Cohesion and Morale

[choppinlt]

Prelude- We can debate who had the "best" tanks, artillery pieces, rifle, machine guns...etc, but it is the person employing the tools that make all the difference. The mindset, physical condition, training, education, and public support..etc all factor in to very complex interrelationships of the human condition. While it is the most important factor by far, the human condition is extremely difficult to model due to all the complexities. While it is difficult, TO attempts to capture various factors to model the human condition. The real world commander must assess and consider the human condition, and so does the TO commander.

I have talked about several of the factors already. This discussion is going to discuss Cohesion and Morale, and their interrelationship. I considered combining Cohesion and Morale in to a single category, but after further consideration I decided they modeled different aspects, yet they are closely related.

When the term "unit cohesion" is used, it can mean a number of different aspects depending on context. In TO, it does NOT directly represent esprit du corp or human relational factors, because these are factored more in to Leadership and Experience Level ratings. Unit Cohesion in TO strictly indicates the condition of the inner workings of the C2 in a unit and it's ability to effectively carry out its orders.

There are 4 levels of Cohesion: Good, Degraded, Disordered, and Disrupted.
Good-all things are working as they should with no internal impediments.
Degraded- the unit can conduct normal operations, however the unit is not operating at full effectiveness. It will take the unit a little longer to react to orders issued and is slightly less effective in combat.
Disordered-the unit is no longer capable of offensive operations (i.e. they cannot attack the enemy in ground combat). There is significant order delay (think 2X greater than normal), and a noticable drop in combat power when defending. Disorder does not instill confidence in troops, therefore morale recovery is extremely limited.
Disrupted-the unit is a mess! There are major order delays (think about 3X greater), and approximately a 1/3  drop in combat power. Additionally, each time a unit gets "disrupted", it automatically triggers a morale check (this will be explained more later).

There will be various combat events that will trigger a "cohesion check" such as a high casualty rate, being forced to retreat too far too quickly, artillery and air attack results. The core factor to passing (or failing) a cohesion check is the unit Experience Level, modified by Leadership. A unit can recover from lost cohesion given enough time being idle without ground combat, and passing cohesion checks for recovery. So you can quickly see that units with higher experience levels and better leaders are going to be much more resilient to losing and recovering cohesion.

Morale is the mental and emotional condition (i.e. enthusiasm, confidence) of a particular unit. Morale in TO represents unit morale level relative to itself. That means "poor" quality units can have excellent morale just like "high" quality units, however the high quality units will be more resilient to morale loss and recovery. This is because morale checks are based on the unit Experience Level rating and modfied by Leadership, just like Cohesion.

There will be a number of combat circumstances that can trigger a "morale check" such as a high casualty rate, being forced to retreat too far too quickly, Disrupted cohesion, suffering a moderate casualty rate while fatigued, and a unit being "outflanked". Morale is checked for each individual circumstance as they come up. This means that a unit could test for morale multiple times due to a single engagement.

Morale recovery will typically be recovered with time, but the minimum time requirements for recovery will be noticably greater than for cohesion. If a unit is NOT considered in C2, then recovery time will be much greater. But what is the best way to restore confidence? ...Success! Therefore the quickest way to recover morale is winning an engagement! I have not worked out the details on what constitutes a "win", but the point is that a "win" will trigger a morale recovery opportunity for a unit.

There will be 5 categories of a unit's morale state: Excellent, Good, Fair, Poor, and Demoralized. A unit's morale state will impact their combat power and will be a factor when determining Aggression Level http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/topic,3763.0.html. Combat power will drop by small incremental changes when going from Excellent to Poor, but Poor is the "break point". When a unit reaches Demoralized it faces a massive reduction in combat power (think around 80% reduction).

Both Cohesion and Morale impact a unit's combat power, but here is where they become more interrelated. The impact of Cohesion and Morale on combat power is NOT addititive. ONLY the most severe case applies. For example a unit is Disordered and Demoralized. Only the Demoralization factor applies, because it is the most severe.

