Urban Warfare

[John_d]

Looking at the screenshots, it looks like the largest settlement available on the map editor is 'Large Town', which I assume is something of smilar size to the 'Large Town' option on the reandom map generator on CMBB. So does this mean that there will be no cities on CMC?

Also, it looks like urban combat would be fairly difficult to pull of successfully, as the lines tend to be too close together for CMC, which seems to require that the armies are 1km apart when not fighting. This would rule out limited objectives such as capturing a prominent building (like Pavlov's House) or securing a main road. It looks like it would be more a case of attempting to drive the enemy out of a substantial area of a city.

Of course, having said this, I might have misunderstood what the CMC engine is capable of. Some clarification would be appreciated

[Hunter]

There are urban tiles, representing large towns or cities. A good many of them stuck together would be a city. The maps are still large (2kx2k), so a successful battle would need to at least take a flag, and gain some territory. This may well be a prominent building / factory etc.

Hunter

[John_d]

But is it realistic to expect the front line to move by 2km during urban combat? Surely one of the reasons that urban combat is so dangerous is that it 'shrinks down' the area that is being fought over. Whereas over open country, it might be reasonable to take an objective and the surrounding 2kx2k area, this doesn't seem possible in urban combat. There are plenty of examples of the lines being split along a single street or even between the floors of a building (the Reich Chancellery in Berlin is a good example of this). If one or both armies are forced to leave the field after an hour of fighting, the intensity of urban combat will be lacking

[Sergei]

Originally posted by John_d:

But is it realistic to expect the front line to move by 2km during urban combat?

Within that 2x2 square km map, there are four flags... so actually the control is decided on a 1x1 sq.km basis.

[Portero]

As I understand a Stalingrad campaign will be included with CMC. It should be very interesting to see how that plays out....

[Sailor Malan]

Originally posted by John_d:

But is it realistic to expect the front line to move by 2km during urban combat? Surely one of the reasons that urban combat is so dangerous is that it 'shrinks down' the area that is being fought over. Whereas over open country, it might be reasonable to take an objective and the surrounding 2kx2k area, this doesn't seem possible in urban combat. There are plenty of examples of the lines being split along a single street or even between the floors of a building (the Reich Chancellery in Berlin is a good example of this). If one or both armies are forced to leave the field after an hour of fighting, the intensity of urban combat will be lacking

As said above, the flags are in the middle of 1x1km. Also, who says you have to capture terrain? What would Stalingrad be, but repeated attempts to enter the same tile, and wearing down the defenders in the process! If you don't capture at least one flag, you have to enter the tile again from outside (very small CMBB set up I guess), but if you capture a flag, you get a 1x1km set up for next hour (far more options).

[based on guess/what has been said by Hunter etc]

[General Bolt]

I'd expect the urban portion of a Stalingrad map to be multiple CMC squares. Stalingrad Map The city looks like its about than 16KM end to end -with some gaps. That would be 8 CMC squares. Im sure no one will make a map this big. :eek: Think 6th Army vs the 62 Army.

[PzKpfwIII]

Originally posted by General Bolt:

I'd expect the urban portion of a Stalingrad map to be multiple CMC squares. Stalingrad Map The city looks like its about than 16KM end to end -with some gaps. That would be 8 CMC squares. Im sure no one will make a map this big. :eek: Think 6th Army vs the 62 Army.

The assault on the Dzherezinsky Tractor Works alone involved some 200 German tanks, with the 37th Guards Division suffering 5000 casualties of a complement of 8000 men (including non-combatants not depicted in CM). This was a small portion of the battle, but probably occurred within the space occupied by just a couple of CMC tiles. Unit densities would be impossibly high in such a case. It's a shame that Operations in CMBB didn't allow for more flexibility, but CMC might be a way to alleviate that.

If they can get the initial set up zones to correspond to "front lines" in an improved way over CMBB Operations, it would be optimal. If we will be restricted to one-km-square setup zones for each battle, it will be an understandable simplification, but not a great way of simulating the situation in places like Stalingrad.

Simulating the entire battle within just the city limits would be a daunting task, but given enough players...sort of like WWII Online, you would need literally dozens of players on each side. May be an eventual step in CM's evolution though.

[Sergei]

Originally posted by General Bolt:

I'd expect the urban portion of a Stalingrad map to be multiple CMC squares. Stalingrad Map The city looks like its about than 16KM end to end -with some gaps. That would be 8 CMC squares. Im sure no one will make a map this big. :eek: Think 6th Army vs the 62 Army.

