Paper Tiger

I've been considering splitting this one up into two, shorter campaigns- one for the 9th Cameronians and the other for the 2nd ASH. There's no real overlap for these two stories. No promises but I would like to drop the difficulty down a notch. I watched Hapless' video series on this campaign and it did make me reconsider the difficulty. After all, not many of us are lucky enough to get out work played like this and I would like to encourage it rather than 'embarrass' the good folks who do. It was meant to be a HARD campaign, after all, it was a very hard operation but I think the last two Grainville missions need to be toned down and that JgPzIV in mission 2 subbed for something a little less intimidating.

Okay, that's it uploaded. The picture failed to load but I don't care about that too much at this point.
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho/
This is a six mission campaign featuring Bravo Company of 1st Battalion 8th Marines. I should mention that it's a rework of my much earlier CMSF1 campaign of the same name but it's so reworked that it's really an all-new campaign that takes advantage of all the CMSF2 features. You'll need the NATO module to play this as the Syrian Airborne features in one of the missions. Sorry about that but I guess most folks reading here already have the full Monty.
It's designed primarily to have fun with one of the most unique factions in the game, the USMC, a light infantry formation that punches far above its weight even without the air support that you'll have in these missions. It should also be quite challenging but not too challenging. Mission 3 - CAAT among the Pigeons is intended to be very easy, to allow you to let rip with a rather unique formation within the MEU. 
I look forward to hearing how you get on. Perhaps you can tell me how many kills HITMAN got in your campaign? You're not beta testing this - I've already played this myself but that's a potential issue, it's been tested by one player with a particular play style and skill set. I try to break these missions but I'm not as creative about that as some of you will be  If you find any typos, let me know. I've been scanning the texts these last couple of days and can't see any but that's likely fatigue. Unless something egregious is found, you should be safe to complete a campaign before a revision comes up. I'm hoping that won't necessary but I've done this before and it can always be improved.
With the exception of CAAT among the Pigeons, each mission has several AI plans to give the campaign replayablity. So, if there's enough interest in it, I will return to this to make a new version featuring the German Gebirgsjagers which look like they'd be a blast to play with as well and not need much work to be done beyond making a core unit file and importing the units into each mission. And finally, I want to make a Brit forces Light Infantry version but that will need more work to do.

Well, well, well. I just fired up the first mission of Gung Ho! with the Gebirgsjagers and holy crap! I'd forgotten how much fun this formation was to work with. So I guess this is going to get a bit more loving for the time being. And no javelins!
If anyone is able to answer, I'd like not to use the Fuchs vehicles and have a pure Infantry formation (of course, I'll be using those wonderful Weasels and the Wolves.) I can rationalise it by saying they were choppered in in the briefing if necessary but from what I recall, they're a formation that fights in all climates and terrain and is intended to operate without vehicles. I'm sure they'd much prefer to ride across the hot Syrian country but war's tough.
I might have to use some Fuchs carriers for the bigger maps like the  Chaparral map where you have a lot of ground to cover but otherwise, there will be no carriers. I don't even want to use the Leopard tanks either - they're not a part of the formation but could be attached if I really need them.

With USMC Gung Ho! up and ready to be played, I started work on Hasrabit yesterday evening. I've examined all the missions, made some notes about OBs and the over-all plan behind the campaign and initial ideas how to improve on it. It's already a fairly solid design, two core unit forces that never meet but have two interconnected missions - a pattern I've used in most of my campaigns since.
I opened up the first mission, Ambush! in the editor and changed the marsh tiles to river and used proper bridges. I can see I was a little over-zealous with flavour objects back then to but otherwise, it's clearly an old map but functional so I decided to give it a spin. A nice small company of Special Forces to work with, excellent, so I devised a plan and hit START. OMG! What a disaster.
Sorry but that's just not my style any more so I'm going to have to make an all-new map to open the campaign (Dinas got it right) and I've got a doozy of an idea of what to do for it. I expect I'll have to do this with several of the missions but what the heck, it's work I enjoy. But I like to play the game from time to time too so this is how I'm going to progress.
While getting new maps prepared for Hasrabit, I'm going to create a fresh core units file and make the German Gebirgsjager version of Gung Ho! to play at the same time. Work title is 'Gebirgsjagers Vorwarts!'. If anyone has any feedback on Gung Ho!, please let me know so that I can incorporate that feedback into the German version. I don't need to have my ego stroked (any more) or even need lots of feedback from a host of players, just one or two comments will suffice to let me know if it's up to scratch or not. I trust you guys to give me useful feedback so don't be shy.

