Anyone missing CMx1-style campaigns?

[H1nd]

It is actually quite possible to build a campaign such as you describe in cmx2 as well. Only thing that is missing is the dynamic carry over of troop positions and battle damage. But technically one could design the campaign to take place over a single large map instead of chain of scenarios in different maps.

Example of recon in campaign can be seen in the stock german campaign of CM:BN where you will need to recon US frontline and the success will give you an advantage in the next mission where you will actually get to attack the place. I would love to see this more in current campaigns but the feature is there it is just not utilized.

You will have to take into consideration that the current system does allow branching campaigns so technically if the designer so wants, he can set say 3 different objectives and depending on the outcome (player manages to capture either 1,2,3 or zero obectives and all the permutations of the two and one out of three objectives taken) the campaign will branch into next scenario that reflects the players success or failure. Now ofc this is massive amount of effort but done in small enough pieces it could work in reasonable scale. Ofc it would be very nice and easy with the cmx1 way, I dont deny that and like i said, I would love to see it again. But to judge that the current engine cannot portray a drawn out battle with dynamic progress is wrong. It is simply not utilized, most likely because the majority of the players are happy with the new style linear (or slightly branching campaigns) but there is nothing stopping you or me from doing such a campaign.

Similarly your argument that the current system cannot represent changing weather and day and night conditions is plain wrong. It can. You can make a campaign with a scenario "defend the village untill nightfall" wich is followed by "we successfully defended the village, now guard it through the night against enemy suprise raids" or you lost and now you gotta take it under the cover of darkness etc etc etc.

The most important issue I think is that the game mechanics and most importantly the "human player factor" makes the combat in CM in general happen faster than it would in real life. THis is why we have scenarios where 12 hours battles are compressed to mere two hours. And remember that you can only affect the human player factor to very limited degree. (limited ammo comes to mind as one as well as very harsh penalties for casualties making the progress slower)

---

Come to think of it there is pretty much nothing on that list of yours that is not possible. You can ofc enlighten me but as far as i can think of it there is a way around to all of those points.