Confession time: How good/bad a commander are you?

[GreenAsJade]

I suck. I hate it when I keep losing. Walpurgis says you're only learning when you're losing. Man, I've learned a lot. But I keep losing. The wierd thing is I've learned enough to beat someone who really is new, and sucks even more, yet there's still an infinity of people out there who beat me. If you only play the AI, you can be sure you suck. You haven't even started to learn.

I also hate it when I think my opponent isn't enjoying it. That's usually when he's losing. I don't know why I play this game!

GaJ

[ June 15, 2006, 03:11 AM: Message edited by: GreenAsJade ]

[Sportsguy64]

Ya I probably suck!

LOL

[ng cavscout]

Originally posted by GreenAsJade:

I suck. I hate it when I keep losing. Walpurgis says you're only learning when you're losing. Man, I've learned a lot. But I keep losing. The wierd thing is I've learned enough to beat someone who really is new, and sucks even more, yet there's still an infinity of people out there who beat me. If you only play the AI, you can be sure you suck. You haven't even started to learn.

I also hate it when I think my opponent isn't enjoying it. That's usually when he's losing. I don't know why I play this game!

GaJ

I would be up for a game if you are looking for an opponent. I don't like losing any more than the next guy, but I don't get all pissy either, I recognize that you learn more when you lose.

[BCW]

I'm a good platoon level commander. Give me a platoon and i'll secure and entire village, overall i'm not that good...I also have to be in the mood for CMAK or CMBB...lately I haven't been(I'm quite sad). I'm always the best when i'm in the mood to be tactical.

[MikeyD]

I'm not really all that bad as a 'theoretical' commander. I keep my squads within command of their officers, I send recon units forward, I lay down suppressive fire, I use terrain features. All the good stuff. But the results are often the same as if I had just marched my troops forward without a plan! Hell, I've occassionally I just group-selected the whole lot and marched them forward to better results! :mad:

I'm reminded of that old phrase that's been revived in the news lately. No war plan survives contanct with the enemy.

[BCW]

I think Napoleon quoted this. "The general that comes to the field with plans, is a doomed general"

[Uberpickle]

I'd say with the game's two demos (Line Of Defense and the one mission in the desert) I am a decent commander. I can hold the Nazi's back in the Desert map for about 40-50 turns until everything goes to hell while taking mainly armored losses (damned M3 Medium!).

But for the campaigns however, I don't know how i'd do. I'm ordering the game today so I guess ill know in a couple of day/hours.

[MikeyD]

Weclome to the Brotherhoood, Uberpickle!

[Bigduke6]

I'm a one-trick pony.

Give me a Red force with herds of T-34s, decent infantry and plenty of it, artillery out the yin-yang, and a rocket battalion or four, and I'll put together a deliberate attack like a Warsaw Pact training film. I'm really good at driving that steamroller, I have drills worked out to deal with the ueber-tanks, I can adapt to crappy weather in a heart beat (dawn/fog is my fave), and I love finding Spandaus and and AT guns, I'll shell them into oblivion.

If I have to do the same thing with Americans/Commonwealth, I generally will get the job done, and even will usually manage to fire off most of my HE, but I'll take infantry casualties that would get me sacked, or shot by my own troops. It's really a problem for me when voters get a say on how an army is commanded.

Ask me to get attacking results with a dinky company of S.S. grenadiers and an ueber-tank or two, and I might as well line them up on a firing range and let the Allies have at it, I can't command Krauts for diddly-squat.

[dieseltaylor]

I think I have flashes of conceptual brilliance which may well work if they were not doomed by my inadequacies at getting down to level 1. My chief important military attribute is being lucky. Very highly rated trait : )

I am conscious that I may be nearing the slippery slope of knowing how much fire power suppresses enemy units at 79 metres which I think as close to playing the game mechanics.

However I am pretty good at working out what tanks are dangerous and what to do with them.

I am very lazy at thinking through plans and writing them down to examine them for flaws. I look at maps now and my subconcious seems to fill me in with speeds to certain points etc. which is probably a function of playing lots of games. I reckon 90 since November 2004. I have been playing for years but that is when my stats at BoB begin.

Thinking through a bit further I do think some credit should go to PBEMHelper which when being used in trusted mode means that for each e-mail you plot two turns and see two films. I think that this ability to see cause and effect so closely related must be a very great benefit in getting into the flow of the game. Where in a normal games you may see in a week the whole of what I see in 5 minutes and I have been able to tie them together in my mind easily.

Funnily enough the experience can be so immersive that you almost start to view it as a film rather than you are involved in it. I have played a 60+ pBEM game in under a fortnight so you can appreciate the inputs you are recieving are concentrated.

It is important from my point of view that win or lose I like to think I played well. Obviously that is a personal judgement but you know when an opponent gets lucky and defies the odds to steal the win, draw etc. And you know when you do something that goes drastically wrong. This could be blind stupidity, battle fatigue : ) or simply the action you took on the information available was the best decision however it unfortunately played directly to your enemies strength.

Nice thing about this game there are plenty of reasons why your plans can go awry.

In that vein the funniest thing I ever heard was in a tournament towards the end of a very big bloody battle the US had the sole tank left standing which was going to wipe the Axis remnants from the board. The US air support arrived bombed the Sherman, which dying, triggered a global morale collapse and surrender. |: ) Bad planning obviously!!!

[John Kettler]

dieseltaylor,

ISTR Napoleon used, as a primary selection criterion for promotion to marshal, the answer to this question: "Is he lucky?"

