Game to hard

[Magpie_Oz]

Maybe something like, a squad attacks an MG nest, then a Platoon attacks a squad, then add in a tank then maybe up to a company etc, start small and get more complex.

[Michael Emrys]

Maybe something like, a squad attacks an MG nest, then a Platoon attacks a squad, then add in a tank then maybe up to a company etc, start small and get more complex.

Exactly. Coordinating infantry and infantry/armor attacks with on-call artillery can be particularly tricky. Especially if there are obstacles such as wire, mines, or bocage that must be cleared in the process. And I don't want this to sound like it is only attack tactics that need teaching, but also a coordinated defense on various terrains and with various forces at hand.

Michael

[Speedy]

In BFC's defense, Haig's tactics didn't work all that well for Haig either.

They worked well enough, ask the Germans.

Had to comment the simple populist views of an unoriginal, incompetent Haig are so far removed from historical fact it really annoys me.

[Magpie_Oz]

Exactly. Coordinating infantry and infantry/armor attacks with on-call artillery can be particularly tricky. Especially if there are obstacles such as wire, mines, or bocage that must be cleared in the process. And I don't want this to sound like it is only attack tactics that need teaching, but also a coordinated defense on various terrains and with various forces at hand.

I'd do 'em but I suck at maps.

Another thing you can do is PBEM an old hand and have them tell you where you go wrong, works for me!

[lookeylou]

They could add a Nerf setting for the "Gamers" and a Realistic setting for us Real Men.

Isn't that called basic training?

[BloodyBucket]

Lookeylou's link to that Few Good Men Forum seems like a pretty good resource.

I think a thread of favorite tricks and tips would be a good start here.

[dieseltaylor]

Seems to me that people have some different ideas on learning/teaching. However to make my method clearer;

How to do scenarios are always written by people who have more than the basic knowledge. Breaking down the steps does not necessarily make it fun or particularly useful,

For example for fun why not start wiht driving a Jeep around a course and give people a rough idea what a good time would be. We could throw in some parking/reversing moves. Then get them to try other vehicles.

Suggest they try cross-country moves .... experimenting is fun.

Ditto infantry. Oh it could be fun

Artillery run a FOO [or take him] to point x and see how fast he can hit a moving dummy target.

Then go to scenarios where they shoot back and see how units last. DO NOT try to play through scenarios until you have done the fun things and have timing, exhaustion levels, and your own destrucibility reasonably well assimilated.

[womble]

I'm not sure that explicit 'training scenarios' are necessary. QBs against the AI are 'throwaway situations' where you can footle around as much as you wish, trying things out and redoing SNAFUs at will. There are so many facets of the game that need to be learnt, from basic controls to the subtleties of how on-map conditions affect unit visibility, that any training sheaf would be incomplete.

I say "AI QBs" because scenarios have FoW built in as part of their challenge, so lose some of their charm if you replay them, IME, and HvH, you're dependent on the opponent's feedback, if it's to be a training rather than learning experience.

[TrailApe]

Pzrshrek,

Here’s a thought, why don’t you leave the scenarios/QB’s/Camapaigns for a bit and move you training to a more controlled environment.

Get into the designer and build yourself something where you can control the variables. I nicked the map from one of the demo’s ‘Closing The Pocket’, it’s a cracking map with loads of interesting terrain that can provide you with tactical puzzles. You are calling the shots, you decide on what resources the AI has and you can give yourself Naval Guns until it’s just not funny anymore. You can also get rid of the Fog of War and see what the AI is up to.One caveat – if you give the AI mortars/artillery, prepare for casualties.

By getting stuck into the designer, you are not only learning the game at your own pace, but you are also starting on the path of designing your own scenarios and eventually, possibly - perhaps - maybe - even campaigns! Add a few features to the map – for a lark I bodged on a strip of sand and a load of shallow ford tiles at one end – hey presto, you’ve got a beach assault (well sort of). Try experimenting with the time also, a burning AFV looks very atmospheric in the pre-dawn gloom and your tactics have to adapt as LOS improves. One you start to beat the AI on a reasonably regular basis – then play it again from the other side – that will keep you honest!

And, as already been mentioned – be patient. Even when the clock is ticking down, move carefully and maintain ‘shape’ and communications

More importantly, have fun.

[michael Dwyer]

Someone posted earlier to do a quick battle and purchase both side. This way you can balance the forces and know what your up against.

I go one farther and say set it up as attack/defend and then play both sides in a hotseat wego. Set up your defense. Then dont move anyone again, just observe how the fire of your attackers in suppressing them. Work the attack as carefully as possible with all the ideas from this thread (and there are lots of them here). As you switch back and forth from german to american you can see how your spotting is going and how much you really have spotted. You will also know how the fire is really effecting the enemy and how suppressed they really are.