There is a lot to think about and chew on, so feel free to ask questions! 

[Sailor Malan]

This all sounds logical and is just what I think should be included in a game such as this. A couple of points (I suspect typos): when you say disrupted units will have a 1/3 drop in combat power, do you mean that? Or a drop to 1/3? I would think the latter is more reasonable. A one on one fight with a good unit vs a disrupted one (all else being equal) I think should go to the good unit (which has to be the attacker) most of this time, so think classic 3:1 in combat power, hence I think the drop should be to 1/3.

I wonder if a straight prohibition on attacking for disordered units is a little abrupt. I would suggest that maybe it has to pass a check of some description... There have been examples (think early war Russian) where units attacked in a hopelessly disorganised manner and got smacked. I am not saying it is at all a good idea but maybe a unit can be cajoled and pushed into an attack when disordered (by passing the check) but it will be at low strength.

To combine your thoughts and mine, I would think something like:
Cohesion. Attack multiple       defence multiple       order delay
Good        1                               1                               1
Degraded  0.75                          0.9                            1.5
Disordered 1/3 (check reqd)        0.5                            2
Disrupted   no                            1/3                            3

For those of you who have not caught the difference between cohesion and morale, I suggest the following examples:

A good cohesion unit should be thought of as a team that knows what it is doing - the command team is in control, has the tools (telephone/radio links etc) knows its subordinate units, can think on its feet etc. Falling cohesion can be caused by loss of the tools, or key people (either by death/injury or physically being out of touch). I would model the British 1AB at Arnhem as having an automatic degraded status for all units while Urquart (the division commander) was trapped pretty much alone in a house out of touch for the first 2 days, combined with poor radios. However all units have sky high morale (in this case).   You can have the opposite case: the team knows what it is doing but doesn't want to do it (poor morale).

The classic collapse of a unit is driven by poor morale, or poor cohesion. The former causes people to physically run away or hide (or more realistically, find a reason to be somewhere else, in WW2, your classic mob running was rare because it is dangerous for the participants - it might happen for a few hundred meters but not for miles). Poor cohesion results in platoons, companies or even battalions being out of touch (and probably ammo), and suddenly realising they are on their own with the enemy all round. They might be willing and theoretically able to fight but see that they cannot achieve anything so surrender.  Most big units (Btn+)  surrender when cohesion falls to zero rather than because everyone wants to run. Small units do the opposite... when under fire they wave the white flag because of morale.

Just my views.

The more I think about these 2 factors, the more I think you might have a lot of national characteristic already buried in here. I think you need to consider fatigue and its effects as well though.

Thinking out loud here, morale is linked (to some extent) to cohesion. Being disorganised upsets troops and lowers morale, especially for poorly trained troops. On the other hand, members of elites just shrink their world to the small units (sections/platoons) and do the best they can. So the training level effects how fast poor cohesion lowers morale. Likewise, morale and training affect cohesion. Casualties (especially key junior and middle leaders) depress the troops, and poorly trained troops do not have suitable replacements on hand so the morale drop from the casualties is amplified into a bigger cohesion drop than for properly trained troops.

You need a sort of 'base national training level', and a 'base scenario morale' level which define the levels to which units gravitate maybe. Then each individual unit has a characteristic (elite, standard, green, raw recruit say) which gives bonuses in morale level and 'resilience' above the base level. Resilience is the chance of losing cohesion or morale. Elite units have a much lower chance of sinking in morale/cohesion for a given event than green ones. Raw recruits would not normally be seen in the west but would already be at the base levels, and have a very good chance of losing cohesion at any reverse.

