vahauser -> German Long Campaign -- Extreme Challange (7/21/2006 11:02:47 PM)
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GERMAN LONG CAMPAIGN -- STARTING SEPTEMBER 1939 The following describes an extremely challenging way to play a German Long Campaign. It's the only way I play a long campaign these days. It is specifically designed to require dealing with dilemmas and difficult choices. This campaign format will work with either standard SPWAW 8.40 or enhanced SPWAW 8.403 v2. SPECIAL NOTE: This campaign format is best suited for Category II players. Feedback suggests that Category I players will not find this campaign format very appealing. General Conditions Core -- German (you may only purchase/build/upgrade German units, no other nation's units in your core). Core Units -- Your core must consist of at least 110 units (including the A0). Battle Points -- Set to 2750 for German, leave at XXX for Poland. Set battle points to XXX for both sides after your core has been purchased. Support -- Support Points (SPs) may be spent on German units and/or any historical Axis Ally that could have been historically present at the battle listed in the mission. Generally, Axis-Allied SPs should only be considered when a battle occurs in a relevant area of operations. Axis-Allied SPs should be limited to one Axis Ally per relevant battle (i.e., no mixing Italian/Romanian/Hungarian units in the same battle). Reinforcements -- Reinforcement Points (RPs) are sometimes needed, but are highly penalized for victory-scoring purposes. Multiply all RPs spent (note the actual purchase cost) by three. For instance, if I need to buy a section of reinforcement SdKfz-7 prime movers, then that section will cost me 120 victory points (40 pts purchase cost times 3 = 120). Record all reinforcement purchases for later scoring purposes (I record these purchases on paper and then enter them into my scoring spreadsheet after the battle). Core Artillery -- Your core is limited to a maximum of 12 core units capable of indirect fire (IF) and all IF core units restricted to 82mm or smaller. Support Artillery -- On-map IF support artillery restricted to 82mm or smaller. Off-map IF support artillery no restrictions. Troop Quality -- Turn Historical Ratings OFF for the first two battles (Sept and Oct 1939 vs. Poland). Set your troop quality (TQ) to whatever you want (I usually choose a TQ between 60-70, but have tried troop qualities from 50 to 110 at various times). Set the Polish troop quality to any value of your choice at least 55 (I rarely go above 60 because of the general difficulty of the battles themselves). I highly recommend a Polish TQ of 55 for the first two battles. After the first two battles, turn Historical Ratings ON for the rest of the campaign. Player Preferences All set to Default (XXX) or 100%, except as detailed above. Realism Preferences Historical Ratings = ON (except as noted above) National Characteristics = ON Command Control = your choice Limited Intel = ON Unit Comm = ON Move & Fire = ON Morale = ON Mines = ON Limited Ammo = ON (reduced ammo not recommended) Reduced Squads = OFF Vehicle Breakdowns = ON Weapon Breakdowns = ON General Preferences Victory Frontage = ON AI Advantage = ON True Troop = ON (I recommend Rarity = OFF) All others set to your choice. Battle Conditions Battle Difficulty = Hard (x2) Airdrops -- Prohibited. You may buy/use airborne units only as regular ground forces. Commando Operations -- Prohibited. You may buy/use commandos only as regular ground forces. Mines/Barbed Wire/Dragon's Teeth -- Prohibited for you. The AI may deploy mines etc., but you may not. This means that even when you are fighting a defend battle, you must still rely on maneuver (and not mines, barbed wire, and dragon's teeth) to achieve victory. Battle Missions -- From 1939 through 1942 you must fight one (and only one) battle of each of the 5 battle types (Assault, Advance, Meeting Engagement, Delay, Defend) before starting another 5-battle cycle. Note that this will require "re-loading" battles on occasion to get an eligible battle type in the cycle. [For instance, my first battle in a cycle is a delay. If the next battle in the cycle comes up as a delay, then I must re-load that battle until I get an eligible battle that is not a delay. Clearly, re-loads will be more frequent towards the end of a battle cycle when you've fought four battle types and must get the fifth to complete that battle cycle.] As soon as possible in 1943 (depending on the completion of the last 5-battle cycle from 1942), you will switch to a 4-battle cycle for the remainder of the campaign. This 4-battle cycle consists of: meeting engagement, meeting engagement, advance, assault (in any order). The reason for the switch is because as the true-troop value of your core increases, the AI finds it more and more difficult to spend enough points (due to the 20,000-pt limit) to fully perform advance and assault missions against you. Therefore, you are the one doing all the advancing/assaulting after 1942. Battle Locations -- 1939 Eastern Europe (2 battles). 