Some Combat Mission Myths

[Andreas]

I think sometimes in bickering over the faults that CMBO has, (or even anticipating those that CMBB might have), we tend to forget what an excellent piece of software this game is.

Two things that seem to have become accepted folk-wisdom about the failings of the CM engine bother me.

1) CMBO does not handle city battles well - how will it cope with Stalingrad?

I think this claim is total and utter tosh. What is correct is that the QB system does not handle city battles - but it does not even try. What is also true is that for a city-battle to work, you have to have a good designer, maybe someone who has been to Europe and understands the layout of a European city.

That condition fulfilled, city battles become amongst the most bloody and exciting battles you can fight. I know because I designed a good one, and because I currently playtest a game by Berli which has been excellent. See-saw, close quarters, extremely bloody, no-holds-barred fighting. Does not get any better than this. On the CD, WBW's Nijmegen would fit the bill, if it was not lumbered with the river crossing.

So, I think that contrary to these repeated claims, CMBO handles city fighting brilliantly.

2) CMBO does not model Bocage battles well

For a time I agreed with that statement. Having looked at this, and designed an express Bocage battle now, I tend to disagree with it completely. If you don't insist to have your Bocage fields rectangular 300x400m fields, but instead have it twist and turn on very small fields (as is realistic in the western region of Normandy, I have been told), it appears to work well.

3) The AI is crap on the attack

While it is only as good as a semi-competent human player at its very best, I found that it can be surprisingly tough and I think that the 'Ai-style' will lend itself very well to early GPW fighting. During the weekend I tested this, and it did quite well.

After playing CMBO for more than two years, since the Beta, and designing scenarios for over 18 months, I am still discovering new angles, and it never is boring, or even close to becoming stale. I think Steve and Charles have done an excellent job, and with all the complaining about really minor, tedious nitpicking that is sometimes going on here, this is forgotten all too often.

Enough ranting - please excuse me while I get off my soap box.

[Juju]

I say, well spoken, Andreas Sir!

[Kingfish]

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

2) CMBO does not model Bocage battles well

For a time I agreed with that statement. Having looked at this, and designed an express Bocage battle now, I tend to disagree with it completely. If you don't insist to have your Bocage fields rectangular 300x400m fields, but instead have it twist and turn on very small fields (as is realistic in the western region of Normandy, I have been told), it appears to work well. <hr></blockquote>

Sorry, but I must disagree with you here. The bocage that i've seen and read about were part earthen bank / part very thick growth. The bocage in CM act more like very tall hedges, offering very little in cover and concealment.

[Hensworth]

The gist of what you're saying seems to be that it's all in the scenario design. I couldn't agree more.

Having said that (and having been there) I have to disappoint you on the bocage issue : those fields are not small with twisty borders. They're huge, and the hedges run straight as an arrow.

[SlowMotion]

First, I agree that CMBO is a great piece of software. THe best game I've ever played. That being said, I see it as the first game in a continuosly improving series. If CMBO is excellent and CMBB should be even better, CM2 better still - are we running out of words? If things go like BTS has planned the series should go a bit like the development we see in HW business. Display adapters or CPUs have improved sooo much in, say three years. Hopefully what what BTS is producing will look something like that.

Skipping the first two myths, here's my view on the third:

After playing PBEM games mostly for a long time, I've recently played some games against the AI as well. In those cases I noticed that the AI did very well as the attacker in some games, whereas in some it was easy to destroy it totally. If some of its weaknesses can be fixed, its performance would get much better - like the habit of pushing units to a place where there are lots of destroyed tanks etc already. IMO some of the real weaknesses are because human players get to read the briefing and thus know what they are supposed to do. Expressing those same things to the AI using flags only can be very difficult. It's like having a very limited vocabulary that scenario designers can use when communicating the scenario to the AI. By adding stuff to this scenario design department, much better scenarios could be made. Also to be played against human players.

[russellmz]

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

The gist of what you're saying seems to be that it's all in the scenario design. I couldn't agree more.

