Attacking with the American Infantry Platoon

[thejetset]

As people have mentioned before, the problem is not with the hedgerow tile. It is with the way some of the maps are made. It's OK that the hedgerow is impassible to soldiers. ...This probably more closely models a real-life combat situation.

The problem is that there are not enough breaks in the hedgerows. The shorter hedgerows should have more gaps and breaks to represent the shorter and younger foliage. Taller hedgerows should have fewer breaks ... but still have a fairly decent number of them.

[nik mond]

So much has been said already, but....

Infantry battle vs AI. If you find yourself unable to advance as the AI is static with a good overlapping defence of the objective then you might want to trade shots with him rather than get worn down trying to advance.... providing you have ammo carriers: jeep, truck, or HT. The AI doesn't resupply. When they run out of ammo they surrender very quickly, or panic and run.

[LongLeftFlank]

Good discussion here and if you haven't fought Broadsword's la Nicollerie map yet, you definitely should. I personally think of it as CMBN "as it oughta be", but your own MMV.

One real revelation as I flesh out my le Carillon monster map (building farmsteads and their immediately surrounding terrain -- slowly) is that there is a wealth of natural dead zones and blind spots, both natural (irrigation ditches and wider stream draws) and manmade ( like rail cuts and embankments). A smart attacker will seek these out, but a smart defender will mine, defilade and TRP them! Definitely a critical and challenging third dimension missing from many of the "pooltable" maps.

[Erwin]

The other issue with bocage gaps is the problem in identifying them in the first place. I dunno if it's the lighting or what but I find that I often have to get to Level 1 and track sideways down the length of a bcoage "wall" in order to spot a gap. It's very time consuming.

The other problem with the lower/smaller bocage is that there are small gaps in them which you can see thru, but these are NOT traversable. So, you have to make another time-consuming judgement call as to which gaps are passable and which are not.

Put these two issues together and one has another irritating non-fun chore approaching that of the excessive bogging issue we've been bitching about...

[Broadsword56]

The other issue with bocage gaps is the problem in identifying them in the first place. I dunno if it's the lighting or what but I find that I often have to get to Level 1 and track sideways down the length of a bcoage "wall" in order to spot a gap. It's very time consuming.

The other problem with the lower/smaller bocage is that there are small gaps in them which you can see thru, but these are NOT traversable. So, you have to make another time-consuming judgement call as to which gaps are passable and which are not.

Put these two issues together and one has another irritating non-fun chore approaching that of the excessive bogging issue we've been bitching about...

@Erwin: I feel your pain. So one "standard best practice" I adopted for La Nicollerie, Choisy Crossroads, and all my maps is marking the main bocage gaps (the obvious ones the farmer would have used) with dirt and sometimes mud tiles. That makes them easy to spot, in-game. I also place many, many other gaps that I deliberately leave unmarked -- because it should be part of the tactical challenge to find those on your own and exploit them. Also -- since the Norman fields were not designed for mechanized agriculture, most field and orchard entrances/exits should not be a full space wide to allow military vehicles free access. Two things I do to simulate that:

1. Put a bocage gap at the entrance (which is never wide enough for a vehicle unless a demo charge or Rhino widens it),

2. Put an open space but use the "heavy forest" tile on it, which prevents vehicles from crossing. Those entrances/exits are marked with wooden gates, so the player can just look for the gate and not have to guess at the underlying terrain tile.

I also leave vehicle-accessible open entrances/exits in places where (my personal judgment) the bocage appears to have been removed or altered to accommodate larger fields and mechanization in the 1940s -- mainly wheatfields.

@LongLeftFlank -- Thank you for your kind words about La Nicollerie. If you like that, try Choisy too. It's not as varied in elevations, but has more farms and a village on it. As usual, when you open the map you'll feel as if you've gone from a "pooltable" to a menacing jungle. I'd encourage anyone with AI coding skills to try making some scenarios for those maps. They're adjacent to each other, so you could even create some linkage between two scenarios.