HOW TO CONSTRUCT YOUR OWN
CUSTOM MAPS IN CLOSE COMBAT III

by FenceH

Greetings, Comrade.  Let me introduce myself. I am a Dutch Army fella living, of course, in Holland and hope to make 25! If it was not for my wife I would be online 24/7. I have spent like 150 hours on the internet. But I realize you aren't reading this to get to know me; you just wanna know what crazy ideas this guy has.

Believe it or not, I think Atomic made a great game. It may not be historically correct, but who cares?. The new battlemaker is impressive, although I was disappointed that there is still no option to create your own map. The game's setting is a very good addition. It goes a long way towards making "camping" very hard if not impossible.

What I always try to do when making a BM is to ensure that both sides can win . I never make defend or attack BMs. I do not know if the reason is that I just don't like them or that I am unable to win them.J There are more reasons, but I will first try to explain the thought I have about meeting engagements. It goes like this:

Deployment and units are the key here, so that automatically includes the rarity issue. It makes a hell of a difference if it is on or off. If it is on, you must consider the possibility that one of the sides (most likely the Russian side) will just have lousy units. For example, a T34'41 is a good all around tank, but it will be whomped by a Tiger I from a long distance.

Time Period: Your first priority would be to decide what period the battle will be set in. Just pick a period and go to the requisition screen, where you can view the units from different years. Give the armor of both sides a good look, and look at the units too. Make sure that the amount of points won't give the Germans a big advantage when Russian armor has taken a day off. From experience, I can say around 1,400 points is perfect . I have a 1943 BM where both sides have 1,400 points and although I believe a German Tiger I outguns a SU122 it's not impossible to win as Russians.

Deployment: This is so incredibly hard to balance. Try to think about what kind a battle you want to have. As I personally favor a tank battle, I always try to eliminate as many AT-gun sites as possible. I might leave a site here and there, but those are easy to spot and anyone will be able to see what could be there.J I do not hate AT-guns, but I think they should be used in defense and maybe to support your tank attacks just a bit. I would have liked to see a 100% free deploy in custom BM's. Atomic has not included that option; there is a FILE available that makes it possible, however, as there was for CC2.

So far we have chosen a period, set our points, and made ourselves a battlestage. Now we have to consider another big factor:

Victory Locations (VLs): My favorite numbers of VLs is three, five, seven, etc. Always use odd numbers! It never leaves the question "who won?" and it also doesn't leave you with the uncertainty of having the computer decide which player has won. I always go for three VLs. Why? Because I always put on the 2 min warning. It means that when you hold all VLs or the other side it starts to countdown for the game to end. This way you never have to be afraid your opponent will sit back, drink some coffee, watch TV, and then return to see if he is able to recapture at least 2 VLs. Now he has to consider the fact he has to hold at least one at all costs, while he has to capture another one to be victorious. For the other side, there is the possibility of feeling strong enough to capture that third VL to end the game. No more endless waiting till your opponent decides to attack. It is a very, very useful option.

Testing: Testing your custom battle is very important. This is the only way to make sure you have created a good, balanced BM and not some monster. I personally always practice twice against the computer. Even though I rarely lose, I have a general idea of how the BM will go. With this knowledge, when I feel I should change some minor faults I go to the Internet Gaming Zone. There I usually play my friend (and notorious GDS-clan member) GDS_SGTSAUNDERS ! We both play as Germs as well as Russians. He usually has some good comments, and while we don't always agree on things, I look closely at the BM again to see if I can enhance it. Then I try the BM on the ladder and see what happens.

This article is a general idea of how to make a BM. This is not the definitive guide to BM creation. Its MY idea of how a BM should be constructed. If you have gotten this far, I'm sure you find there is still something missing that I have mentioned before. The famous defend/attack scenarios. How can I say this without hurting people's feeling? I suppose I can't avoid doing so, so I won't bother to try. I believe those kind of scenarios are inherently unfair.

Let me explain. When constructing a defend or attack BM, you will be the defending party much of the time, because you will always give the attacking side more points than the defending. Nine out of ten people will always take the side with the most points. The defender, on the other hand, has made the BM, has practiced the map over and over and knows exactly how many AT-guns he needs to have line-of-sight (LOS) on the most important areas. This way, he can spent his points much more effectively, while the attacker will never know what to expect. Most likely, VLs will be placed in such a manner that the attacker will always have to get in LOS of those AT-guns, which wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that AT-guns in some locations are so goddamn hard to spot. An 88mm AT-gun can kill any tank in one shot, so there goes your precious JSIII or SU152. The attacker did indeed have a point advantage, but it won't take long before that advantage has become a disadvantage.

Just the other day I played an attack/defend scenario. Of course, I was the attacking side. It was Germans: 475, Russians: 600, I think. Anyway, I bought a T-34 (85mm) and a GDS SU152 SP arty., some inf. support, and lots of recon. When I found myself on the battlefield I discovered I had made a terrible mistake. I didn't look close enough at the map. There was only one place for me to hide those big tanks I had purchased. When the game began, my SU152 was knocked out with one shot. I never knew what hit it! My inf. was ambushed up north, so I decided to expose my T-34 (85mm) tank and hoped to spot those AT-guns when they started taking potshots at me. By pure luck, I managed to shoot the two AT-guns. After the game, my opponent said I was a great player. I didn't agree. His argument was that I succeeded in destroying those AT-guns. It was luck those AT-guns missed. If they had hit the tank, it would have been game over from that point onwards.

The problem with these kind of BMs is that when you take the defending side you wont know how many AT-guns you need or where the hell to place them. Even though you have a general idea when looking at the map, you still don't know how the actual LOS is on the map, while the guy who has made the BM has probably used that BM several times and by pure statistics has a general idea where his new opponent will deploy troops. With proper screening of his AT-guns by infantry 99 out off a 100 times it's the maker who wins.

I do hope people will start to make their own BMs, and I hope they will try to make them as balanced as they can. Most important of all, make a BM with all honesty. What good will it do to set people up? Eventually everybody will know, and they will never play ladder games with you. If you are not a ladder player, and if you use crappy BMs, you will never know how good you really are. In that case, you'd better not play at all. There isn't anything nicer than to know you just beat that guy on a fair BM and it could have gone both ways.

One little remark on the latter. Rarity of units will sometimes unbalance the game heavily. That is something the guys at Atomic didn't anticipate, I think. Once, I had a scenario and I had to fight an entire heavily armored German attack force with 5 or 6 T-34'41s. I lost BIG TIME! That just happens, you know? Don't start nagging or whatever. Just report the loss and go on with it. And always, REMEMBER THAT IT IS JUST A GAME!

One last thing! Its a favor I have to ask of the ladder players. Would you all be so kind as to start commenting on the games you play? It doesn't have to be a 1000 word story; just a little piece will do just fine. Thank you for taking the time to listen to what I have, to say and feel free to reply on the matter. My e-mail address can be found at Case's ladder on both CC2 and CC3.

I hope I haven't forgotten something J cause that would be really stupid. Never thought I would write an article...HAHAHA. Anyway if people are offended by this article blame the GDS-website. :)

Good luck on the ladder or for the fun-players both, eh?

Good luck! I will see you all there.

FenceH

 

 

 

.