Having said that (and having been there) I have to disappoint you on the bocage issue : those fields are not small with twisty borders. They're huge, and the hedges run straight as an arrow.<hr></blockquote>

were you there in wwii or today? according to ambrose there are few wwii style bocages left (he mentioned a few areas where they could be seen in citizen books)

[ASL Veteran]

I guess it is all in what you are comparing CMBO to. The reason city fights don't seem to feel right is that you can't have a building that is bigger than 20 x 20 feet. I would think most business sections of most cities will have buildings that are larger than 20 x 20 - maybe a shop or store or two? A warehouse? A pub? Perhaps some administrative or government buildings? How about cathedrals? Ah, but I guess buildings larger than 20 x 20 don't need to be included to make a 'real' city fight - at least for those who know any better and visited a 'real' European town. The inability to link the 20 x 20 buildings together makes creating larger buildings impossible - you can put the buildings adjacent, but troops will just have to run out into the street to get to the next rowhouse. This is but one issue (the biggest for me) but others have brought up other issues as well.

Bocage is not messed up because of how you make the fields - that's just a statement that implies that the only person who can do a 'real' bocage scenario is you because you are the only person who knows what 'real' bocage looks like . The 'real' problem with bocage is that infantry (when fired upon) who are taking cover behind bocage tend to enjoy running through it and getting annihilated. I even think that their exposure is higher when running through bocage than it is when in the open (although I'm not sure). This is a fairly well known trait since the AI doesn't know that standing behind bocage in open ground isn't the same thing as just standing in open ground - so it heads for the nearest tree when under fire.

Problem with the AI on the attack is that it picks one point to attack - then does a Banzai Charge along that route of attack with everything it's got. The AI does okay for all that and I wouldn't exactly describe it as crap, but there really is no comparison with a human opponent (nor would I expect there to be). This makes playtesting scenarios difficult since playtesting the AI does nothing to tell you how a scenario will play out in PBEM.

[Andreas]

Well ASL Vet, nobody is stopping you from making a different sort of Bocage map, last time I checked I did not have a monopoly on scenario design.

FYI - in a trypical European city, you actually have to get out in the street/courtyard/garden to get from one building to the next, since the buildings are divided by very strong fire-walls.

So I stand by what I said. They both work, if you squeeze the Bocage together close enough, since that helps quite a bit with the seeking cover problem, I found.

[Andreas]

BTW ASL Vet - what are you comparing it to? I am talking computer games here, not board games.

[Shipmonkey25]

ASL Vet, the squares are 20 meters, not feet.

[RMC]

I always thought that the major limitation to CM city battles was the inability to place the building close enough together to create a european urban envirnoment that looks european. The building size factor is a problem, but I think it takes second place to the building density problem. Smaller tile sizes would help here.

Courtyards are indeed a european reality, but CM doesn't have those either. There is just a lot of room for improvement in the representation of buildings. I don't know why people would get irritated by the acknowledgement of this one failing. ASL and SL were and are great wargames and the 40m hex size gave them the same kind of problem.

[Andreas]

RMC - I agree about the representation. I just don't agree that this failure of representation means that the simulation does not work. I believe it does, and I now know a number of people who agree with me.

BTW - courtyards are easily done. I'll send you a map with an explanation to look at if you are interested.

[dalem]

Andreas-

Thanks for posting this. It's nice to see a post with a positive focus for a change. Now, I disagree with you on the bocage thing, but even if I'm right and it's not a good model, it's only one 'miss' in a vast array of successful 'hits'. I am content to let that be addressed in a future release.

Thanks again for pointing out the positives.

-dale

[JasonC]

Yes, most buildings were divided by interior walls, some thick and some not so thick. But the men did go through those walls. Digging holes in them with picks, blasting holes in them with TNT charges, having a tank blast a gap, whatever it took.

The reason they did is that it was easy for MGs to sweep the avenues, and they were more deadly at that than MGs are in CM - at long range. (Short range fire onto pavement is plenty deadly in CM, as it should be). Also because it was far easier to cover all the ground floor doors and windows without exposing oneself to small arms fire from outside a given building, than it is in CM.

So they also went from rooftop to rooftop. They used ladders and scaling lines to get onto roofs or into second story windows, or across alleyways above ground level. And of course they also went underground, in cellars to shelter from artillery fire, in sewers to infiltrate buildings already taken. The first rule of street fighting was to stay off of the streets, and the second was never to go through a doorway.

