Tactics against a certain kind of enemy needed!

[Schoerner]

I have a problem with a good CM-oponent:

if i win the law of the action (Gesetz des Handelns) - i.e. eliminating 50% of his tanks and controling the key-areas - he keeps one or two platoons hidden till the last one or two minutes and then rushes in the last moment towards the victory flags.

Even if his forces are much to weak to be able to hold the area, if the game would last on, usually the flag becomes "?" and instead of a major victory i lose the game in the last minute.

Is there a key-tactic against this kind of gamey tactics?

I know i should clear the area around and behind the flag, but he has at least a PAK or a howitzers just waiting for this and after 28 turns against such a good oponent i'm not able to concentrate enough firepower and an advantage of 1.5:1 for an attack for this purpose.

[Silvio Manuel]

Hmmmm, well...have enough infantry covering the *approaches* to the flag such that you murder him and make him PAY for the right to change the flag to "?" status. He will probably call down off-map Artillery from his spotters (good players save a few rounds for the last 1-2 turns), so keep in mind that you only need some men within the 80m radius to control the flag, and other men (MGs for example) covering the approaches.

Also, you could drop smoke on the land he has to cross through to run at the flag, thus cutting off the LOS of his support weapons, and changing his Arty FO's fire pattern to "unspotted/out of LOS" b/c of the 'broken' feature in CMBO that the arty becomes less accurate the second that LOS is broken.

[bsd]

You could try playing "no flag rushes". For example play a game that is 32 turns long and say that no one can move troops INTO a flag zone in the last 2 turns (but you can fire on troops already there). This works to stop rushes.

A simpler option is to make the games longer generally, to give you more chance to find his hidden troops or set up a good defence.

An even simpler option is to play someone else entirely, someone who plays more in the spirit of CM.

[GenSplatton]

The better option is to just to kill so much stuff when he rushes that it isn't worth it for him to do so. Who cares if he contests a flag if he takes 200 points in casualties doing it? Flags are a minor detail in the game.

[Silvio Manuel]

I almost forgot...use the "BER," -> Badco's Endgame Randomizer. You basically wind up choosing a # of turns in the QB set-up screen (let's say 30) and then use the BER to do +/- 3 turns, so you never know if it will end on turn 27 or 33 or anything between...that should vastly reduce any reliance on Flag Rushing.

[ July 31, 2002, 11:40 PM: Message edited by: Silvio Manuel ]

[Schoerner]

Wow, didn't know about this nice tool.

Thanks a lot for the info.

[HarryInk]

That randomizer's a nifty tool. It looks like it's just for windows? Is there a MAC version?

[Redwolf]

A flag rush will usually not gain any victory points for the rusher.

Assuming that the rusher had more losses in the game, then making the flags neutral raises the importance of the knockout points, of which the rusher has less to start from. The rusher is also likely to suffer more vitory point losses from the rush itself, especially if he uses HQs, crews or halftracks. Or spotters...

More on victory points at thforums (see my sig).

[CrapGame]

A true "Good CM Opponent" is by definition not a "Flag-Rusher". Flag rushers are quickly put on the list of people not to play against, and word of being on that list spreads quickly.

[bsd]

Originally posted by redwolf:

Assuming that the rusher had more losses in the game, then making the flags neutral raises the importance of the knockout points, of which the rusher has less to start from.

:confused:

If you are losing and the enemy has all the flags it is still beneficial to dispute the flags, providing you take acceptable losses doing so. Your score will decrease slightly, but your opponent's score will decrease a lot (by 300pts per large flag you dispute). This means a better result for you, even if you still lose.

It is always beneficial - points-wise - to dispute enemy flags on the last turn provided the losses are acceptable.

What is "acceptable"?

On a map with 1 300pt flag, player A (harry) has killed 300 points worth of enemy and player B (bsd) has killed 500 points worth and has the flag. Harry's score is therefore 300/1100. bsd's score is 800/1100.

Harry then rushes the flag because he is australian. But bsd kills 300 points MORE of harry's forces as he does this. Harry's score is now 300/1400 and bsd's score is 800/1400.

So what was a 72% vs 27% win to bsd has become a 57% to 21% win to bsd!

Hence losing 300 points worth of troops disputing a large flag was beneficial

This is an extreme example, but the principal is there. Flag rushing is serious and seriously effects scores.

I hope my sums are right.

[Redwolf]

bsd, you calculations are generally correct, but in a quickbattle where 800 points of units can be killed there will be more than 1 300 points flag (although both scenario designers and the quickbattle generator place too few flags).

here is my usual example, from http://thforums.com/CMBO/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=58

Should you rush that flag?

In the previous example, should Player B rush the small flag and make

it neutral?

