Campaign System

[Fullhouse]

Issues of Balance and withdrawal are all decided by how the strategic layer is implemented.

There must be strategic incentives for one side to stay and fight even if forces are unbalanced. Also, it should never be totally clear due to fog of war exactly how unbalanced any battle is until it is underway and both forces have eyes on in the field.

There are several ways to give strategic incentives, road net and supply for example. Road net allows you move forces quicker and in good order and arrive at any destination unfatigued and supply, well that is obvious.

I think playing wargames that have companies as the base unit size help in the vizualisation of how battles evolve. I would say HTTR and COTA would be the best examples.

In any campaign lasting over several days, the first few battles are messy as recon by fire takes place, after a few meeting engangements between random elements bumping into each other, lines form and then attacks are made to try and secure objectives that either facilitate supply for friendlys or frustrate it for opfors. Other objectives will be clearing the road net and to take high ground and good defensive positions. After this jockying for postition has taken place then the battles proper begin to try and secure the campaighn objectives.

If the only strategic level objective is the destruction of enemy forces, then you will have withdrawal after withdrawal, however the destruction of enemy forces must in fact be a secondary objective. The primary objective must be the taking or securing of some strategic objective and thus the destruction of enemy forces must be in a sense incidental to this. This will cut down on withdrawals.

In essence the ground being fought over must provide some benefits to those that hold it. Thus even if a force is outmatched it may seek to hold the ground to maintain those benefits for its own regiment/division etc and also to frustrate for as long as possible the enemy in receiving those benefits.

A campaign system that can create the above conditions should lead to a rich playing experience. I mean if all you want is balanced battles CM fulfills that need excellently. I personally would like to see the engine break out of that niche and explore some of its more diverse possibilities, which 99% of the time are ignored.