A Stalingrad campaign doesn't have to portray the whole city, just a portion. Or maybe it's not even about the city, maybe it is about Operation Uranus (well, a Soviet mechanized division breaking through the Romanian lines might not be that exciting...) or a part of the siege.

Similarly, a Barbarossa campaign map probably won't stretch from the Black Sea to the Arctic. Or... will it? :eek:

[Renaud]

Im sure no one will make a map this big. Think 6th Army vs the 62 Army.

Ha, I wouldn't be so sure. You never know what people will attempt. I've seen CM maps so huge and unbelievably detailed, you would never guess someone would spend 200 hours doing that but they do. I predict this will reach new highs with the advent of CMC.

As far as the impossible unit densities, I totally agree. No CMBB games involving 200+ tanks and 8000+ troops in a 2x2 tile will be happening. But I guess you could use the auto-resolve feature to take care of those giant battles, while the human players controlled smaller units in the great scheme of things, such as units involved in flanking or other actions around the periphery of the urban areas.

[mrpwase]

Originally posted by Renaud:

But I guess you could use the auto-resolve feature to take care of those giant battles, while the human players controlled smaller units in the great scheme of things, such as units involved in flanking or other actions around the periphery of the urban areas.

Now that is an excellent idea. Would that be possible?

[General Bolt]

Originally posted by Renaud:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr /> Im sure no one will make a map this big. Think 6th Army vs the 62 Army.

Ha, I wouldn't be so sure. You never know what people will attempt. I've seen CM maps so huge and unbelievably detailed, you would never guess someone would spend 200 hours doing that but they do. I predict this will reach new highs with the advent of CMC.

As far as the impossible unit densities, I totally agree. No CMBB games involving 200+ tanks and 8000+ troops in a 2x2 tile will be happening. But I guess you could use the auto-resolve feature to take care of those giant battles, while the human players controlled smaller units in the great scheme of things, such as units involved in flanking or other actions around the periphery of the urban areas. </font>

[Bruce70]

Well said General, I was just about to say the same thing. Like you I do not know how long the "battle" lasted, but I suspect that 200 tanks etc, were not all actively engaged within the space of one hour, and in CMC terms they probably did not enter the same 2x2 map simultaneously.

I'm not quite sure how it would work, but on the face of it, I do not think that a battle of this scale can immediately be dismissed as a possible CMC campaign.

[juan_gigante]

They say a division per side is what it is designed for. While I'm sure that limit can be increased, an Army on a side is a little much.

Next they'll be asking for all of Kursk.

[Mad Russian]

Originally posted by juan_gigante:

Next they'll be asking for all of Kursk.

SOMEBODY has already started on it.

Others are waiting to see it show up.

You'll see... :eek:

[PzKpfwIII]

Originally posted by juan_gigante:

They say a division per side is what it is designed for. While I'm sure that limit can be increased, an Army on a side is a little much.

Next they'll be asking for all of Kursk.

If anyone actually attempted such a thing I'd have a hard time believing it would be any good; the Kursk salient as shown at the Wikipedia page on the battle appears to be about 200 x 200 km; that would equal 10,000 maps to be made. (I realize the argument will be made that not all of the salient saw combat forces deployed there, and in fact only small portions of territory were actually fought over, but my counter argument would be that if you can't change the historical outcome, what on earth would be the point of replaying something of this scope?)

But not just made; they would need to be "tweaked" I think in order to get the flags to work correctly - as it stands now they will four to a map, 1 in each 1km square quadrant. Even if the maps were simply generic and not done from historical maps (and again, if recreating a "historical" engagement, why bother without maps), this would be a giant workload. As with the Dzerhesinsky Tractor Factory example, with 200 tanks attacking 8000 defenders, you'd have to break it up into small slices I think.

Besides which, as an Army Group battle, Kursk is interesting but break it down into divisional battles. Individual panzer divisions fighting their way through mud and minefields sounds kind of ...well, boring.

I think we'll need to look to creative researchers to find those interesting divisional actions (what CMC is being designed for) nestled in the "hohum" strategic battles that everyone stampedes over in their quest for a "sexy topic."

Kursk may be sexy at the strategic level, but it may even prove difficult to find suitable divisional slices of it.

And then we'll be surprised to find, say, that a really decent divisional action took place during the siege of Leningrad or something - with wide open flanks to maneuver around, and lots of tough choices to be made by attacker and defender both.

I do hope we'll start to look past the stuff that's been done to death or on an inappropriate scale, and start to look for those hidden little Divisional battles that the mainstream historians have ignored or never knew about.