Player A: 237 + 300 / (187 + 237 + 400) * 100 = 65%

Player B: 187 + 0 / (187 + 237 + 400) * 100 = 23%

65/23 = 2.8 = still a major victory

But when rushing, the player usually takes casualties, lets say B

looses 270 points (1.5 plattons + 1 tank) and only inflicts 50 points

on the opponent (1/5 platoon) for making the small flag neutral:

Player A: 507 + 300 / (507 + 237 + 400) * 100 = 70%

Player B: 237 + 0 / (507 + 237 + 400) * 100 = 21%

70/21 = 3.3 = still major victory

OK, another example, that one was a bit extreme, you have to be a bit

stupid to sacrifice so many units for a small flag.

Lets say player A has inflicted 800 knockout points and sits on the

only 300. Player B didn't have his best day, inflicted 150 knockout

point and has no flags.

Victory level:

Player A (800 + 300) / (800 + 300 + 150) = 88%

Player B has the other 12%

= 7.33

You rush the flag, make it neutral, and lose 120 points for making the

300 points flag neutral. That should be a plus, shouldn't it?

Player A 920 / (920 + 300 + 150) = 67%

So far so good. But since the flag is neutral, you don't have the

other 33%.

Player B 150 / (920 + 300 + 150) = 10%

= 6.7

As you see, the rush doesn't really make a difference, lost is lost,

and by making the flag neutral you make knockout points more

important, which is bad if you had more losses.

[ August 01, 2002, 11:16 PM: Message edited by: redwolf ]

[Guest Mike]

Just insist on using the randomiser!!

BTW CMBB has a built in randomiser.

[bsd]

Originally posted by redwolf:

bsd, you calculations are generally correct, but in a quickbattle where 800 points of units can be killed there will be more than 1 300 points flag

Hi redwolf.

I have just read your guide and see you have studied this quite a bit. I agree with all your maths, just not your conclusions! I think dropping from an 88% win to a 67% win for the disputing of a single flag is quite significant!

In my original example above, if there were 2 large flags and 2 small ones and I held all of them, then if Harry disputed all of them and lost a whopping 500 points doing so, I would drop from 1300/1600 = 81% to 1000/2100 = 41%. That is huge.

Harry would only drop from 300/1600 = 19% to 300/2100 = 14%.

His flag rush has destroyed my win margin, from 81-19 to 41-14, despite him losing 500 points in the closing turns.

Obviously if there were 10 flags and all were sucessfully rushed, my win margin would decrease even further.

I understand your point is that if you are losing on kill points and your opponent has all the flags, disputing them will not make you win. You will still lose. But the margin by which you lose can be improved significantly.

BTW Harry is one of the most honorable guys I've played and he would never flag rush in real life.

- Marco

[ August 02, 2002, 12:53 AM: Message edited by: bsd ]

[Lou2000]

Thanks for the earlier link to the

Endgame randomizer ...

Nice little tool .. adds a level of uncertainty to the final few moves of a game.

Gonna use it in the future

Lou2000

[Rat]

Your opponent is a tard...period...

[xerxes]

If you can't stop a flag rush do you really think you have adequate control of the flag area? Would you tell your commanding officer that you've "secured" the area if the enemy can put 3 squads in the area within the space of a minute?

Personally I don't tend to flag rush, but if I can't stop a rush I realize I haven't done the job.

[Psyched]

I agree with Xerxes.

The whole PURPOSE of having a Victory Flag location is that the area is deemed (rightly or wrongly) as being strategically important and hence must be secured. The very fact that victory points are awarded for securing the area around the flag supports this idea. Otherwise, there would be absolutely no REASON to have Victory Flags in the first place. That whole question, IMHO, is a legitimate subject of debate.

Even if the area may not appear important to the player, the directive to secure the area is one of the mission objectives and those orders need to be followed, even if they don't make much sense to the soldiers doing the fighting.

The bottom line is that Victory Flags do exist in the game and must be managed properly. If an opponent can throw the flag in dispute within one or two minutes (remember, one turn = one minute real time), then the area has not been adequately secured or DEFENDED and hence victory points have not been earned.

Rushing a Victory Location at the end of a game is not being gamey. It's a legitimate way to exploit an inadequately secured or defended mission objective.

Players who complain about this tactic strike me as people who essentially want everyone else to play like they do, so they don't have to worry about properly defending Victory Flag locations after they've been taken. After all, that takes manpower which could be used elsewhere to gain control over other Victory Flags. As the Germans learned in the war, holding on to already conquered territory is just as important as taking it in the first place. Neglecting this aspect of warfare could and should prove fatal.

Using the Game-End Randomizer should help end this debate, but I think it's unfair to accuse those who dispute a flag at the end of play as being gamey.

[Redwolf]

bsd,

I see where you are coming from. But still I find you examples slightly flawed. Not for too few victory flags anymore, but this time for assuming the battle will have relativly few casulties. In my games that are thought through to a (possible) flashrush, I see more victory points going down the pipe than in your latest example.

That means, if the player sitting on the flags had inflicted so few casulties on the other one, then the other one will rightfully threaten the flags, he has enough force left. And if he used proper tactics instead of a rush, he would probably push you off the flags regularily (no rush).

Of course, a flag rush will change the score, all I can it is usually not sufficient to turn a clear victory into a draw or a comfortable draw into a loss. In any game where the rushing player has been beaten before.

