CM Red Thunder page is up

[Bletchley_Geek]

Then again it seems 'mainstream' wargamers are more than content with games such as PanzerCorps, Battle Academy or more recently Heroes of Stalingrad anyways, so any concern over historical accuracy is a moot point. ;)

I reckon those 'mainstream' wargamers are the 'grognards' of tomorrow. My first computer war game ever was R. T. Smith's "Desert Rats" and my first board war game was an "Axis & Allies" copycat. Go figure  :)

EDIT: An interesting remark from Usenet on Lock'n'Load

But - Holy Sh*t! - there's 120 pages of rules!  Peter Jackson could make
a three-hour film given 120 pages to work with.  And the rules are
*shamelessly* stolen from SQUAD LEADER.  Except for the replacement of
the the fire table with a dice-based system, whole rules come over word
for word.

Sure, an "Undo" button would help ... but it wouldn't.  Example; you
have an infantry unit with an MG-34.  You're in the Operations Phase,
and you'd like to move it.  Except - Gotcha!!! - you forgot to take it
off the tripod back in the Rally Phase!!  If you were playing against a
human opponent, you'd say you forgot, and he'd say, "sure, go head and
flip the counter now."  But when PC programmers slavishly port a
boardgame, the computer just says you can't.  Nope.  Sorry.  You failed
to do right in the "Now You Can Dismantle Your Machinegun Phase."

And ... what difference does it make?  Why not just dismantle the gun in
the Operations Phase and move out?  It's not like you can *do* anything
with the gun in the interim.  On a smaller scale, this is GUNS OF AUGUST
all over again.

Overall, this really points out how completely outdated IGO-UGO is. 
It's awful.  They try to mitigate this with the "impulse" system, but
still allow you to activate units at will.  A better system would be to
randomly activate hexes occupied by your troops when it was your turn.

Example:  On the very last impulse of a turn (every other unit, friend
or foe, has moved or fired...), I assault-move a panzer up to a house
occupied by some partisans.  I blast them with the cannon and
machineguns.  Then the turn advances, and I have a better than even
(ties go to the side that had the initiative in the last turn) chance of
moving first.  I do get the initiative.  So I choose my panzer and blast
'em again, this time at full power.  That's some dead partisans.

These comments, no matter how colourful they're, kind of sum up pretty well how I feel of all these over-hyped, streamlined war games. And why I think there's quite a case to overthink about things  and to keep Battlefront and Graviteam in the business :)

[Zonso]

Wow! 120 pages! Interesting, I just threw that out there after reading the AAR posted here and 'thought' another comic book type game. I did not realize it was a copy of Squad Leader, which I really loved and played a lot back then.  I would find it incredibly frustrating today if I had to stomach watching infantry advance in the open to melee like that.  :o

Point taken re the grognards of tomorrow and the epiphany above. I guess I am entering grumpy old man era as I started with Waterloo/D-Day haha. :) True regards those developers you mentioned and Panther also of course!

[Bletchley_Geek]

The challenge is to keep the eyes on the prize, and leaving monocles where they belong: in a museum.  ;)

[Michael Dorosh]

A more sensible approach to 'historical accuracy' is that of trying to 'recreate processes' so the outcomes can be significantly different but still 'make sense'.

The problem is in forcing the player to adopt those processes for reasons he will find as logical as his historical counterpart.

The German defensive doctrine in Normandy seems strange, but it was based on their strengths. The MG42 was a fearsome weapon, so they lightly outposted their positions with machine guns. Their NCOs in theory exercised great initiative so they emptied out their main defensive line and relied on heavy counter-attacks to throw out enemy attacks. Their tanks and self-propelled guns were mobile and able to fight at close range with enemy armour and so they were used in a local counter-attack role as well, often adding punch to counter-attacks and direct firing at close range. Their mortars were cheap, easy to hide, nearly silent when firing, and plentiful, and so they bombed the daylights out of everything on the defence.

Does a CM player get rewarded for using his forces in this way? A good scenario design will probably highlight the uses of these weapon systems - but that presupposes several things.

a) a scenario designer who has a schooling in the tactics of the day
b) a player who has opted to play a "historical" scenario rather than a Quick Battle
c) a player who decides to adopt the scenario designers vision of how the scenario should play out
d) a game system that will reward "historical" play via the game mechanics

Do German troops in the game have better "initiative"? BFC has stated flat out they don't believe in "national characteristics." So they model flat characteristics such as morale, fatigue, training which in real terms, I suppose, amount to how fast troops can traverse terrain, how well they stand up to fire without suppressing, how accurately they fire their weapons, etc. What is initiative? Is it a mathematic equation equaling how fast a unit can respond to its orders, or is it really a measure of how well a squad or platoon leader reacts to the situation on the map?

