AI hands me my ass in tutorial...

[Agua]

Total US Victory with 6+ minutes remaining.

[Hiram Sedai]

Total US Victory with 6+ minutes remaining.

screenshot or it didn't happen

[Aldaros]

I was surprised how ineffective the anti-tank fire was when I played the tutorial. My Shermans always seemed to brew up whenever someone just looked at them funny in CMx1. Only lost one to a panzerfaust near the end because I got lazy. Then again, I was on the default (easy?) setting. That mortar they have is lethal though; I think that caused about half my casualties.

Taking it slow definitely works well for the tutorial; move up to a hedgerow, blast whatever's on the other side for a few minutes, then advance and repeat. The AT gun opened up on my infantry before any of my tanks have gotten within sight of it, so that helped a lot, too. And on-map mortars are sooo much easier to use than in CMx1.

[Agua]

Hiram, u old SOB.

[Sitting Duck]

Total US Victory on the tutorial.

Now on to the other 2 battles.

Can't wait for the full release. Game plays very well on my MBP - beautiful.

*** Tutorial Spoiler ***

I ran the bulk of my forces up to the hedgerow on the left of the main road. Deployed the MG and mortars, then settled in for a bit to see what we could see and wait for the reinforcements to arrive. Used mortars and MG to wreak havoc as the Germans showed themselves. Took the farmhouse with no issue. Most of my casualties came as a result of the German mortars. UGH!

I did have problems up the main road to the right side. Those darn hedgerows were just too thick and too close together. Lost 1 tank and decided to camp out on the right side while my main force worked forward on the left of the main road to the cross road objective.

[Lanzfeld]

You guys want better results????

Move your 60mm mortar teams to the hedgerow on the left and DONT USE SPOTTERS. They can direct fire themselves with no delay and live forever. Try it. I have won this battle with 2 wounded. You can as well.

[Dadekster88]

Played Regular WEGO myself. Lost 25 KIA and 2 tanks to the AT gun. Germans left with 5 alive with rest WIA or MIA. 12 minutes left with both objectives taken.

---SPOILERS---

First impressions are that the AI spotters don't F around. I lost half a squad and my whole platoon HQ to one round that just dropped like a daisy cutter on them. Saw the spotting rounds but figured I'd ride it out....ouch. I replayed it over and over...like a damn movie as they just went flying through the air. The HQ unit was just straight gone. So that was fun running the three squads with no leadership other than squad leaders. Luckily they got the task done down on the left side and the HQ unit had called in some awesome rounds. The farmhouse for me was cake, seemed there were only 2 half squads in there and they were pretty wiped out by the time I stormed the 3 structures. What really helped as others have mentioned was calling in a linear mortar request right down the wall by the far bridge. The HQ unit had eyes on several squads there and I checked end of game and that mortar had 15 kills. Pretty Johny on the spot there just walking rounds down the wall. Both tanks made it on that side till the end until one got nailed by a shrek but no damage, crew bailed and the was last turn and game didn't tally it as a kill which was a bit sad because I wanted them to remount it, but oh well.

The right side, well...that is one hell of a line of sight down that crooked road for that AT gun. Brewed both Shermans right up as soon as they got close to that little cunning slope out in the meadow. Once they paid the ultimate price I was able to hose the area down with one of the MG teams and then dropped mortars on the location to suppress it and a nearby MG unit. I then was able to move one of the Shermans on the left side safely (good thing there weren't 2 AT's but I gambled ) and just plastered the area with HE for a good 5 minutes which worked since that Shermans got the Pak40 killmail. After that it was pretty much working down both sides using lots of covering fire and bounding movements. I still got several guys killed but for most part a lot of Germans gave up or ran. Better troops and I'd definitely would have had a harder time of it. All in all a very well done tutorial to learn the ropes again.

My biggest gripe after just one playthrough on the tutorial was that some of the death animations seemed to get stuck midway showing guys in the process of falling down but frozen in midair etc. Not sure if that's just a tutorial thing or something on my end though but its just a bit distracting. Maybe 1 in 20 guys seemed to do it and just the Germans for some reason. Never noticed any of my boys stuck like that. Other than that...I've found my new poison for a long time to come.

Well done BF and testers, your hard work and committment show clearly within the game.

[Volodnikov]

Real-time battle on Warrior difficulty. As everyone else said, the best route is by inching forward on the right.