[slysniper]

I have not read through this thread but I hope someone has pointed out that playing on the basic training level is NOT the easy level, I have found that setting is actually harder because Borg spotting is active, thus if poor tactics is used he is receiving AI fire from every unit that can bear on him.

I recall this issue back when I first tried the CM2 engine, even with plenty of skill, the AI seemed tougher on the easy setting.

[womble]

I have not read through this thread but I hope someone has pointed out that playing on the basic training level is NOT the easy level, I have found that setting is actually harder because Borg spotting is active, thus if poor tactics is used he is receiving AI fire from every unit that can bear on him.

I recall this issue back when I first tried the CM2 engine, even with plenty of skill, the AI seemed tougher on the easy setting.

I agree somewhat with this. I think the shorter artillery delays apply to the AI too, allowing them to nail you down with mortars much more quickly than in the 'more realistic' FoW settings.

That said, playing a few games in Basic Training mode gives you a bit of a better insight as to the effects of various fires on various targets, rather than it just being "firing back/not firing back much, probablt/dead AFAICT" trinary status.

[rune]

Guys,

There is a much simplier solution, one that doesn't rate scenarios [what is hard? If it is hard for one person and easy for another then what rating does it get?], doesn't require dumbed down scenarios to show someone how to drive.

I will be out of town for a National meeting for soccer officials, but when I get back, or if someone else would like to do so, play the game pbem and will teach you the commands and tactics. So the first game will be a teaching moment, not playing to win, to get you up to speed. After that, I suggest playing others pbem to see other tactics at work. Best way to learn, see examples.

I'll check in when I get back from LA, if you don't have a pbem, I'll send you an email.

Rune

[Blackcat]

In BFC's defense, Haig's tactics didn't work all that well for Haig either. They were positively unpleasant for the people asked to carry them out.

Sorry to interupt, but people do tend to say silly things about WWI and imagine that WW2 was so much better.

If you take into account the relative lengths of the Campaign and the numbers of troops deployed then you will find that Normandy was a bloodier campaign for the Brits than was the Somme in 1916.

To put it another way a British soldier had more chance of becoming a casualty in Normandy than his father did on the Somme. If you factor in the change in ratios between teeth and support arms (there was a much bigger proportion of people in "safe" rear area jobs in 1944 than there were in 1916) the situation was even more dangerous for the combat troops.

Now back to the topic under discussion....

[Magpie_Oz]

Don't care who "is to blame " or what or why but the stats are simple:

WW1 : 330000 Australians out of 4 000 000 served overseas in 4 years.

60000 died 137 000 were wounded

WW2 : 1 000 000 Australians out of 7 000 000 served in 6 years.

27000 Died 23 000 wounded

So I/we don't find much silly about the "bad press" for WW1

[mike2R]

I'm a new player and have had problems with the difficulty as well.

I think the best advice I've read on this thread is to play with the quick battle system. Scenarios and campaigns are generally made by experienced players for experienced players, and can be brutal for the newbie. Even if you don't want to pick both sides yourself, you can still adjust the force levels to give yourself an advantage - an extra 70% or so point advantage helps a lot!

Things I've learnt so far - there is better, more comprehensive advice upthread, but this is stuff I've learnt the hard way in the last couple of weeks, and might be handy since it is from a newbie perspective:

1. Scout. If you're going to move a squad somewhere, first send a scout team. If you think that an enemy might attack from a direction, detach a scout team and send them off in that direction as a picket. Everything is so much easier when you know where they are before they engage your main force.

2. Discard any rock-paper-scissors ideas you may have from standard RTS games. Yes a machine gun is effective against infantry, but infantry are also effective against a machine gun crew. Volume of fire is the important thing. If you've located some enemy infantry, don't be satisfied by sicing a machine gun on them, they'll probably suppress the crew before they've got set up. Instead set two machine guns on them, as many squads of infantry as you can, and see if you can call in some mortars.

On a similar theme, anti-tank guns are badly named. They should be called anti-everything guns. But they are very effective against tanks. Never ever move a tank anywhere you haven't first moved infantry.

3. C2 is really really important. Keep platoons together whenever possible. If it isn't possible, keep the HQ near the elements which are most likely to come in contact with the enemy. If you get that wrong, move the HQ asap.

4. It isn't a race. There is something in the wego system that makes me want to rush things. I just have this feeling that every unit should be doing something every turn... This is false. Or rather, sitting in reserve IS doing something; it is fulfilling the very important role of not getting dead, ensuring you have forces ready next turn to avenge what happened on this one.

5. Artillery is a bitch. And doesn't know what side it is on. Keep an eye out for every round falling, and if one falls near your guys forget caution and just leg it.

[Blackcat]

Don't care who "is to blame " or what or why but the stats are simple:

WW1 : 330000 Australians out of 4 000 000 served overseas in 4 years.

