COURAGE & FORTITUDE - survivors reunion

[Erwin]

Within 6 turns of completing this amazing campaign (WEGO/WARRIOR).

Just wondering how many other players here have completed this campaign. We should get a medal for sticking it through to the bitter end in LA HAYE.

Great training experience and for those who complain that playing the AI is too easy, or who think they have mastered CMBN, it's a "must play."

I'll post results when done so the hardcore (you know who you are) can compare.

[Agua]

HA ... La haye du poits (or whatever) stopped me cold. I was consumed with the campaign up until that point. Just my personal taste, but it looked like far too many forces to micro manage. May have played 5 minutes into it and lost enthusiasm.

[Mad Mike]

I finished it, got a Major Victory out of it.

The last mission wasn't a CMBN highlight for me and this in a collection of scenarios which always were close to be frustrating.

Anyway, I will gladly take a medal for it .

[slysniper]

I finished it about a month ago, also played it Wego on warrior setting. Made it through without ever having to replay any battles (meaning go back to earlier save (but did stop battles and was placed in the same map again), commented about some of the battles in other threads here. For anyone who has a poor battle and is faced with having to redo it, I can see the reason for losing interest in it.

I was so tired of it that I sat on the last battle in the game for a month and really did not find a interest in finishing it. Then one night I finially played it until I had a foothold in the town and decided to hit cease fire. I had a major victory. I enjoyed the challenges and it was a good test of skills, but I must agree, it was a little much, too many battles with hard won minor adcheivements. It did get old, not one I would likely go back and play again.

[TheVulture]

I thought La Haye was one of the best scenarios in the campaign. Everyone has their own preferred style of scenario I guess. Or maybe it is just that my plan of attack for once happened to match up well against the defense arrayed against me, so I had the satisfactory illusion of feeling competent.

[sburke]

I thought La Haye was one of the best scenarios in the campaign. Everyone has their own preferred style of scenario I guess. Or maybe it is just that my plan of attack for once happened to match up well against the defense arrayed against me, so I had the satisfactory illusion of feeling competent.

LOL I hear that. I decided to hold off some on the campaigns as I figured it would be more frustrating to try and develop the appropriate skills somewhere where my learning curve or lack thereof induced an additional penalty. I finally started back up in Road to Montebourg and was able to thrash the AI in the second battle pretty handily. I am clinging to the delusion it is because I am starting to actually get a handle on developing and implementing a battle plan versus it probably being the single easiest battle of any scenario/campaign. Don't spoil my delusion with facts please.

[Erwin]

Well I am proud that I struggled through this very hard campaign and didn't give up (even though I was dying to try out some of the newer campaigns, esp from the German side).

For what it's worth:

LA HAYE was a US Major Victory 1000 vs 265 I really liked LA HAYE as it seemed to me the pinnacle of CMBN scenarios with a lot of units and choices. Great stuff.

Campaign was a Total Victory (which I didn't think I deserved based on friendly casualties).

KIA 255 US vs 305 Ger

WIA 245 vs 197

MIA 2 vs 11

Tanks 3 vs 5

AFV's 2 vs 0

Other 5 vs 5

But I am SO happy to finish this brutal campaign. It's eminently winnable per the system calculations, but very frustrating due to the easy way one can take major casualties. Much of the time I felt I was fighting the game system rather than using good tactics. I tried to only replay a turn when the system did something really weird and I lost a lot of men or stuff for no fault of my own tactics. But, I really learned a lot about the CMBN system as well as discovered many weird phenomena:

1) Several of my platoon HQ's were KIA in SCHOOL OF HARD KNOCKS. Not only were their Co CO's and XO's unable to provide any C2 for the rest of the campaign, these platoon HQ's were never replaced. Nevertheless, it was not a problem to fight on without C2 and win. I concluded that C2 is overrated and is way too subtle in terms of its game effects.

2) An inf section took a casualty whilst boarding a truck. The result was the inf unit remained greyed out for the entire battle and neither it nor the truck could receive or carry out any orders.

3) A squad was killed but for one man, however, that one man was able to be issued an ASSAULT order.

All in all the designer did a great job creating a really hard campaign that has clearly sorted the men from the armchair general "poseurs."

Please don't let anyone tell you they know how to play CMBN well until they've completed the Courage and Fortitude campaign!