Another problem CM encounters with depicting urban combat realistically is that interior LOS are handled abstractly, as a degradation in LOS line (with only minor cover effects) for some distance, and then no LOS. This effectively makes everything inside one big room, but "foggy". As a result, direct fire weapons are relatively more effective - SMGs in particular - while indirect weapons like grenades aren't as important as they really were in such situations.

It often happened in reality that a given room would become a no man's land while enemies held rooms on either side of it, each able to grenade the other if they entered it, but not able to grenade the further room securely held by the enemy side. Without SMGs being the slightest use through two adjoining walls. This doesn't happen in CM, because of the way interior LOS is handled, and also because the grenades are undermodeled (especially for inside, which heightens their blast effect) compared to small arms. The same is true of engineers demo charges, only more so. On the other hand, very light cannons rubble large buildings too easily.

Yes, urban fights can still be bloody and require large forces for a given amount of space. That is hardly all there is to accurately modeling urban combat in WW II, however. It is equally true that combats in dense forest (or even continuous scattered trees, aka "open forest"), is extremely bloody in CM. The reason is simple - the usually range at which contact occurs is very short, and consequently small arms firepower ratings in typical encounters are very high.

CM handles the way fire ascendency builds and decides such firefights quite well. And it does bring out the importance of falling back when you would be outshot, of bringing up additional forces, of hitting the other guy moving and piecemeal while you are stationary and "on-line" with one another. The general infantry tactics stuff, with small arms, is solid. It is the integration of special weapons, grenades, particularly obstructed terrain, etc - that is simplified. The net result in tight terrain is usually that good infantry, well armed and well handled, rides over anything else, pretty much regardless of the specials. The thing CM models well dominates other factors.

As for the statement that actually the AI is good on the attack, if you are outnumbered (especially in infantry) and the terrain is tight but passable and you have no powerful area effect weapons (heavy artillery, TRPs and medium artillery, numerous AP minefields) then yes the AI can inflict losses even on a sound defense. That simply reflects the fact that a bear hug plus numbers will wear down a defender without a "shield" to stand behind.

If you have area effect weapons and create shielded areas to maneuever behind, or the terrain is more open, then numbers or not the AI can't attack worth a darn. If it has to rely on combined arms coordination between infantry, armor, and indirect fire, then it is hopeless. And that after all is the only art involved in the warfare of the period, and the reason it is tactically complicated enough to be interesting as a strategy game. Smashing hordes of infantry together in covered terrain and then saying "ooo, look, many bodies" is not a sign that the AI is challenging.

Of course none of us would be here arguing about such quibbles if CM weren't the best strategy game and the best wargame in a long time, and probably the most playable one ever (thanks to the computer and the fine BTS control interface, 3-D sense of ground, etc). Nobody gives a darn about improving TOAW or the campaign series by comparison, because they don't even manage to make it into the same league.

Does that mean people should shut up or sign BTS's praises instead of niggling away trying to get the best there is to be as perfect as possible? Nope, not at all. The community of hard core wargamers is not called "grognards" for nothing. "Grognard" means "grumbler", i.e. one who complains.

It was Napoleon's term for his Old Guard, who knew enough about how things were going to tell where they could be improved; who put up with anything asked of them, but in return exercised a veteran's right to sound off. He meant the name to tweak them for it, as though the toughest soldiers in Europe were a bunch of crybabies. But he also listened. Feedback from grumbling veterans of CM in search of perfection is a good thing and not a bad one. Lousy games have no grumblers, just as lousy armies had no veteran NCOs continually improving their army's practices.

[kipanderson]

Hi,

On this one I must agree with Andreas.

I feel that CMBO handles city/town fighting very realistically. Last night I and Andreas had a TCP/IP city fight battle. I was attacking and used the same real world tactics used by all sides in attack within cities. Extreme, local concentration about sums it up. Anyway the result was very realistic. Also, a fairly cheerful one for me. (Andreas, do not mention the little matter of my two M10s and your Tiger!)

My point is, the ultimate test for CMBO is “when using real world tactics, is the outcome as it was in the real world, WW2?”. The answer, in my view, is yes, when dealing with city fights and just about all other types.

All the best,

Kip.

[Marlow]

Got to agree that the Bocage is a little off, especially in night battles where LOS for units behind the Bocage is severely limited. It doesn't do any good to set up those MG nests in the corners of the fields, if the unit only has reliable LOS for 20 meters. While this lack of LOS would be fine for units approaching the hedgerow, it doesn't seem right for defenders using the hedgerow for cover.

