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Road to Montebourg


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Oops. I kind of missed this as I've been busy and when I do pop in, it's been off the first page.

afreau

Yes, there are no engineers in the final mission by design. There are already a lot of breaks in the bocage to allow the player to approach the objective from a number of different directions. This has the added effect of making the town a mini fortress. I hope this wasn't too much of an inconvenience to you. Plus, it helped to keep the number of units manageable when played in Real Time.

GerryCMBB

I hope you enjoy the rest of it. It was designed to be a reasonably easy but enjoyable campaign. After playing this one, you can graduate to the more difficult campaigns that came with the disk. I did have to do a lot of reading to get the general idea for the campaign. But the maps took the most time to do.

Aqua

That's my sweet spot too. I primarily design for my own pleasure and I like company sized actions. There are a few bigger ones later in the campaign though but nothing unmanageable.

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Some thoughts/feedback. I've been playing through without restarts, aside from restarting the entire campaign after losing it a few missions in the first time through.

Some general notes:

-- The time limits seem a bit tight for some of the missions, especially as they're infantry based.

-- I noticed in the campaign briefing that the difficulty of some missions was altered up or down (from what historically happened in these battles) to make each mission challenging but not impossible. I can see where'd you want to do that (seeing as some missions are nasty enough as is). Could you release a 'historical difficulty' campaign at some point, though? It'd be interesting to play through, even if some of the missions aren't always balanced for 'fun' gameplay.

-- Many of the enemy aren't in foxholes or trenches in these missions; 60 and 82mm mortar fire is VERY effective at cleaning these positions out. Don't know whether this is intentional or not.

-- Might help to mention in the campaign briefing that you may run into artillery attacks on your assembly areas. Admittedly, the enemy should be expected to do this, but not all scenario designers do that kind of thing -- I'm used to having my starting areas perfectly safe and secure in most scenarios in this game.

Beau Guillot -- mortars seem to do most of the work in defeating the positions that watch the field. When I first played this mission, I had my troops crawl a large part of the way across the field, but this tended to wear them out, and wasn't as helpful as I'd liked. The second time around (after restarting the campaign), I found that I could just order short runs (using the quick command), and have my troops hit the ground for 5-15 seconds in between. This avoided most of the enemy's fire, and allowed for faster movement. This mission actually seems more difficult once you get past the first hedgerow, as you face some nasty close-in fighting.

Ecoqueneuville -- tried sending tanks down the road the first time, with infantry infiltrating through the fields; I lost (though I think I could've won if I had more time). The second time, the tanks went through the fields). I've found it's very useful to have multiple tanks in one field -- a couple offering suppressive fire, and a couple racing forwards to poke their guns through the opposite hedgerow to finish the enemy. :D Either way, this one seems kind of difficult, but that's what you get when a reinforced company has to take down an understrength company on a hill.

La Grand Hameau -- Pretty textbook, and simple, though I can't seem to target the opposite hedgerow in the leftmost field for area fire (i.e. the one that the antitank gun sits behind). Beat this one twice.

Le Hamelet -- lost this one (and the campaign) first time through. I made it to the mortars, but then the enemy mortar crews all turned their guns on my troops, and routed them. :o Second time around, I played the version you get from beating the previous two missions, and it was much easier (although the enemy infantry gun caused a huge chunk of my casualties).

Turnbull's stand -- lost this one -- do you have to hit Cease Fire once your troops are off the map? I thought I got most of my troops off the map before the enemy took one of the objectives, but I still lost.

One note -- the enemy tanks one of my AT guns early, towards the start of the scenario, though I think that was because there wasn't much of a hedge in front of it (it was pointing towards the road from the house on the left, peeking across the hedge/treeline).

Les Licornets -- Had trouble getting LOS to target the opposite hedgerow near the objective. The good news was that the AI doesn't respond effectively if you attack from his right flank -- the tanks get knocked out (especially the one near the road), and enfilading fires tear up the infantry that are hiding behind the hedges.

