Cant play campaigns

[lordhedgwich]

In CM games i normally just play scenarios but recently i have really wanted to try and play the campaigns, but i get too stressed over the death of my troops knowing they wont be there next mission lol Is that weird? I get all worked up and just end up be overly cautious which usually causes my men to get hit by arty from being idle too long   Anyone else have this problem?

[A Canadian Cat]

Sounds like that is a Good Thing.  Your are supposed to be cautious with your soldiers and make every effort to see them survive to fight another day.  That is one of the good things about campaigns.

[Erwin]

Yes, having to deal with the consequences of your actions/successes/failures in one battle continue to the next battle(s) is what makes CM such a great game.

 

That's one of the reasons that it is vital for BF to put more focus on Campaigns that use/exploit all the features that their game engine allows - branching, penalizing excessive friendly casualties, destruction of "valuable" buildings, core units, as well as using up too much ammo etc etc. 

 

After CMSF was patched to its current (excellent) iteration, the campaigns that were created for CMSF by volunteer players became increasingly sophisticated, and many were quite brilliant.  As new CM2 titles were released it seems like the campaigns have unfortunately become increasingly cookie cutter, simplistic and rather boring.

 

It's understandable that campaigns have been neglected since the work involved is tremendous - several man-months to create a good campaign.  That's not sustainable by volunteers.  I am very happy to hear that BF is planning Campaign modules to sell.  That may be more important than continually creating new CM2 products.

Edited July 13, 2015 by Erwin

[lordhedgwich]

Well i started to get interested in the campaigns after playing GTOSs campaigns. What are some of your guys favorite campaigns?

[SlowLarry]

The russian is pretty cool because you do not need to think about excessive casualties because you get new stuff in the next battles. But the german one is outstanding. If you get over having to move so many troops( actually once you get going the burden eases significantly) you will be rewarded by the best combined arms armor heavy experience on the largest and pretty gorgeous maps of all the cm game imho.

 

My personal favourites:

 

1. Blunting the spear (RT)

2. Road to Montebourg2 (BN)

3. Road to Nijmwegen (BN+MG)

4. Kampfgruppe Engel (BN+CW?, its bugged now after some update though)

5. Devils Decent (BN)

[Baneman]

...

4. Kampfgruppe Engel (BN+CW?, its bugged now after some update though)

...

And now fixed

See here : http://community.battlefront.com/topic/120235-updated-kampfgruppe-engel-campaign-on-repository/

[simon21]

Here is the thing.  CM rewards careful planning.  I agree.  

 

The problem is that if you play in WeGo mode, which I consider to the the intended way to play the game it's very hard to avoid losing a lot of guys because they start getting screwed up by guys in houses or hit by artillery for a minute strait when they should be running away.  I can't tell you the number of scots I lost in the CW campaign trying to take houses when I had clear numerical superiority and surprise.  My people would just run away after the Germans buggered them with the MP40's.  The game almost needs a sync command, but I realize this would be impossible.   

 

There are also balance changes that occur due to new versions of the game.  MG's over time got a lot more deadly.  The campaigns are playtested at one difficulty for one version and often played in a different difficulty and version.

 

The campaigns are 'balanced', in many ways, for save scummers and at about the half way point, if you aren't save scumming, then you probably have lost a lot of guys due to game bugs or just not being able to control your guys.

 

This is pretty frustrating.  My advise is to save scum if you are going to use WeGo.   

Edited July 23, 2015 by simon21

[PanzerShrimp]

Yeah the Blunting the Spear campaign is well worth it when you get to that last level.

 

I had about 95% of my panthers, 30% of my mark 4's, 50% of my infantry, probably less in half tracks....

 

But still got a major victory campaign wise.  

 

It is a large campaign though and I don't think people who are new to combat mission in general should start there.

[Bulletpoint]

 

 

This is pretty frustrating.  My advise is to save scum if you are going to use WeGo.   

 

I agree WeGo can be frustrating, but I diasgree about save scumming. It may feel good in the short term, but long term it kills my enjoyment of the game to save/reload to always avoid problems. It makes victory feel hollow.

 

Just grimace and bear it, take note of what went wrong and do better next time

Edited August 7, 2015 by Bulletpoint

[MOS:96B2P]

<Snip>   I diasgree about save scumming. It may feel good in the short term, but long term it kills my enjoyment of the game to save/reload to always avoid problems. It makes victory feel hollow.  <Snip> 

 

One way I have found to have the best of both worlds is to save however not reload in the actual game to try for a different outcome.  Just go on with the game as Bulletpoint says.  However, when something interesting happens, I will sometimes take the saved game file, change the file name and save it to use as a training file.  This way I can go back to it and practice doing the house entry, street crossing, tank shoot out etc. (whatever it was that got my @ss handed to me) until I hopefully learn from it and improve.

 

But as Bulletpoint said reloading just to change the outcome can make the victory seem hollow. 

[womble]

I save every replay and every orders turn, not to rectify mistakes I make, but because upon occasion the game will crash, and redoing 35 minutes of a scenario (as I just did with KE) sucks donkey phallus. And sometimes to rectify gross, howling mistakes the TacAI makes. In mission 1 of KE for example, a breach team kept refusing to blow a hole in a hedge and instead would run through a nearby gap. Not an order I deem the breach team would get that wrong: they might breach in the wrong place, but "Blow a hole in that hedge for the Panther" doesn't translate to "run into that field over which we do not yet have dominance-by-fire" except in Monty Python sketches. Took me about 10 reloads to find a way to make them do the job, and that wasn't optimal. Sending a mortar team off unescorted into a sector I thought was secure, but turned out not to be: that kind of foul up I let stand...

[A Canadian Cat]

One way I have found to have the best of both worlds is to save however not reload in the actual game to try for a different outcome.  Just go on with the game as Bulletpoint says.  However, when something interesting happens, I will sometimes take the saved game file, change the file name and save it to use as a training file.  This way I can go back to it and practice doing the house entry, street crossing, tank shoot out etc. (whatever it was that got my @ss handed to me) until I hopefully learn from it and improve.

 

But as Bulletpoint said reloading just to change the outcome can make the victory seem hollow. 

 

I think that is a brilliant suggestion.

[lordhedgwich]

Thanks for all the tips guys think im going to try Blunting the spear now I have been busy with some CMBS pbem games (which i have been getting slaughtered in) lol

[lordhedgwich]

Im about 10 turns into the first mission of "blunting the spear" so far so good took down 4 t34/85s and only 1 PIV was hit killing the driver but the tank is intact