Okay, that's it uploaded. The picture failed to load but I don't care about that too much at this point.
https://www.thefewgoodmen.com/tsd3/cm-shock-force-2-2/cm-shock-force-2-campaigns/cmsf2-usmc-gung-ho/
This is a six mission campaign featuring Bravo Company of 1st Battalion 8th Marines. I should mention that it's a rework of my much earlier CMSF1 campaign of the same name but it's so reworked that it's really an all-new campaign that takes advantage of all the CMSF2 features. You'll need the NATO module to play this as the Syrian Airborne features in one of the missions. Sorry about that but I guess most folks reading here already have the full Monty.
It's designed primarily to have fun with one of the most unique factions in the game, the USMC, a light infantry formation that punches far above its weight even without the air support that you'll have in these missions. It should also be quite challenging but not too challenging. Mission 3 - CAAT among the Pigeons is intended to be very easy, to allow you to let rip with a rather unique formation within the MEU. 
I look forward to hearing how you get on. Perhaps you can tell me how many kills HITMAN got in your campaign? You're not beta testing this - I've already played this myself but that's a potential issue, it's been tested by one player with a particular play style and skill set. I try to break these missions but I'm not as creative about that as some of you will be  If you find any typos, let me know. I've been scanning the texts these last couple of days and can't see any but that's likely fatigue. Unless something egregious is found, you should be safe to complete a campaign before a revision comes up. I'm hoping that won't necessary but I've done this before and it can always be improved.
With the exception of CAAT among the Pigeons, each mission has several AI plans to give the campaign replayablity. So, if there's enough interest in it, I will return to this to make a new version featuring the German Gebirgsjagers which look like they'd be a blast to play with as well and not need much work to be done beyond making a core unit file and importing the units into each mission. And finally, I want to make a Brit forces Light Infantry version but that will need more work to do.

Ah, you have no idea how much that is appreciated.  Thanks for posting that. You have re-inspired me to get back to work on this with more enthusiasm so that all that hard work doesn't just go down a black hole. 
Your opening is almost identical to mine but I am much more aggressive with my Humvees than you and much less aggressive with the AAVs (They're carrying so much valuable ammo). I tend to hit the northern yard HARD with heavy artillery and send 1st platoon into the town from the north yard while 2nd platoon and the engineers go in like you did. If you clear out the north yard, the Syrians in the centre usually surrender more quickly.
There are several AI plans in that mission and two of them will give you quite a different experience so your video and my post won't spoil much for others
If you record yourself playing the next mission, I'll be curious to see how you approach that one.

I see this situation has been resolved. Sorry, I've been very busy with both work  and AoW4 this past week.
Hope you enjoy the campaign. I've yet to hear from anyone who has completed it or at least any feedback on the final three missions.

