Anyone missing CMx1-style campaigns?

[Steiner14]

Whenever I play a campaign, I always miss real tactical considerations that go beyond the next two hours.
I'm wondering if others are missing the CMx1 style campaigns, where several battles were fought on the same map with evolving building destruction? 15 years later, an enhanced version of that system should not be impossible - it would offer tremendous possibilities.

A few thoughts, that compare the IMO tactically way superior static CMx1 campaign system to the current CMx2 system. Compared to the CMx1 system the current system is nothing more but a simple story-telling mechanism without tactical depth while a static campaign system potentially offers the highest tactical uncertainty, freedom and difficulty for the player:

Right now every campaign is more or less the same: the individual battles need to be balanced, because they are disconnected, while the core force is more or less for keeping the storyline together and adding to the balance in the one or the other way.

Contrary to this, the CMx1 system allows:

The player more or less receives a certain area (= the map) assigned and is responsible for holding or advancing on it and being responsible for all his forces.

The knowledge about the enemy could be absolutely zero, since there are several battles on the same map to find out what is going on. It could be up to the player to get a clear picture. Not in two hours but over one or even several "days" (battles):
Is enemy present at all? Are tanks present? Are ATGs present? Could I reach that hill or that position immediately?
If enemy is present, how strong is he? (this becomes even more interesting with the later discussed feature of reinforcements) Is he dug in? Can the goal be reached by a smashing quick advance or would it be suicide?
Instead of dreaming about an attack, will I be happy to hold the position for a few days until reinforcements arrive?

I'm also thinking about the tactical challenge how to realistically approach defenses, for example in front of important bridges, bridges that must be taken intact. Or parts of cities, that over the span of several battles could turn into dust.

Reinforcement model with the static CMx1 system:
Because there is time to fight a battle over several scenarios, there is no need for predetermined reinforcements arriving at certain times, at highly unrealistic timespans.
Reinforcements could be handled similar to artillery or air support - but arrival times would be realistic: a day, up to several days.

Additionally the ordering of reinforcements by the player could be combined with a price (the costs could be displayed to the player in equivalents of infantry platoons or tanks). It's then up to the player if he wants to "spend" these additional costs, of if he saves them.

The cost of these points could be made dependent on how quickly he needs the reinforcements (emergency/quick/when available).


Reduced design work:
One map per campaign would reduce the amount of work for the designers. Result: More campaigns, more tactically realistic content, with less efforts for the designers. Less time being spent on artificially balancing single battles.

I imagine instead of two campaigns that come with a game, there are five or ten campaigns! Varying from big attacks, to small platoon sized probes against a village, recon of a huge map, potential attacks, totally unexpected developments, things falling apart,...

If there are only two campaigns, and one capaign would be a totally unbalanced "things falling apart"-campaign, this would be not understood. But with a big variety of campaigns that would change totally.


The crown of the development would be the combination of both systems. A static battle that could switch, depending on several factors to a different location. But so far we don't even have static campaigns...

What do you guys think about the current campaign system VS a static system?