When I have recovered and played some rather easier games I hope to go back and try some of the battles in C&F that my track bypassed.

So, how many of us actually completed the campaign? Six???

[womble]

So, how many of us actually completed the campaign? Six???

[Raises hand].

And I went back and did the missions I didn't get first time through (University I missed because I won School and Bolleville and N803 because I went cross-country via Bumper Cars and Razorback Ridge).

In the actual run-through, I got Surrender victories in all but RR (and Crossroads...), and the campaign was a Total. I restarted School twice, Bumper Cars and RR once each, and only redid turns when something "Kwazee!!" happened.

[DavidFields]

10 more turns to finish La Haye. Has been like that for about 6 weeks. Will eventually finish it, with some sort of win. I agree it is a great campaign, one I will likely always remember. It has been my indoctrination into CMBN. University and La Haye made marvelous use of light changes during the scenari

Fun? That is the issue I am wrestling with.

[Erwin]

I know exactly what you mean, Rankorian. The good news is that when you play future campaigns/scenarios they will seem relatively easy and more fun, and you will find your standard of play much improved, or so I am finding.

[John1966]

Finished it. Major victory (WEGO, elite).

The only one I had to replay was Razorback Ridge. Funnily enough, the only one I didn't get a victory on was Bumper Cars (a draw) which is not one anyone has said they found difficult. I found the lack of gaps in the bocage and engineers made it very hard to even engage with the core German assets. I was also probably a bit jaded after School of Hard Knocks.

Actually the lack of gaps in the bocage and sometime absence of the engineers (especially Razorback Ridge) would be my biggest criticism of the campaign. Satisfying in the end but a bit of a stretch to describe as "fun".

Oh, and the final battle was pretty much won by a single surviving member of a squad with a scrounged bazooka. He even survived the battle. Medal due there I think.

[Pericles]

Razorback Ridge ended the campaign for me. There is no way I'm slogging through that again. The enemy has eyes on the hill and has lots of arty. Your armor can't go anywhere due to hedgehogs. Maybe if I had more arty to work with. The mission requires meticulous attention to detail and has low window for error. I appreciate the work that must have gone into setting up the campaign, but I don't think I have the patience to reach the level of expertise in Combat Mission required to survive this campaign. 

[Erwin]

The final mission was a great one if you enjoy huge missions.  Perhaps there is a way to extract the missions and play em separately.  I agree some of the missions required repeated play to succeed/survive.  Not fun at all to have to replay repeatedly to find the "trick/key".

[mjkerner]

Erwin, use Mad Mike's Campaign/Scenario Decompiler to extract the sceanarios from campaigns. It's been around for several years, in CMMODS now, I believe. I have extracted every scenario from every campaign in every game/module, and will never complete them all, I'm sure.

[Bulletpoint]

I completed the campaign, but if I remember correctly I did not win the final mission. Still, the campaign ended in a win overall.

I don't save/load all the time; if i screw up I stick with it or restart the mission completely (loading a save before the mission starts so that there's a chance the enemy will deploy differently if there are different AI plans included). I highly recommend this playstyle, as I really feel it made me a better player. Especially for H2H where there's no save/load to fall back on.

School of Hard Knocks was a mission I also struggled with, but later I came back to it and to my surprise won it without too much trouble, once I realised how to go about it.

[Erwin]

2 hours ago, mjkerner said:

Erwin, use Mad Mike's Campaign/Scenario Decompiler to extract the sceanarios from campaigns. It's been around for several years, in CMMODS now, I believe. I have extracted every scenario from every campaign in every game/module, and will never complete them all, I'm sure.

Thanks...  I managed to get all the way thru some years ago.  But, thought it would be useful for new players so they could at least enjoy all the scenarios.

[Heinrich505]

Erwin,

  I played it through on Elite, managed a Major Victory overall, but only pulled a tactical victory at La Haye.  I actually enjoyed that one the most, even though trying to move squads through minefields very slowly was quite a chore.

  I think I had to re-play Razorback Ridge because I was getting cut up waaaay too badly.  Managed to get through it the second time.

  I think the "Fortitude" part was meant for those who struggled through the campaign.  I sure used up a lot of that. 

  Overall I'd say I enjoyed it, but most of it was not easy.

Heinrich505