If the latter (and I think that is what it is) isn't that the player's role?

We may see some of this built in, if the conditional AI triggers are robust enough and allow for gradations, but I suspect we will not, at least at first. It would be nice to see such a thing develop, and if so, then perhaps we may be able to build in some more "national characteristics" after all...and with it some national doctrines.

Thoughts, gentlemen?

[Bletchley_Geek]

Does a CM player get rewarded for using his forces in this way? A good scenario design will probably highlight the uses of these weapon systems - but that presupposes several things.

a) a scenario designer who has a schooling in the tactics of the day
b) a player who has opted to play a "historical" scenario rather than a Quick Battle
c) a player who decides to adopt the scenario designers vision of how the scenario should play out
d) a game system that will reward "historical" play via the game mechanics

The beautiful thing is that CM enables that to happen. But at the same time, CMx2 remains what I consider a 'toolbox', leaving room for alternative takes on the subject matter. Very much as with a LEGO set, it's up to you what you want to build with it: the Eiffel Tower, the Millenium Falcon a four meters tall Pikachu model... is up to you. Of course, in LEGO, you might want sometimes to have a round piece or a piece of a specific colour which doesn't come with the 'Starter Kit'. So you go back to the shop and buy whatever allows you to extend the array of tools to achieve what your heart desires.

Is a sound business model, which has been proven to be a stable income stream. A similar business model has worked out strikingly well for Games Workshop, the people behind Flames of War or Slitherine with their Field of Glory miniature rule set. This incremental approach, allows to adapt quickly to shifting tastes of the communities that consume those products.

This strategy - which I think what Battlefront is doing - needs to be kept in mind in order to understand what CMx2 is and what is not.

Do German troops in the game have better "initiative"? BFC has stated flat out they don't believe in "national characteristics." So they model flat characteristics such as morale, fatigue, training which in real terms, I suppose, amount to how fast troops can traverse terrain, how well they stand up to fire without suppressing, how accurately they fire their weapons, etc. What is initiative? Is it a mathematic equation equaling how fast a unit can respond to its orders, or is it really a measure of how well a squad or platoon leader reacts to the situation on the map?

If the latter (and I think that is what it is) isn't that the player's role?

We may see some of this built in, if the conditional AI triggers are robust enough and allow for gradations, but I suspect we will not, at least at first. It would be nice to see such a thing develop, and if so, then perhaps we may be able to build in some more "national characteristics" after all...and with it some national doctrines.

Thoughts, gentlemen?

I consider "national characteristics" to be a sign of failure of the 'get-the-process-right' thing which computer wargames can hope to achieve and board games just can't. Limiting control without frustrating players, as you say, it's a matter of having the player to act like their historical counterparts. That's another way of saying 'immersion'. Getting the game to reward players that get 'immersed' into the setting of the game - i.e. the player takes a historical game as 'historical', not as a personalized installment of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" - is also called 'reactivity'. Both immersion and reactivity are, again, things that can be taken to the infinite and beyond in a computer, and in a board game don't go beyond the boundaries of the board.

And both 'immersion' and 'reactivity' are nowadays waved in our faces to make us buy games, but at the end of the day they don't really deliver in either department anything that would make us turn heels over heads. For instance, Graviteam succeeds in the immersion but fails in the reactivity bit. CMx2 immersion is Okay and reactivity is optional.

More specifically and to the point: I asked on the Battlefront forums if they were considering the concept of having 'linked victory conditions'. That would in my opinion allow to account for the 'rigidity' at the execution, not the planning behind the operational art-of-war as practiced by the Red Army in World War 2. The other is to account for the emphasis for 'tempo' in the offensive. Which would mean pushing into a small battlespace a LOT of firepower, or in other words, increasing substantially the amount of units you can have on the map.

And this latter thing is directly related to that of having a more expansive friendly AI, and the hardware of course,  that makes such huge scenarios playable. The friendly AI topic can be addressed by Battlefront of course. The question is when and how. The hardware one can be negotiated to some extent by entering into a very expensive process of optimization process, offering diminishing returns as progress is made. They already accomplished a massive improvement in efficiency for Market Garden (and hats off to them, I am sure that wasn't easy). The question in this case, is whether Battlefront has entered into the diminishing returns phase of their engine optimization.