[CrapGame]

Psyched,

You said,

If an opponent can throw the flag in dispute within one or two minutes (remember, one turn = one minute real time), then the area has not been adequately secured or DEFENDED and hence victory points have not been earned.

Rushing a Victory Location at the end of a game is not being gamey. It's a legitimate way to exploit an inadequately secured or defended mission objective.

I disagree. There is a difference between showing that an area is not 100% secure, and a last minute flag rush, which does not prove the area is not secure, it just shows there are opposition forces also present in the area, which is enough to distort the victory points. It states nothing about the fact that given an additional 3-5 minutes that those forces would usually be annihilated en masse by the forces that held the flag area. The typical flag-rusher usually uses crews from vehicles or abandoned heavy weapons, partial squads, FO's with no ammo left, etc. to dispute the area.

If those forces could truly provide the force necessary to dispute the control of the area, the opponent would have done it before the last minute of the game and got the victory points for himself. Waiting to the last minute(s) just ensures that they will not be completely wiped out before the clock ends. It's entirely unrealistic. Could you really imagine a company or platoon commander ordering a flag rush without expecting to be fragged by their own troops?

It is entirely an exploitation of the game system, which is remedied by the end game randomizer.

[xerxes]

I totally agree that a last second flag rush is unrealistic. It even looks odd which I'll admit I don't like. I just don't believe the flag holders deserves the points as much as they think they do if they can't stop some crews from approaching that close.

I'd also note that in most scenarios rushing a flag at the end is rarely an issue in my experience. Seems like flag rushing is far more prevalent in ME QBs.

[GenSplatton]

The typical flag-rusher usually uses crews from vehicles or abandoned heavy weapons, partial squads, FO's with no ammo left, etc. to dispute the area.

Gotta jump in here. If you don't have enough firepower at the VL to persuade ragtag outfits like this to turn and run the other way, units which at this point of the game are easily routed, then you did NOT have control of the flag to begin with. Face it, a few squads would turn this rabble back in a heartbeat. Back in the day, when I was new, I'd bitch about flag rushes. Now I just face the fact that, if I let someone rush it, I didn't control it to begin with. I'd say less than 5% of my games has a flag rush ever been an issue, and I play only QBs.

[Psyched]

Originally posted by GenSplatton:

Gotta jump in here. If you don't have enough firepower at the VL to persuade ragtag outfits like this to turn and run the other way, units which at this point of the game are easily routed, then you did NOT have control of the flag to begin with. Face it, a few squads would turn this rabble back in a heartbeat. Back in the day, when I was new, I'd bitch about flag rushes. Now I just face the fact that, if I let someone rush it, I didn't control it to begin with. I'd say less than 5% of my games has a flag rush ever been an issue, and I play only QBs.[/QB]

That echoes my point exactly.

I understand the gamey "feel" of a flag rush, and it's one of those areas where a "game" is separated from "reality". But a player must keep this aspect of play in mind and respond accordingly. A properly controlled VL should turn back a weak challenge immediately, else it wasn't properly defended in the first place and SHOULD be at risk of being lost.

Put another way, the VL is labeled as such because it is an IMPORTANT mission objective. Once obtained, resources simply have to be committed in order to preserve it.

In some ways, the availability of a potential flag rush can be seen as an ABSTRACTED way of demonstrating the importance of properly defending a captured mission objective. In "reality", such an important holding would be heavily defended in order to keep it out of enemy hands.

Again, using a game-end randomizer makes this question mostly moot.

[ August 05, 2002, 07:24 AM: Message edited by: Psyched ]

[russellmz]

Originally posted by GenSplatton:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> The typical flag-rusher usually uses crews from vehicles or abandoned heavy weapons, partial squads, FO's with no ammo left, etc. to dispute the area.

Gotta jump in here. If you don't have enough firepower at the VL to persuade ragtag outfits like this to turn and run the other way, units which at this point of the game are easily routed, then you did NOT have control of the flag to begin with. Face it, a few squads would turn this rabble back in a heartbeat. Back in the day, when I was new, I'd bitch about flag rushes. Now I just face the fact that, if I let someone rush it, I didn't control it to begin with. I'd say less than 5% of my games has a flag rush ever been an issue, and I play only QBs.</font>

[xerxes]

Splatty:

Drop me your email if you could, I can't find your (valid) email address.

-marc s

[GenSplatton]

if it were cm, the clock would stop with the last three southerners fighting in the union line and the flag at "?" ....

Routed troops I believe (correct me if I'm wrong oh CM grogs) don't affect the flag. In fact, I believe broken/routed troops don't affect the determination of a VL at all. I am going off personal observation here realize. It may be in the manual, but I'm really not willing to dig for it. Like I said, I just feel if I lose the flag, I never really had it. So be it. I'll be happy with the points I gain from slaughtering my desperate opponent's weak willed rush. The one caveat I will put in here is if they do it with an AFV. I do hate when I have three squads guarding the flag and a Puma rushes in and contests it.

Marc, on the way...