Anyone missing CMx1-style campaigns?

[Cogust]

Hi,

I'll try to give my input into this discussion, I will try to put my input after each quote to make it more structured. I hope that it won't be too hard to read through.

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.

I want to start out by defining what we are actually discussing, is it 1) CMx1 static operations with 10+ years of additional tweaking vs the current CMx2 campaigns or 2) CMx1 static operations, but with the CMx2 engine, vs the current CMx2 campaigns?

Number 1 is pointless as CMx2 camapigns is what happened after Battlefront tweaked CMx1 10+ years and it is hopeless to discuss what should have been done in those 10 years as that is pure fantasies.

I am thus assuming that we are discussing number 2, the only thing that makes sense to discuss IMO.

Story telling and long term tactical considerations are two things that are present in both CMx1 and CMx2, that's what campaigns/operations are all about.

It is true that some CMx2 campaigns lack long term considerations as the author valued balanced battles higher than them, by doing that they ensured that most battles are reasonably fun to play but the player isn't punished/rewarded by earlier decisions in the same way. One major drawback with CMx1 operations were the other side of the coin, the snowballing effects that you got where an initial advantage just got bigger after each battle and before long one side were deploying in a very narrow zone along the friendly map edge with little hope of getting anywhere.

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.

All the questions in the above paragraph are equally important in CMx2 as they are in CMx1, the only thing that is lacking is the carrying over of rubbled houses and similar between battles.

CMx2 campaigns are more flexible than CMx1 operations, but the latter are stronger in certain aspects due to their more narrow focus, destructible terrain is one such aspect.

One drawback with CMx1 is that if you faced a Tiger tank in the first battle you know that you will keep facing it until it is destroyed while it can be withdrawn between battles in CMx2.

The blowing of bridges during tactical combat (as in CMx1) is something that is VERY rare, but blowing the bridge between battles (as is possible in CMx2 if one makes a campaign where the battle after a failed bridge assault will have a blown bridge) is much more common.

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).

It appeares that you are discussing a hypothetical reinforcement model here, something that is neither in CMx2 nor in CMx1, it certainly has merits but I see it as pretty pointless for me to argue around as it does not exist at the moment.

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...

More campaigns are always welcome, but that is not dependent on the CMx2 campaign system per se. One can make more, but smaller campaigns with several battles on the same map to reduce map work, but I do not think that will lead to more campaign shipped with the game as most work is consumed with play balance (the whole campaign, not necessarily each and every battle in the campaign) and AI plans (CMx1 didn't have them which often made it very dull to play the AI).

The one thing lacking in CMx2 campaigns is dedicated H2H campaigns that are shipped with the game, that would be frickin' awesome. I also want the ability of several possible scenarios branching out from each battle to give more flexibility to the campaign authors, as it is now you can only have two different branches.

I envisage a campaign where both players are fighting battles along a frontline, divided into 2-3 sectors, where success in one sector will open up the possibility to drive deeper there and perhaps force the other player to fall back in other sectors to avoid being cut off. Players could then decide if they wanted to deepen their penetration or if they wanted to widen the breach first. This is doable with the current campaign system, but all the choices are pretty clunky if both sides are making decisions between battles.

/Conny