[Michael Dorosh]

Does a CM player get rewarded for using his forces in this way? A good scenario design will probably highlight the uses of these weapon systems - but that presupposes several things.

a) a scenario designer who has a schooling in the tactics of the day
b) a player who has opted to play a "historical" scenario rather than a Quick Battle
c) a player who decides to adopt the scenario designers vision of how the scenario should play out
d) a game system that will reward "historical" play via the game mechanics

The beautiful thing is that CM enables that to happen.

What is the evidence that the latter happens? It seems rather open to debate to me, but my interest, and knowledge, mostly comes from the Commonwealth, and right now, there are so many missing weapons systems and procedures it seems hard to judge accurately. But also so much goes on "under the hood", not to mention internal game mechanics seem to change a lot with each patch. Not a bad thing - particularly when stuff like machine gun behaviours are "improved" - but it seems no two people agree on what they should actually be to begin with.

Do German troops in the game have better "initiative"? BFC has stated flat out they don't believe in "national characteristics." So they model flat characteristics such as morale, fatigue, training which in real terms, I suppose, amount to how fast troops can traverse terrain, how well they stand up to fire without suppressing, how accurately they fire their weapons, etc. What is initiative? Is it a mathematic equation equaling how fast a unit can respond to its orders, or is it really a measure of how well a squad or platoon leader reacts to the situation on the map?

If the latter (and I think that is what it is) isn't that the player's role?

We may see some of this built in, if the conditional AI triggers are robust enough and allow for gradations, but I suspect we will not, at least at first. It would be nice to see such a thing develop, and if so, then perhaps we may be able to build in some more "national characteristics" after all...and with it some national doctrines.

Thoughts, gentlemen?

I consider "national characteristics" to be a sign of failure of the 'get-the-process-right' thing which computer wargames can hope to achieve and board games just can't. Limiting control without frustrating players, as you say, it's a matter of having the player to act like their historical counterparts. That's another way of saying 'immersion'. Getting the game to reward players that get 'immersed' into the setting of the game - i.e. the player takes a historical game as 'historical', not as a personalized installment of "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" - is also called 'reactivity'. Both immersion and reactivity are, again, things that can be taken to the infinite and beyond in a computer, and in a board game don't go beyond the boundaries of the board.

And both 'immersion' and 'reactivity' are nowadays waved in our faces to make us buy games, but at the end of the day they don't really deliver in either department anything that would make us turn heels over heads. For instance, Graviteam succeeds in the immersion but fails in the reactivity bit. CMx2 immersion is Okay and reactivity is optional.

More specifically and to the point: I asked on the Battlefront forums if they were considering the concept of having 'linked victory conditions'. That would in my opinion allow to account for the 'rigidity' at the execution, not the planning behind the operational art-of-war as practiced by the Red Army in World War 2. The other is to account for the emphasis for 'tempo' in the offensive. Which would mean pushing into a small battlespace a LOT of firepower, or in other words, increasing substantially the amount of units you can have on the map.

And this latter thing is directly related to that of having a more expansive friendly AI, and the hardware of course,  that makes such huge scenarios playable. The friendly AI topic can be addressed by Battlefront of course. The question is when and how. The hardware one can be negotiated to some extent by entering into a very expensive process of optimization process, offering diminishing returns as progress is made. They already accomplished a massive improvement in efficiency for Market Garden (and hats off to them, I am sure that wasn't easy). The question in this case, is whether Battlefront has entered into the diminishing returns phase of their engine optimization.

I agree with comments further upstream that the Red Army probably wasn't all that "rigid" by 1944, but perhaps someone can present some actual examples rather than all of us merely hypothesizing. Either way, what does it really mean in practical terms other than C3 restrictions? I can model that just by being a crappy player. ;-)

Squad sizes seems to be another. General Simonds had an interesting take on the subject, and a number of his speeches were reprinted by the Canadian Army in a volume I have kicking around. I found his comments about how the platoon, rather than the section (squad), should be considered the basic unit of maneuver to be quite fascinating. Game players seem to scoff at the Soviets for being these unwieldy blocks of men for fighting platoons as if they were squads, when Simonds was pretty much insisting that the Canadian way was to do exactly that. Of course, many game players don't realize that the actual fighting strength of a British/Canadian infantry squad was 5 or 6 men rather than the paper strength of 10. Makes one wonder just what a Soviet platoon really looked like in battle. I honestly doubt the details of anyone's squad/platoon attacks were really captured well for posterity in most cases.

