4
Close Combat
Who’s in Control? You Choose
As noted earlier, your teams may or may not obey an order you give them.
However, you can avoid order overrides by selecting the “Soldiers always
obey” game option. Even so, when a team receives orders to fire, it may decide
that a different target represents a greater threat, and may fire at that alternate
target instead.
A soldier’s emotional state may also keep him from carrying out an order; he may
remain in cover or run away. Again, you can override these states by setting troops
in “Soldiers show no fear” mode before starting a game, but you can’t switch them
out of this mode during play, and units may follow orders with such enthusiasm
that they sustain far more casualties. Choosing “Soldiers show no fear” mode is
not only risky, but also makes game play less realistic.
To learn how to play Close Combat, turn the page.
For a detailed history of the Normandy Campaign depicted in Close Combat,
including a discussion of defensive and offensive tactics in the hedgerow battle,
see Chapter 4, “The Normandy Campaign in Close Combat.”
To read about the larger events of World War II that led to or resulted from the
Normandy Campaign, see Chapter 7, “The Big Picture: A Short History of
World War II.”