Barbarossa PBEM campaing

[seabolt]

see if there is a way to combine maps and go over the game limit of units ids and try and piece together a team campaign like that without scaling things down. Even to the point of doing a part of a campaign instead.

Two topics, here.

Scaling:

Actually, there's really no way to not scale at this level of detail, except for the most fanatical players of humongous battles. Even the fabled Wehrmacht combat teams of '44 rarely dealt with anything smaller than an infantry regiment when combining arms. Combining arms at the company, much less platoon, level? There's practically zero historical precedent for it.

SP scenarios feel "right" when they already incorporate at least a 3:1 scaling. I don't think the proposed 100:1 scaling for Barbarossa is the problem with modeling it. (In fact, that's the intriguing part, in that it helps some of us "grasp" the campaign on a more human level.) Realistic C&C that doesn't make a Soviet player want to chew off his own tongue and choke to death on the blood, that's the problem.

Team campaign:

You're absolutely right that this can be implemented on any scale. My initial idea has evolved to this: The campaign map would consist of a ~5-high by 6-wide grid. The 2 victory objectives (Berlin and Moscow for Barbarossa) would be at a front corner of a back-row map "cell," so that they could be attacked from 4 different "cells."

Each team would have 4 players. The referee would designate 1 player as High Command. Each team begins the campaign by negotiating strategy and allocation of assets. Whatever happens here, the High Command ultimately has final call on who is assigned to each of the starting maps, and what assets go where.

The High Command assigns himself to one of the starting maps, too, so that 4 of the 5 are manned by players. The fifth is manned by each team's politically connected but intellectually deficient lieutenant commander, Adolphus Inglebert for the Germans or Antov Ivolski for the Soviets. We call him AI, in either case.

Each player deploys his assets and chooses his stance. (He's supposed to do this according to the team plan, but does not have to ...) The stances are:

Defend: Always on defend, no chance to advance per delay.

Delay: Always on delay unless opponent delays or defends too, which creates a meeting engagement. If all adjacent teammates advance as result of round's battles, he also advances after any victory.

Meeting engagement: Defers initiative to opponent. Whatever stance the opponent takes, you take the usual opposite stance.

Advance: Always on advance unless opponent advances or assaults too, which creates a meeting engagement. If medium victory or better, pushes the opponent back one map.

Assault: Always assaults unless opponent stance triggers change, per above. Pushes opponent back with any victory.

High Command chooses the AI stance (obviously, defend or delay will be most common ...). Depending on who's assigned where, most often one player on each team will get to pound on the AI for the round. Sometimes opposing sectors will be AI vs AI.

After each round, possession of each row of the grid advances per the battle results. This will create salients, of course, which will be particularly dangerous and vulnerable at the same time. Haven't fleshed that out.

If a player's A0 unit gets killed, he's done! You now have a second AI commander on the team. This will be a grim day ...

Scoring would be by the Blitz model. Each player would get (eg) 0 points for a draw, +/-3 points for a minor, +/-6 points for a medium, etc. High Commands would get normal scores for their own battle, plus half of each subordinate's victory points (round down) and half-1 (eg, -2 for a minor, -4 for medium, etc) of each subordinate's negative defeat points. (Hoarding assets for yourself will kill you.) Bonus points will be provided for non-High Commanders who take prestige targets (Berlin, Moscow, Leningrad, etc). High Commanders earn bonuses for campaign speed and limiting overall losses.

Highest tally wins. Assuming you survived.

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