[Bletchley_Geek]

What is the evidence that the latter happens? It seems rather open to debate to me, but my interest, and knowledge, mostly comes from the Commonwealth, and right now, there are so many missing weapons systems and procedures it seems hard to judge accurately. But also so much goes on "under the hood", not to mention internal game mechanics seem to change a lot with each patch. Not a bad thing - particularly when stuff like machine gun behaviours are "improved" - but it seems no two people agree on what they should actually be to begin with.

Well, I tried your Bulge scenario with Market Garden and I think it plays much better, meaning that after crashing against the American AT guns I felt the urge to read more about German panzer tactics. I am not sure if that's evidence, lacking an AAR, which I don't have the time to put together for you. The scenario "A Temple to Mars" from CMFI is another one example that comes readily to my mind.

I agree with comments further upstream that the Red Army probably wasn't all that "rigid" by 1944, but perhaps someone can present some actual examples rather than all of us merely hypothesizing. Either way, what does it really mean in practical terms other than C3 restrictions? I can model that just by being a crappy player. ;-)

Well, I took that sentence in particular from this book

http://www.amazon.com/The-Art-Maneuver-Warfare-Airland/dp/0891415327/ref=sr_1_fkmr3_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1392781013&sr=8-3-fkmr3&keywords=robert+s+leonard+the+art+of+maneuver

and the particular reference in the book I think comes from

http://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Military-Operational-Art-Practice/dp/0714640778/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1392781065&sr=8-2&keywords=david+glantz+operational+art+of+war

The latter I haven't read - I need to save up a bit for that one.

As a more concrete example, there are the studies on Korsun, which I consider to be a brilliantly planned operation (its execution is a different matter). The push of Malinovsky (?) towards Riga in the summer of 1944, cutting off AGN, is another example, but there's nothing in English available about it.

[Michael Dorosh]

Thanks for those. I think we can probably agree about the operational level, I was thinking more about the tactical level, which is thornier. Again, I am most familiar with the Commonwealth. Timothy Harrison-Place's book on the British Army's difficulties in preparing for the invasion of Normandy is fascinating reading - they struggled to write a manual into 1944, and as he notes, didn't bother to read it in almost every case even if they did manage to write one. I get the feeling veterans would advise us that manuals don't mean much in the field in any case. Which makes in interesting to see CM AARs which attempt to ape the approved "school solutions" which Harrison-Place insists were probably never done in actuality.

If it works, it means it can't be wrong...

[Bletchley_Geek]

Thanks for those. I think we can probably agree about the operational level, I was thinking more about the tactical level, which is thornier.

No worries, mate. The first one I can't other than recommend highly, I find it to read very well, and I think it will be very interesting to anyone interested on the War That Never Was, and especially if playing the excellent and recent Flashpoint.

Again, I am most familiar with the Commonwealth. Timothy Harrison-Place's book on the British Army's difficulties in preparing for the invasion of Normandy is fascinating reading - they struggled to write a manual into 1944, and as he notes, didn't bother to read it in almost every case even if they did manage to write one. I get the feeling veterans would advise us that manuals don't mean much in the field in any case. Which makes in interesting to see CM AARs which attempt to ape the approved "school solutions" which Harrison-Place insists were probably never done in actuality.

If it works, it means it can't be wrong...

Bil isn't playing by the book as it was in 1944, he's playing by the book as it was in the early 1990s, with all that emphasis on Intelligence Battlefield Preparation. He's very good at that, and knows how to apply it so it becomes an awesome force multiplier.

[Michael Dorosh]

Again, I am most familiar with the Commonwealth. Timothy Harrison-Place's book on the British Army's difficulties in preparing for the invasion of Normandy is fascinating reading - they struggled to write a manual into 1944, and as he notes, didn't bother to read it in almost every case even if they did manage to write one. I get the feeling veterans would advise us that manuals don't mean much in the field in any case. Which makes in interesting to see CM AARs which attempt to ape the approved "school solutions" which Harrison-Place insists were probably never done in actuality.

If it works, it means it can't be wrong...

