Head to Head Campaign Discussion

[Bradley Dick]

Has anyone here tried to play or create a balanced H2H campaign? I would like to make one where the battles have some consequence for the PBEM crowd. I want to know what works and what does not. I'd like to hear if anyone has any tips or warnings that they could come up with for building one of these.

I was thinking about a few points:

• Start with a meeting engagement to get the ball rolling
  
• Branching campaign paths available for each battle depending on who wins
  
• Persistent forces with resupply and reinforcements to help balance the sides and keep it fun after a loss
  
• Exit zones to help preserve forces in the face of defeats(in other words, if you can't take the objective then you had best manage a decent retreat before you call the ceasefire)
  
• Minimum of three battles before the campaign ends (but I would like to shoot for more)
  

Any input or advice anyone has would be greatly appreciated.

[JonS]

Be careful with exit zones. I 'get' why you'd want to use them, but if you intend to have the enemy force as a Destroy Objective then also having an Exit obj can, and probably will, really mess with your overall scoring schema.

Edit:

You might do a first H2H campaign that's even simpler:-

Battle 1: balanced meeting engagement

Battle 2: winner of Battle 1 attacks loser of Battle 1 in defensive positions.

That'd require 3 battles but probably only two maps.

* Battle 1 is on Map 1.

* Battle 2a is on Map 2, with A attacking and B defending.

* Battle 2b is on Map 2, with B attacking and A defending.

That would be reasonably tractable to design and create, I think, and the knock-on effects from Battle 1 isn't as likely to lead to a cascading run-away victory in Battle 2, and you could even give the loser of Battle 1 some reinforcements to assist with their defence. It also has a coherent narrative: "we bumped into the krauts at Grid 123456, and got knocked on our butts. Now we're defending at GR131466" or "we bumped into the krauts at Grid 123456, and kicked them hard. Now we're attacking their main position at GR131466."

[Bradley Dick]

JonS,

That's exactly the sort of the thing I was thinking of to start it off with. Winner of the meeting engagement attacks the loser as he tries to hold for reinforcements. If you made exit objectives a low value in comparison to the actual objectives, could you balance out the need to preserve your forces with the draw of actually winning the objective?

[JonS]

If you made exit objectives a low value in comparison to the actual objectives, could you balance out the need to preserve your forces with the draw of actually winning the objective?

You can, but you need to think through what proportion of the total force pool is going to be for Unit Objs vice Terrain Objs, and consider all the use cases:

* What if Side A just withdraws all their forces at the start of Battle 1?

* What if Side A doesn't get anything off the map but holds all the objectives at the end of Battle 1?

* vice versa for Side B

* etc

You'd also need to be really explicit with the players about exactly where and how they can score points, so they can make an informed plan.

If you make the Destroy Unit Objs really low value then there's less incentive to spontaneously exit the forces, but similarly there's less incentive to preserve your own forces. For example, if a Terrain Obj is worth 500 points and the Destroy Obj for your forces is only 50 points, then it makes 'sense' to shed rivers of your own blood to take and hold the terrain obj, which might not quite be what you as designer trying to achieve or encourage

[Bradley Dick]

Is there any way to do a sort of if then else statement with objectives? Say, if you hold the objective, then all forces are considered to be preserved and exited; otherwise you must exit to maintain those units.

[JonS]

I'm not sure - I've not tried to do anything like that.

Hmm.

You could go the other way, and make units worth practically nothing in the first battle, but almost everything in the second battle. You'd have to try it to see if it works, but it *might* work that any units destroyed in Battle 1 would then cost points in Battle 2, which I think might provide the kind of incentive you seem to be going for.

I'm assuming, here, that you weren't thinking of having an Exit Obj in Battle 2?

[Chris Ferrous]

You could entirely ignore the CMBN in-game scoring system and dictate yourself what is meant by, or at least what constitutes, victory, defeat or an inconclusive result (and various other possibilities).

In other words you could use objective zones almost like flags, and casualty figures as sustainable unit integrity values without having the game compute what that means. I do miss the overall morale = x% summary from CM1.

I did quite a bit of this sort of thing with CM1 using both an external operational map which dictated engagements' OOBs and the terrain, and also using a 'choose your next move' text-style options table using a spreadsheet with a complete tree of branching possibilities. Each battle result (closely defined) leading to maybe 1-3 possibilities for the player who held the initiative (not necessarily the 'winner' as you've already countenanced should one side 'escape' an engagement for instance).

Another thing I miss from CM1 is the ability to re-import a damaged battle map as often as you like (including its units living and dead). Before I knew of this option it really grated if a battle was fought over the same ground and a farmhouse smashed to bits earlier was suddenly intact again. One or two buildings you could deliberately damage but to replicate shell damage for a whole village would be tiresome.

[76mm]

Another thing I miss from CM1 is the ability to re-import a damaged battle map as often as you like (including its units living and dead). Before I knew of this option it really grated if a battle was fought over the same ground and a farmhouse smashed to bits earlier was suddenly intact again. One or two buildings you could deliberately damage but to replicate shell damage for a whole village would be tiresome.

Er, how can you do this in CM1? I didn't think you could import a save game map, etc. as a scnenario? Or are you talking about something else?

[Chris Ferrous]

Hi 76mm

Yes, it can be done in CM1, it was a great feature and I played some 'never-ending' QB campaigns with some of my PBEM pals. We gradually trickled in units at maybe 800pts per battle (I can't remember exactly) and obviously if you'd taken a hammering in the previous game it didn't help your chances in the next.

To import a used map (in CM1) you MUST have a FINISHED battle file which has been saved during the map review option after the AAR screen. This has the same file suffix as any battle map or scenario file and can be imported either as a QB or as a starting position in a new scenario (IIRC, QB is absolutely definite, I'm not absolutely sure about creating a scenario that way).

[76mm]

ah yes, I think you can do this with QBs, but not scenarios.

Interesting, because I'm still playing CMBB more than CMBN...gotta have my East Front fix...

[Chris Ferrous]

@76mm

I may still have a CMBB map we used for one of our 'never-ending' QBs. I can't remember why we stopped after 3 battles as neither of us had got to the far end of the map. Think RL issues intervened.

BTW, be careful if you put any set-up zones on the map as they will stay in place for subsequent battles; hence a starting meeting engagement with zones at respective edges only is best. Surviving units can stay put beyond the zones but new units will be placed in them. There's some other cautions I could offer; PM me if you need more info.