Greetings,
Can you explain a bit how the campaigns will go?
Will you have one batch of forces to play the whole campaign with? Will there be reinforcements or recovering units from previous battles that will be available later in the campaign?
In other words will the units you have from the start have meaning. Some games just chop up the campaign in scenarios where it hardly matters what happened in the previous battle . You start each battle with the forces they researched from the books. I think that logic should be reserved for scenarios. During a campaign you want to care about your army. Your losses your wins. How will you procedé in the next battle. Will it shift from a offensive to a defensive campaign.
Hope to hear how your campaign system works.
So far it's a very interesting take on how the battles themselves play out.
Regards
Sounds promising. Hope progress goes well. Looking forward to give this a go.
You win the campaign if you reach the Suez (if you're German-Italian), or if you stop the Jerries at Cyrenaica (or push them back all the way to El Agheila). It's actually a bit more complex than that, since we have a tree-like campaign progression diagram. In several situations we'll even have a draw. It works the same in both singleplayer and multiplayer games.
Your idea is the same as mine. I dream of the time when we'll have a good enough AI algorithms to be able to pull that off. Not only that, we have other features which will be added in the campaign layer (HQ staff officers, intelliegence operations, training and replacements, ... practically all that happened in-between the big operations). But since this will be a life-long project (hopefully) with many games, we are starting with the core mechanics, trying to avoid the "kitchen sink" problem. And in the following installments we plan to add more and more layers.
And when we succeed in doing so, we'll probably go back to all of the previous games and add those features as well, along with other mechanics we've added to the other games. I'm not sure will it be resolved through expansions, or DLCs, or updates ... it's too early to know all the details so early in the process. We have a lot more work to do, but our aim will be to provide our players with some good and stable wargaming content, and continuous support in the years to come.
Thanks for the promo! It's hard to make yourself heard in this loud world. Every little bit helps. Cheers Jeffrey! 😀
also hope you dont mind but I placed a mini promo at the Matrix forums to check out this game. As that forum as a pool of wargame fans
Hi Jeffrey, and welcome to the forum! That's a great question. The campaigns will be a series of connected scenarios. Depending on your victory or defeat, you will move to the next scenario. So if you were to play the game and get the same historical results - you will be able to experience all of the historical scenarios of this campaign.
We did a lot of thinking about this. One way of dealing with campaign would be to make something I call "continuous campaign". That's the design which you have suggested. That is practically a sandbox of North African theatre, in which you move, fight, get reinforcements and replacements, watch for your supply lines day-in and day-out. It's a great way to play, and it reminds me of my favourite tabletop wargames (DAK II is one of them). But the downside is that you don't get to play the historical scenarios. That way you'll never get to replay Crusader or Gazala, because your gameplay will very soon veer of from the historical narrative. Also, it is very hard to design a smart AI opponent for that type of campaign, which is very important aspect indeed.
The type we chose for this first game in the series is "scenario-based campaign", the one in which you get to experience historical scenarios. Most of the player will find this more interesting, since they'll be able to relive some of the well known scenarios. And in each new campaign they'll be able to experience some other what-if situations. That's why we designed scenarios like Alamein 41 (attack on El Alamein in 1941) or Cairo 42.
We plan to create both types of campaigns in one of our following games in this series. That way the players will be able to choose the mode of play: Continuous Campaign, or Scenario-based Campaign. I'm looking forward to that, because that will really make this series shine.
Thanks for your question. Please, feel free to ask and suggest. It's always a great thing to talk to fellow wargamers! 😊