Matrix Games Forums

Occasionally the AI will do counter battery missions. I would and have commented on the problem described a different way.

First, I am wondering why the player can do things with the fire support that the AI will not or probably will not. For instance a TOT, which is very realistic. The 2nd US ID had a unique COMM system in place such that it could routinely fulfill a fire mission with the whole DIVARTY and other supporting artillery for a simultaneous impact of all rounds. There are famous instances in the BoB when 2nd Div and 1st Div had over 10 battalions firing a TOT. And the Germans were doing this as well.

Second, and more important, is the player does not have the option to build a fire support plan and the priorities of fire so that the AI will conduct the fires as the player desires. There is some sort of fire support plan that is hard coded. It is not transparent to the player what it is.

The original BftB has the Dec 16 scenarios starting after the bombardments are over and supposes some effect and consumption of ammunition. (But if you play the US it will not seem like there is an effect. You can start blasting away at the bridge crossing sites from the start.) The experience producing KOAD explained to me why that might have been done. The German AI versus the human US will never blast the KNOWN US arty postilions. Instead it will weakly execute fire support the way 5th Panzer Army did.

I think:
1. Players ought to be told what the hard coded priority of fires are
2. Players ought to be allowed to change the priority of fires

I agree. More options always. But I'm playing through Race to Bastogne, as Axis, at the moment, and there seems to me to be a lot of AI counter-battery during the first day. Every Allied arty unit I can see is being hit fairly often by AI directed counter-battery fire. So much so that I haven't felt the need to interfere. Of course, there's loads of Axis arty. Its when there's less, perhaps, that you start to query the hard-coded fire support plan and wonder what it is, because it will then happen more often that the AI arty hits either nothing at all, or something that isn't your priority.

Hi all,

A couple of months ago Dave indicated a counter-battery task option for arty would be moved higher up on the dev schedule. Can't provide a link though..........

I wasn't dreaming, honest!![:D]

Rob.

I didn't expect the releases to match the timetable precisely, as there's always something that slows everything down.

I hope you get well soon, Dave.

As to the artillery issue: regardless of the use of TOT, I still feel artillery is too powerful compared to its real WWII counterpart, and that winning a scenario on time can depend too much on using artillery ahistorically (hammering certain units with most of the artillery by default, not as an exception or a high priority mission) in some scenarios. Compare the effects of a well-planned bombardment by the player to the "opening bombardment" that has taken place according to many BftB briefings, which doesn't seem to have any effect at all (it will generally take the bulk of your forces a while to get into contact, giving the enemy time to recover).

Currently, ahistorical gameplay is encouraged: as enemy casualties usually offer only a minimal amount of points, the only relevant thing becomes reaching the objectives on time. If you destroy an Allied division, but take a small village on time, you lose. If you leave the division intact but take the village on time, you win. That's the part that bugs me most and why it sometimes doesn't feel like a realistic modelling of a military operation.

That's easy to change for whichever scenarios you wish to play, ComradeP. Just open it in the scenmaker and allocate the points how you wish them to be between killing the enemy and taking VPs. Honestly, it's a minute of your time to do that, once you've learned it. And it's easy to learn.

True, but the scenarios were originally balanced and shipped this way. If I'd significantly increase the points for losses, the AI would need extraction objectives to be able to preserve its forces, for example.

Editing the scenarios wouldn't really change what I view as the issue, as the currently, in my opinion, problematic scenarios would still presumably play out ahistorically. It's a typical wargaming problem, that losing units or not have any kind of credible force left at the end of a scenario is not a problem as long as you capture objectives, objectives that in the greater scheme of an offensive might not be crucial.

It's the main reason why I'm sceptical about how a campaign will work: it's also a typical wargaming problem that a human player has a significant advantage over an AI that increases as the length of a scenario increases, because you can make better long term plans and will usually be able to do plenty of damage in the opening turns/days.

In the case of BftB, it might work because the Germans don't have enough quality units to be able to afford severe losses to their mobile units (in the later Bulge scenarios in particular, US reinforcements can be difficult to deal with already, as historical), but in a game where sides are more evenly matched or where one side can afford the losses suffered by his mediocre troops, it might not.

At the moment, I just find it very difficult to have fun whilst playing a BftB scenario, because something just doesn't "feel" right. I guess the scenarios for COTA2 might be more enjoyable for my preferred playstyle, so I'll try those as well. As stated in the "plans" tread, I intend to buy all the new releases, to see where the series goes as I like the system/the theory, just not all of what it translates to in practice for BftB.

ORIGINAL: ComradeP

Currently, ahistorical gameplay is encouraged: as enemy casualties usually offer only a minimal amount of points, the only relevant thing becomes reaching the objectives on time. If you destroy an Allied division, but take a small village on time, you lose. If you leave the division intact but take the village on time, you win. That's the part that bugs me most and why it sometimes doesn't feel like a realistic modelling of a military operation.

In a lot of the BFTB scenarios this capturing of a small village is what its all about. The destruction of the divisions comes later...much later.
The Battle of the Bulge is all about creating a huge pocket to entrap 3 Allied Armies, where they could be systematically destroyed.
Its a Blitzkrieg to Antwerp, over incredibly difficult terrain, in the middle of winter!
Its all about speed. "Speed is the key"

If they had succeeded I imagine that most Allied forces in the pocket would have surrendered, if the pocket was not able to be supplied by air, or it would have been another Dunkirk, where the Allied armies would have to have been evacuated by sea.
That's assuming that the Allies were not able to make a breakout or a breakthrough to rescue them, and I doubt that the Axis even if they had managed to make it to Antwerp would have been strong enough to prevent it to be honest.
What you are not doing, ComradeP looking at the bigger picture.