60000 died 137 000 were wounded

WW2 : 1 000 000 Australians out of 7 000 000 served in 6 years.

27000 Died 23 000 wounded

So I/we don't find much silly about the "bad press" for WW1

The fact that you weren't there doesn't change the fact that Normandy was more of a meat grinder than the Somme.

[Magpie_Oz]

The fact that you weren't there doesn't change the fact that Normandy was more of a meat grinder than the Somme.

It is not about whether we decided to leave defending your home and go to look after ours second time around, UK numbers are a similar if not worse tale of woe.

WW1 : 6 600 000 Mobilised 885000 Dead 1 600 000 wounded

WW2 : 5 900 000 Mobilised 383000 Dead 284000 wounded

About 15% more served in WW1 than 2 for the UK but more than twice the deaths and nearly 6 times the wounded and in WW1 a far greater percentage of casualties were within the Army as the other forces were not as large or involved as they were in WW2.

Australia had 3 times as many serve in WW2 but incurred less than half the number of deaths and a sixth the number of wounded, same for us as a large number of our casualties were from POW's and RAAF in bomber command.

"Originally Posted by dan/california

In BFC's defense, Haig's tactics didn't work all that well for Haig either. They were positively unpleasant for the people asked to carry them out."

Pretty much sums it up for me

[Blackcat]

Mr. Oz, you are firing wide. Australia's casualties, whilst horrendous in both wars, have nothing to do with how nasty Normandy was as a campaign.

The chances of a Brit or Canadian, particulalry in the combat arms, becoming a casualty in Normandy was higher than his forebears on the Somme in 1916. The later is written into folklore as a campaign of Lions led by Donkeys, a slaughter, etc., the former isn't.

If Haig's methods (which, mostly, weren't his but let that pass for now) were so awful why don't Montgomery and his subordinate generals come in for the same level of criticism? Dempsey was certanly no more competent than Rawlinson and had fewer, if any, of the technological barriers and troop training problems that the latter had to try and overcome.

[MengJiao]

Mr. Oz, you are firing wide. Australia's casualties, whilst horrendous in both wars, have nothing to do with how nasty Normandy was as a campaign.

The chances of a Brit or Canadian, particulalry in the combat arms, becoming a casualty in Normandy was higher than his forebears on the Somme in 1916. The later is written into folklore as a campaign of Lions led by Donkeys, a slaughter, etc., the former isn't.

If Haig's methods (which, mostly, weren't his but let that pass for now) were so awful why don't Montgomery and his subordinate generals come in for the same level of criticism? Dempsey was certanly no more competent than Rawlinson and had fewer, if any, of the technological barriers and troop training problems that the latter had to try and overcome.

I agree that Haig-bashing is not particularly worthwhile. If you look at what he thought he learned at First Ypres (ie, keep hammering because the defense is close to breaking), some of what is read as his mistakes becomes more comprehensible. Even so (perhaps ironically), WWI was what Montgomery wanted to avoid. Normandy was definitely a horrific fight for the UK and Canada because they faced an in-depth defense on a very narrow front and nowhere else to go, while on the Somme, eventually some tactics for limited attacks were evolved and there were other options (stop attacking -- not an option in Normandy, switch elsewhere -- not an option in Normandy, use tanks -- not much of a novelty in Normandy).

I thought ritual abuse of Montgomery was more popular than ritual abuse of Haig these days.

[MikeyD]

Reading over the 'on topic' posts, I think a newbie learner should do two things. 1) Replay the same scenario multiple times using wildly different tactics each time. 2) Don't mind losing. You walk your men up the middle of a road and they all get shot down. Ah, a learning experience! Maybe next time you'll drop a smoke screen at the end of the road, or maybe avoid roads entirely, or maybe do 'recon by fire' into likely enemy locations, or maybe something else. Each attempt is a new learning experience. The knowledge is accumulative, it carries over into other scenarios.

[Boo Radley]

The game definitely has a learning curve. A bit embarrassed to say, so far I've played nothing but the tutorial campaigns 3 or 4 times due to time constraints and to due getting slaughtered.

I've dropped every mortar round in the demo on the AT gun and still lost 3 tanks and a full squad to it.

I've cleared the farm, took out the first MG. Then rushed the AT gun from the farm with 2 squads, while supressing the with mortars, only to have the attaackers cut to ribbons by the 2nd MG.

It hasn't been fun at all, but I'll heed the words of Winston Churchill“Never, never, never, never give up.”

Don't be embarrassed, All I've done so far with the game is play "The Road to Berlin" three times.

The first time, I lost 4 tanks to that AT gun and a panzershreck when the game was about halfway done. I quit that game, figuring my men were really close to fragging me and started over, going much more slowly.

