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Casualties as a victory parameter


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Being a CMx1 veteran, I've bought CMBN recently and I am happy with the new game in (almost) all respects. One thing I do not like is the way final score is calculated, especially when it comes to casualties. One can only get large chunks of points for keeping friendly casualties below certain threshold percentage, or for pushing the enemy above it. So, individual casualties - losing a few more men or keeping them alive - does not matter.

I haven't tried Quick Battles yet, but according to the manual, casualties are not regarded at all in them!

I don't say it is wrong and I haven't found anyone here complaining. I just don't like it. Is there an alternative system, perhaps one designed by the community, to convert the final results to account for individual casualties, even in QB? Something that the good old CMx1 did quite well?

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Think you may be wrong here... check out the scenario editor, mission, unit objectives.

Neat as it allows you to set 8 different values.

In some of my builds have set values on the officer core... then some on the Armour.

On a current build have increased the values so the allies score double points over the axis (AI vs Brits... Axis Assault).

Hope this helps.

(Sorry me and panzermike agree... time in typing... I lost.)

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Yup, there are at least two ways to make casualties matter with the editor. One is to assign a casualty threshold in the parameters section and the second is to make some or all of the enemy OB a unit objective group (Shift F1 etc) and assign points to the group for destruction. If you assign a value of 1000 points for destruction of the assigned group and you destroy 33% of them during the mission, you'll get about 330 points.

I use both when I design my missions. The parameters are useful for rewarding a player who completes a mission with less than say 10% casualties. If he gets 100vps for doing so and his side's group was worth 1000vps to the enemy, the 100 vps would offset the losses taken and improve his margin of victory. The enemy still gets the 1-99 casualty points though.

It is also useful for balancing a mission so that one side does not get a win at the start of the mission simply by requesting a Cease Fire. The AI always gives you one and so you can win easily if the designer doesn't prevent this. One way to do this is to assign an obscene amount of points to the AI side as long as their force has taken less than 30% casualties. Or less points if you want to balance the mission so that there's a draw if players do this in competitive play.

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So, how do casualties affect the score in Quick Battles?

The destroy objective doesn't work in Quick Battles. My assumption would be that it doesn't work because there is no way for the game to assign a destroy objective to a unit automatically. So in terms of Quick Battles it is true that casualty victory points don't work. In terms of the game itself however, they are present and are frequently used in scenarios.

In terms of the OP's post, if he was referring to QB only then he is correct. Casualty victory conditions don't apply. If he is referring to CMx2 in general terms then he is incorrect because the ability to assign casualty victory points is present and is used in scenarios and campaigns.

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Just to make sure I understand, are you saying that there are no victory points assigned for causing casualties in Quick Battles?

If so, then theoretically one side in a Quick Battle could kill/wound every enemy soldier save one, and if that one remaining enemy soldier occupied the victory location (let's say there is only one VL) and the other side had 100 men remaining in good order, but none of them inside the VL, the side with the one soldier would win the game 100 to 0?

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Just to make sure I understand, are you saying that there are no victory points assigned for causing casualties in Quick Battles?

If so, then theoretically one side in a Quick Battle could kill/wound every enemy soldier save one, and if that one remaining enemy soldier occupied the victory location (let's say there is only one VL) and the other side had 100 men remaining in good order, but none of them inside the VL, the side with the one soldier would win the game 100 to 0?

There may be parameter objectives which are threshold based, but yeah, what you mention there is essentially as I understand it with regard to QB.

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Thanks for the explanations. Essentially, I can agree with my opponent on modifying the scenario objectives to include Unit objectives before playing in order to get more representative results if we are not happy with the threshold parameters alone.

It won't work for Quick Battles, though. We'll figure something out, the 100 to 0 kind of results does not work well with the ladder system at our wargaming site.

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This sounds like another reason to get back into crafting proper scenarios again. QBs are good enough to reduce the need for build-your-own but when you abandon hand-crafted scenarios you miss out on much of the subtlety of the game. Ever since CMSF I leaned heavily on casualty threshold parameters and targeted kill unit objectives for victory conditions, often to the annoyance of my fellows who wanted a more standardized approach to victory conditions.

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Think your find that if a scenario has only terrain objectives you will get scores of 100-0.

Try playing a quick battle version (I on is CMBN MG ... 2.11), and I think your find casualties are shown as part of the score.

So you do get points for casualties.

Right you are, Nelson. Well, I should have played the game BEFORE reading the manual :)

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Casualties absolutely do count towards victory points in QBs.

Victory conditions

In order to ensure that all QB maps function uniformly, with any and all possible QB parameters, the game automatically converts all terrain objectives to OCCUPY objectives. All other types of objectives are completely ignored. The value of each OCCUPY objective is proportionally adjusted from the designer's values, relative to each other, so that the total points equals 1000. Additionally, the game automatically adds an enemy-casualty UNIT objective for each side.

The weight of OCCUPY and UNIT objectives for the final victory score depends on the type of game played. Meeting Engagements reward players less for holding terrain, more for causing casualties. Assaults are the opposite as casualties matter less, holding ground is paramount. Probes and attacks are inbetween.

The exact breakdown of casualty points vs. terrain objective points in QBs is:

Terrain/Casualties

ME: 400/600 pts

Probe: 500/500 pts

Attack: 650/350 pts

Assault: 750/250 pts

Thanks to Berto for figuring out this last part.

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