Bil isn't playing by the book as it was in 1944, he's playing by the book as it was in the early 1990s, with all that emphasis on Intelligence Battlefield Preparation. He's very good at that, and knows how to apply it so it becomes an awesome force multiplier.

I wasn't referring to Bil... but now that you mention it, I guess I wonder what it says that Bil is able to get success with "modern" techniques. I am sure that sound principles are universal - i.e. "overwatch" - and that these are not nationality specific, either. I keep trying to steer the conversation towards specifics and others keep veering away toward generalities. Let me be more direct. What specifically should the game engine let a Soviet player do, or not, that other nationalities shouldn't, in order to be "historical"? Is it really a matter for scenario designers to come up with via force mixes and troop type settings, or is there something more intrinsic? Some have suggested things like ability to split squads, others suggest command/control delays. I don't know if we've discussed artillery delays yet, these were certainly included in CM:BB.

[MengJiao]

Again, I am most familiar with the Commonwealth. Timothy Harrison-Place's book on the British Army's difficulties in preparing for the invasion of Normandy is fascinating reading - they struggled to write a manual into 1944, and as he notes, didn't bother to read it in almost every case even if they did manage to write one. I get the feeling veterans would advise us that manuals don't mean much in the field in any case. Which makes in interesting to see CM AARs which attempt to ape the approved "school solutions" which Harrison-Place insists were probably never done in actuality.

If it works, it means it can't be wrong...

Bil isn't playing by the book as it was in 1944, he's playing by the book as it was in the early 1990s, with all that emphasis on Intelligence Battlefield Preparation. He's very good at that, and knows how to apply it so it becomes an awesome force multiplier.

I wasn't referring to Bil... but now that you mention it, I guess I wonder what it says that Bil is able to get success with "modern" techniques. I am sure that sound principles are universal - i.e. "overwatch" - and that these are not nationality specific, either. I keep trying to steer the conversation towards specifics and others keep veering away toward generalities. Let me be more direct. What specifically should the game engine let a Soviet player do, or not, that other nationalities shouldn't, in order to be "historical"? Is it really a matter for scenario designers to come up with via force mixes and troop type settings, or is there something more intrinsic? Some have suggested things like ability to split squads, others suggest command/control delays. I don't know if we've discussed artillery delays yet, these were certainly included in CM:BB.

  It seems like a scenario design problem.  For example, an attack starts with only tanks and no artillery and infantry -- those arrive later.  Or vis-versa -- or with lots of artillery and not much else -- lots of stuff arriving as reinforcements might simulate some kind of coordination problem -- but such things would tend to happen more (in 1944 at least) when the Germans were not well-entrenched -- the punch into the first line was something the Russians had worked out (usually) by late 1942 or early 1943 (operation Spark for example).

[ComradeP]

It is typical in a way that when you say you would like to say improved C&C and logistics modelling, people assume the game won't sell well. I've encountered that response several times now on different forums. Some games go a long way, but still have their shortcomings.

Command Ops for example has had numerous problems with modelling supply, some of which were only recently fixed. Similarly, although the C&C is generally handled well, there are no areas of operation and the player is still a supreme overlord who can send ahistorical numbers of units towards one objective or concentrate all his artillery on one objective.

Generally speaking, attempts to add more detail often highlight what that game can't do.

Historical accuracy shouldn't be mistaken for railroading you into behaving exactly like your historical counterparts. Rather, in my opinion it should give you the historical tools (equipment, training and command effectiveness ratings, things like that), strengths and weaknesses of a certain nation's army to work with.

Now that Korsun has been mentioned: it was a very "un-Soviet" operation for the time. It had received weeks instead of months of prior planning and instead of a deep strike well into the German rear (which would've meant advancing towards the Bug or at the least Uman) it featured a limited encirclement. The Soviet staff study doesn't really mention any future operations in detail, the limited encirclement was the plan and not part of a greater plan. Compare that to Bagration, which had plenty of preparation time and featured a two pincer encirclement operation as well as the usual bloody frontal attack against the center of the German line to keep the Germans from withdrawing.

When I'm talking about the rigidity of the Soviets, I don't mean they should literally stop at certain points on the map or behave like a bunch of clowns, but rather that the handicaps the Soviets still suffered from should be present in some form.

