Courage and Fortitude; 116th Regt. seize bridge, hill

[Crushingleeek]

Anyone playing the courage and fortitude campaign?

I achieved major victory in the first mission, and the second mission puts you on a map of largely open land, and objectives are to seize the bridge (100 points), and the hill(200pts)/crossroads(200pts) about 700m or so further in.

I tried playing this map conservatively (scouting and hiding) as well as pushing aggressively. Both ways, my men get a serious shallacking from German artillery. Playing aggressively, I got 174 out of 500+ men killed, mostly just from raining artillery!! It just kept coming over the course of 90 minutes. (Imagine having that kind of blood on your hands as a colonel) I know the 116th had some pretty bloody days, but the kind of beating I took is getting close to cease/fire surrender status even for a computer game. I thought knocking out their heavy mortar spotter would do the trick but the rain kept falling.

1) Anyone else have difficulty/ have any tips (put spoiler alert on)? Or are not all missions made to be really winnable?

2) Is there away to cut barbed wire?

[WriterJWA]

I had major trouble with this as well. I was able to break the wire with engineers blasting through it and could get infantry on the other side, but they were quickly wiped out by the shellacking artillery.

[Crushingleeek]

I have no problem with this kind of "impossible" scenario, if that's what it is. I like the realism of some scenarios just being unwinnable, as they are in real life, and it's just up to you to minimize the damage while gaining as much as you can.

I just want to make sure there isn't something I'm not doing right.

One thing that sort of raised an eyebrow to me was how my scout team (two privates) moved forward to the bank of the river and that drew artillery fire. I'm sure anyone, especially Germans with the shortage of ammunition already in effect in summer '44, would try to target a larger force than a scout team with artillery.

[TheVulture]

***** SPOILERS ************

It's a bugger of a mission. Here's what I did.

Well, obviously set up every MG and mortar team you have ready to roll.

There are two ways to cross the bridge: on the bridge itself (very buggy in my play through), which obviously involves running into copious minefields and through TRPs. And through a complete absence of cover whilst under the gun of any number of enemy MGs and AT guns. This will probably get you killed in short order.

The better way IMHO is to slog through the water / marsh either side of the bridge. This is verrrrrry slow. Sending the squads of a platoon through one at a time with 30-60 seconds spacing will likely have them in adjacent action spots as they move through the mud. Plotting the waypoint becomes an exercise in hell though, since at least on my machine it was very hard to place waypoint where I wanted them - they kept jumping to the center of the bridge or other strange places that were not at the waters edge. Stick to the waters edge. Plot a waypoint every 8x8 tile or two or else your men will decide the quickest way to the next action post is back through the mud, onto the bridge and via the afterlife.

You men will take fire. And start trying to run, which will exhaust them in short order. Moving at quick it is possible to get to the far side in cover in 'ready' state if you take no fire.

Since you are low down - skirting the water or wading through it - you are fairly well protected from incoming fire, which means that the defenders get to expose their positions at relatively little cost to you. So now you know where to direct your mortars and MG fire.

This is where timing gets a bit tricky. Staying put behind e.g. the hedge on the far side of the bridge until the first line of defenders is suppressed or mangled saves you getting shot but will get arty dropped on your head in the near future. Pushing on up the road (well, the side of the road) to avoid the arty will almost certainly mean getting MGed to death because the defenders won't be suppressed or destroyed yet.

My solution was to spend a very long time continuing to wade down the edge of the river to the right to come out of the marsh near the small copse of trees. This took a few more casualties on the way (no bad thing - exposed more defenders) and took a long time due to tiredness in my men (and the not very fast movement on 'quick' through the mud and water), but the net result was that my platoon were in a position to assault that copse about 45 minutes in, with about 40% casualties getting that far. Yeah, they were all at 'broken' by then too, but I wasn't really expecting them to do any fighting after that anyway.

On my side of the river, I kept my front guys moving every 5 minutes or so and generally watched the artillery falling on positions I'd just left. And keeping an eye out for spotting rounds on support units I'd thought were safe.

You have a lot of time in this mission. Don't be in a hurry. It was over 40 minutes in before I'd dealt with enough of the first line defenders to start trying to push my second platoon across the river (foolishly I tried the bridge, which was till a mistake even then). Your 105 mm howitzers wil provide over 10 minutes of smoke each on a linear mission across the mouth between the swamps - so you can have more than 20 minutes to cross mostly out of LoS if you need it. One platoon of pioneers was able to deal with 3-4 minefields in the duration of one smoke mission.

