker once he takes it over -- by definition, a forward slope defensive deployment offers little or no LOS to deeper defensive deployments.