Interestingly, someone like John Tiller feels that the squad level is more or less the only level that allows for a more or less faithful recreation of tactical fighting. A game on CM's or PC:O's scale is 2-3 levels above that and already shows some weaknesses inherent to it being a game (such as having too much information compared to what would be historical and generally speaking having  fairly evenly matched forces). It also hides operational or strategic flaws and thus most of the rigidity coming from inflexible C&C, inefficient logistics or slow (non-motorized or tractor-pulled) artillery units not being able to provide support after a short while.

Another problem is that many developers have been developing games, often including boardgames, for decades and are quite conservative in their game designs. To them, the computer is a glorified calculator. I don't find it particularly surprising that revolutionary games are developed by new studios and not by people like Tiller or Grigsby.

I'm still very curious what will happen when the boardgame wargamers who moved to PC gaming will become a minority compared to the newer generations of wargamers (myself included) who grew up with PC wargaming. I expect that many developers will have to radically alter some of their game systems to keep up with the new demands for innovation.

[Michael Dorosh]

Interestingly, someone like John Tiller feels that the squad level is more or less the only level that allows for a more or less faithful recreation of tactical fighting. A game on CM's or PC:O's scale is 2-3 levels above that and already shows some weaknesses inherent to it being a game (such as having too much information compared to what would be historical and generally speaking having  fairly evenly matched forces). It also hides operational or strategic flaws and thus most of the rigidity coming from inflexible C&C, inefficient logistics or slow (non-motorized or tractor-pulled) artillery units not being able to provide support after a short while.

We may need to define "level". You are using "squad level" here to define what I think I refer to as "man to man" - i.e. each unit in the game is a single man. CM/PC:O is only one level above that, as units are groupings of 4 or 5 men (when squads break down into teams). Unless you mean to say a game in which units are squad-based (as in CM, groups of 10 men) and each player runs a company or battalion at a time.

Putting that aside, it's an interesing comment from Tiller - where can one go to read his comments? Just designer's notes, or elsewhere?

Another problem is that many developers have been developing games, often including boardgames, for decades and are quite conservative in their game designs. To them, the computer is a glorified calculator. I don't find it particularly surprising that revolutionary games are developed by new studios and not by people like Tiller or Grigsby.

I'm still very curious what will happen when the boardgame wargamers who moved to PC gaming will become a minority compared to the newer generations of wargamers (myself included) who grew up with PC wargaming. I expect that many developers will have to radically alter some of their game systems to keep up with the new demands for innovation.

I wonder if these things won't tend to go in circles. I note at BGG a few people are singing the praises of Mark Walker's Heroes of Stalingrad.

Discussion: http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1125213/heroes-of-stalingrad-the-computer-wargame-ive-wa

At a certain point, what is old may seem new. Miniatures, for example, had their resurgence. I don't know that conventional boardgames given new life with an AI, like Heroes of Stalingrad, will be the next new wave, but it is an interesting idea. The thing I've never liked about Matrix's games is they are rarely open-ended enough for scenario designers - but of course, doing that is kind of a dead end as far as revenues go.

Which kind of brings us back to scenario designers. The strength of any tactical game system will lay in the quality of its scenario designers. Publishers would probably do well to invest more in them, and sell product on the strength of their offerings, than in "realism".

[MengJiao]

I'm still very curious what will happen when the boardgame wargamers who moved to PC gaming will become a minority compared to the newer generations of wargamers (myself included) who grew up with PC wargaming. I expect that many developers will have to radically alter some of their game systems to keep up with the new demands for innovation.

  I have you played any of the Grand Tactical Board games?  These cover a level (and the original design was designed to do exactly this) where the Soviet problems with "rigidity" probably had the biggest impact.  The games are Devils CAudron, Where Eagles Dare and No Question of Surrender.  the scale is companies, with Division level activations (and other actions) at two hour intervals with 350-500 meter hexes.

[ComradeP]

We may need to define "level". You are using "squad level" here to define what I think I refer to as "man to man" - i.e. each unit in the game is a single man. CM/PC:O is only one level above that, as units are groupings of 4 or 5 men (when squads break down into teams). Unless you mean to say a game in which units are squad-based (as in CM, groups of 10 men) and each player runs a company or battalion at a time.

Yeah, my post was a bit confusing. I meant squad level as representing squads or teams as the smallest unit (men might be there, but they're still part of a squad or team and not individuals) and command levels of platoon, company and battalion.

http://www.1up.com/features/john-tiller

have you played any of the Grand Tactical Board games

I'm not a board wargamer, so unfortunately I haven't played them.