The Labyrinth / Neuville au Plain -- I liked using the recon platoon to find the enemy -- and a flank route around them, in both cases -- before moving my infantry out. :D

The Labyrinth seemed like it'd be more difficult, with the enemy tanks and all, but the AI seemed to assume that I'd use a frontal attack, making it very easy for my forces to dispose of one and chase off another (hitting one in the rear side with a 37mm armored car gun sent one scurrying off into an out of the way field -- it didn't come back, even when I advanced on the objective).

Hell in the Hedgerows -- When I exhausted the HE ammo for my howitzers, the smoke ammo vanished. :( One of my 82mm mortars also wouldn't deploy (the "Deploy Weapon" button would be highlighted, but the FO screen kept saying "Not Deployed). Without enough smoke ammo to screen my advance, my troops just got cut to pieces when trying to get past the creek.

Oddly enough, much of the enemy artillery hit empty ground, since I kept my troops moving. They did manage to take out at least one mortar team at one point, however. Many of the casualties were from the final push to the creek, in any event. The fighting up to the "Route des Moiselettes" banged up a few of my squads, but most of my force was ready to rock until I tried to cross the creek.

I almost wanted to just hit "Cease Fire" at that point rather than try to make the crossing. It's the sort of situation that just says, "Don't try this." I sent my troops forward, though, because I figured a real-life commander wouldn't have the option of just refusing to attack.

Stalemate -- Tried to attack first with one company, then sending the second in to finish the enemy off. It worked, though the first company sent through was badly messed up. Partly because of the minefield near the "Quadrangle" -- I wasn't paying close enough attention and had a squad take multiple casualties from mines, then took more casualties when I thought I could get around the mines by moving just a little bit further from the "quadrangle". This also prevented my first company from attacking in one coherent force against the enemy (ack). The second company attacked through the first company's position, and took some casualties, but wiped out the enemy save for an infantry gun, with time to spare.

Orchard Hill -- Crossing the river/creek wasn't so difficult, but the fighting after reaching the bunker line was. Still, I managed to get a squad -- then after that, a platoon -- around the left side and into the enemy rear around the 20 minute mark. :D Ran badly low on ammunition, and had trouble getting my spotters to see their spotting rounds once I had advanced to the bunker line (which dramatically reduced usefulness of indirect fire at that point).

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Peach operations

Thanks for the extended feedback on your progress through the campaign so far. It sounds like you'e enjoying it and so are not bothered at having to restart the campaign. You are my sort of player. By sucking up the losses and continuing, you are experiencing some of the variants as you progress through the campaign.

Regarding time limits, I added at least 10 minutes to the length of most missions after playtesting to ensure that most folks would be able to do it without too much time pressure. I have to draw a line somewhere and the time limits you've got seemed fair. I want the missions to have some challenge ;)

Enemy troops are not deployed in foxholes or trenches behind bocage because they would be unable to draw LoS through the hedge. Try it. They can only fire on units on the other side of the hedgerow. very unsatisfactory and so the hedgerows are all the cover they have.

Regarding AI artillery hitting your set-up zones, the AI does not have any pre-planned artillery and so what you are likely experiencing is some enemy commander spotting units at the hedgerows on the front edge of your deployment zone and calling in a strike. So your set up areas are safe from pre-planned strikes but not from strikes called in by enemy FOS after the mission starts.

I'm thinking of uploading a more realistic version of the campaign to the Repository later as there are a couple of missions that should be real stinkers but I felt that making them accurate would just piss off most players. Example being that there was a lot more artillery available to the Germans in Hell in the Hedgrows and it was a real dog advancing against it. The Allies lost that battle but I decided to try and keep it winnable as long as the Allied player was willing to push hard and not worry too much about casualties.

