I'd played a few games of CoN before, but this particular battle got me hooked. I'll try to describe it in words, since I didn't take screen shots when it was happening. I didn't realize until just how epic it was.

So it's a WW3x4 game, I'm playing as Saudi. (This game is still active, btw). Israel invites me to their Coalition early, so I join. Unfortunately, Israel player's diplomacy was disastrous. We gained no other members, but we did get into a war with Syria.

Loyal to the Coalition, I went to war with Syria. That angered Iraq, who attacked both of us and brought in their five-player Coalition, including Egypt, who attacked Israel. As Iraq attacks me, hard. So now I'm fighting on several fronts. After a hard slog, I defeated Iraq and Syria was reduced to a pittance. Then suddenly, a fresh and ready Iran, who was at war with no other player before this, attacked me. Israel, Syria, and Iraq were all dead at this point and Egypt's attack into Israel had totally stalled out into rebellions and incompetence. So I was secure on the west side.

But the east. The east. Iran moved in for the kill.

What happened next was the most exciting battle I have ever had in a CoN game. It was Napoleonic. Iran moved 30 fresh divisions against me in three columns across a wide front. By rights, he should have won. I had about fifteen divisions left, in two columns and a half column defending the capital. I had to dodge, duck, lure, and maneuver madly across the desert and the smoking, insurgent-filled ruins of Iraq to defeat him. But defeat him I did. I took each column in turn with superior local numbers and devastated them with tactics. I can post screen shots of the news articles if you like. I lured him into trap after trap and destroyed him piecemeal.

I killed 25k Iranians and lost only 5k Saudis.

Against better players, my stats wouldn't be so high, but Iran was a good player, he simply didn't understand ground combat and combined arms.

The turning point of the whole campaign happened right outside Baghdad. He sent his best colum on a beeline for that city. This was about eight infantry, two recons. I had about two stacks to meet him,each with only half that strength, at best. But he doesn't know that. So he sees my two armies coming for him -- I've already caught and diced some of his smaller armies -- so he panics. He sends his guys into defense mode, they retreat to a mountain hex. Good decision tactically, locally. I won't attack him there.

Instead, I rip my armies immediately away from Baghdad, surround and kill his second column heading toward Riyadh. Lay infantry in front of him, rip it up with arty as he tries to advance. Column one dead, column two stuck in mountains. Column three roaring through Syria. Rush my units over there. Again, lay a trap. Infantry in front of his advance. Come get it. By now I have strike fighters to back up arty. He has no chance. Kill ratio is about ten to one. Even higher in some battles where his guys just sat in positions as arty killed them.

I'm fairly new, so I don't know anything about landmines. I certainly have thought, well if I can build a secret bunker in this city, why can't I build forts in these cities? Some Gustav line stuff. But that could bog the game down a bit, so hey, trust the devs.

Fair enough. I meant he wasn't just fire and forget. He was actively moving his troops when I did things. He zigged, I zagged. It wasn't an AFK player. He fought hard, he was active during that whole six hour window of intense death match chess games. So I give him full props. We fought like hell in that window.

Pix or didn't happen Let's see if this imgur album works
imgur.com/a/bJwURrp

ETA: If you deploy artillery and defensive infantry correctly, you can utttelry murder newbies. Speaking as a newbie myself.

1. Infantry makes contact, STOP!

2. Keep contact, bring in superior force

3. You better have superior forces around, it should be tanks, arty, aardvarks, or a just a big stack.

4. Never, never, never throw your infantry into a 1:1 fight they can't win. Never.