COTA (mini-guide): Tutorial, AAR, and tips!

[MarkShot]

You will see unit roles for road columns such as ...

[MarkShot]

And ...

[MarkShot]

Okay, now that the entire COTA team has had a chance to introduce themselves in this thread, it is time to wrap up this AAR.

[MarkShot]

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New Orders

The sky is just beginning to show a little light.

You'll notice that my armor and motorized infantry are down at Larissa.

7 hours remain in the scenario. If you look at the Win Meter in the top left hand corner, you will see that I am just shy of a decisive victory. Exiting these units at Larissa will secure my decisive victory.

This is the objective labeled "Assemble at Larissa" in the objective list.

[MarkShot]

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New Orders

I group all these units together (just do the old mouse drag routine) and give them an order to exit.

[MarkShot]

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GAME OVER

And here is the final situation to the North.

[MarkShot]

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GAME OVER

And here is the final situation to the South.

You will notice that none of my units exited at Larissa. As a result, this got logged as a bug.

Had this been working right, then the units will dissappear from the map and you'll get a message. With COTA there are no predesignated units to exit. However, you must satisfy the requirements set out by the scenario designer which can be specified in armor ratings, anti-personel ratings, bombard ratings, etc... I have exited units in other games, but these units wouldn't go (and I tried everything).

So, the final result was a marginal victory. And this is now on Dave's task list to investigate.

---

Besides giving you a chance to look at COTA and pick up a few insights, one of the nice things about this thread is that it has provided you, the customers, with a chance to see what goes on behind the scenes. As you can see Panther is extremely responsive within the limits of its resources unlike companies which at best use the testers to catch bugs. The testing team is made up of a fairly diverse set of individuals from those who have done extensive historical research to having military service experience to someone such as myself who has neither but has been in systems development for 20+ years.

[MarkShot]

I said I would talk a little bit more about the scenario itself when done.

The force ratio here was something like 10:3 (Axis:Allies) with the Allies having two excellent terrain features to work with: a river and a wooded road choke point to the far North.

So, how can the player lose when playing the Germans?

Remember, I took a hasty attack approach in this AAR. I had played this previously as the Germans and instead took a deliberate attack approach and suffered a marginal defeat. What went wrong?

(1) The deliberate attacks allowed the Allies to reach their defensive positions and dig-in. That vastly improved their situation.

(2) The deliberate attacks along with enhanced defensive situation of the Allies ate up precious time that the Germans did not have.

(3) An unopposed attack generates much more fatigue than an unopposed road march. Remember the 141st Regt and 143rd Regt are also on foot and have a lot of ground to cover. Having the 141st Regt perform a deliberate attack exhausted them to the point that they had difficulty accomplishing their other objectives to the South-East.

[MarkShot]

Alright, let's flip the scenario and look at it from the Allied player's perspective. I am not going to do another AAR, but I will sketch in broad strokes a successful plan:

You cannot mass any place as the Allies, even at Tempe. It's not a question of "if the Germans will make it across the river, but more like when and in what condition". So, you have to spread your forces very thin.

You will have two arty batteries and near the end platoon of armor will show up at Larissa to help out. Your entire force of three battalions is on foot.

You are in a hasty defense situation. You have to hustle individual companies to defensive positions immediately. They have to get to cover, halt, and dig-in before the Germans are upon them. Otherwise, what happened to the Allies in my AAR will happen to your men. If they can get dug-in, they will fair much better.

To the North, a well placed company in the woods along the road can tie up the German column of tanks and trucks for an extended period.

You will only want to place a scattering of companies along the river and hold half back in reserve and to exit.

You should set your HQ units significantly back from the action so that they don't get overrun. If HQ units should happen to be in a retreating or routing state, then they will be incapable of relaying any orders to their subordinates.

Your arty should be towards the South well clear of being overrun. They can sit on some objectives for you and also be close to Larissa when the time comes to bug out.

At Tempe, you have some good defensive terrain and it is quite feasible to blow a bridge or two if it comes to that. (The AI does this automatically if it feels it can no longer hold the crossing. This happens when you give the a deny crossing order to your units.)