The two Ste Mere Eglise missions, Licornets and Labrynth, were supposed to be quite easy missions but I decided to link Turnbull's Stand and Labrynth together to make all the Day 2 missions more meaningful. As a result, a loss in Turnbull's Stand will have a very strong influence on the course of the battles for the rest of that phase. It affects the amount of replacements you get as well as the forces you will face in Labrynth. The idea was that if the Allies were able to hold the Germans up long enough at Neuville au Plain as Turnbull did and clear the Germans from the north of Ste Mere Eglise that more Paratroopers that got scattered on the drop would be able to rejoin their formations more rapidly.

To win Turnbull's Stand, you must hit Cease Fire. You don't have to exit all your guys off the board when you do but you will lose points for them. But nowhere near as many as you will if the enemy touch one of the objectives before you do.

It sounds like you had a very similar experience to the Allies in Orchard Hill by the way. They ran short on ammo too.

I look forward to hearing how you get on with the rest of the campaign, especially as you are following an alternate branch to le Ham. Good luck and that's again for the feedback.

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Paper Tiger,

You, Sirrah, are officially to be considered a git! A cunning, devious git probably in the pay of the Prince of Darkness.

I ran through the Beau Guillot battle without any problems racking up a total victory with next to no casualties. Then I started the attack on Ecoqueneuville.

One look at the map convinced me that the road was a ticket into a killing ground. It was just too tempting an offer, what with the farm complex giving a short approach with lots of cover to the village and all. So there was no way that I was going to take that route. However, being limited to just 12 explosive charges I was going to have to be very careful about picking an alternative. So I counted up the hedgerows to be breached, worked out a feasible way in and set off.

You put mines behind a blank hedgerow! Not covering gaps, not covered by MG's or mortars as part of the MLR but behind a bog-standard hedgerow just waiting for a sucker like me to try and blow his way through. You complete git!

Anyway, I still won (German Surrender with 12 minutes to go) - outflanked most of the defences and used the 105s to shake up the village causing units to flee towards the church. Most of my casualties were caused by those damned mines, those aside I had six men down to German fire (including two to the FOO's pistol, which I thought neat).

Thanks for, once again, putting in your time and energy and creating what is shaping up to be a great campaign. If you feel any back pain that is probably due to me sticking pins into a wax effigy. Thanks again.

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I'm about 8 missions into this campaign with relatively minor casualties so far. I burn up most of my casualties during the last few minutes of each battle.

I love the campaign so far. I say again: I love the campaign. It's tough but manageable.

Driving down the roads tends to be suicide. Your engineers are gold. Better than gold. They're like golden golems with high explosives. Blast holes in the hedgerows and make your own paths. You'll lose less men this way but it will be slower going.

The only trade-off I've found for this strategy is the casualties. It's a time consuming bit of maneuvering when you bypass the obvious ambush points of a road to get to your objectives. As a result, you have to push hard and bloody to end up with the objectives by the end of the map.

Especially that first mission at "Ecoqueneauville" where you get the tank platoon, it's important to blast some avenues in the hedgerows.

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Tried Hell in the Hedgerows twice with two different axes of advance. Draw first time, Total Victory second. SPOILERS

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First time advanced both companies up the middle. Ran into maybe a 3 or 4 sections with HQ and a MG on the north and east outskirts of Le Goulet. Caught a good bit of fire from the northwest at la vallee and an inf gun on the top ridge. Once we made the covered road in the middle of the map, hung a right to the east because of the fire on the west. Advancing east along the covered road, we encountered maybe a squad in two sections on the far right portion of the road. MG bunker situated about 1/3 of the way from the west edge of the map along the ridge, with a mixed bag of NASTY stuff along the west half of the ridge. Failed to bring 4 platoon 60mm along, believing the 2 company weapons platoon leaders with radios would take command of the mortars. WRONG. From the covered road, noticed a lovely stretch of barbed wire covering the anticipated assault on the south side of the creek. Called in all available arty along the west 1/3 of the ridge, saving the 75mm packs for smoke. Determined to send the platoons down to the creek through a section of lightly wooded slope as it appeared to provide at least a little relief from enemy LOS & LOF. Found a couple of bottle necks at 1) the gap between the hedges from which the troops exited the covered road; and 2) a gate immediately to the east of our exit from the covered road. OUCH. Despite having about 7 or 8 MG sections firing on the bunker, it still managed to pin the troops at the two bottle necks. Learned something about CMBN with infantry bottlenecks. With remainder of squads, I sent them forward in split teams with enough temporal space between the orders as allowed by selecting and issuing the orders in RT. Quite a few wounded scattered along the trail from the covered road to the creek. Once we made that leg of the trip, we discovered a foxhole with another MG in it on the slope in front of where we intended to recover before the smoke arrived. Needless to say this was bloody. Ultimately, as teams came unpinned, I sent them around the barbed wire, then back into the wooded section and straight up slope to defilade at the top of the ridge. I sent them into the road at the top of the rige, but each time they'd become panicked by a surviving portion of a HQ unit next to the bunker, so no units (other than mine) were destroyed once we made it to the road. Finished with a Draw. Going from memory seems like it was 50 KIA and wounded, so the only objective I met was the touch objective at the top of the ridge.