The second time, I still had 3 tanks at the end of the game, but I hadn't taken either the farm or the crossroads, although I was much closer to the crossroads than any of the German forces and what was left of the Germans near the crossroads were all routed, so I really question that decision.

Now, the 3rd time, I'm taking it even slower and as yet, have not lost a tank and I'm pretty sure I've knocked out both MGs and the AT gun.

Unfortunately, this time around the enemy artillery is NOT falling off the map (Figures, don't it?) and I've had two squads get all blowed up!

But I'm learning each time. This game is much harder than CMx1 because it's far more nuanced. Split squads, scout teams, making sure your troops are facing the correct way... there's a whole 'nother level of finessing involved here, and as has been said before, there's a much greater learning curve.

But it's a trip, no doubt about it.

[YankeeDog]

Don't be embarrassed, All I've done so far with the game is play "The Road to Berlin" three times.

The first time, I lost 4 tanks to that AT gun and a panzershreck when the game was about halfway done. I quit that game, figuring my men were really close to fragging me and started over, going much more slowly.

The second time, I still had 3 tanks at the end of the game, but I hadn't taken either the farm or the crossroads, although I was much closer to the crossroads than any of the German forces and what was left of the Germans near the crossroads were all routed, so I really question that decision.

Now, the 3rd time, I'm taking it even slower and as yet, have not lost a tank and I'm pretty sure I've knocked out both MGs and the AT gun.

Unfortunately, this time around the enemy artillery is NOT falling off the map (Figures, don't it?) and I've had two squads get all blowed up!

But I'm learning each time. This game is much harder than CMx1 because it's far more nuanced. Split squads, scout teams, making sure your troops are facing the correct way... there's a whole 'nother level of finessing involved here, and as has been said before, there's a much greater learning curve.

But it's a trip, no doubt about it.

I pretty much credit by ability to breeze through that scenario on the experience of playing as Red in CMSF for several years. You think going up against PaK40s and MG42s with Shermans and BARs is hard, try going up against Abrams and Javelins with T-72s and RPG-7s.

Got all objectives, didn't lose any tanks, only had a few infantry casualties (don't remember exactly, less than 5 WIA/KIA plus several yellow injured guys). Granted, there was some luck involved; the AT Gun did get one good penetrating hit on one of my tanks, and it was sheer luck that it survived. I also think I got some good "die rolls" on a few of the infantry firefights -- I suspect if I re-ran some of the more intense turns, I suspect the average number of U.S. casualties would be more than what I got on my final count.

Anyway, I think I still have all my saved movie files from Road to Berlin... I'd be happy to post them somewhere if someone can spare the web hosting space. I could probably find some time this week to write up a short AAR guide to go along with them, focusing on my tactical thinking and tips for people who are new to the CMx2 engine.

[herr_oberst]

Don't be embarrassed, All I've done so far with the game is play "The Road to Berlin" three times.

If Boo can do it, so can you! (Hmm... have to talk to Steve about licensing that particular remark as part of CM marketing...)

Seriously, if you're new to Battlefront games, or an old hand that skipped the whole modern era set of CMSF, then expect to take your lumps. Very similar games, but the nuances are different. And unlike most anything else out there.

Battlefront games have the reputation of being a thinking man's game... they are. In short, you'll fare far better if you do think, and learn, and read up on period tactics.

If you plan to advance your pixeltruppen from A to B, get your camera down and follow that path... where are you vulnerable? Can you interdict the line of sight with smoke? Can you lay suppressive fire on any unfriendly unit positions? What terrain can you use to your advantage?

My first "Road to Berlin" attempt was going smoothly until my lead Shermans crossed the hedge gap by the farm entrance, and it was downhill from there.

But expect to replay your first scenario a couple of times, many scenarios have multiple AI plans, and won't play out the same every time. Even if you encounter the same AI plan, I'd expect you to perform better than the last time.

Barkman's Corner can be great fun, and good for iterative play. Winning is fun, winning with near zero losses is even more fun!

[argie]

When I started with the Tutorials and the first scenarios, I thought I'll never be able to manage any battle bigger than Platoon level.

I just finished the Campaign Panzermarsch with a Total Victory at Iron Level (the only one I'm playing, in Wego mode).

The key was to try every thing I thought could work on RL once and again in the Tutorials in Basic Training until I was confident on how it will actually work in game.

When the Campaign was in the last battles, I got far more frustrated for my insufficient gear than for my way of dealing with almost a battalion of pixeltruppen. And I did a lot of stupid things in those battles just for the frustration of not being able to play adequately.

I let the AI do the most targeting and it worked fine.

I did take a lot of care on my troops, stoping to give them buddy aid every time and moving them slowly to their objectives, always seeking for cover.

The AI wasn't a great opponent, but it worked fairly better than CM1 generation games, the last wargames I've played from a few years until now.

Well, overall, the learning curve is steep, but it rewards greatly.