This was straight out of the Band of Brothers episode "Crossroads", which coincidentally is the objective in the tutorial. I ended up surprising a whole bunch of Germans, who scrambled to save their lives but were cut down by the fire.

The end result:

[Sakai007]

I watched that episode of Band of Brothers right after I played the tutorial, oh yeah, I loved it. In my first run, I had a squad do just as you showed in the screen, and got the same results. They killed 15 all by them selves. I played the one with Panthers as the Americans a little while ago. I had two 60 squads with 50 kills between them, epic!!!

[yuvuphys]

Dropped mortars based on pre-battle intel, and took out the AT gun and mauled a few squads. Look for the question marks during the setup phase. Then 1 squad+1 sherman down the main road, with the rest of my force down the left. Moved everyone up to the shrubbery in front of the farm, hammered the whole area until it's quiet, then stormed the farm with flanking fire from the units coming down the road. Then advancing up to the crossroads through the field on the left side, placed squads on the shrubbery on the right (directly to the left of the road), which allowed them to put flanking fire on the squads on the right side of the road. This leaves you with good cover/concealment while eliminating the enemies cover/concealment. Ran out of time with 3KIA, 9WIA, and 70 enemy CAS, the rest broken and hiding.

Very well done, Battlefront; don't believe I ever had this much fun with CMBB, CMAK or CMSF.

[ChrisND]

*** MAJOR SPOILERS ***

Wow, a whole lot of varied results, way more than I expected to see. I'm glad I resisted the temptation of adding a second AT gun, that would have been ugly for some people!

Some background on the map, for you would-be scenario designers: this is a real location in the Cotentin about 500-600m south of Boutteville. Since I had a mostly historical background for the campaign (Task Force Raff on D-Day), I wanted to do a real-world location along a road they very likely traveled along. I had a vision in my mind about what I wanted the map to be like, and then scouted around in Google Earth looking for it. It's pretty easy to tell from the roads and buildings, combined with period maps, what areas were probably around back in the 40s. When I saw this:

, I knew I had the right place. It had a nice curve in the road to provide a buffer zone for the Allied setup and advance, just a couple of small quaint structures, and an interesting asymmetry with the two large fields being offset from each other. The road leading south from the crossroads also gives a nice line of defense that is logical, but exposed enough to give the player an advantage for the learning process.

I mentally broke down the map into three battle areas: the large open field to the south, (with longer lines of fire and more exposed), the road in the center as a kill zone/funnel if the player used it before disabling the German AT (and also can fired, or be fired upon, either side), and the northern series of hedgerows which often result in a series of close-range fights. All of this variety in a compact area, already present from the real world! If you are planning on making a real-world map, it really pays off to spend a lot of time searching for an area that just feels "right", something that will make for interesting and unique game play. If you see a patch of ground and the thought of that terrain in action excites you, you've probably found a good base material to start making a map from.

In contrast, Closing the Pocket's map was made almost completely from scratch, except for most of the commune's building arrangements (the church area is an invention). Maybe I'll go over how I did that another time.

Anyways, to start I made the map pretty much as it showed up in the real world on Google. This area has Google Street View so I went down and verified that everything not only looked old enough to have been around back then, but the locations also jived with historical maps.

I made a few alterations to help the scenario work the way I wanted it, and I kept them subtle wherever possible, so that it kept as true to the original as possible; things like a few meters difference in elevation, a wall where there was a bocage, things like that. The wall south of the crossroads is an example, which provides some decent protection for the Germans to give a semi-sustained firefight BUT doesn't give them much concealment so the player knows they are there. Probably the most important "minor" alteration is that hedgerow just east of the farm that you guys put your overwatch at; you'll notice that the northern end of it is slightly raised in elevation, because the German gun and infantry were originally sniping over it to the bend in the road where I wanted the American setup to be safe.

The last thing I do is add flavor objects and alter the ground types. For something so minor and almost irrelevant to the battle itself, they add a lot of atmosphere the environment. For each chunk of the map, I ask myself: "What is the story of this place?" Ask yourself this for every field and terrain feature you make. So next time you play this or the other maps, get down to eye level and look at each field and building cluster, and see if you can put together a story from the details. There's the overgrown field that is out of season, the tree farm where harvest has just begun, etc.

Here's a Google Street View of the US starting road:

And guess where this on the map!

[Wiggum]

@ Normal Dude

I have a question to you as the designer of this scenario:

The german force, which TO&E (OOB) do they use ?

What morale level are they overall ?

