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RAMADI (Iraq): Mother of All MOUT Maps


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... This is all part of the weird backdrop of counterinsurgencies, which doesn't appear on any battle maps and is rarely visible to the grunts or even the commanders. A lot of the same Sopranos stuff went on in Vietnam and in the 1900s Philippines. Local warlords don't like outsiders messing with their 'businesses' and governance, whether it's big white guys or Commie/Islamist zealots. And they have the guns and thugs to make their displeasure felt to either. Their disunity and provincialism though can be their undoing; these guys have rivals and hereditary enemies who are happy to make common cause with the newcomers - temporarily. So it goes.... 

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Oh, me too bro. The spooks act like this is all black magic hush hush stuff, sources and methods etc. When all it really is is good (or bad) business development, with armed militias in place of lawyers.... 

My work projects here in Asia (heck, in Quebec for that matter) have to deal with all the exact same stuff, other than - so far! -  thugs with guns. All politics is indeed local...

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Nice paper from the Small Wars Journal treats of this stuff: 

http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/innovation-in-integration-task-force-iron-ranger-and-village-stability-operations-in-afghan

"[Bernard Fall] losing control of an area indicates that you are being out-governed, not outfought. The government that fails to provide for its population, particularly the essential desire for order and respect for property, cannot be considered legitimate.... Any determined assault on lightly armed police causes their collapse as effective security forces, as exemplified in the Iraqi cities Fallujah, Baghdad, Ramadi, Samarra, and Tikrit in 2004. This type of atmosphere creates the incentive for other armed groups to compete for the ability to define order on terms different from the government.... Legitimate governments enlist militias reluctantly as it is perceived as a sign of the state’s weakness, and a poor precedent for the rule of law. States voluntarily ceding their monopoly of the legitimate use of violence are often afraid of opening Pandora’s box. 

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2 minutes ago, borg said:

What a beautiful map !! I'm testing this weekend / week. Man... if I can , I work to finish early. Get home and command my squad on CMSF :)

 

what are conscripts in the game ,? Do they have a pivotal role ?

Aha. I just read - they are spies and IMP not to loose any :)

 

thjs is waaaay too cool. So - can I also read about this historical battle. ? I'm sure that CMSFII will blast all of us if such scenarios are replicated on a higher engine

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Nope, air support parameters are not moddable afaik. It is possible the quality of equipment (Poor - Excellent) has an effect but I haven't inquired closely.

What a hilarious little outcast tribe we make here btw, babbling and cackling at each other over minutiae of recreating sideshow battles, using a 10 year old video wargame pretty much nobody plays. My wife has no clue I spend this kind of time on this. My little girl is more perceptive, but is pretty much hardwired not to like guns.

Wargaming practitioners are entering dotage. And good riddance! says society to we bookish white men, piously replaying in cardboard the actions of our endlessly more practical forefathers.

Heck, history itself is rapidly being consigned to the dustbin of, well, history.... 

A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. 

 

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Hey, it keeps us off the streets (or out of pubs & clubs in my case).....Can't be all bad!  ;)

I've learned more through my interest in WWI & WWII modelling and wargaming than I ever did at school or university, indeed I passed my history exams at school based on my own learning not the syllabus we were taught (just to make a point) and got into university based on an essay I wrote about the various socio-political tensions in Europe leading up to WWII.

Since I've got back into CM, my interest's mainly been focussed on more modern stuff, mostly because it's a learning process for me.  Like yourself I don't find much appeal to the various 'Thunder-Run' type scenarios, with Blue carving a swathe of destruction across the map. I prefer small scale (as a rule, but big can be good too) asymmetric warfare scenarios that challenge the player and render Blue's usual high tech advantages at least somewhat null.

 

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Well thanks anyway brother, for calling me out of CM hypersleep. But be advised: I could abruptly vanish once work ramps up again.

Agree 110% on asymmetrical warfare being the best scale for infantry actions at CM scale (armour fighting is a different beast, but has never held much appeal for me in my 40 years of wargaming - to me, they are gun platforms). 

That's why my top-10 wishlist changes for the next iteration of the engine all have to do with terrain, and improving  the AI's / TACAI's use of same.

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Well Abu Sayyaf missed me yesterday, although I have been to Bohol twice.  Their intended target may have been the ShangLa Mactan over in Cebu. Scum. But it looks like the Phil.gov was on the ball this time.... Raw material for a CMSF scenario too, altho doing dense jungle is tricky.

Bohol-Firefight.jpg

Airstrikes against suspected Abu Sayyaf terrorists continued in Barangay Napo in Inabanga, Bohol, until close to midnight on Tuesday. 

http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/888530/suspected-abus-soldiers-clash-in-bohol-9-killed

At least nine people were killed on Tuesday in a gun battle between government troops and suspected Abu Sayyaf bandits in Bohol province, far from the terrorists’ southern jungle bases and in a region where the US government had warned the gunmen might carry out kidnappings.

Five Abu Sayyaf bandits, three soldiers and a policeman were killed in the gun battle in the mountain village of Napo, Inabanga town.... the gunmen had arrived aboard three fast boats. The bandits entered Inabanga, 71 kilometers from Tagbilaran City, going upriver toward Napo on Monday night.... residents of Napo reported the presence of the armed men to the police, who immediately sent officers and soldiers to the area.

Dela Rosa said the intruders took cover in three houses as the firefight broke out.

The firefight started around 5:20 a.m. on Tuesday and was still raging late in the afternoon. The Philippine Air Force joined the fray in the afternoon, dropping bombs on the gunmen’s location. As of 4:40 p.m., nine bombs had hit the area, shaking the ground as they exploded.

The more than 60 bandits had either been forced out or killed in the two houses and the others were holed up and surrounded by government forces in the third house, Dela Rosa said.

If it is proven that the gunmen were from Abu Sayyaf, it may be the bandit group’s first known attempt to carry out ransom kidnappings deep into the heartland of Central Visayas, far from its jungle lairs in the southern provinces of Sulu and Basilan

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You'll be relieved to know that none of this was reported on US TV and that we are all safe over here.  

News here is either about the passenger dragged off a United flight, or something to do with Trump.  As we all know, nothing else important happens in the world anymore.

Edited by Erwin
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16 hours ago, Erwin said:

You'll be relieved to know that none of this was reported on US TV and that we are all safe over here.  

Britain too apparently remains unthreatened.....But there was cake!  :)

https://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/chocolate-cake-missiles-iraq-err-syria?utm_term=.kr2PwlyeV#.ynX4YZLy7

Which apparently passes for news these days.  :mellow:

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@LongLeftFlank  I'm intrigued by this talk of negative victory points, haven't looked in the editor yet, but I gather you've used them so perhaps you can advise.....If the player fails to achieve an objective with negative victory points, do they receive points? 

I'm considering placing red 'Spy' units marked as civilians on my Mosul map and applying a 'Destroy' objective with negative victory points for the Blue player, in order to represent the negative impact of civilian casualties.....Is this a viable concept in your opinion?

Edited by Sgt.Squarehead
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Sorry to have misled you. They are positive points awarded to the AI side if you blow the objective; ergo, effectively negative to the player for victory determination. But my briefings are wordy enough already so I didn't bother explaining the reality.

WW is not designed to play H2H; RED forces would need a 50% haircut to make it remotely balanced.

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