Second time I figured the west side couldn't be any worse than the east, so tried that route.

Sent E Company up the middle again and D Company along the western side through la vallee. Probably a couple sections and an HMG in the le valee area. E Coy advanced along the covered road towards le valee while D Coy took the frontal approach. Limited field access due to hedges required some split team work again at la vallee to bring a squad around the back of a platoon HQ and HMG in a field north east of la vallee. That squad spent the remainder of the scenario in defilade corner of bocage due to the MG bunker on the ridge. This time, I brought all my platoon mortars (YAY!), and was relieved to find a nice row of bocage providing cover all the way down to the creek. No bottlenecks, no barbed wire, timing of mortars, smoke and the run up the ridge were perfect. Two platoons took out the two western MG bunkers with close target orders, then sent one platoon around the back behind the road to put fire on the units along the ridge from two directions. AI surrendered. Had 18 killed, 15 wounded - score 850.

REALLY tense scenario. I didn't see a FO on the map review so I assume the platoon HQs were calling in the arty. I've learned with CMBN that you get up and RUN when a spotting round comes in. Great map and a great scenario. I've got the end of the prior scenario written down so I can play this one again.

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Nice result second time around there ;) There are four distinctly different AI plans in this mission and in some, you'll have to fight for Le Goulet while in others, you'll get in without a shot. So it can play differently when you fire it up again. A in in this missions smoothes over your progress through the remaining Le Ham missions. Good luck with Breakthrough. If you liked the map for 'Hell', you'll love the map for Breakthrough.

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Played a little more, and lost the campaign again. :D

One general note re: foxholes and hedgerows -- I've seen foxholes that have LOS through an adjacent hedgerow (in some of the Road to Montebourg scenarios, in fact). Are you sure they can't see through hedgerows?

Holding Action - This mission was very frustrating. Everything seemed to be going (mostly) as planned, and I swept through most of the buildings on the left side before the enemy reinforcements showed up. I hadn't taken the last three buildings on the far left side, so I moved my troops in..

..what I discovered is that, if a building is next to a hedgerow, then troops in that building can see the other side of the hedgerow, and vice versa. So if:

[] is a building

| is a hedgerow

G is a german squad

A is an American squad

and you have

[A]| . . . . . . . . |G

...then the two squads have -- according to the game -- LOS to eachother. Naturally, this was very bad for me, because the enemy reinforcements all seem to appear right behind the opposite hedgerow, all ready to open fire on my poor squads. And since entering a building means that your squad is moving, they're instantly seen -- even though they're entering through the opposite side of the building from the hedge that the Germans are firing through. Argh.

Anyway, I tried calling in 75mm howitzer fire, but the spotter apparently didn't see the spotting rounds and called FFE anyway, and the shots were way off target. I kept trying to counterattack, only to have my troops mauled as soon as they entered the three buildings in the far left corner.