Then I slowly filtered platoons through the mud and up the road (staying off the road). You can go around the barbed wire at the edges of the swamp, but it is not that fast and there is no cover. One platoon was more or less broken pusing up to the barbed wire (I don't think they ever made it past that) but again revealed more enemy positions that were dealt with by HE and MGs. The next two platoons made it in to the first line of german foxholes before falling into a state where they were no longer any use (50% casualties, broken morale). My last two platoons were just moving up to take over the final advance on the hill when the Germans surrendered.

So the main strategy is to locate enemy firing positions at minimal cost to yourself. Moving along the edge of the river did this for me, which was mostly a happy accident. Take your time. I waited over 45 minutes to start my push up the center, and still got a surrender with 20+ minutes left. You can spend the first hour shooting the hell out of any positions you find and still have time to push a whole company the length of the map under fire.

Hope this helps.

EDIT to add: I finished with around 100 causalties out of my 600 man force. Having thought about what worked and what didn't, I'm pretty sure I could do a bit better than that, but not much.

[Crushingleeek]

Wow thanks for the detailed description. It's nice to hear that at least a few others found this to be a bugger of a mission, and I'm not just forgetting to hit the "deploy" button or something similar.

***Potential spoiler***

Can engineers defuse minefields or only mark them? Does marking them make troops move through the field slower but with less casualties?

[Keith]

The key to this mission is to spread out your squads generously such that a single mortar strike won't paste an entire platoon. Whenever your troops spot a collection of foxholes, register artillery on them. When the tanks arrive, cautiously edge them forward to provide area fire to supress enemy infantry further. Once an AT gun opens up, hide your tanks and register artillery. Lead with the engineers to mark mines on the road.

[Sergei]

1) Anyone else have difficulty/ have any tips (put spoiler alert on)? Or are not all missions made to be really winnable?

I think you already got a plenty of tips, but also be aware that this is meant to be a 'very difficult' mission. However, if it doesn't seem to go forward, you can cease fire and the next mission will be the same map later in that same day, but with better preparations. THAT one you must win, though.

[Dr.Jones]

I have still problems with this mission. Making cease fire is not helping either. After that they have entire battalion there and the position is not better you start at the bridge and they still have the hill and all the flanks. I tried also to hit the observers on the hill but they have too many of them.

br.

Dr.Jones

[Jrod]

This mission is seriously difficult. For me there were a couple key decisions that eventually led me to victory (after 3 consecutive failures and subsequent restarts).

First was pounding the hell out of the hill with heavy mortar fire right off the bat. I think I was able to knock out a few key arty spotters which paid serious dividends throughout the rest of the mission.

Second was holding my tanks back. I did not even move them forward an inch until my infantry was up to the long line of barb wire at the end of the neck of the two swamps. This allowed me to locate and neutralize all the A/T guns before moving my tanks forward.

Other than that it seems like getting MGs into the enemy foxholes on the right side and then getting a few fairly intact squads up in that small hedge adjacent to the hill seems to be the best way to force an enemy surrender (that and my 3 surviving tanks pummeling their positions).

This is a brutally hard and sometimes frustrating map (ran into a frustrating issue where several squads got stuck "inside" the bridge) but all in all fun and satisfying to win.

Came out with 138 killed though :-(

[DavidFields]

It would appear as though one could inflict enemy casualties, not take casualties of one's own, and take the bridge, and get 600 points.

Is that a viable approach--knock the heck out of the germans for almost an hour, then take the bridge, and call it a day (tea time!)

[Elmar Bijlsma]

Severely disliked this one. Disliked it from the start and was proven absofeckinglutely right by what unfolded.

The setup zone lacks elbow room. Why in the name of all that is holy does it not extend all the way to the back?! That way I do not have to crowd my support in to the very few decent spots within setup. It was largely due to this I kissed goodbye to a substantial part of my mortar support who got nailed while still conducting their opening barrage. They could've done that from further back, except the game would not let me.

That and a rather substantial part of my fire support going astray. As luck would have it the mortars that got nailed were the only on board mortars actually hitting their assigned targets. That was enough for me to ceasefire. Looked at the next campaign scenario and, not being put in a good frame of mind by aforementioned, quit in dismay at the sea of units I had to control next.

