SE4 Strategy - An Art or a Science?

[Skulky]

A few historical comments that i missed out on adding before when they were more relevant but anyway here goes.

The German's lost against the Russians, not because they couldn't fight or had bad military leadership, instead it was the fact that Hitler (one of the stupidest leaders of all time) tried to run the military campaign. His politics and insane generalship got in the way. If Rommel or any other halfway competent general had run the campaign on his timetable with his units he would have won. I played a simulation against a very smart opponent as the Germans and won, hands down, I took worse losses than the Germans initially but ended up winning cause the weather effects didn't hit me in the end.

Vietnam, same goes for Mog, if we (being hte US) had put our backs behind it we would have done a lot better, if the men on the ground had been told to kick their asses anyway they could the war woudl have been won, problem was that the "managment" was telling them where to fight and how hard, furthermore there was no general objective or strategy. I just read "the things they carried" great boook and the soldiers felt like all they did was walk around, shoot ppl burn villages and keep walking. In WW2 we had a job to do with straight foward lines, Vietnam needed definition and objectives.

Finally, in Somalia the men there took on something they couldn't handle with their current ROE (dont' kill ppl that arn't shooting you). If htey had went in and out by helicopter, or the trucks hadn't gotten lost, OR they had been authorized to kill anyone who wasn't american and brought in heavy artillery they woudl have won, the odds the fought against and still survived were amazing.

Finally, Finally, american's can't take causlties. When Stalin lost a million in a battle he gave htem all medals and their families grieved and the neighbors thought those who had died heros. Here we point the finger at the government for causing these losses. The biggest lesson i learned while playing, surprise surprise, Starcraft was that you're going to lose some people. Hell you're goign to lose a lot of ppl. Loses should be minimized but not to the extent of tactical consideration. I wouldn't want to die, but when this mentality forces paralysis it isn't acceptable.