I did manage to defeat most of the German squads, but a couple managed to make their way into the area I was supposed to control (one of them being the German company HQ). I also focused mostly on the left side of the map (not sure whether the bunker counts as being in the area you're supposed to control), so that may have also affected the outcome. Anyway, lost that one.

le Ham -- I was under the (apparently mistaken) impression that preplanned artillery didn't need spotting rounds in CMBN, with or without target reference points, since the game displays <1 min for delay for preplanned strikes. Thus, I put the TRPs at the base of the opposite side of the hill, where I guessed that the real resistance would be. Much to my dismay, the 240mm rounds landed a decent distance short of their target, and the 107mm smoke mortar rounds fell short too (although this was less of an issue, since they still obscured my forces). BTW -- the scenario briefing says that I get 75mm howitzers, but I never had any 75mm available to my FOs in this mission.

I had to rush a FO up to where he could get LOS to the defensive line, and started the long, drawn out process of waiting for a 240mm strike to be called in on the left side. Similarly, I took my other FO into LOS with the bunkers on the right side, and called in 107mm HE on them. The 240mm fire was then adjusted to the TRPs at the base of the hill. Surprisingly, there actually were some survivors after multiple 240mm rounds landed on the fortified line, and I sent some troops from the right hand side (where they were more successful) to clean out a surviving bunker + MG.

Strangely enough, several 240mm hits at the base of the other side of the hill didn't seem to break some of the defenders. I sent the light tanks forward on the right hand side, using engineers to clear a path to the hedgerows, and lost two to the antitank gun. I had previously spotted it, but I thought that the hedgerow would obscure view of my tanks (wrong). Apparently if G is the gun, T is the tank, and | is a hedgerow, then in the following situation:

T| . . . . . . . . . . G

..the tank and gun can exchange fire -- although some of the antitank gun's rounds may hit the hedgerow instead of the tank. Eventually, some rounds made it through, and killed a couple tanks. It should have been just one, but I didn't realize one of my tanks had LOS to the gun. Many mortar rounds (and tank rounds) later, the gun was finally killed.

Anyway, my remaining tanks + some infantry struggled to claw through the defenders on the right hand side, making some progress, only to rush tanks forward -- in an attempt to get behind the hedge the enemy was using as cover -- and have those tanks cut down by AT rockets and a Marder. Meanwhile, I was trying to get the rest of my infantry to go over the hill, believing that I could use mortars and overwhelming firepower to overpower the defenders -- which I eventually did, but at much greater cost, and with much greater use of mortar ammunition than I realized I needed.

Time ran out with my troops having secured most of the first area (I got points for it even though it appeared that some of the enemy were there), but not having moved beyond that.

In a way, it seems like a decent chunk of the difficulty I've experienced is coming to grips with the quirks of the game regarding LOS and fire support. Oh well.

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Hah! Holding Action can be a real bitch depending on which AI plan you get. There are two very different AI plans in that one and it is important to keep tabs on what the AI is doing while you're playing this mission. I won't issue any spoilers other than that ;) You definitely got the more difficult of the two plans though. The counter-attacking units arrive from the EBE and move to their objectives.

With regards to the 75mm artillery missing from Le Ham, That's a mistake in the briefing. There used to be, but towards the end of developing this mission, I subbed the 75mm Light Howitzers for that platoon of Stuarts and neglected to delete the text from the briefing. Oops...

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I did manage to defeat most of the German squads, but a couple managed to make their way into the area I was supposed to control (one of them being the German company HQ).

It's become a theme in my campaign for the last surviving German to be their company commander... resolutely holed-up alone in his original position, blazing away with his MP40 at any passing Doggies. I picture him a bit like some kind of Commando Comic villain, his contorted face lit by muzzle-flash as he cackles maniacally with one jackboot perched atop a pile of bodies; grrr, I'll get him yet.

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Well I didn't do well on Turnbulls Last Stand. I had three goes at it and quit out on the first two due to the "Eternal Planning/Spotting bug"* fouling up both my AT Guns and my Mortar. When the game misbhaves like that I break my house rule of no reloads/retries.