Not sure I am explaining this well, but in principle all units would be at good cohesion at the start but the national training level defines the check to lose cohesion... 1941 Germans would have a low chance of losing cohesion for a given event (say 10% casualties), but 1941 Russians would have a very good one. Say 10% for a German unit and 40% for a Russian. So 2 identical combat effects: on the German unit a 90% chance of being unaffected in cohesion, but only 60% for the Russian. If either unit fails the check, the effects would be the same. Then you have a similar check for recovery and you get the German units being tough and quick to reorganise after set backs, but the Russians being brittle and then not robust at recovery.

Enough from me...

[choppinlt]

Great response, and thanks for chiming in! OK, let me address this....

This all sounds logical and is just what I think should be included in a game such as this. A couple of points (I suspect typos): when you say disrupted units will have a 1/3 drop in combat power, do you mean that? Or a drop to 1/3? I would think the latter is more reasonable. A one on one fight with a good unit vs a disrupted one (all else being equal) I think should go to the good unit (which has to be the attacker) most of this time, so think classic 3:1 in combat power, hence I think the drop should be to 1/3.

It is not a typo, currently I have Disruption resulting in a 30% drop. This drop corresponds to the loss in combat power for Poor morale. Morale and Cohesion combat power loss  directly correspond to each other, except Morale has an additional category; Demoralized. I can define Cohesion loss as "acute" loss of morale, meaning that the confusion at each level results in greater immediate doubt AND lower morale. Once the inner workings are re-established there is less doubt and morale quickly returns. In other words it is acute morale loss, with no lingering effects. Cohesion can flucuate more often both up and down, but Morale (note it is capitalized to denote the TO category) I will define as "tactical" loss of morale. I say tactical because it only applies to the tactical unit suffering the morale loss. It can be recovered, but takes significantly more time than Cohesion. Then there is the Combat Effectiveness Rating which is morale (and many other factors too) applied to a whole force (or unit types) that do NOT change over the course of a normal operation. I mentioned CER when talking about National Characteristics, but I have not had great discussion on it yet.

Back to Disruption and your proposing to drop to 1/3 combat power... With the number of different unit characteristics modeled, we have to be careful in our weighting of any one category. Going through some sensitivity analysis with my combat system (and looking at other systems), 10% is a noticeable drop. 30% is REALLY significant! Since these factors don't apply in a vacuum, there are likely to be other deductions that apply too. Additionally it is important to consider that while a unit may have low cohesion (assuming there are no other major factors) they are still armed and ready for combat, even if they are much less efficient. This is a long-winded way of saying that we will continue to evaluate all the factors as we go along through development and tweak as we go along, but I think that it currently is at a good starting point. Feel free to bring this up again when we are further in development!

I wonder if a straight prohibition on attacking for disordered units is a little abrupt. I would suggest that maybe it has to pass a check of some description... There have been examples (think early war Russian) where units attacked in a hopelessly disorganised manner and got smacked. I am not saying it is at all a good idea but maybe a unit can be cajoled and pushed into an attack when disordered (by passing the check) but it will be at low strength.

Hmm, I will seriously consider this...I like this idea!  If I forget this detail over the course of development, bring it up again...don't let me forget adding this detail without giving explanation why I left it out! This can add additional variability such as you can issue orders to attack, but there will be a widely varying response both in timeliness and whether or not they actually do it.

For those of you who have not caught the difference between cohesion and morale, I suggest the following examples:

A good cohesion unit should be thought of as a team that knows what it is doing - the command team is in control, has the tools (telephone/radio links etc) knows its subordinate units, can think on its feet etc. Falling cohesion can be caused by loss of the tools, or key people (either by death/injury or physically being out of touch). I would model the British 1AB at Arnhem as having an automatic degraded status for all units while Urquart (the division commander) was trapped pretty much alone in a house out of touch for the first 2 days, combined with poor radios. However all units have sky high morale (in this case).   You can have the opposite case: the team knows what it is doing but doesn't want to do it (poor morale).