The campaign covers about 30 hours of real time so there won't be any replacements for losses. However, the Special Forces don't fight alone in most of their missions so I'd suggest you let the help do the door-to-door.  There's no option (that I'm aware of) for replacements to be of lower quality. It's a good suggestion though. Fortunately, you can combine two or more depleted units into one large squad now with the new engine so at least you're not stuck with several 1-man squads running around in later missions anymore.
The Guards are on their own in their missions though so I'm trying to keep the difficulty of their missions down. Once I've got the RG missions all crafted, I will compile the missions into mini campaigns to test them to see if the campaign is viable.
I prefer the Red v Red myself but I'm missing hearing artillery and air strike call-in voice acting when playing and the Syrians also have very poor co-ordination of artillery and air strikes in particular. After Gung Ho! and the new German version I'm working on, the contrast is striking - the voice acting helps to create the impression of a living battlefield and the call-in times are really short, sometimes just 2 minutes for battalion mortars and less than 10 minutes for sir strikes called in with an air controller. But the actual balance of forces is better and there are fewer constraints  on your actions in a mission so that you don't have to worry about civilian casualties so I really let rip with Red v Red MOUT. 

A quick update on progress - I've been trying to decide how best to get this project moving and one of the reasons why it's proving hard to do is that some of the new missions are just too damned hard and just not fun for me to play. I don't enjoy playing really, really hard missions any more and prefer something doable with proper planning and a little bit of luck. So I'm dialling down the difficulty in some of the missions so that they're not all hard.
I thought I'd get this finished quite quickly as it's already a working and finished campaign and just needed some AI improvements but it's turned out to be much more work than that. I forgot that pretty much every mission has an AI attack and they're a lot of work to get right. I want to do a good job with this and try to use as many of the improvements to the game engine since Hasrabit was released. I did a quick and dirty v2 back in the days to add AI fire plans and well, I was a bit over-zealous with that feature and that has required quite a bit of tinkering alone.
Apart from the finale, 'Hasrabit', the Special forces missions, both Phase 1 and Phase 2, are all pretty much done with new OBs for both sides, AI plans and very extensive map reworks. The first three missions of the campaign are tested and finalised now and am trying to get the Phase 1 Republican Guards missions into a similar state. As I mentioned in an earlier post, almost all the RG missions are AI attacks or meeting engagements and they're really hard to do. 'The Guards Counterattack' mission is almost there but I've decided to make 'The Barrier' mission an AI-defense mission instead of the meeting engagement it was. Now it's the AI that is forming the titular barrier and that should make it easier as it doesn't take so long to devise a good defence with 2-3 AI plans.
I've been scratching my head what do with Hill 142  - the delay calling in Syrian air strikes is appalling and so I'm pondering redoing the entire mission to skip the long recon phase. There was no Syrian air support in the original version and so adding it has changed the balance. I find it only works well in very slow missions with long waits for things to happen or if it is available from the get go in which case, it's often too OP.
As for the Phase 2 missions, there are only two RG missions and they're both proving tough nuts to revise. 
Heavy Metal - now I've decided to go back and use the original map with some tweaks like I have done with The Guards Counterattack for this one to avoid having to redo it completely. That means I will be able to tweak the existing AI plans instead of crafting whole new ones. I will keep the new map shown above for a future project - I have some ideas but I'll hold on until after this gets finished.
Saudara - I've completely redeveloped the small built up area and expanded the map but otherwise it's not going to change that much. 
That's where I am at the moment. I have to admit that I'm enjoying the newer, easier versions and the ideas are coming along slowly for the Hill mission. There's no rush to get this finished, there's no release date to consider so I can take my time. If it gets too much again, I'll maybe do some work on the German version of Gung Ho! to reinspire me.