I LIKE hard scenarios. But I loathe with a passion such insufferably lame design limits. What was the rational for limiting the setup zone to such an exposed area? There was perfectly usable terrain right behind the setup zone. Why? Had I not wanted the pre planned barrage (promptly reminding me that these are currently humbugged) I would have run most of my mortars to the back anyway. It was such a glaringly exposed position that I did not want to be there before a single round dropped. But the cover afforded was meagre, so I had to.

Maybe I'll try this campaign again someday. Post patch maybe so I can at least get decent use out of my mortars before they get smacked in such a bullcrap way as not being able to set up somewhere at the back.

[TheVulture]

Maybe I'll try this campaign again someday. Post patch maybe so I can at least get decent use out of my mortars before they get smacked in such a bullcrap way as not being able to set up somewhere at the back.

Not sure what happened to you there. I was perfectly able to set my entire force up out of line of sight of the enemy (including my mortars, obviously).

[Offshoot]

Apart from the road up to the bridge, which I assume is TRPed to death, the shelling seems completely arbitrary. Some heavy machine guns on the little rocky mound in the ploughed field have been unmolested for ages but two big shells fell right at the back in the exact round the reinforcing company turned up, taking out the Company HQ and the XO. I had my big mortars behind a hedge on the right and they have been untouched so far. I'm seriously considering running all the infantry across open ground and hiding them by the water on the near river bank to see what happens.

[DaveDash]

Ok this mission is a pain in the a**. Spoilers Below:

First mission ever in my CM life where I have not been able to win it first try. Came oh so close and had 118 KIA vs 93 KIA. Not bad given the ridiculous circumstances of this mission, but still terrible casualties.

This mission may be realistic - but it is certainly not fun. When CMSF started, a lot of the missions in Task Force Thunder were designed from a realism point of view, and the CMSF campaign wasn't the best. As the designers got better, missions became more of a balance of realism and fun.

This mission really fails as a fun mission. You are given hordes of units to control that you must filter through one little choke point. The enemy has craploads of artillery and you have no cover. Basically it is a meat grinder.

You can't set up effective bases of fire, because your guys get chewed up by artillery. I managed to clean up the all the enemy anti tank guns and would have steamrolled to victory, except ALL my tanks got bogged as soon as they touched one small fraction of grass trying to navigate the buggy mess that is the bridge.

Pretty much for round 2, I'm just going to sit back and blow the hell out of the Germans with artillery for 1 hour 30 minutes, then move one guy up to the bridge near the end.

All in all, horrible horrible mission. Thumbs down.

This mission could be improved dramatically if there were multiple paths you could take to win it. For future campaigns, please, take some lessions from the CMSF campaign designers.

[tdogg]

Missions difficult as these are not always realistic in the sense that if your forces are conducting a mission such as this you have failed to maneuver operationally. This would be one serious reprimand for a colonel or brigadier general.

In real world, a Lt Col or a Major at Battalion would order a recon or probe of the area, realize the enemy kill zone and go around or wait for the big guns like 155s or 215s to plaster the area. CAS might be possible, though it seems interdiction was more the allied airpower them in normandy.

Never should you cross a bridge under preregistered arty fire and mg42s.

It's missions like these that make me wish for more operational command simmulation during campaigns, just a simple 2d interface in between missions. Just something to give the player a chance to address operational issues that arise during a campaign.

[Wolfe]

Finally got this bugger on the third try. Those AT guns made my life miserable. The damn PaK38 WOULD NOT DIE! So on the third go-round I surmised the copse of trees off to my right "might" make a great hiding place for an enemy AT, and I prep-bombarded the place with half my arty tubes before doing anything else. Cheating? Maybe. But at some point you just want to move forward with the campaign.

One thing that makes a big difference too is to WAIT for the daylight to change. When you start out it's so dark you actually can't target the hill ahead. The tanks came early, but I just let them sit there until my FOs had LOS to the hill, then moved 1 tank out to draw any AT fire - it did. I then took out the two remaining guns in succession with massed MG and mortar fire.

I spread the MG teams out on either side of the bridge, just short of the river, to provide covering fire. And once the AT guns were dead moved the tanks 1-by-1 over the bridge.