The problems can be compensated for to some degree (but is by no means a complete solution) through the liberal use of woods and wooded lane tiles in addition to bocage tiles. This approach has the added benefit of restricting the movement of U.S. armor with the (unrealistically) omnipresent hedgerow cutters, particularly in July 44 battles.

If anyone is interested in what such a map would look like, I’ve got a couple of battles that use a map that is loosely based on some D-Day aerial recon photo of the Normandy area.

[Jagdratt]

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

It often happened in reality that a given room would become a no man's land while enemies held rooms on either side of it, each able to grenade the other if they entered it, but not able to grenade the further room securely held by the enemy side. Without SMGs being the slightest use through two adjoining walls. <hr></blockquote>

What type of materials are used to construct the interior walls in the types of buildings you're talking about? Current interior walls in North American buildings - 2x4" studs with 5/8" drywall on both sides - offer no protection from even the smallest calibre weapon. Never having travelled to Europe, I'm having a hard time envisioning what type of construction would be used to provide this level of protection from small arms and grenades.

[Andreas]

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

Does that mean people should shut up or sign BTS's praises instead of niggling away trying to get the best there is to be as perfect as possible? Nope, not at all. The community of hard core wargamers is not called "grognards" for nothing. "Grognard" means "grumbler", i.e. one who complains.<hr></blockquote>

Jason, by no means did I mean that people should stop raising valid points, or debate the game. CMBO is not the holy writ, and it certainly has its faults. The reason I raised this is that there is IMO a big risk that people start putting things down as engine faults when they really are not. I have my complaints about the game as well, and Steve knows about them, but at the end of the day, I think there is sometimes too much griping and propagation of myths going on here.

Jagdratt - there are two types of interior walls, supporting and non-supporting. The former is probably difficult to get through with small arms and grenades. There is however a third type of wall that is lodged between buildings, a fire-break. This is a very solid wall set with the intention to prevent a fire from jumping buildings. To get through these you need a serious engineering effort. The wall is good enough to be the exterior wall for the building - and often was, since along a block plots of land would be developed at different times.

[Stacheldraht]

OTOH, one should be careful not to write off (potential) weaknesses of the game as myths, too. BTS obviously interacts with fans for feedback, and if lots of people say city fighting or whatever doesn't work well, that may induce BTS to reexamine it. (Of course, as noted, such criticisms may be the product of misunderstandings of the game.) I think a lot of the "complaining" one sees around here is really an act of devotion or love for the game, not just some dude mouthing off--though that happens, too, naturally Why else would people even know or care about all these little teeny details if they didn't play the game so much?

I'd have to say, for instance, that the AI on the attack in QBs is, in fact, extremely inept compared to a competent, experienced human player. Mass flag rushes, poor force coordination, amazingly strange armor movement, predictable arty targeting and timing, etc. don't bode well for the computer's success.

Even after giving the AI force and experience bonuses, it's not often hard to end up causing five to ten times the casualties you receive. That admittedly presupposes an understanding of how to set up a solid defense, purchasing your own units for the best cost/benefit ratio, and having played the AI enough to learn its patterns, though. Favorable terrain helps, too

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: Stacheldraht ]</p>

[RMC]

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

What type of materials are used to construct the interior walls in the types of buildings you're talking about? Current interior walls in North American buildings - 2x4" studs with 5/8" drywall on both sides - offer no protection from even the smallest calibre weapon. Never having travelled to Europe, I'm having a hard time envisioning what type of construction would be used to provide this level of protection from small arms and grenades.<hr></blockquote>

Masonry and plaster. Thickness varies with the age of the building. Modern building seem to be more efficiently built. On the older ones, you get a sense of over engineering because they weren't too sure what was right.

Compared to the way europeans build houses even today, US homes seem downright flimsy.

[Andrew H.]

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

What type of materials are used to construct the interior walls in the types of buildings you're talking about? Current interior walls in North American buildings - 2x4" studs with 5/8" drywall on both sides - offer no protection from even the smallest calibre weapon. Never having travelled to Europe, I'm having a hard time envisioning what type of construction would be used to provide this level of protection from small arms and grenades.<hr></blockquote>

People are using "interior walls" in different ways, which might be confusing the issue. Interior walls in *houses* -- i.e., the walls that separate the bedroom from the living room, or whatever, are fairly similar to American interior walls in homes built in the 40's. I.e., slightly more substantial than in homes built since the 70's, but still no impediment for the lowest caliber infantry weapon. Also, there are doors and stuff on the inside.