A quick update on progress - I've been trying to decide how best to get this project moving and one of the reasons why it's proving hard to do is that some of the new missions are just too damned hard and just not fun for me to play. I don't enjoy playing really, really hard missions any more and prefer something doable with proper planning and a little bit of luck. So I'm dialling down the difficulty in some of the missions so that they're not all hard.
I thought I'd get this finished quite quickly as it's already a working and finished campaign and just needed some AI improvements but it's turned out to be much more work than that. I forgot that pretty much every mission has an AI attack and they're a lot of work to get right. I want to do a good job with this and try to use as many of the improvements to the game engine since Hasrabit was released. I did a quick and dirty v2 back in the days to add AI fire plans and well, I was a bit over-zealous with that feature and that has required quite a bit of tinkering alone.
Apart from the finale, 'Hasrabit', the Special forces missions, both Phase 1 and Phase 2, are all pretty much done with new OBs for both sides, AI plans and very extensive map reworks. The first three missions of the campaign are tested and finalised now and am trying to get the Phase 1 Republican Guards missions into a similar state. As I mentioned in an earlier post, almost all the RG missions are AI attacks or meeting engagements and they're really hard to do. 'The Guards Counterattack' mission is almost there but I've decided to make 'The Barrier' mission an AI-defense mission instead of the meeting engagement it was. Now it's the AI that is forming the titular barrier and that should make it easier as it doesn't take so long to devise a good defence with 2-3 AI plans.
I've been scratching my head what do with Hill 142  - the delay calling in Syrian air strikes is appalling and so I'm pondering redoing the entire mission to skip the long recon phase. There was no Syrian air support in the original version and so adding it has changed the balance. I find it only works well in very slow missions with long waits for things to happen or if it is available from the get go in which case, it's often too OP.
As for the Phase 2 missions, there are only two RG missions and they're both proving tough nuts to revise. 
Heavy Metal - now I've decided to go back and use the original map with some tweaks like I have done with The Guards Counterattack for this one to avoid having to redo it completely. That means I will be able to tweak the existing AI plans instead of crafting whole new ones. I will keep the new map shown above for a future project - I have some ideas but I'll hold on until after this gets finished.
Saudara - I've completely redeveloped the small built up area and expanded the map but otherwise it's not going to change that much. 
That's where I am at the moment. I have to admit that I'm enjoying the newer, easier versions and the ideas are coming along slowly for the Hill mission. There's no rush to get this finished, there's no release date to consider so I can take my time. If it gets too much again, I'll maybe do some work on the German version of Gung Ho! to reinspire me.

A quick update on progress - I've been trying to decide how best to get this project moving and one of the reasons why it's proving hard to do is that some of the new missions are just too damned hard and just not fun for me to play. I don't enjoy playing really, really hard missions any more and prefer something doable with proper planning and a little bit of luck. So I'm dialling down the difficulty in some of the missions so that they're not all hard.
I thought I'd get this finished quite quickly as it's already a working and finished campaign and just needed some AI improvements but it's turned out to be much more work than that. I forgot that pretty much every mission has an AI attack and they're a lot of work to get right. I want to do a good job with this and try to use as many of the improvements to the game engine since Hasrabit was released. I did a quick and dirty v2 back in the days to add AI fire plans and well, I was a bit over-zealous with that feature and that has required quite a bit of tinkering alone.
Apart from the finale, 'Hasrabit', the Special forces missions, both Phase 1 and Phase 2, are all pretty much done with new OBs for both sides, AI plans and very extensive map reworks. The first three missions of the campaign are tested and finalised now and am trying to get the Phase 1 Republican Guards missions into a similar state. As I mentioned in an earlier post, almost all the RG missions are AI attacks or meeting engagements and they're really hard to do. 'The Guards Counterattack' mission is almost there but I've decided to make 'The Barrier' mission an AI-defense mission instead of the meeting engagement it was. Now it's the AI that is forming the titular barrier and that should make it easier as it doesn't take so long to devise a good defence with 2-3 AI plans.
I've been scratching my head what do with Hill 142  - the delay calling in Syrian air strikes is appalling and so I'm pondering redoing the entire mission to skip the long recon phase. There was no Syrian air support in the original version and so adding it has changed the balance. I find it only works well in very slow missions with long waits for things to happen or if it is available from the get go in which case, it's often too OP.
As for the Phase 2 missions, there are only two RG missions and they're both proving tough nuts to revise. 
Heavy Metal - now I've decided to go back and use the original map with some tweaks like I have done with The Guards Counterattack for this one to avoid having to redo it completely. That means I will be able to tweak the existing AI plans instead of crafting whole new ones. I will keep the new map shown above for a future project - I have some ideas but I'll hold on until after this gets finished.
Saudara - I've completely redeveloped the small built up area and expanded the map but otherwise it's not going to change that much. 
That's where I am at the moment. I have to admit that I'm enjoying the newer, easier versions and the ideas are coming along slowly for the Hill mission. There's no rush to get this finished, there's no release date to consider so I can take my time. If it gets too much again, I'll maybe do some work on the German version of Gung Ho! to reinspire me.