The classic collapse of a unit is driven by poor morale, or poor cohesion. The former causes people to physically run away or hide (or more realistically, find a reason to be somewhere else, in WW2, your classic mob running was rare because it is dangerous for the participants - it might happen for a few hundred meters but not for miles). Poor cohesion results in platoons, companies or even battalions being out of touch (and probably ammo), and suddenly realising they are on their own with the enemy all round. They might be willing and theoretically able to fight but see that they cannot achieve anything so surrender.  Most big units (Btn+)  surrender when cohesion falls to zero rather than because everyone wants to run. Small units do the opposite... when under fire they wave the white flag because of morale.

This is great, and spot on! It's interesting that you mention Arnhem, because that is one of my case studies!

Just my views.

Yes please by all means, offer them up! Thoughtful responses, constructive criticisms, different viewpoints and questions are great! It allows a creative synergy that is highly motivating. 

The more I think about these 2 factors, the more I think you might have a lot of national characteristic already buried in here.

Correct, there is some national characteristic here! Reference my above response with the CER.

I think you need to consider fatigue and its effects as well though.

I have! Fatigue reduces resilience, therefore fatigued units are susceptible to more morale checks (reference the initial post and the section morale check causes). Fatigue has less impact on cohesion in my interpretation. Also note that fatigue can have a direct impact on combat power. Once you pass a threshold there will be a linear drop in combat power, though a unit will never lose more than 50% due to fatigue alone. Fatigue is a significant player in Aggression Level, and highly fatigued units will suffer greater non-battle casualties too.

Thinking out loud here, morale is linked (to some extent) to cohesion. Being disorganised upsets troops and lowers morale, especially for poorly trained troops. On the other hand, members of elites just shrink their world to the small units (sections/platoons) and do the best they can. So the training level effects how fast poor cohesion lowers morale. Likewise, morale and training affect cohesion. Casualties (especially key junior and middle leaders) depress the troops, and poorly trained troops do not have suitable replacements on hand so the morale drop from the casualties is amplified into a bigger cohesion drop than for properly trained troops.

Exactly! Thus higher trained units and better leaders create units that are more resilient to passing morale checks for both loss and recovery. In other words each training level has a % chance of passing assigned. It is modified by the unit's leadership (up or down). Oh goodness...I don't see where I discussed unit characteristics anywhere on this forum. OK, that is another thread I can start!

You need a sort of 'base national training level', and a 'base scenario morale' level which define the levels to which units gravitate maybe. Then each individual unit has a characteristic (elite, standard, green, raw recruit say) which gives bonuses in morale level and 'resilience' above the base level. Resilience is the chance of losing cohesion or morale. Elite units have a much lower chance of sinking in morale/cohesion for a given event than green ones. Raw recruits would not normally be seen in the west but would already be at the base levels, and have a very good chance of losing cohesion at any reverse.

Not sure I am explaining this well, but in principle all units would be at good cohesion at the start but the national training level defines the check to lose cohesion... 1941 Germans would have a low chance of losing cohesion for a given event (say 10% casualties), but 1941 Russians would have a very good one. Say 10% for a German unit and 40% for a Russian. So 2 identical combat effects: on the German unit a 90% chance of being unaffected in cohesion, but only 60% for the Russian. If either unit fails the check, the effects would be the same. Then you have a similar check for recovery and you get the German units being tough and quick to reorganise after set backs, but the Russians being brittle and then not robust at recovery.

So all of this is incorporated! Using the CER (which changes over the course of the war), Experience Level (i.e. training), and Leadership mods what you suggest is addressed. It may not be exactly how you suggest, but it is addressed, especially when National Characteristics (like doctrine) are applied. For instance Soviet troops in 1941 have a lower CER than late war, will generally have lower Experience Levels, and lower Leadership values assigned (purges), and then you have what you suggest!

One thing I have not fully developed are HQ's and ways they can gain or lose morale. I have some basic ideas, but have not fully fleshed them out.