I'd be interested, for example, in seeing the 101st Jäger Division's fighting in the Kuban bridgehead portrayed - this was the division that the author of Cross of Iron served in, and upon which his novel (and later, Peckinpah's movie) was based on. Rather than an assault into prepared positions in depth, it would be fascinating to play CMC as a withdrawal - basically a chase. If there is some mechanism in the game for withdrawing units through a port or railhead, so much the better. Think of the decisions you would have to make as the German, such as deciding which units to leave as a rearguard, etc. Do you send a regiment back 5 km and get them to spend 24 hours digging trenches and bunkers? What if the Russians simply bypass that hill? Or arrive before you're done digging? The Soviets would have to decide how fast and how hard to push. Sounds much more interesting than coaxing Panther tanks with engine troubles through half a dozen layers of prepared defences, which is all many divisional slices of Kursk would end up being.

The final point appears self-evident only considering none of us have seen the game yet. But if CMC is being optimized for divisional forces, something on an army-group scale may be ill-considered for the same reasons divisional level battles are ill-considered in CMBB. High level considerations like strategic reserves of oil, corps level anti-aircraft assets, railroad schedules, and a host of other "data" that would be essential to the planning staff of an army or army group would not be present in CMC at all - requiring either lengthy "house rules" or else some other workaround (or simply ignoring them). Again, this may not seem to be an optimal treatment of the subject.

IMO. It reminds one of Denis Leary's take on crack, a substance that CM is often, not undeservedly, compared to - "Only in America would there be someone that cocaine wasn't good enough for." I think we see that here; Germany fielded hundreds of Divisions on the Russian Front, their opponents fielded just as many; each one had their own history, I'm hoping the designers look past trying to shoehorn the well-known battles into CMC simply because they have name recognition, and go the extra mile to find those battles that will really be shown off to advantage in CMC - the Eastern Front was so much bigger than just Stalingrad/Kursk/Berlin, wasn't it?

[ November 02, 2005, 10:45 AM: Message edited by: Russophile ]

[juan_gigante]

Your mention of the 101st Jager reminded me of a year or two ago when I, for some reason or another, got really interested in the 100th Jager's actions in the battles of Stalingrad. I've got to remember to look around and see if I've got any of my old stuff about them, maybe try to make a CMC scenario. I personally think that the Jager divisions are some of the cooler ones, but it can be tough to find info on them.

[Runyan99]

Based on the 1x1 flags in CMC for holding terrain, I think it is obvious that urban combat is going to be sub-optimal in CMC. CMC is apparently designed best for low force density fluid situations. That isn't urban combat, generally, and it certainly does not apply to Stalingrad.

In CMC, it won't be possible to take just a house or a block. If you want to advance, you'll have to advance several hundred meters and take the next flag on the map.

Some small objectives like the next house or the next block will have to be given up and fought over again many times in a CMC campaign. That is, until one side or the other is so attritted that a large advance to the next flag will be possible.

That said, I don't think this means that CMC is totally broken for urban combat. It just isn't going to be perfect. However, it will be more or less workable, I think.

[PzKpfwIII]

Originally posted by Runyan99:

Based on the 1x1 flags in CMC for holding terrain, I think it is obvious that urban combat is going to be sub-optimal in CMC. CMC is apparently designed best for low force density fluid situations. That isn't urban combat, generally, and it certainly does not apply to Stalingrad.

In CMC, it won't be possible to take just a house or a block. If you want to advance, you'll have to advance several hundred meters and take the next flag on the map.

Some small objectives like the next house or the next block will have to be given up and fought over again many times in a CMC campaign. That is, until one side or the other is so attritted that a large advance to the next flag will be possible.

That said, I don't think this means that CMC is totally broken for urban combat. It just isn't going to be perfect. However, it will be more or less workable, I think.

Hopefully there will be a mechanism for "drawing front lines" that doesn't revolve around 1km square blocks - and a better system than the Operations in CMBB (though those were a better system, at least, than the ones in CMBO). Even the CMBB style front line drawing (and consequent setup areas) would be an improvement on simply carving out 1km square blocks for the sake of simplicity - but of course all these comments are made without having seen the game.

[John_d]

Might a system like was used in Jagged Alliance 2 (ahhh, they were the days... ) help with this? For those of you unfortunate enough not to have played it, the urban areas appear on a different scale to the rural areas on the operational map. So that whereas in open country the were about an hour's walk apart, in the towns the lines were only about 2-5 minutes walk apart. Although the system was not ideal, it still enabled the player to have the front lines running through relatively small towns. Something similar might work for CMC. Mind you, Jagged Alliance was more about guerrilla warfare rather than the epic battles of the CM series.

Btw, I thoroughly recommend Jagged Alliance 1 and 2. They look a little dated now, but there's still something about them that appeals to the meglomaniac inside of us all