my ideal cm game.. whats yours..

[nelly]

hi all for many years ive been playing cm games against the ai and for the most part i have had a great time. what would i like to see in the next decade or so? well i have played around with a lose concept for a ww2 rts for some years now. and i think it would suit the cm series very well. simply speaking it would combine cm with a new admin structure. fighting with a purpose. a series of theater maps. Mediterranean/ Northerner Europe/ Russia/ far east .each theater follows a historical timeline and has recognized divisions of the day. (sounds familiar.. ) example:- (Mediterranean theater, 1940 north Africa)" o' conner moves west and begins ,operation compass". troop deployments are displayed on a "situation map" .the map is divided into a number of battles each of these has a number of games .say 8 for arguments sake. choose the battle you want to play ex. ( attack fort nibiewa)start time 0600hrs .choose one of the 8 games in that battle for nebiewa. .game time 2 hours. player plays out that game then the next and the next until he has played all 8 games in that battle. at the end of that battle player returns to the situation map . player chooses the next battle,say ( attack fort capputzo) start time 0600hrs again, same start time as the previous game, same 2 hour duration. this time there are 10 games in the attack on fort capputzo. player playes all 10 games and so on .after the player has played or passed all the games in all the battles in a 2 hour window, the ground gained or lost will register on the situation map. unit loses , prisoners taken, booty gained etc will also be recorded. each game result combines with the others to builds a unique situation report over the 2 hour game period. . the aim is to achieve success by defeating or holding the enemy and achieving the goals of "operation compass" .by clicking on any of the battles on the situation map you can choose to fight /hold ground /move from that sector( giving the player the option to plug a hole somewhere)/retire / route..having played all the battles in operation compass for after a given period of time ( in this case 2 hours of game play).. all the game results are correlated and new battle lines are drawn according to players results and the situation map is adjusted accordingly. the process then begins again from 0800 hrs with the units strengths and start lines adjusted . all the games are connected instead of independent games not related to each other as in the campaign mode in cm today,each games map is connected to its neighboring game. " fighting with a purpose"..over time the collective gains and loses will determine what has happened in "operation compass" you return to the theater map and assess your next move . the theater map can be connected to a world map showing troops in action somewhere else giving a separate theater a chance to play out . the game could be based on year by year or by theater over the course of the war .many permutations are possible. the end result is that i think the added dynamic of a map structure would give the game against the ai a greater purpose. and far greater enjoyment to the gamer than a number of seemingly unconnected battles labeled as a campaign ,with no real goal to aim for. this is only the tip of the ice burg and only one mans opinion but it will hopefully start a discussion among the game followers that read this . maybe even the game developer has already covered it, who knows , i can only hope.. fight the good fight..fight with purpose..thanks for reading.. Gdsm nelly..

[Fizou]

Dude.. wall of text. People will have a hard time reading that.

Id love if CM would incorporate a good grand campaign system. But I am pretty happy with what we have now. There is still a lot to do with the tactical simulation and that should always be the first priority if you ask me (fire/flamethrowers, ground to air, tank riding etc).

[Kenzie]

I've always thought it would be awesome to see a WWI CM game. That would be my ideal CM game. I've always been fascinated by the WWI era. Imagine leading scattered teams of stormtroopers, infiltrating enemy lines and isolating strongpoints for the follow-up offensive. Imagine seeing a creeping barrage with lines of infantry following close behind and mopping up pockets of resistance. Or imagine going on trench raids in the middle of the night. Or a small scale game where night-time patrols stumble into each into each other in no-man's land and a firefight breaks out, eventually spreading all across the line. I've never seen anything like this in a game before.

Or how about one of the lesser known fronts, like the African front. Battles in German East Africa or Southwest Africa would be great in the CM engine IMO. Battles were often very small, highly mobile, and fought over incredibly vast distances, much of it unmapped and unexplored. Imagine long distance, direct fire artillery duels between field gun batteries, with companies of askari skirmishing in between. Imagine leading companies of Indian troops in bush fighting with native askari troops. Or how about some raids against the Uganda railway line?

Even big frontal attacks on the western front were not always just grinding human wave slaughters like people seem to always believe. Sometimes the defenders took far more casualties than the attackers. I was reading in a book about some battle in December 1914 in which the Germans launched a local attack against the French with five companies of men, and captured three lines of trenches at the cost of only 6 dead and 13 wounded. There were many battles like that. Something like that would be great in CM. It's just all about fire superiority and fire and maneuver tactics just like anything else. There is nothing special about it. Modern infantry tactics were all started in WWI.

[LukeFF]

One that has a forum where the posters use paragraph breaks.

[nelly]

it does look a little like a wall of text . i wrote it on a small screen and it didnt look like that after an all nighter, lol.

i agree with you that some of the smaller details of the game could be tweaked a little.

i would like to see medics following up an advance.

in game arty like priests or 25 pounders, firing indirect missions instead of direct at 1 man.

and also maybe a creeping barrage fire mission.

[BLSTK]

One that has a forum where the posters use paragraph breaks.

...and CAPS

hugs and kisses,

BLSTK

[sburke]

What we wish for is often not what we really want.

Having been playing campaign games with Broadsword now since shortly after the release of CMBN we have pretty much foregone the idea of trying to do too much at the CM level. Trying to fight all of a division scale battle alone would create enough overhead that you'd actually get very little of it done in your lifetime.

What we have done instead is used a larger scale board game for an OP layer and then fight only very interesting specific battles at the CM level. Map creation time alone weighs against doing much more. It retains all the larger operational perspective of the battle while not having us waste an inordinate amount of time on battles that simply aren't worth the effort to do in CM.

As an example right now Broadsword is running a MG campaign using Where Eagles Dare. The board game itself has been pretty interesting as neither of us has full control over what we'd like to accomplish in a turn and random events have had a huge impact in the development of the battle.

As it stands right now we have a completely ahistorical, but plausible fight building up for Eindhoven. The Germans have been able to slip in units of the 59th ID while XXX corps and the 101st AD have both had difficulties that have created a situation where the fight for Eindhoven looks to become the critical moment in our campaign. Either the Allies smash through the German defense and make up lost time or the ultimate impact will be that the 82nd and 1st Airborne Divisions will face isolation for a much longer period than was historically the case.

I don't think anyone here needs to be told what potential impact that would have had on MG itself and the Allied strategic/political situation in the West. Hell that could probably tie up several threads on this forum for a while. So instead of trying to fight all the way through from D Day to the Elbe battle by battle, we have a playable game in CM that ends up with strategic consequences for Western Europe.

As it stands right now the Germans have approx. a reinforced regiment in Eindhoven. Another regiment will be on it's way and if this force holds long enough, the 107th Pz Bde is due to arrive. We are still thinking through the mechanics, but this will take more than just one very large scale urban battle to resolve.

I expect we will be fighting this out through a good part of 2014 and possibly 2015. Needless to say we are thrilled with the continued enhancements in urban and anti armor combat as the very nature of this battle has changed dramatically from what we would have expected prior to CM 2.01. If anyone is wondering if I think I found enough value in the MG module, you can stop over thinking it. Hell yeah.

My advice to the OP, stop thinking too big. Even assuming anyone was able to resolve the technical complexity of tying a tactical game to a strategic layer, you'd really not get as much value out of that as you might think. You'd simply end up with something you could never ever play through. Just trying to game the 4th Armored Division (much less the entire Lorraine Campaign) at Arracourt would be a pretty huge effort. (and yes I have thought about that.. a lot. )