PzC Normandy '44 demo operation available for use with CMx2 H2H Campaigns tutorial

[noob]

I asked John Tiller Software to allow me to distribute a reduced version of their game Panzer Campaigns Normandy '44 containing one playable scenario, and they have approved my request, therefore i have added a link below to a rar file containing a demo scenario from the Panzer Campaigns Normandy '44 game.

The demo scenario covers the clash between the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division with support and the 25th SS Pz Grenadier Regiment with support.

The battlefield is a hex map covering an area of 20 x 18 km with the Canadians advancing on Caen via Buron.

The action starts at 08:00 hours on the 7th June 1944 and lasts 8 turns (16 hours)

The demo is to be used in conjunction with the tutorial available at the link below, the PzC N44 units have been modified to display CMBN levels for Experience and Fitness, and the headcounts of the foot companies have been changed to reflect the relevant CM companies OOB's in the tutorial.

Once the rar file is downloaded and the folder extracted, just double click the normandy44.exe file, then click Mode / PBEM and select FOW and an encrypted PBEM game will start with the Allies moving first.

The game is played as a standard PzC PBEM game with the assault phase being resolved using CMBN PBEM / Real Time battles instead of the standard PzC assault function, however if the the forces involved are too small to warrant creating a CMBN battle the the PzC assault function can be used.

All the relevant PzC manuals are in with the demo, so with them and the tutorial, two players can play a H2H fully automated umpireless CMBN PBEM operation.

If there are any questions or problems please use this thread to respond.

[noob]

I have added a link to the tutorial intro to a demo of Panzer Campaigns Mius '43 for players to use to familiarise themselves with the game rather than using the demo of Panzer Campaigns Normandy '44 which i have provided, this is to allow players to preserve the FOW integrity of the Normandy demo scenario.

[c3k]

This sounds interesting.

Thanks.

Ken

[dieseltaylor]

Nice going noob. It may make CMBN a more clubbable option.

[noob]

Nice going noob. It may make CMBN a more clubbable option.

Forgive my ignorance but what do you mean by clubbable ?

[dieseltaylor]

My reading of CMBN is that there are wide variances in spotting times and kills such that if I were running matched scenarios I would confidently expect these random factors to have an important bearing on the players results. Not necessarily decisive but sufficient to affect results in some battles.

Going for a campaign means at a club level you can have several people playing on each side and the variation in each battle is not that important to the individual as he is not in competition directly with other players. We now war is luck, blood , sweat, and tears, Simply playing battles without a context is unsatisfying.

There has always been a demand for a campaign side to CM and this may provide.

Anyway WeBoB may be the place to give it a whirl. I will try to make some time for it but a bit hamstrung with ailing relatives. Send me an e-mail with your ideal going forward on this.

[noob]

My reading of CMBN is that there are wide variances in spotting times and kills such that if I were running matched scenarios I would confidently expect these random factors to have an important bearing on the players results. Not necessarily decisive but sufficient to affect results in some battles.

Going for a campaign means at a club level you can have several people playing on each side and the variation in each battle is not that important to the individual as he is not in competition directly with other players. We now war is luck, blood , sweat, and tears, Simply playing battles without a context is unsatisfying.

There has always been a demand for a campaign side to CM and this may provide.

Anyway WeBoB may be the place to give it a whirl. I will try to make some time for it but a bit hamstrung with ailing relatives. Send me an e-mail with your ideal going forward on this.

Now i see what you mean.

As for my idea for going forward with this, i will refer you to this section from the tutorial:

"In the course of a PzC campaign there is the potential for a lot of CM battles to be generated, so CM battles can be sub contracted out to players in the CM community, these are played as standard H2H PBEM or Real Time games with one difference, the campaign commanders write and add the briefings and diagrams to the CM battles, then, based on the outcomes of these battles, the commanders can request the players to play further battles with the same forces, or not participate any further, as would be the case in a real operation."

Therefore only two players have to actually play the Campaign game as commanders, the other participants can just play the surplus CM games it generates.

I am starting such a campaign using my system with one of my regular opponents and i will be sub contracting surplus CM battles out when they occur, if you wish to play one of these i can put you on a list of players i have recruited.

[noob]

I have corrected an error with the OOB of the Canadians, so if anyone has already downloaded this demo they need to overwrite the .oob and .scn files with the new ones now contained in the PzC Normandy '44 folder.

[Lanzfeld]

How can a battle be too small to warrant a CMBN battle? I love small fights!

[zwobot]

Looks interesting.

Do you have any rules for initial recon ('?' symbols visible at CM scenario start) in the assault phase?

E. g., if units spent at least 1 PzC turn next to each other without moving the initial recon in the CM scenario will be set to 20% and it will go up with each subsequent PzC turn without movement or assault action...

The above is only a suggestion, maybe it is too complicated to track already. Nevertheless any simple rule for initial recon would be a nice addition.

[Chris Ferrous]

Noob: well done for pressing on with this, especially for contacting the JT game suppliers for permissions.

I've followed this topic with interest from the start and my main concerns are that the generation of CMBN battle maps of sufficient detail will be onerous to say the least; and how long does one allow for a battle? Would it be longer if greater forces were involved?