Regards,

John Kettler

[GreenAsJade]

I would be up for a game if you are looking for an opponent. I don't like losing any more than the next guy, but I don't get all pissy either, I recognize that you learn more when you lose.

I like to think I don't get all pissy Ask anyone I've played: they all know how I get when I loose. I don't think I can think of anyone who knows how I get when I win

Thanks for the offer - I actually have 254 fantastic opponents over at We Band Of Brothers, with the added advantage that when I play them my games are recorded in the stats ... always interesting to look back on, and compare how you're going with others.

You should pop over there some time

Cheers,

GaJ

[Sportsguy64]

why did GreenasJade get so pissy? I don't think that was very sportsman like at all.

[Redwolf]

My CM record clearly reflects my personality.

When I started doing competitive CM play I was doing pretty well, not really knowing what I was doing, more making obvious decisions. I think I was number 15 on tournamenthouse.com for a while which is pretty good.

Then I learned everything possible about the CM engine, the new CMBB features in particular and it went downhill, rapidly. The more I learned about the engine the worse my track record was.

Except that occasionally I completely wipe out opponents, even those who later score a much better total. These are usually complicated defense scenarios with me as the defender, in particular thse where you have to do a mobile defense. Or me attacking with mobile forces in terrain with good mobility. The latter is also true in TacOps, I can usually form an armored first and sneak it up to a point where the defender can't react fast enough.

%%

So, overall, it seems that I have a tendency to get lost in details and I don't realize that some high-level decisions are just obviously wrong or right. I end up throwing a mental dice on those high-level decisions. Then I cannot make good for the high-level blunder by winning individual sub-fights.

If on the other hand the setup is so complicated that my level of thinking is actually required I do better. I also do better when the obvious game winning point to make is to be single-minded about one stroke so that I don't even start fiddling.

[DavidFields]

Ok, I guess. At least until the night gets late, and I have had excessive vino.

But the situation can make one look either brilliant or foolish.

I like to play a conservative, keep casualties low, infantry ahead of AFVs, scout carefully, type of style.

This can look brilliant against a "trap" type situation--scenarios where if you rush forward you are overly exposed to a counterattack, or there are hidden AT or MGs which would rip you apart.

This look less brilliant when the winning strategy, though not known to be so on first examination of the situation, is to dash forward and get somewhere first, or to rip through an area which, as one has to take as an act of faith, is devoid of defenders.

I suspect I would have been summarily shot in the Russian WW2 army because I would have a hard time giving an order for a tank rush across an unscouted bridge.

On defense, I like to trap--internal kill zones, and maneuver. Strip off the infantry, then AT assets further back, then flank assaults at exposed areas. In chess, that would be the equivalent of Black with a tight pawn formation seeking a slight tactical edge, wearing down the White attack, not a Sicilian Defense gamble.

Throwing a bunch of tanks over a ridge on a shoot-and-scoot near frontal armor defensive engagement--I would want to give that task to someone else.

Oh, and playing SP, I can take hours/days with a movement--indeed I will just stop playing at critical moments, and take a walk, just to savor the tactical situation. The process is just as important to me as the result.

Good question. Brings out what we think a good/bad commander is.

[von Lucke]

Originally posted by Earl Grey:

I always ask myself what I'd do if I were REALLY there. I haven't had any tactics courses and never been to the armed forces (and had I been they had made me an airborne sniper and lone warrior), so everything I can do I have taught myself. Considering that, I think I'm good enough. And when my 251/9 kills a Sherman at 1.5km with one shot, or my PzIV knocks out half a dozen enemy tanks wothout getting the paint even scratched, I'm rewarded enough. Not to say I've even lost Jagdtigers to FRONTAL PENETRATION (damn those April 1945 scenarios! ) and every kind of stuff you can imagine. But I LEARN from my mistakes and not often make the same one twice...

If I was REALLY there, it'd be a nice, boring, action: Sit back and call in an overwhelming artillery strike, wait for the enemy to pull out, then advance into their vacated positions.

But that doesn't make for much of a game.

[jeffsmith]

Simply put

I'm a "Bloody Butcher" of a Commander

[DerBlitzer]

I tend to be pretty aggressive in all games, and CM is no exception. But it's much more difficult to be aggressive if you're commanding American or British tanks against the Germans. If you've got Shermans or Churchills or the useless Wolverine you have to be sneaky in your aggressiveness. I play only historical scenarios because I enjoy working with forced limitations and seeing what I can do.

I love sneaky manueuvers, but they're hard to do when both players can see the whole map. Often the map dictates the attack points, i.e. you're not going to advance across open ground, and your opponent of course knows this. Feints I rarely plan, but sometimes they simply happen because one probe just gets wiped out, and it ends up looking like a feint when I send nothing more in that direction.

Basically, before I start, I conceive of a loose overall plan, which typically falls apart after a few turns. But I enjoy improvising and adjusting tactics on the fly, responding to the enemy's movements and successes. The loss of a key tank always stings, but it forces you to really concentrate on the goal. I try not to get distracted from reaching the flags (like getting revenge on a Mark IV that's racked up kills, for example) but I never try to force a position when it appears to be failing (like some leaders we know). Having to adjust, and being able to do it, is what makes the game so good.

I also love smoke. I use it all the time on the attack with a decent amount of effectiveness, to cover a flank, or hide scurrying infantry, but most players I encounter in PBEM never use it.

[NameUsedBefore]

I'm methodical once I get into the flow of things and I'm learning patience. I'm also good at creating checkered defences and doing a lot with a single platoon. I'm still iffy on very large and night battles. I understand situations well and take risks when I think the payoff exceeds that which may come from failure.

Overall, I'd give myself a B-.