To the South, there isn't any good defensive terrain around the crossings. The good terrain there is too far set back from the crossings to be effective at night. The best terrain in a couple of cases is, in fact, on the far bank. So, you are going to have to place a couple of companies over on the West Bank.

A suicide mission you say. The situation here for the Allies is that not everyone is coming home and they know it.

If you set up your defense well, then Pz 3 Regt is going to get stuck for a long time. By night fall, you can still have the Germans shooting it out with you at the river crossings. If a defending company breaks, you can try placing a blind slow barrage on the crossing point to slow the Germans up. Eventually, the Germans will regroup and come at you hard and force the issue.

As the sun begins to set, it is time to order unengaged units away from the fighting to Larissa to exit. They will get moving at night fall. It's going to take the remainder of the clock to reach Larissa.

Those units engaged along the river must stay and hold to the last man.

If the river to the South is crossed by the Germans, then you can set up an understrength battalion on the high ground to the West to protect the route South and your artillery.

You can use your late arriving armor platoon to move up the road and delay the Germans at various blocking positions if Pz 3 Regt has broken through.

This plan is good for a marginal victory. I don't know if a decisive victory is possible. In my opinion, the scenario is possibly 6-12 hours too short for the Allies to make it to Larissa to withdraw. They have a lot of ground to cover and start off pretty fatigued to begin with, and, of course, they are being shot at.

However, you may find yourself much more proficient at this game than I am. So, let me know if you suceed in getting a decisive victory as the Allies!

[MarkShot]

Here, a screen shot of the Allies blowing the bridge when I used the above plan.

[MarkShot]

Well, this concludes my current plans for this thread.

As I test and play, I'll add tips when things occur to me. Remember the two HTTR guide threads (links appear in the first post). They should still be quite useful for COTA.

Also, there is an HTTR strategy guide for sale which may be of use for COTA. (available via digital download from the Matrix store) At least, one half of the guide will be useful, since it is dedicated to game play. The other half is dedicated to an analysis of the Market Garden operation.

Take care.

By the way, if anyone is interested in how the concerns which were raised by Jim Burns in this thread were ultimately resolved, you can follow along here (as it branched off into a separate topic):

tm.asp?m=985214

[Deathtreader]

Hi,

Thank you for an excellent AAR!!! And yes -- your answer(s) to my question about movement cleared it up for me.
Thanks again,

Rob. [:)]

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
Well, this concludes my current plans for this thread.

Excellent stuff Mark - just an idea here : why not turn the whole AAR into a pdf-file ? Would make it a bit easier to read & print. I could do that - which would give you more time to do another one

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[Txema]

Excellent idea !!!

Yes, please, convert it to a pdf file to make it easy to print and read offline.

Thanks in advance,


Txema

[elmo3]

Great job Mark. Now get back to work so we can play the game too! [:D]

[MarkShot]

Well, the Almighty and Powerful Oz aka Dave O'Connor, has fixed another bug.

Here you see my same units at Larissa beginning to finally exit.

It's back to testing for all of us. So that, hopefully, you will never have to experience your glorious decisive victory snatched away by a dastardly and insidious line of C++!

[MarkShot]

Eddy,

PDF if you want. Include a link back to the Matrix forums in the preamble.

Be advised that I'll probably grow this thread with more stuff as things occur to me similar to the second HTTR tips thread.

When you have it, we can host it at Matrix and put a link to it in the first post.

Thanks.

[MarkShot]

Eddy,

By the way, do you want to PDF the two HTTR threads also?

I guess these guys want something they can take on the train, bus, or latrine. Although Matrix will not be liable if you are reading this stuff on your steering wheel while driving to work.

[sterckxe]

ORIGINAL: MarkShot
By the way, do you want to PDF the two HTTR threads also?

I could do that - I'll start on the COTA one sometime next week

Greetz,

Eddy Sterckx

[RayWolfe]

ORIGINAL: sterckxe
I'll start on the COTA one sometime next week

Touch of the Dave O'Connor's there!
Ray