My MGs took a beating from the arty, but I took great effort to buddy-aid as much as possible so I could have them for later in the campaign. In the end my tanks did all the pushing forward. I got a major victory with only pushing 2 platoons across that bridge (1 team at a time).

Whew. What a pain!

- Chris

[DavidFields]

Ok this mission is a pain in the a**. Spoilers Below:

This mission really fails as a fun mission. You are given hordes of units to control that you must filter through one little choke point. The enemy has craploads of artillery and you have no cover. Basically it is a meat grinder.

........

Pretty much for round 2, I'm just going to sit back and blow the hell out of the Germans with artillery for 1 hour 30 minutes, then move one guy up to the bridge near the end.

.......

All in all, horrible horrible mission. Thumbs down.

In my opinion, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the key [i don't think this is a spoiler] is looking at the situation prior to the start of the scenario. With open terrain, one is not going to get across it without killing everything in cover on the other side. Since that ain't likely to happen, particularly if one only likes to play scenario once, for keeps, I didn't even try.

Thinking in campaign terms, not scenario terms, my objective was to pound the other side, preserve forces, and get the bridge.

Result: draw 600 Allied to 516 German. I lost 24 KIA, 10 WIA and 2 tanks, Germans lost 46 KIA and 65 WIA. Could I have done better? Yes, if I had not been playing "blind", and knew the enemy set up. I won't go into Spoilers at this point. But I was quite pleased.

And was quite pleased at a scenario which rewarded restraint.

I enjoyed the scenario, and have been impressed by the design of the campaign thus far--clearly done by someone who has an enormous amount of experience, and wanted to do something subtle--also seems like a semi-tutorial in both artillery, and in moving largish infantry formations.

Do those of you who win "School" not get to play the "University" scenario?

[TheVulture]

Do those of you who win "School" not get to play the "University" scenario?

No - if you win the school scenario (not sure what level of victory is required) you move on to a 'chosing the path' scenario to select a branch of the campaign (IIRC).

[DavidFields]

Wow, University is tough, and long. I feel as though it is giving me a course in infantry batallion tactics. And despite my, "try to get it right the first time", 50 turns in to the 90 turn scenario, I suddenly realize I may not win, and may actually try it a second time.

Nicely done. Fair. Just, in my opinion, University is tough.

I think the hardest thing for me to learn is patience. 90 turns of WEGO is a long time--can't remember CM1 scenarios being so long. I think I probably push my infantry too hard--and use "Move" too much on these long maps, when sprints and resting may be safer.

[DaveDash]

I enjoyed the scenario, and have been impressed by the design of the campaign thus far--clearly done by someone who has an enormous amount of experience, and wanted to do something subtle--also seems like a semi-tutorial in both artillery, and in moving largish infantry formations.

I guess we'll agree to disagree.

The campaigns produced in CMSF (Marines, British Module, NATO) were excellent.

This mission for a start is not finished properly, and goes against many of the design components that made the later CMSF campaigns excellent.

This mission is "fun" because CMBN is new and fresh, but if I loaded up this mission in CMSF after NATO, I would be utterly disgusted with its design.

[DavidFields]

How about I am used to WW2 scenarios, never played CMSF, find Modern Warfare foreign, and find this campaign interesting...much like the campaign Blitzkrieg (?sp) in CM 1.

Did you play the next Scenerio, University, when you lost? I came close to winning it the first time, likely lost on casualies, and not have a new respect for the falling sun, but will have to have a second go at it.

[Elmar Bijlsma]

I like hard missions, too few missions are.

But this one was just badly put together. Having given it another go my opinion has not mellowed in the least. I continue to object strongly to the way the US back area is so limited and exposed. I'm fine with advancing across open ground but if my supporting elements don't have the room to operate and can't sneeze without near instant retribution, I'm going call that poor design.

Not a big fan of the German pre-planned barrage either. It is out of place. Why is it falling there when there is no evident cause for it to do so?

German forwards defences seem to be those of an officer not very attached to his men. That was the case in the preceding mission too but that looked like a badly chosen forward OP.

But the forces in this one that are left so hopelessly exposed and are too numerous to be a credible deployment, even if less easily flanked (way, WAY too easy) as in the preceding mission. I cannot rationalize it.

[Lt Bull]

**********SPOILERS BELOW**********

First off I must say that I hardly ever play(ed) any CM single player. But I am learning that these single player campaigns ARE a challenge! In particular, THIS campaign, "Courage and Fortutude", I would classify as EXTREMELY challenging.