What most people mean by "interior walls" are not really interior walls, but the walls between buildings that touch each other, but that are otherwise separate buildings...i.e., you have to go out the front door of one and in the front door of another. This is pretty much the same thing that you find in the circa-1900-downtowns of most smaller US cities -- a row of businesses surrounding, say, the square with the courthouse. You generally can't go from the shoestore to the hardware store, or from the hardware store to the bank, without first going outside, because each building is separate. This practice is just more widespread in Europe.

[Runyan99]

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

[QB]

2) CMBO does not model Bocage battles well

<hr></blockquote>

I for one think that the way CMBO handles the hedgerows is FUBAR. I have not been to Europe and seen a real French hedgerow, but all of the accounts tell me that these were formidible earthen berms overgrown with brush, bushes, and trees. Thus the hedgerow itself was a strong defensive position. Germans who had time to dig into the side of a hedgerow were impossible to see, and almost invulnerable to artillery. Even without digging in, the earthen berm offered good protection, and the foliage gave good concealment.

In my opinion, placing a squad on top of a hedgerow in CMBO should give cover and concealment much like being in Woods terrain, only better due to the protection of an earthen berm. It should almost be as good as a low stone wall and woods terrain combined (at least for frontal fire).

This is NOT simulated in CMBO. In fact the opposite is true. My experience is that there is no more exposed position for a squad in CMBO than to be in the middle of a bocage row. It is worse than being in Open terrain. It almost like getting caught in barbed wire in terms of mobility and exposure to enemy fire. In addition, there is the problem ASL Vet mentions, which is that even when trying to place squads behind the bocage to get a cover bonus, the TacAI tends to run them right into the bocage (often TOWARDS the enemy), and then they are swiftly all killed and wounded.

In short, CMBO's bocage is wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Tero]

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

Masonry and plaster. Thickness varies with the age of the building. Modern building seem to be more efficiently built. On the older ones, you get a sense of over engineering because they weren't too sure what was right.

Compared to the way europeans build houses even today, US homes seem downright flimsy.<hr></blockquote>

A few remarks:

The load bearing walls have to carry the weight of the edifice, including the roof and what is on it.

The effects of the elements dictate also what the construction has to be able to carry: At 0 - +2ºC snow becomes waterlocked and VERY heavy. If there has been much snow you either have to built the edifice in such a way it can carry a normal load. Or you go out and push it down. It is interesting to see the increasing winds usually tear off the roofs off the new buildings, almost never off the old buildings.

Cost effectivness: in olden days the life expectancy of a house could be anything up to several hundred years. If it was to be a permanent residence it was built to last. No reason to build it bad and then go on mending it if you could get it right the first time around. Not that there was much time for sloppy work either. Nowadays the life expectancy seems to be down to 50 years max. Also, the number of flaws that are accepted in the construction has gone up. You can build it sloppy and flimsy because you can build lots of them.

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: tero ]</p>

[Richard Morgan]

Andreas,

Reference bocage, how do Cornish hedges compare? I have heard that they are very simular, if not identical. You are familiar with Cornwall (as I know full well) so you may be able to make a meaningful comparison.

Cheers,

Richard.

[dalem]

Folks-

RE bocage, here's a link I've posted before bocage pics.

I took these October of 2000 in a little town south of Bayeux, Normandy, France. Using my large friend for scale it's easy to see the basic hedgerow structure, and this one had that little 'siderow', or tunnel, or whatever, running alongside it. In my opinion, bocage is an extremely specialized form of terrain for a game like CM, and will never be able to be modeled correctly with the current tile size. You need to be able to combine a STEEP,short slope with DENSE, oftentimes unpassable undergrowth, and occasionally full-sized trees, all in a Very small space.

The terrain types themselves - field, slope, brush/woods/rough - are already extant, but you need them in much closer proximity than can currently be achieved with CM:BO-style terrain.

As a seperate tile, I don't know - I think if BTS could have done it more correctly they would have.

[ 01-21-2002: Message edited by: dalem ]</p>