Are they the "worst" troops you could put up or can you make them much worser with some adjustments ?

Are they designed to defend stubborn, could they be designed to route as soon as possible ?

[Huh?]

That AT gun stalled my entire assault on the farm and kept my remaining tanks out of the battle until the final minutes. It ended up with 20 kills and 3 tanks. It did feel great when I finally had it pinned and was able to bring my tanks up. I brought a squad up to the last hedgerow and suddenly there were a lot of enemy troops on the wrong side of cover. It did not end well for them.

[Zatoichi]

Normal Dude - just wanted to say thanks! Seeing the effort you've put into this one map is astonishing. I have to say, from my perspective it was worth every minute - I've had immense enjoyment fighting over the terrain, solving the tactical puzzles it presented and watching my Shermans brew up when it turned out I hadn't solved them!

Plus I got to blow large chunks of it to smithereens, which is always fun!

I cannot wait to get my hands on the full game - the demo has me addicted after 4 hours of play.

[GonzoAttacker]

Normal Dude what a great map. Thourghly enjoyed the detail. Really like the sutle change in elevations in the fields, Lots of fun. Hours of enjoyment as I learn to move with the controls, movment orders etc. Got to fine tune my tactics as always. Practice practice practice! Thanks again.

[undead reindeer cavalry]

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

because of the two WC hockey games i played only one CMBN game. i chose to play the tutorial mission as iron + RT.

i moved the initial platoon to the hedge overlooking the large field, positioned from the right of the opening on the hedge to the road on the right. the platoon exchanged fire with the Germans and received random fire from the ATG. i lost much of the mg due to unfortunate error in positioning (i didn't notice in time that they were on the wrong side of the hedge).

i moved two shermans lead by a scout team on the road, but kept them slightly back.

i moved the second platoon to the left side of the opening on the hedge, overlooking the farm. i moved the new 2+1 tanks to the opening (keeping them behind the hedge line).

i then plotted a single mission on the ATG for both mortars. as the rounds began dropping i moved the 3 shermans to the field, about the level of the bridge.

i then moved a squad from the 2nd platoon to the trees next to the farm. then moved another squad from the 2nd platoon across the bridge, keeping the third on the hedgeline overlooking the farm. i made an unfortunate error with the squad moving to the farm: having split the squad i placed the mg team on the wall so that it got a FOV to the bigger building at the other end of the farm, but the Germans were behind the first building and killed 3 of the assault team going into the building. i thus had to move the mg team to the neighbouring actionspot so that it could engage the Germans. i then moved the rest of the 2nd platoon into the farm to secure it and the hedgeline towards north.

meanwhile German mortar rounds had begun tropping on the 1st platoon and the platoon took some losses. thus i moved the 1st platoon next to the 3 shermans sitting on the open field. i don't know what took the ATG out, the mortar rounds or the small arms fire (or the tanks).

i begun moving the two other shermans + the scout team along the road a bit past the line of the hedgeline overlooking the field. i moved one team from the 1st platoon to the hedge by the road. the two shermans, the team and the scouts moved slowly along the road, sherman mgs probably doing most of the killing (Germans running into open fields and tank mg LOF).

i then moved the 2nd platoon behind the ATG position. i moved the 1st platoon towards the crossroads, leading with the 3 shermans.

i then moved the 2nd platoon towards the crossroads, spread between the map edge and the road. i moved the 1st platoon + the 3 shermans to the crossroads area. i moved the 2 shermans + 2 teams on the road a bit closer to the crossroads.

then the game ended. my losses were 30 men. the Germans had about the same number (20-30) left as OK.

the only target orders i gave during the whole game were the two mortar strikes.

i didn't spot any bugs in the game and it seemed to work great.

my only complaint regarding how the game worked would be the information given about the enemy in iron mode. i wanted to check what enemy info could be seen in iron and thus clicked a random enemy icon during early phase of the game. most unfortunately i happened to click an icon that gave the information of it begin "ATG ammo carrier team" or such. so much for guessing where the ATG would be. :/

what comes to the simulation aspect it's hard to say anything from such a quick game. basicly i just moved the 2 platoons across the field. i guess the battle was already done at that point, which could explain why there wasn't much of fighting going on.

i liked the map and the scenario served as a good tutorial to the changes made to CMBN (comparing to CMSF).

[Faelwolf]

+1 on an awesome map.

