Campaign System

[Mad Russian]

Few people are going to sit and watch a battalion get cut to pieces on a map without withdrawing. Very few locations are worth the severe mauling of a unit.

To refer back to HTTR/COTA again. When defending a valuable location, one dosnt do it by placing units slap bang on the top of location, but on good defensive terrain through which an enemy must pass to reach the location.

This might be a tree line with flat empty terrain in front of it, high ground or any number of permutations etc.

This is true. I'm not saying in the least that the attackers get off casualty free in the exchange. More that they deal death and destruction to the smaller defenders forces. These forces are not willing to look at an attacker with supporting tanks, being hit by artillery and seeing waves of infantry coming to stay on the map and take the heavy losses.

The accounts you read about where the Germans kill 3 T-34's out of 20 and the Soviets stop attacking is viable here. Even understandable. When you know that you might have to fight with this very same unit again later. (Commanders are NOT assigned units but battles in the campaign.)

It is up to the defending unit to find terrain which grants it force multipliers so it can withstand attacks from superior forces.

I dont know how your campaighn system generated the terrain and ability to manouvre and set up within it, if it dosnt allow for the above then that would be a problem.

Each battle location had a map that was made for it specifically. The operational map was to be made from actual German tactical maps.

I may not mind if my battalion gets cut to ribbons if it can deal out what it gets before bighting the bullet or it can significantly delay or hold up enemy forces.

The problem with that supposition is that you won't know if you've done that or not until AFTER the battle and if it looks like you are just going to get pounded you won't just sit there.

In CM terms then:

The way to counter an attack by an unbalanced force is to fight them on an unbalanced map.

So a campaighn system would have to have a strategic layer that allowed defenders to seek out unbalanced maps to defend from and attackers (or those with the intiative) seeking to counter this by either overwhelming force or manouvre to better routes of attack.

While of course this is sound tactical advise that worked well for the Germans in Normandy and the US in the Battle of the Bulge it wasn't working well on the steppes of Russia.

This would counter another pretense of the average CM battle that often gets overlooked, not only are the forces "fair" but the terrain is "fair" also. Where is in reality most battles would never enjoy the above conditions.

Coming from my scenario making background where my battles/operations are all set on historical events that is less true. I have to work with the maps, OOB's and situations, to try to get my scenarios as close to the original situation as possible.

The issue that rapidly showed itself in the CM resolution of Op CM is that the generals are striving for unbalanced battles. The attacker isn't going to take a fight where he thinks it's anywhere close to an even fight unless he doesn't have a choice. The defender is going to try to unbalance the fight with reserves, reinforcements and counterattacks.

The end result seems to be a series of actions where one side has pretty much overwhelming local superiority against a weaker opponent.

Sound familiar? Of course it does. When you play higher level games it's what you do.

You stack Six American divisions around St. Lo and blow through the defending ONE German Regiment there.

You will do the exact same thing here. What that translates into are an almost endless series of actions where the defender is retreating off map almost as soon as they can.

At least that's what the playtesting has shown so far.

Maybe the we have the wrong operation to try this with. An operation where the terrain can be a factor like Normandy or the Bulge would certainly be better for the defender.

Good Hunting.

MR