While that started moving things a bit, the ground war looked like WWII in the trenches. Then I started working with moving units around. Clicking on units and trying to make them do something seemed really ridiculous at first. Bizarre things -- and more often nothing -- would happen. But after a while I started to get the hang of it. Some of the units can be moved, and some will even attack, while others can't be moved, such as any unit assigned a defensive position.

Amazingly, when I clicked on a heavy artillery squad and put the circle over the enemy, a short time later the enemy battalion disappeared!!! After many hours of working with this, my troops were advancing, the stalemate was over, and how one can manipulate the ground forces started to reveal some patterns. For example, it seems like once troops get dug in on a line, they do not like to move. Much prodding by moving the right units gets them going again.

For example, heavy arty and mechanised unit advances seem to bring most of the others along with them eventually. Try to advance an infantry unit on a mechanized unit, and they don't move (THAT makes sense). In any case, I haven' time to go into a long explanation, but I've found just working the ground units alone interesting and fun. The key is to learn by experimentation which units are capable of doing what.

I've foound that the light and heavy arty, plus the mechanized brigades can be used to very good effect. There does seem to be some intelligence in the artificial part.

Continued working with the campaign seems to prove that the more I get into it, hte more complex and difficult it gets. The numbers of possibilities and choices is endless. You've probably read Alex's trouble with massive enemy aircraft resupply. I haven't had that problem (recently), but something really strange has now occurred.

After I got most of the enemy wiped off the map, suddenly a Korean D-Day happened on the Changsan peninsuale. That's the one in NK southwest below Pyongyang. Suddenly enemy units seemed to be marching right up out of the sea and rolling down the road to cut me off from behind.

Where the hell did they come from? There is no naval base there, no ships, no nothing. They just marched up right out of the Yellow Sea and moved right on down the road. Fortunatley I have enough reserved to clobber them, but not if artillery battalions materialize out of the water. Go figure .. .

The ATO can be used in conjunction with moving ground units, instead of flying yourself. Its a bit of work, but what I was doing was selecting any flight that affected a certain battle area. Keep the ATO and Map open and click them on and off to find which ones you need. Just be sure that whatever flight you select actually has a target, because many times there is no target, unless it's a little town or something, They can even drop their load on friendlies. With the huge number of ATO missions available, you can really wipe out the enemy fast if you do this carefully. Definitely cool.

i.e. Reinforcements appear at set locations for both sides. At the present time under 1.07 these reinforcements can appear at locations that have already been captured by the enemy.

A number of previous posts (in the old combatsim forums) have dealt with the problem of an enemy battalion being surrounded on all sides, with only one tank or whatever in the unit. This will then suddely get reinforced back to full strength at the resupply time.

Even prior to 1.07 you would occasionally get messages like 'DPRK reinfocements arrive at Wonsan', even though no shipping or airlift units appear to have arrived there.

Put it down to just another Falcon abstraction and the fog-of-war

i.e. Reinforcements appear at set locations for both sides. At the present time under 1.07 these reinforcements can appear at locations that have already been captured by the enemy.

A number of previous posts (in the old combatsim forums) have dealt with the problem of an enemy battalion being surrounded on all sides, with only one tank or whatever in the unit. This will then suddely get reinforced back to full strength at the resupply time.

Even prior to 1.07 you would occasionally get messages like 'DPRK reinfocements arrive at Wonsan', even though no shipping or airlift units appear to have arrived there.

Put it down to just another Falcon abstraction and the fog-of-war

Re-supply, AFAICT, is the topping up of existing units, and if the enemy has more units, they get more extra tanks, even if the situation is fluid.

What I have NEVER seen is new batallions being created. In IRON FORTRESS, I blow 12 bridges around our area, completely isolating the opposing forces. Some enemy units will have crossed the bridges before they are blown, but I know what they are, roughly where they are and how many there are. I have never seen any enemy new units suddenly appear within the cordon.

I don't think you are seeing new batallions being created. What I think MAY be happening is that units appear and disappear on the map depending how recently they were sighted by allied forces (ground and air). They continue to exist, but will not appear on the map for some time and in that time they can travel some considerable distance.

