Quick Battles - what works and what doesn't

[Paper Tiger]

Being an old ASL grog, I was very happy when I found CMBO and played it to death until CMBB came out. Loved the Russian ToW and really enjoyed playing as the Finns. I never really got into CMAK for some reason and only bought it earlier this year but I have hardly ever played it. CMBB was my favourite. My prefered play option was Quick Battle because I enjoyed the total Fog of war, not really knowing what I was going to be up against when I selected my forces. Since CMSF was released I have played a few of the scenarios that came with the game but I have spent most of my time playing around with Quick Battles. With a bit of work from the player the CMSF QB experience is a considerable improvement over the CMx1 experience. With a bit more work from the developers in the future, the Quick Battle option can be considerably improved.

Here are a few of the problems I have noticed. Yes, most of them have been metioned before but I’m writing a summary of the problems and a possible workaround as well as adding a couple of my own ideas.

A At present, you can’t select a map that is an AI attack map. You either get a Blue Attack map or a Red Attack map but if you want to play Blue force defending against an AI Red Attack, the system can’t discriminate and just picks a ‘terrain type’ attack map from your QB Map folder.

One workaround for this is to select a Meeting map and alter the balance of forces if desired. Meeting QBs give roughly equal forces to each side so the defender needs to be handicapped.

B You can’t select a specific map from a menu. Instead, the computer randomly picks from one of the available maps depending on Terrain Type and Engagement Type and then size.

The only way to get the map that you want is to move all the unwanted maps from your QB Map folder before pressing select. This works but it’s definitely preferable for the player to select his map from a menu in the QB set up menu.

C A big problem for me is that the AI forces always set up dismounted once selected and this means that infantry will footslog its way across a large map. It would be nice to be able to select AI Mounted or Dismounted from the available options. But that might never happen so it’s important to bear this fact in mind when selecting your battle size. With small maps or in cities, this isn’t really an issue but, more about this later.

D I have also noticed that the AI tends to bunch all it’s forces into one group even where there are plans for two or more groups in the AI plan. I have seen two groups once or twice in a large number of playtests but it is a very rare occurrence.

However, one possible side benefit of this is that you get more variety of attack plans for the AI. Most of the time though, they appear to go into Group 1 by default but I’m sure I’ve seen a Group 2 plan being used once. I’d like to hear some other peoples experience with this.

E There is, of course, no ablility for the player to select his own forces. This has already been done to death so I won’t dwell on it but, in spite of the developers intention being to maintain realistic forces, I have been given, or fought against, wildly unrealistic forces. A couple of days ago, I played a QB as Red Uncon defending a village against a Blue attack and their entire force consisted of four Striker Gun vehicles. Ho hum.

F And finally, the biggest problem of them all, a QB AI attack consists of an attacking front of vehicles with the infantry moving along behind. After a couple of rounds of fire sent the infantry’s way they’re all doing the Crawl of Death until they reach their next waypoint. On a large map, the waypoints might be very far apart, 500m+. Result, a very slow and vulnerable AI attack. I haven’t yet managed to keep the AI forces moving when under fire as they always hit the dirt and crawl. I’ve tried different settings, Cautious, Normal and Active with Dash, Quick, Assault etc, but the result is always the same, Crawl of Death. When I’m controlling the Blue Force, I find ‘Assault ‘a very good way to move Infantry around in the face of enemy fire. I never use Slow except when moving between two close points and I want to try and keep my movement hidden. It would be nice if the AI could use Assault movement when Assault is selected for the AI plan.

Problems C, D and E might require considerable development time but I’d be VERY happy if F alone was sorted. To give this game some legs, the Tac AI and the Operational AI needs to be improved to prevent the Crawl of Death. It really is a game killer.

After all is said and done, the best way to play QB is player attacking the AI. The AI scripting works best in QB for the defender with varied defensive set-ups and unknown force composition. In scenarios, the AI scripting is much better because the designer can set up the groups and their at-start dispositions, ie mounted or dismounted, with Javelins already equipped atc. With QBs, this is not possible but I can live with these limitations if Crawl of Death is fixed.

[Mishga]

Nice thread. Agree 100%

Tho I did make a blue attack map and put some enemy tanks, almost called them panzers lol, in group 2 and gave them assault mission AI.

Was a nice surprise for Meach to suddenly be counter attacked from the flank by a platoon of T72M1's as he advanced on the objective. So group 2 in the plan worked for me.

[Roter Stern]

Resurrecting this older thread that I just stumbled upon, because I'd like to hear something 'official' on this one:

Originally posted by Paper Tiger:

Most of the time though, they appear to go into Group 1 by default but I’m sure I’ve seen a Group 2 plan being used once.

Does the QB AI split its troops into groups? If so, what is the general logic for when it does that? Is it more or less random or does it actually split light infantry and heavy armor into different groups?

[ February 15, 2008, 09:54 AM: Message edited by: The Louch ]

[bodkin]

I really think being able to set your own time limits is needed almost as much as unit selection.

I don't want have to try and take a small town in 25 minutes, this just leads to boring rush tactics.

[Spooner]

Playing a tiny QB with Syrian special forces attacking Syrian fighters, the attackers just had ATGM squads. I've also had the same problem with stuff like a MGS platoon vs light infantry, as mentioned by the OP.

Although a larger battle can be playable with varying proportions of troop types, when you are just fielding a single platoon, the random pick of units can more often create rather odd and unlikely battles, especially when support groups are picked (like MG or AT platoons) that would never really operate autonomously.

On another note, I'd really like to have the ability to separately choose map-size and force-size. Although large engagements on very small maps are probably unplayable for anyone, I do find the opportunities for maneuver that small-medium sized forces have on "over-sized" maps to be very interesting. I also find that the smaller assault maps often have their objectives right on the edge of the map, so that the incredibly artificial map-edge has a large bearing on the tactics used in the map.