The center road being an obvious funnel into a kill zone really made me have to step back and think, and the placement of the hedgerows and fields made screening my flanks an interesting proposition as well.

[Pvthudson]

Just won this with a major victory. Bound cover your tanks up the road, smash all cover in the distance with target fire and slowly move the infantry up I will have video up later

[phantom67]

Fun map, got utterly raped in the first attempt. On the second attempt I realised you could park your tanks next to hedges, so that they can shoot through them just like infantry, so I parked two Shermans next to the bocage by the farm, had arty surpress enemy positions to the right of the main road, had the Shermans fire smokes to block the enemy LOS from the crossroad, and surpressed the crap out of the farmhouses with my MGs and a spare infantry squad, while my other 2 squads assaulted the farm.

Once the infantry took the farm, I was able to spot the AT gun, and after a little bit of area fire by tank, along with artillery, I was able to establish battlefield superiority, and the enemy just collapsed as my tanks rolled through. Also had one of the infantry platoons move up along the right flank, supported by armor, but by this point, the battle had already pretty much been won. Ended up with 6 KIA if I remember correctly.

[GhostRider3/3]

Thanks "Normal Dude" Awesome map..... just brilliant. I must say the first time I played the Tutorial it was fun as hell. Thanks for making such an authentic map, very enjoyable and I can tell I have much to look forward to in the full game. I cant wait to start making my own designs using google earth, and some other WWII images. Thanks for the motivation! Now I have the weekend off..and I plan to play the Demo over and over!

[Rocky Balboa]

Just finished my first play of "Road to Berlin". Total Allied Victory on veteran/wego settings. Allied losses were 15 men Killed, 7 wounded and 1 tank destroyed. Secured the farm and crossroads. The Sherman was lost to a long shot from a schreck. The AT gun never really caused me any problems, I took him out fairly early with a 60MM mortar.

One thing I learned about the AI in CMBN is that its viscous with indirect fire. Most of my casualties came from indirect fire so I learned to keep my infantry moving. If you get pinned down or stay in one position for too long chances are you'll receive a surprise falling from the sky.

Watch for the spotter rounds and get the heck out of dodge when you think he's lining you up for a pounding. Of course playing WEGO makes this difficult sometimes when the spotter rounds come in at the beginning of a turn and you have to wait until the next turn to react.

All in all a great scenario ND, I really had a blast.

[Cull]

Hey thanks for the insight into the scenario design. Love seeing the modern-day pics of the locations; they really bring it to life, so to speak.

[Battlefront.com]

That AT gun stalled my entire assault on the farm and kept my remaining tanks out of the battle until the final minutes. It ended up with 20 kills and 3 tanks. It did feel great when I finally had it pinned and was able to bring my tanks up. I brought a squad up to the last hedgerow and suddenly there were a lot of enemy troops on the wrong side of cover. It did not end well for them.

It is really nice to see AT Guns getting to shine as well as they did in real life. Previous CM games they were difficult to keep in action. Of course, there is also the other side of the realism coin:

The AT gun never really caused me any problems, I took him out fairly early with a 60MM mortar.

The bane of any AT Gun's existence is the enemy's mortars. The 60mm Light Mortar gives the US a tactical edge, IMHO, over the Germans when coming up against dug in crew served weapons.

Steve

[MrSpkr]

my only complaint regarding how the game worked would be the information given about the enemy in iron mode. i wanted to check what enemy info could be seen in iron and thus clicked a random enemy icon during early phase of the game. most unfortunately i happened to click an icon that gave the information of it begin "ATG ammo carrier team" or such. so much for guessing where the ATG would be.

Rationalize it this way: perhaps the American unit that spotted these guys noticed they were carrying an ammunition box or boxes and were thus able to figure out that there must be a gun dug in near where those fellows were moving . . .

Steve

[ChrisND]

*** SPOILERS ***

The german force, which TO&E (OOB) do they use ?

They are part of a Grenadier battalion.

What morale level are they overall ?

Are they the "worst" troops you could put up or can you make them much worser with some adjustments ?

Second from worst I believe, for most of them, and usually conscript experience. I tend to give the ATG and MGs slightly higher experience and motivation.

Are they designed to defend stubborn, could they be designed to route as soon as possible ?

These guys will break earlier than most of the Germans you will encounter in the game, especially the guys defending the farm. Furthermore, because they are one of the least experienced forces in the game at Conscript level, expect the enemy in other scenarios to spot you sooner and shoot more accurately.