On the third go the AI put nothing down my left flank and everything came at me to the right of the road. I took down his two MKIVs bit could never get sight on the Marder with an ATG or the mortar. Shuffling my infantry about wasn't much help as I couldn't really get the squad or MG from my left flank to a position where they could get into a position that could do any real good.

Finally I ran away and escpaed with a minor victory and just two wounded. Can't say as I enjoyed this one.

*For those who haven't seen it the "Eternal Planning/Spotting Bug" occurs when for some unknown reason a gun or mortar when asked to fire doesn't, even though they have a clean and good line of fire. When you look at the unit info in the bottom left hand corner you will see the gunners status as constantly and very rapidly alternating between "Planning" and "Spotting", once in this loop the unit never comes out of it and will never fire again. In this scenario I accepted the default set-up, save a I moved the mortar up to the hedgerow, and hit this bug on each of the first two tries. On the third occasion in the setup I moved the ATGs a very short distance to the left and had no problems.

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Le Ham - Ran into the same problem with pre-planned arty. It's a bug and isn't supposed to be happening.

There are two oddities with this bug. First, it doesn't seem to be happening on all machines. I really didn't notice it on any scenario until "A Holding Action". the 81 and 75s were given the pre-planned barrage area fire orders and they utilize spotting rounds. Of course, if the unit calling the barrage can't see the rounds fall, the barrage will be way off target. I sent my save of the startup to akd, and he could not get it to do the same thing. I thought, "huh, well maybe just a one off thing", and tried it immediately after reading his comment to me. Same result. I replied by e-mail and he tried it over, and over and over, and could not get the pre-planned arty to do the spotting routine. Finally, I fired up the setup one more time and just took screen shots of the arty dialog box showing it took nearly 5 minutes for FFE to be called on the 75mm. It happens every time, without fail, on that setup for me, and apparently, never happens for akd.

The second oddity is I really didn't notice this happening in any scenario or QB prior to reaching A Holding Action in the campaign. I haven't looked into it any further, but I may try another scenario to see if it's just some quirky think with the campaign or if there's a larger problem here.

[Edited to include the following:] No, it isn't limited to this campaign. Worked perfectly on Road to Berlin, then the spotting routine occured on A Delaying Action.

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I finished the Labyrinth yesterday a lovely map (again), but not much of a fight I regret to say. About half my casualties came from when one of my butterfingered men either dropped a grenade in the act of throwing it (no he wasn't shot or even shot at - the enemy units were all well surppressed and cowering) or perhaps he threw it and it bounced back off the bocage. Killed four men out-right and wounded another three. Dunno how many AI scripts there are with this one but perhaps I just got lucky. It was fun but too easy.

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Normally when playing a Paper Tiger scenario I avoid road movement towards the enemy like the plague, but on this ocassion I didn't fancy any of the alternatives either and I thought I'd give it a go. So I dumped some prelim mortar fire on likely ambush sites and set cautiously off. After nearly twenty minutes without being fired upon or spotting any sign of the enemy, I just drove some recon units down to the end of the road. One turned up an infantry AT team behind a hedge which it killed before they could react and the other spotted a Marder by the objective which it engaged with its 37mm and destroyed.

At that point I was really behind the defensive line so all it remained to do was rush my infantry up (three full platoons + two sections of engineers, all mixed and bunched up, running down the middle of the road, not a sight common in this game), re-enforce the recce teams and roll up the line.

One spot gave me some trouble. Probably because they ran away from the earler mortar fire, in a very small area in a copse there was a company HQ, a platoon HQ, an AT, and half a rifle squad. One of my sections walked into their line of view and four men went down instantly, the rest ran. Mortars sorted the problem out.

A Greyhound came across a MKIV and immediately engaged it from its port-quarter getting a penetration. The tank started to rotate towards the Greyhound but didn't fire instead it backed away, but not quickly enough - a M8 gun-carriage finished it off the next turn with a 75mm heat round.