I ran a CMAK (Battle for Bastogne) campaign using an old board wargame as its basis. I wrote an extensive manual and it worked quite well and turned up some very interesting battles but the main problems (after writing the manual, testing the rules, setting OOBs, and making some stock maps) was that players varied in their speeds of play (no-one dropped out in play), and didn't appreciate the amount of admin needed for adjusting the OOBs for losses. I can send you a copy of this rulebook if you like as it may give you some more ideas.

What we are really lacking in CMBN, which CMAK DID provide, is a random map generator. This was used according to tightly controlled rules depending on the operational terrain, and then manually edited, again according to set principles, to generate more intricate elements such as roads exiting through the correct mapedges and intersecting in the villages etc., and to remove some bizarre random elements.

In all honesty, I would actually consider making the entire strategic base map in sections, with overlap, after all they can be chopped up as needed, and then actually move units across those maps in real time. I'd have to give it some thought but I'm sure it could be done. My 6-year old pc, just defunct, could manage maps of 1km x 1km and about a battalion of units. My new pc seems to have no such restrictions! Maps that are too small would tend to work against ATG weapons which can be well hidden at 2000m and yet lethal to the right target.

Anyway, good luck with your proposal, and I hope it works out.

[noob]

I've followed this topic with interest from the start and my main concerns are that the generation of CMBN battle maps of sufficient detail will be onerous to say the least; and how long does one allow for a battle? Would it be longer if greater forces were involved?

I have been running a campaign using PzC for nearly a year now as an umpire with two teams of two players, and i have become, in that time, quite good at modifying pre existing maps so that's not really an issue for me, as for the lengths of the battles, they are fixed 60 turn games, but the CM maps have exit zones for players to withdraw their forces if needed, so the games rarely last their full term.

I ran a CMAK (Battle for Bastogne) campaign using an old board wargame as its basis. I wrote an extensive manual and it worked quite well and turned up some very interesting battles but the main problems (after writing the manual, testing the rules, setting OOBs, and making some stock maps) was that players varied in their speeds of play (no-one dropped out in play), and didn't appreciate the amount of admin needed for adjusting the OOBs for losses. I can send you a copy of this rulebook if you like as it may give you some more ideas.

Thanks for the offer, but if you look at my signatures you will see a link to a tutorial containing instructions on how to use the PzC game as a CM operational tool, and also rules for the transferring of data between the two games, and how combat and it's effects are calculated, applied and tracked.

What we are really lacking in CMBN, which CMAK DID provide, is a random map generator. This was used according to tightly controlled rules depending on the operational terrain, and then manually edited, again according to set principles, to generate more intricate elements such as roads exiting through the correct mapedges and intersecting in the villages etc., and to remove some bizarre random elements.

I agree a random map generator would be excellent but as there are a plentiful supply of maps available it does not take too much time to modify them.

In all honesty, I would actually consider making the entire strategic base map in sections, with overlap, after all they can be chopped up as needed, and then actually move units across those maps in real time. I'd have to give it some thought but I'm sure it could be done. My 6-year old pc, just defunct, could manage maps of 1km x 1km and about a battalion of units. My new pc seems to have no such restrictions! Maps that are too small would tend to work against ATG weapons which can be well hidden at 2000m and yet lethal to the right target.

I thought of such a thing myself but apart from the workload of building an area of say 20 x 20km in CM maps the micro management of manually moving all your units up roads would be tiresome IMO, that's why using the PzC game is such a good idea as it cuts out that task and automatically calculates LOS, Supply lines, Long range fire, Air Strikes and all combat Engineering functions so one only needs CM maps that cover the defenders hex area (1 x 1 km) and the attackers jump off points, meaning that most CMmaps are 1500 x 1000m with a maximum map of 2000 x 1500m

Anyway, good luck with your proposal, and I hope it works out.

It's not a proposal, it's a fully playable system, now that JTS have allowed me to distribute the demo, two players can, with the use of the demo and the tutorial below, play a fully automated umpireless CMBN operation.

Thanks for showing an interest.

[noob]

Looks interesting.

Do you have any rules for initial recon ('?' symbols visible at CM scenario start) in the assault phase?

E. g., if units spent at least 1 PzC turn next to each other without moving the initial recon in the CM scenario will be set to 20% and it will go up with each subsequent PzC turn without movement or assault action...

The above is only a suggestion, maybe it is too complicated to track already. Nevertheless any simple rule for initial recon would be a nice addition.

That's an interesting idea, i will have to give it some thought, thanks for the input.

[noob]

How can a battle be too small to warrant a CMBN battle? I love small fights!

I to love small fights, and will probably never use the in game PzC assault function in any operations i play , however some may not, so the option is there to use the PzC assault function to get a result.

[noob]

I have corrected another error with the demo, so if anyone has already downloaded it they need to overwrite the .oob and .scn files with the new ones now contained in the PzC Normandy '44 demo v2 folder.

[noob]

I have corrected some more errors in the Panzer Campaigns Normandy '44 demo, so please overwrite the old folder with the new one at the link.

[JonS]

Congratulations noob, this is a good thing you've put together here

[noob]

Congratulations noob, this is a good thing you've put together here

Thanks Jon

[Placebo]

I can't see a link in the thread, should i be looking in the repository?

[noob]

I can't see a link in the thread, should i be looking in the repository?

The links you need are my signature links below, one is a link to a tutorial on how to use Panzer Campaigns Normandy '44 to play operational CMBN battles, the other is a link to a demo scenario from Panzer Campaigns 'Normandy '44 to playtest the system.

[Placebo]

Just to clarify I am not blind just had signatures turned off