I had a quick look at the 'Tiger' mission and the attacking Pioneers' morale is Extreme which is probably why they don't give up. There are some very weak units mixed into the German OB but the majority are good quality and so they won't surrender. It's definitely not due to reinforcements that never arrive.

I'm winding up work on my 'USMC Gung Ho!' campaign and when that's done, I'd like to start a new version of the same campaign but this time with German Gebirgsjager units instead. But I'd like to give it a German name instead of 'Gung Ho!', a title which demonstrated my pedigree as an old ASLer.
So the daft question is, what would be an appropriate German expression to use instead of Gung Ho!? I've googled it and got 'ubereifrig' or 'wild entschlossen' among others and of course, I'm clueless. What would you German speakers prefer I use or would something else be appropriate. I don't have to be able to pronounce it, just spell it and that's what copy and paste are for.
BTW, I was planning to use the title 'Tally Ho!' for the Brit version.

Well, work on this is going much more slowly than I thought. I haven't given up on it but have to confess that I find that playing Red v Red isn't as much fun as playing Blue v Red - it takes absolutely ages to call in air support and high calibre artillery, nearly 30 minutes which is a long wait. Recon is also not as much fun as a result so I'm doing a bit of a rethink on how to approach certain missions.
The sheer number of AI attacks in this campaign is pretty overwhelming as they're hard to do well and I prefer to have more than one plan. Almost every mission is an AI attack or a meeting engagement (even worse!). I've already turned Strong Stand from a meeting to a player attack and will do the same with Hill 142.Anyway, I opened up a few of the maps and got back to work this morning and have a better idea where to go with this. It's going to get finished later rather than sooner.

This is perhaps the first ever variable-difficulty campaign devised. If you are struggling with the difficulty, you will lose levels and play the GREEN version of each mission. The GREEN versions are usually much easier to play and win for most of us regulars If you are winning each mission, you will stay at that experience level, REGULAR, while if you are winning comfortably, you will eventually face a more challenging opponent, VETERAN. So, if you are patient and skip through the first couple of missions, you'll get to play the GREEN versions of the remaining which are more suited for the player who just wants to relax and enjoy a not-too-challenging evening's play. By having variable difficulty, everyone should be able to play the campaign through to the end at their own level of ability.

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)

Well, work on this is going much more slowly than I thought. I haven't given up on it but have to confess that I find that playing Red v Red isn't as much fun as playing Blue v Red - it takes absolutely ages to call in air support and high calibre artillery, nearly 30 minutes which is a long wait. Recon is also not as much fun as a result so I'm doing a bit of a rethink on how to approach certain missions.
The sheer number of AI attacks in this campaign is pretty overwhelming as they're hard to do well and I prefer to have more than one plan. Almost every mission is an AI attack or a meeting engagement (even worse!). I've already turned Strong Stand from a meeting to a player attack and will do the same with Hill 142.Anyway, I opened up a few of the maps and got back to work this morning and have a better idea where to go with this. It's going to get finished later rather than sooner.