I usually make notes on what units are around, where they are heading and their strengths (so I know if an allied batallion needs a bit of help). It takes quite some time to build up the picture and even then, a unit that has escaped detection can suddenly appear either on the map or in the sim. But none are created within the cordon.

Of course the situation may be different if the area under examination is not completely cut-off, but at least in this case it gives some sort of control over the experiment.

It's really bizarre because they just keep on doing this for hours and hours. On the other hand, I have had units disappear and reappear. Alex makes a good point about taking notes since this would tell if they are new or not. Was too horrified at what was happening and didn't check. Got really ticked off because I was sure I was about to win. No joy.

If they are NOT new, then it would be obvious that I have a continuous loop in a code statement that keeps moving them around like this.

Batallions make up brigades, and brigades make up divisions. I wonder how they all work together in the ground war. For example, often when you see an enemy attacking a town, the whole brigade is involved. The armour leads the way, followed by the artillery. A batallion or two of infantry follows in the rear (they are often from a different brigade, but the same division). I think the infantry's role is to hold the town after it has been taken (not sure about this).

Anyway, I too have been unable to make any infantry unit move to take an enemy position, even if it is undefended and there are no enemy units nearby. OTOH, it is easy to move armour and mechanised batallions. I am waiting to see if the rest of the brigade is going to move up behind them. Maybe then once the town has been captured (it is strategically important) the infantry will move up to help hold it.

What I am doing is re-taking towns and bridges that are still red when the enemy crossed through them earlier. The enemy units are now history, but I thought it might help turn the situation from "fluid" to "good" with a corresponding improvement in our re-supply.

Has anyone got any insight into how the batallions work together as brigades or even divisions?

Infantry will move if they're on the road and not assigned defensive positions. I wiped out one of mine by making it attack an armorded battalion, but I don't see much use in moving them. Tried advancing a whole brigade but it wouldn't go. There's got to be some key to making this work, but I haven't found it yet.

I'm curious about you blowing bridges all the time. I try to avoid this since I may want to cross that bridge myself, so I was wondering about your thinking on this. It's fine to blow it if you're sure you won't ever need it, but certainly not any bridge that facilitates my northward advance. Unless maybe you can get engineer battalions to repair them?

Regarding bridges in the Rolling Fire (middle) campaign. I systematically destroy bridges to:

a) Prevent western DPRK forces reaching Seoul by the end of day 1.
b) Cause rerouting of DPRK troops to Doduncheon (sp?) bridge (or other specific choke points). On their way there I hit them with every available BAI, Interdiction and CAS flights. Then hit them again as they queue to cross the single bridge. In 1.04/1.06 my squadron and the A-10 squadron racked up 2000+ A/G kills in 3 days doing this. Even under 1.07 A/G kills in the 100s are possible on the first day for the Elite F-16 and A-10 squadrons.

After 3 days or so, combined forces move up to Wonsan on the East coast - take the port, the strike west to P'Yong'Yang. Small bridges may also be repaired by engineer units in approx 2 days, postponing a counter-offensive, but not permanently.

Generally bridge destroying is a completely defensive tactic. Reason being: Its better to keep the enemy out now and worry about advancing later.

I blow the bridges to give me two days grace and can eliminate the small number of batallions who cross before the bridges are down and maybe get some air supremacy.

They get repaired in 2 days or so. I plan to keep the ones to the north and west of Taegu out of action, and launch my counter attacks along the south coast, where the enemy is weak, and up the east coast, where the navy is in control. To protect the flanks of these thrusts, I plan to....yes, you've guessed it, blow more bridges.

I also plan to blow a ring of bridges around the enemy forces to the north and west of Taegu to bottle them up and allow my thrusts more freedom.

But at the moment I am still in phase 1

Bridges get repaired even if there is no engineering batallions nearby. In fact, even if there are no enemies whatsoever in the vicinity! It takes about 2 days for the smaller ones and 3-4 days for the bigger ones.

Someone once reported that you get a better campaign situation (eg "fluid") if you knock out a HQ batallion. Presumably vice versa is also true. Maybe their presence is important near the FLOT??

You know, I mentioned my reinforcement problem from that western peninsula. If I blow the bridges in that area, my problem may be solved.