[Asid]

I wonder if a straight prohibition on attacking for disordered units is a little abrupt. I would suggest that maybe it has to pass a check of some description... There have been examples (think early war Russian) where units attacked in a hopelessly disorganised manner and got smacked. I am not saying it is at all a good idea but maybe a unit can be cajoled and pushed into an attack when disordered (by passing the check) but it will be at low strength.

Hmm, I will seriously consider this...I like this idea!  If I forget this detail over the course of development, bring it up again...don't let me forget adding this detail without giving explanation why I left it out! This can add additional variability such as you can issue orders to attack, but there will be a widely varying response both in timeliness and whether or not they actually do it.

I would have the ability for disordered troops to attack. Obviously they would suffer penalties and not be as effective. Maybe it is a desperate attempt or a delaying action...This would add immersion and realism.

[Sailor Malan]

We seem to be thinking in the same way... 

On HQs, there are 2 very different scenarios in my opinion. There is the less normal situation where the HQ is directly threatened (under attack, or indirect fire/air attack). Most HQs (certainly in the west) fight as very high morale units (albeit with poor heavy weapons and support) - they are manned by people who got promoted for being good at their job - the Regt SM for example, or the Btn Lt Col. They wont have forgotten the basics and are highly motivated. The other option is they are manned by people who have been over promoted and maybe are struggling at command. In this case a chance to jump back to basics is usually a relief to them.  Only in a really poor army (either poor in skills, such as a minor neutral in 1940, or morale like Italy in the desert in 1940) would HQs not resist strongly (given their weapons - they should be no match for a std inf company!). So most HQs morale should rise when physically threatened, or plummet completely and they should melt away.

The more normal situation is where the HQ is not itself physically threatened, but its subunit(s) are, or have suffered reverse. Here I think we can relate to the triggers. The most damaging I think is threatened supply lines (enemy behind with no air supply for instance). Then (I suggest, in order): enemy broken through into the formation (not sure how to determine this), an attack by sub unit(s) goes really badly, and then things like continuous (>24hrs?) negative effects (bombardment, enemy pushing subunits back continuously, etc.)  This latter effect is compounded by fatigue. I think we can relate to minor continuous bad news being wearing, but it gets more so if you are tired. It takes a really inspirational staff to fight against a slow drip of bad news. This is another area where elite status counts. If you put a 'normal' division in the position of 1AB at Arnhem I think morale would suffer. HQs get lethargic ('what's the point? I cant attack yet I need more men. etc). The para's didn't. The intensity of their defence was only limited by the means not the will. The opposite would be French 55th Div at Sedan. The division morale collapsed after some effective but small effects. Only a few sub units were beaten but lots of them chose to defend in place rather than attack as ordered, artillery was not ready etc. All these are signs of lost intensity allowed by HQs that are not on the ball.

I don't fully follow how this will be modeled in your system, but I think you have the leavers here to manage it.

Oh, and I accept I don't understand your system enough to know what factors to apply, but I think the test case for disrupted defenders is they should lose most of the time in a 1:1 attack by a good equivalent unit. The factors should be such as to achieve this. They should lose not because of being unable to do anything. They should lose because once the attackers do overrun the first line of defence, the disorganised defender cannot respond. No reserves moved up, no reactive fire support etc. If the defender is a company, in effect they don't get credit for their reserve platoon, if they have a troop of tanks, this isn't factored in fully (no one gets the message to them on time). If they have fire support, this might work to start with but then fails (a pre-arranged fire plan might go off but no flexible second response etc.)

I presume HQ morale has some knock on effect to sub units? I would suggest it relates most directly to cohesion loss/recovery and only indirectly on subunit morale. The low morale HQ doesn't give guidance/info to sub units, which causes confusion. This confusion lowers morale (the 'acute' .loss you mention), but HQ morale I don't think should hit unit morale directly (or only in extreme cases). As an example, it might be useful to ask what the effect of reg/Brigade HQ suddenly disappearing (as in  'not being there'). Sub-unit coordination would suffer until they improvise a way round the HQ, but the sub-unit wouldn't immediately run away...