I could write a very long post about this topic but I'll keep it simple.
You PAINT up to three set-up zones for both players - Blue 1, 2 and 3 and Red 1, 2 (pink) and 3 (orange) and any units that are placed in these zones in the editor by the designer can be re-positioned by the player (and the AI through painting yellow zones) anywhere in the same set-up zone. Units not placed in a set-up zone are fixed in place and can't be re-positioned by either side. A lot of the time, players just paint one large Blue-1 or Red-1 set up zone and don't bother with the others. The extra allows the designer to exert a much more sophisticated level of control over AI placement in plans.
You can overlap these zones and units placed in such a mixed zone can be placed in both. I don't do this intentionally as I have my own system.
The player can position the AI's units very precisely in the editor and, as long as you don't paint any yellow set up positions for the group in order 1 in a plan, they will stay there at set-up if that plan is selected. Or you can paint certain sections of the set-up zone with yellow boxes and decide if they'll set up on Lower Floors, Upper Floors, Rooftops or a mix if they are in buildings.
There are five possible AI Plans so if if you're not too particular, you can paint zones for the AI groups and it will place units from that group randomly in that yellow set-up zone in that plan. If you're only planning to use one plan, set the units up by yourself. 

Interesting. I'm afraid so. If the bunker is still right at the edge of the bridge, that's not the updated version of the campaign so you'd need to restart the campaign to get the fix. Saves from the old campaign have the old campaign baked in. The fix wasn't a code fix but rather a scenario design fix.
For the rework, I repositioned it away from the bridge to near the pump house and tested it several times (read that as more than 5 at least) to ensure that the US could get across the bridge and they could every time. 
 

Unusual tat. Is it permanent? It's a play but I can't quite work out  the details. Is there some significance to that particular play?
And yes, I'm back and that's the first fruit. For the time being, I'm importing the new core files units into Montebourg (I've just finished 'Labrynth' which I was dreading doing) and after that, I'll import the new core units into The Scottish Corridor. Once that's done, I'll really get to work revising these two. I've learned a lot since I made Montebourg so reworking the AI plans should be 'fun'. It's the work I love best. 

Just a quick post to reassure you that I am still working on this. However, Age Of Wonders 4 dropped last week and I've spent all my game time playing that and will likely be playing a lot of it for some time to come. I'll be working on this in the evenings in the future as I don't generally 'play' games then. It's also good because it prevents burnout from being a thing.

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)

Well, thanks to Age of Wonders 4, not an enormous amount of progress has been made but I've been working on the first two missions and have finally gotten Overkill and Ambush to where I want them. I'm considering taking out the Adan airfield missions as they are not part of the original campaign and the second one involves a large AI attack and these attack missions are a lot of work to get right.
I've toned down the difficulty of Ambush quite a bit - the new AI fire plans mean that the player will get ripped to pieces by the superior firepower of the attacker. It's an ambush mission - the AI is not supposed to know you're there and to blunder into your well-set ambush. Best guesses aside, I don't really know when the player will launch his ambush so I'm not going to script in fire plans for AI groups and just let them start firing once they know the enemy is there the old fashioned way. But I'm taking this experience with me to the Montebourg rework to make German AI attacks much more effective.
Testing the Guards Counterattack mission is quite hard work because while it's an AI attack, it's also quite a long mission as you have to counter attack, obviously. The opening AI assault is brutal and I'm happy with that but I have yet to win it - the T-90s are not as OP as I'd feared so I'm going to stick with them. The Barrier mission is a meeting arrangement and is going to be a lot of work testing too. I've reworked the original map and extended it quite a bit to improve LoS and added some terrain features to an otherwise barren map. A lot of apparently arid Syria land appears to be worked by farmers so I've worked a couple of features in from real world locations to make it look more interesting.
The AI is defending in Hill 142 so that won't be nearly so much work to finalise. Obviously, Heavy Metal is a complete reboot and another meeting engagement and then there is the final Guards mission, Sadara, which is like Hill 142 but much bigger.
The final mission, Hasrabit, is another large AI attack and quite a beast to manage so there's still a lot of work to do there.
So, it's a lot of work but I'm slowly working my way through it. Slow and steady wins the race (Tell that to Usain Bolt)