I commend the campaign designer for creating such a great, challenging campaign with great maps. I really like the "branches" in the campaign and the choices the player has. Hope we see more of it. Highly recommend this campaign and any others like it.

To this particular battle: Yes I have played it, turn based. Unfortunately it was punctuated (and in some ways "ruined" because of all the reloading) by the "out of memory" crash that can happen during turn-base CMBN play. Until this gets fixed (if it ever will) I highly recommend that players consult the Task Manager while playing and keep an eye on the memory usage of the "CM Normandy.exe" process. Save the game before the memory grows to over 1.4GBs, shut CMBN down, restart CMBN and resume your game to avoid the "out of memory" crash.

Anyways, I was able to get a win out of this particular battle (eventually) however, I can probably be certain that had I NOT had to reload the game due to all the "out of memory" crashes (maybe 12-15 reloads), I am quite sure I would have suffered a bad defeat playing it through the first time blindly.

I did however stick to my original plan. Locating and killing AT guns was of course a priority. I assigned 2 rifle platoons to advance towards and across the river to seek and expose enemy positions, exploring the possibility of outflanking the enemy positions up the right flank.

I scattered my MG and FO teams across the map to provide suppression fire against any enemy units that opened up on the rifle platoons I sent forward to draw fire. I didn't actually send the forward infantry units across the bridge but rather had them wade through the swamp that is under the bridge. Once these infantry units got to the other side of the river, they turned right and made them move across the map along the river bank (partially shielded from the small arms fore that was targeting them). Moving through this swamp terrain is both slow and tiring.

When the remnants of this platoon made it to the far right of the map (approximately 60min of game time had elapsed by then), they turned left and headed up the right flank of the map across the open ground to the woods in front of them.

From there, under the cover of smoke, I had these units advance further up the right flank reaching a line of hedgerows that shielded them from enemy fore from the left. These units actually made it all the way to the far rear left of the enemy positions and were poised to outflank the enemy positions on the rear hill.

By this time all enemy AT guns had been neutralised (either by my flanking infantry units or by arty fire). With this small group of infantry in place, I now used my 105mm guns to lay down a smoke barrage and rushed groups of rifle platoon infantry and tanks across the bridge and to the right (engineers had marked the mines earlier on).

I was able to get lost of suppressive firepower against the enemy positions on and around the hill. I even managed to get a tank up the far right flank to support the infantry there. The enemy surrendered a few turns before the official end, major victory.

If you think THIS battle was tough, depending on the choices you make after this battle, there is ANOTHER battle in this campaign that is equally as challenging. I would really like to hear an honest story of ANYONE who is able to blindly play the "US attack across a ridge" battle (on Iron difficulty) and win. :eek:

[TheVulture]

**********SPOILERS BELOW**********

If you think THIS battle was tough, depending on the choices you make after this battle, there is ANOTHER battle in this campaign that is equally as challenging. I would really like to hear an honest story of ANYONE who is able to blindly play the "US attack across a ridge" battle (on Iron difficulty) and win. :eek:

Yeah, for all the problems people have with this mission, it is a cakewalk compared to razorback ridge. Though with the branching campaign system I think you can avoid it - it is one one of the branches before they recombine for the final attack on the town.

[DavidFields]

University: did not replay it completely, went back to one save about 30 turns from the end. I don't think I understood the victory conditions well enough the first time. Shifted most of my stuff to the left flank, and got Minor Victory. I survive to move on.

The method to my madness on making these posts is so that new players on the board who have problems with Courage and Fortitude are not overly discouraged--since alphabetically it is early in the Campaign folder, one could unsuspectingly start it as a first campaign, and be crushed.

Both School and University are demanding. Perhaps they should be labeled as such (I found Over Hill, Down Dale, on the other hand, to be easy--which meant one did not know of what was coming later)

Sounds, from other threads, that BFC is thinking about the "difficulty" issue. In this case, I am not sure even adding units, or experience, would make things easy--just the shear micromanaging could be intimidating.

More like the grading for ski slopes? This is a "black diamond", and as long as one is aware of that, have a blast.

We do this for fun. In skiing, put me on a steep trail, and I am not having fun--I am miserable. We want, I think, to avoid putting CM2 players into surprising miserable situations.