[choppinlt]

We seem to be thinking in the same way...   

It definitely appears that way! People that know me well may agree  that thinking like me is dangerous though! 

Agreed, HQ's are primarily administrative in function. While they will have some combat value (depending on what they are assigned), that is not where their value lies. They help coordinate the mission at each level, and shepherd the forces under their control with supplies and information. HQ units will appear starting at the Regt/Brgd level and higher. So the question becomes, how does Cohesion and Morale impact how they function? With HQ's, Cohesion will be applied like any other unit, so I think that is pretty straight forward. How will morale be applied? What about Leadership factors being applied to subordinate units? And at what levels? For instance, if you have a division commander with poor Leadership, how does this impact the individual battalion? If a regiment HQ has all 3 infantry battalions disrupted, what does that do to the RHQ? I focused on connecting these dots for the last few weeks, though the whole morale impact is still in development.

And yes HQ's will impact subordinate units in a variety of ways. Exactly how is still under development. But tactical units are most affected by their immediate higher HQ. Higher echelons matter, but the effects will be different. One way is communication flow. For instance, you are a corp commander and a DHQ got Disrupted (let's say by airstrike). The RHQ is still Good, so those battalions have no extra delay when issued orders, and still get any other benefits from the RHQ. However, getting divisional assets will be more complicated. Additionally since there is a break in the comm flow, information to you (the corp commander) has additional delay. The greater lag will force you to guess for longer on what is happening. National characteristics will play in to this as well. For instance Soviet forces will be most impacted when an HQ has comm issues.

As for morale, there are 2 different directions I could go. The morale of an HQ could be A) strictly a weighted reflection of it's subordinate units, OR B) the HQ could have it's own morale tracked like any tactical unit with taking morale checks, etc. For A, say an RHQ has 2 battalions Demoralized and 1 battalion has Good morale which would give a weighted morale level of Poor for the RHQ. Thus it directly represents the morale of its subordinate units. I see some distinct benefits both ways, though I am leaning towards the weighted representation for HQ morale.

Your response reminded me of something else. Some of your descriptions reminded me that TO gives the bottomline results, but players are left to weave their own story about things unfolded during different game events such as an engagement (unless of course they actually played it out, which gives the story), or why orders were not followed, etc. Players can have fun with this, or pay it no mind, based on preference.

As for the combat system, agreed, you have to make best guesses and assumptions while I have it in front of me. It still needs thorough playtesting, but it has been producing solid results. I will try to shed more light on it in future posts. I can say this: it is complicated and based on lots of variables and data. I plan to develop guidelines to help players with planning and context, but I am wanting to prevent TO from being a simple math problem. This may make some players uncomfortable, but even in modern times commanders don't have charts to figure out their odds before going on the assault. They make decisions and plans based on their understanding of their forces, enemy forces, and the situation.

You also got me thinking about your point with 2 equal units, so I did a test! I took 2 US infantry battalions against each other. The attacking battalion was in perfect condition and the defending battalion in a Hasty defensive posture, but it was disrupted. The battle took place in rolling terrain with a mixture of open and woods. The results surprised me a little because the attacker bounced with no advance after fighting for almost 2 hours.** HOWEVER, change the terrain to flat and open, and the attacking battalion advances 400m in about 90 minutes before the attack loses momentum. Is this an issue? I don't think so... at least right now. It must be considered that this test is done in a vacuum. There are likely to be other factors at play, and the biggest one in my mind is the lack of artillery. The attacker is most likely going to have it and since the defender is Disrupted, they likely will NOT have it. This will only increase the disparity. Caveat... everything will continually be under evaluation, so this is all subject to changes and tweaks.

**I alluded to earlier, this is the final result. The story may be that the attacking battalion advanced a few hundred meters, but pockets of resistance prevented the attackers from consolidating their gains with the end result being a fall back to original positions.