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I think here are multiple AI plans, so the location of the gun may vary from game to game. For what is its worth, I would sugest keeping your troops and vehicles off the roads (TEGPT has a habit of keeping them covered) and looking to places where the Bocage tursn a 90 degree cornernad provides a view down more than one line of approach that can ne used by tanks.

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Normally when playing a Paper Tiger scenario I avoid road movement towards the enemy like the plague,

//spoiler

I had the same experience, and also Les Licornets - the roads were absolutely free, particularly Les Licornets (The Labrynth at least had some squads covering the road in my play-through) - if one has a spare fifteen minutes they can see the results in this little movie I made for some pals of mine to show em the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhbIdXtYUyY

I thought it an obviously fatal flaw for the Germans in their defence, I only played it once so I'm not sure if there are other plans in which they lock down the road.

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tiger123

sorry, but the AT Gun moves from spot to spot in different AI plans.

Blackcat

Yup, 'Labrynth' can be really easy if you did well in 'Turnbull's Stand' - they're the same German units that you fought in that mission. A player who didn't do so well there would find this one a tad more challenging. The accounts of the fighting that took place on the 7th June to the north of Ste Mere Eglise don't indicate that the Germans were able to put up much of a fight and so the plan was to have these two missions rated 'Easy'. Thus the big guns...

Besides, it's a 16 mission campaign and I didn't want each mission to be hear-tearingly difficult to play. I want folks to finish this one and have fun doing so. I can count the number of times I've read an End of Campaign AAR report from my previous campaigns on two hands and still have fingers left to spare. Making difficult missions is actually really easy to do. Making fun ones is not so easy. ;) It's a LOT of work creating a campaign and it makes a change for me to get to read people's AARs right up to the end of it. I'm lovin' it! :D

The roads in both these missions are covered in one of the AI plans. From what I'm seeing from pics posted here of 'Licornets', I see lots of folks getting the second plan and not the 'PT plan'. You might find 'Licornets' has more teeth when you get that one.

LemuelG

I'll be taking a look at that video later today as well as the Grand Hameau Asasault AAR posted in another thread. Thanks a lot for posting them guys.

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'Labrynth' can be really easy if you did well in 'Turnbull's Stand' - they're the same German units that you fought in that mission. A player who didn't do so well there would find this one a tad more challenging.

No wonder! I kept coming across solo Germans... IIRC, in Turnbull's my mortar team evacuated with 40-odd kills to their name :D

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LemuelG

I was able to watch your video at work this afternoon (a very quiet day indeed). That was well done. I suspect you'd nailed some of the road defenders with your opening barrage as it wasn't meant to be that easy. An added bonus would be that it forced the StuG commanders to button up as well. A mere 20+ minutes to take this one down with only 7 WIA!!! I am beginning to think I made those two missions a bit too easy now. Ah well... that's life.

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Finish the campaign a couple of days ago and I would just like to say how much I enjoyed it! In CMx1 I would have run a mile to avoid such infantry-heavy scenarios but this campaign really showed to me how much better the latest engine is.

I also really appreciated the effort put into the historical aspect by Paper Tiger. The briefings were interesting to read and I really liked the way the whole thing gave you a sense of pushing the front forward. Icing on a great cake!

The only thing I would change is upping the level of difficulty a bit! Overall I reckon at extra 50% enemy would have made this more challenging to play since in general I was normally not worried about 'winning' but only about keeping my casualties down (maybe that IS historical though!). In a related way, I think the amount of HE charges for bocage-blowing could be reduced a bit to limit the offensive possibilities to only 1 flank maybe?

Oh, I particularly loved pulling up Google Earth and finding the battlefield sites! :-D

Fantastic campaign!

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I am beginning to think I made those two missions a bit too easy now. Ah well... that's life.

I'm not sure, a human would never have let me handle them so roughly. I thought the German dispositions were really good, the AI just proves incapable of reacting proactively to his flanks being turned.

A StuG or ATG tucked in behind that road intersection (main road and farm road) covering those flanking positions would likely have stopped me moving up there so quickly... needs more traps :D

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