Why cant the troops climb up small cliffs?

[legend42]

The cliffs are about 14m up. Are they not equipped to do this?

[flamingknives]

14m cliffs. that's 45 ft, not what I'd call small when wearing light clothing and climbing shoes. Wearing body armour and boots, carrying weapons, ammunition and sundry equipment I'd class it as nigh-on impossible, unless carrying specialist equipment, which you won't find soldiers carrying combat situations, on account of how much they have to carry already.

Perhaps on a specialist operation, which is out of the scope of CM.

[The_Red_Rage]

Not really specialist. I remeber we took an "alternative" route during a "hasty retreat" simulation, and entire company equipped for FIBUA (yep, bangalores, ladders, and other engineer contraptions) ended up moving against the side of the cliff covered in very thick bush and trees, accopmanied with lifting Carl Gustafs/C6s/engineer crap on ropes and some very hilarous/scary falls. I remeber eating my smoked salmon IMP midway through that ordeal with my legs hanging off a 30 ft cliff. And that was done by a reserve infantry unit (albeit a Para one) without anything remotely resembling alpine gear.

But with respect to CM, doubt it will ever happen. Cliffs were always out of touch and pretty much the only true natural obstacle in the game.

[theFightingSeabee]

I have had similar experiences as Red Rage. I went to USMC's jungle warfare school in Okinawa. It was very rough terrain. While we did do a lot of rappelling, both off a 90 ft cliff and even more hasty rappelling down steep muddy areas, just a 10 foot cliff was a major obstacle.

I also agree with Red Rage about cliffs in CM. It's nice to have some impassable obstacles for the sake of forcing tactical gameplay.

[Roter Stern]

It's all a matter of gradient and not an obsolete elevation. A 14m elevation change is hardly noticeable over a 300-400 meter long hillside, where as that same 14m elevation all of a sudden becomes an unbreachable obstacle if it only occupies a few meters in the horizontal plane. So assuming that you are in fact talking about a near-vertical 14m cliff side, I would have to agree with the posters above that in the scope and time-scale of CM battles an obstacle of that size is impossible to navigate.

More importantly the question is why doesn't CMx2 model elevations which vehicles can't traverse, while still allowing for infantry movement? My suburban neighborhood alone has half-a-dozen real life examples of ditches and gradients that I wouldn't risk the most hardcore off-road vehicle on, yet they would only pose a minor obstacle to a soldier on foot ... so a battle field should be no different, that with all the deep areal bomb craters and anti-tank ditches and what-not.

What I find more peculiar is how CMx1 was able to make that distinction, yet CMx2 has somehow lost that ability. Personally I found it to be a very important map-making tool, which allowed for an undoubtful level of control over the player's vehicle movements without having to resort to creating "fences out of buildings"

*At this point I expect Steve to pipe in about how much more complex the terrain in CMx2 is compared to CMx1, and how it's a complete time sinkhole to attempt to program the TacIA to be able to make a distinction between 'full-access' and 'infantry-only-access' areas, and how that would wreck havoc with pathfinding... etc...etc*

[Jak170]

There are some maps that have hills that only infantry can run on and not tanks. I don't know if that's what your asking but yea.

[Roter Stern]

There are some maps that have hills that only infantry can run on and not tanks.

That does not exist - an elevation change of 5 meters or greater vertically over 1 tile is treated by the game engine as a 'cliff' - as indicated by the rocky texture applied to the affected terrain - and prohibits both vehicle and on-foot movement. A gradient of less than 4m:1 is treated as a mild slope and allows for both vehicle and on-foot movement.