If destroying that Division prevents you from taking that small village, then they have won. In delaying you from capturing it, they have probably given time for two Divisions or even a whole Army to move into position on the next map to block you from obtaining your strategic objective, which is the bridge over the Meuse and on to Antwerp.
Also the longer you take the more time it gives for the Allies to realise what you are doing, and start to pull back those 3 armies, you are trying to entrap, to a more defensible line to counter your attack.
The reason the other small village objectives are so important is they are probably on key supply routes that the spearhead will need for its supplies.
Others will be because the supply corridor needs to be widened. As the spearhead advances if the neck of the corridor is too narrow it makes it vulnerable to a counter attack, and the cutting off of the supply route. Just as happened historically to Peiper.

If you can destroy the division, and capture the village then great!

If you look at a historical example, you have kampfgruppe Peiper, the armoured spearhead of the 1SS Pz Div.
He could have turned North to encircle, and destroy several Divisions, at almost any point in his drive for the bridge across the Meuse, but that was not his objective.
He bypassed enemy opposition where he could, and pushed on in places he probably shouldn't have. Its these vital small villages, mostly with key bridges, defended by small pockets of enemy in them he really needed to capture, in order to push on to his objective, that on the maps in game you will never get to, just as he never, unless someone makes a map for the battle of Antwerp one day. (Now there is a good project!)

Its wroth noting that von Rundstedt actually proposed a smaller plan not to cross the Muse but to destroy the Allied concentrations around Liège and Aachen, to Hitler, but Hitler wanted to go for the bigger plan of taking Antwerp.

HTTR is the same kind of thing. Its the Allied Blitzkrieg to Arnhem.

When interpreting an operational level scenario within the scheme of a greater, strategic, offensive, I agree that you could say that capturing a village is more important than enemy casualties in a very strict interpretation of the theoretical plan for this offensive.

However, there are a few reasons why I disagree with you/why I don't find the way the game represents the Ardennes Offensive entirely historical.

It was, to a greater or lesser extent depending on how much credit you want to give him, Eisenhower's plan to send reinforcements to the flanks of the German penetration and try to cut it off, as detailed in Crusade in Europe. Eisenhower's a bit flattering regarding his own performance here obviously, but it was more or less what happened.

Casualties in wargames tend to become ahistorical rather quickly, so as long as the game is balanced with that in mind it might not be much of an issue. However, there being no campaign is in this case problematic because even though I have to capture the villages on time, whether the enemy has a credible force left at the end of the scenario is irrelevant, whilst it would be very important in the campaign. That's one of those wargaming things that tend to pop-up in almost every game: units being worth less than objectives in small scenarios, leading to ahistorically violent last stands.

We also need to keep in mind that we don't literally "capture" towns here. We slowly gain control over them. That's another specific feature of this game system that must be taken into account in this case, as unlike in other wargames just moving into the objective isn't good enough. You can capture an objective with a regiment or just a field kitchen, both will start the timer. Taking that fairly unique capture mechanism into account, capturing an objective too late often just means starting the timer too late.

You can remove most of the enemy forces from the map and lose because you started the capture timers too late, that's why I feel there isn't enough of a reward for destroying enemy units: the AI can sacrifice units to make sure you don't start the capture timers on time, or exit enough men. That's the part of the game that bugs me, and not just in this game obviously as many wargames suffer from the same problem.

When viewed from the perspective of the Ardennes Offensive, regardless of whether it's likely that the Germans would have gotten across the Meuse, the Allies couldn't afford to lose their initial capability to resist. Someone had to slow the Germans down.

It's difficult to move forces into the path of the enemy advance if the bulk of your forces are north and south of the enemy penetration, so after the initial days it would be difficult for the Allies to reinforce from the west as easily as they could reinforce the northern flank and particularly the southern flank.

Let's say you're playing a scenario like Elsenborn Ridge. You destroy most of the 99th Infantry Division and the elements of the 2nd Infantry Division, which should probably be interpreted as them being unable to offer much resistance, instead of their actual destruction. If that happens, who will slow the Germans down further west? The answer to that question is currently not relevant according to the game. That's why it's so different from a campaign game. In a campaign game, the loss of the 99th in the opening days, and similar losses of other divisions along the front would've been a complete disaster. It would have meant there would be very few units around to slow the Germans before the Meuse.

In short: I agree that in this case average town could be important when it came to allowing the Germans to advance further, but the scenarios are currently more or less missing the element of what would've happened if the defenders had folded, because the next scenario will include the historical OOB again for that engagement.

I do like the game system, but I don't like the way the capture system works in combination with low points for unit destruction, or the efficiency of the artillery which the player can freely target at any unit within sight.

You have made some great points, and like you I wish there was a campaign mode where you could carry forward forces.
I actually have started a... very long play, scenario like that with Pergite!

tm.asp?m=3338720

He sent me his AAR for the Hofen battle and when...if, I get that far, I'll incorporate it into my AAR as well.
I feel a bit guilty its taking me so long...sorry about that [:(]

I don't have time to fully reply to your excellent reply tonight...maybe tomorrow [;)]