[Sailor Malan]

I like everything you are saying.

On the 1:1 disrupted test, full disclosure here: I have no supporting evidence that a disrupted unit should act as if an equal attacker had 3:1 odds - just a gut feel. However, to flesh  out my gut feel, I guess I mean 3:1 odds table in a classic game CRT, so wins 5/6 of the time. Maybe it should 4/6. On the other hand, classic CRTs had the issue of 1:1 attacks winning 1/2 the time, so maybe that is a bad place to be.

Lets look at it a different way: what is the difference between a disorganised defending Btn and an organised (good cohesion) one.

• companies might be in poor positions- not properly mutually supporting
• support company wont get requests for (e.g. mortar) fire support as quickly (or at all)
• support company wont have allocated HMGs (depending on TOE/nationality) to front line effectively
• attacked support units will not be used effectively
• units will be more likely to run out of ammo (resupply requests getting lost)
• reserves and reaction moves of subunits wont happen on time or at all
• higher level fire support wont happen properly(late or not at all]

To my mind this means there are 2 ways an attack on such a unit can go: if the attacker is so weak or poorly put together that the front line can beat it back on its own, it will almost be like the defender isn't disordered at all. The only effect would be the lack of support/resupply mentioned above but little else. However, any slight advantage (penetrating the front line companies) that the attacker gains will result in a big win... the whole Btn could be pushed back with losses based on the 'defeat' of a single company maybe.

I would do a plot, but what i am saying is the chance of no gain or a small attacker gain (a hundred meters then bog down) is only slightly reduced (relative to the same attack on a good order defender, but once gains are made (up to complete push back of a Btn), the ground made and the losses taken by the attacker bias a lot.

I guess the above all apply to hasty defence. For a more established on, disruption would only have a subset of the issues (support weapons are already allocated so there wouldn't be issues of lack or allocation.

[choppinlt]

Ha yes, that was my assumption of what you are talking about with referencing CRT's and the classic 3:1 standard in board games.FYI,if you do an internet search you will find some interesting discussions around the 3:1 argument...but I digress... 

Agreed, all of those items are potential factors with a disrupted unit. But first let us define Hasty! The terms means different things depending on context, but in an operational context I have defined it as troops that have established basic fighting positions to include foxholes. This implies that they have had some time to establish themselves and dig in some. Prepared positions would include some fall back positions, some trenching, with access to some barbed wire, mines, and a few wooden bunkers. Fortified being more extensive earthwords and perhaps some concrete structures.Troops with the greatest exposure are troops that get counterattacked when moving (whether they are attacking, or otherwise on the move). Troops that are in a stationary position, but that have not had ample time to dig in are considered Exposed. Ah wait...I discussed this already some time ago and you can reference this link: http://dogsofwarvu.com/forum/index.php/topic,3655.0.html

Some more iterations:

Rolling terriain with mixture of trees-

Same scenario as before EXCEPT the attacker has 1 battery of 105's in support, and the defender has Good cohesion in an Exposed posture. Rolling mixed terrain is pretty good defensive terrain, and the attacker bounces with no advance about 60% of the time.

This time the defender is Disrupted and Exposed, resulting in an advance of 300m.

Change terrain to flat and open...no where to hide!

Same scenario except defender is Good and Exposed. In this case the attacker advances 400m!

Same scenario except defender is Disrupted and Exposed. This time the attackers push 700m! In flat and open terrain a unit pushes an equal sized and equipped unit that is Disrupted unit back 700m with the addition of 1 battery of 105's.

One last trial...
Attacker has no 105's, Defender is fully vulnerable and is disrupted in rolling mixed terrain. The attacker advances 300m! So this is a literal 1:1 case, except the defender has decent terrain.

Keep in mind that this is the core result with no variables thrown in.

As you can see, all the variables play a role. Terrain is key, but unit being disrupted makes a significant difference.