1940 Western Europe (2 battles). Early 1941 Western Europe (N. Africa, 2 battles). June 1941 through May 1944 Eastern Europe. June 1944 to End your choice. These locations are chosen on purpose to make your battles as difficult as possible. Towards the end, Soviet/Allied air and artillery become very deadly. Battle Deployment Area -- At the start of every battle find the victory hex closest to your board-edge. You must deploy all of your forces closer to your board edge than that victory hex. This makes hard battles even harder. This is on purpose. Rules of Engagement -- You may not move or shoot out of your battle deployment area (as described above) until either: A) at least half of the turns in the battle have passed; or, B) all of your victory hexes have been captured by the enemy. This means that even if you are shot at you cannot engage until either of the engagement conditions A or B above are met, so stay out of sight (but note that you are allowed to move and shoot within your battle deployment area; I often use smoke to hide my units). If you do decide to deploy units in hexes where they might be shot at, then you will have to set the ranges of your units so that they cannot take opportunity fire until engagement conditions A or B are met. This makes really hard battles almost impossible. You will have to maneuver under time pressure in every battle you fight. This is on purpose. Also note that engagement condition B is always satisfied when you have an advance or assault mission, so in that case you may deploy and engage as you would in a standard battle. Post Battle Rules -- Before doing anything else, you must do a "Fix All" at the end of every battle. This is on purpose and directly affects your Total Campaign Score. Total Campaign (TC) Scoring Campaign Length (CL) -- Keep track of the number of battles you have fought. Base Campaign (BC) Score -- This is the standard score of a campaign (1 point for a marginal victory, 3 points for a decisive victory, etc.). Build Points (BPs) -- This is the running total of build points you have remaining between battles (after Fix All and any unit upgrade/changes have been performed). Note that you will not get a build screen following the last battle in the campaign, so you must record a running total of your remaining BPs in case the campaign ends (I use a spreadsheet). Total Campaign Score = BC x (BPs - RPs) / CL Where BC is the base campaign score, BPs is the most recent number of remaining build points, RPs is the total sum of penalized reinforcement points over the course of the campaign, and CL is the number of battles you fought in the campaign. For example, let's say I complete a campaign in 43 battles (CL), had 200,000 BPs remaining prior to the last battle, spent 3000 penalized RPs, and a base campaign score of 90. Therefore, my TC = 90 x (200,000 - 3,000) / 43, which yields 412,325.6 Final Comments Remaining build points is the key to achieving a high Total Campaign Score in this format. Players will constantly be under pressure to conserve BPs, even if it means fighting battles using older equipment. The combination of difficult deployment and rules of engagement, plus the penalties for reinforcements, plus the mandatory "Fix All" after each battle, means that conserving BPs will be very difficult. Now, you will really have to think about whether to upgrade to those new Pz IVs in 1942 or stay in your Pz IIIs. And having your expensive Tigers get blown up by bombs or rockets in 1945 might not be such a good idea when staying in StuG IIIs might not cost so much when they get destroyed. Decisions, decisions, decisions. I've spent a great deal of time and effort deliberating over every aspect of this campaign format. Every part of it has its reason and its place (the whole is totally dependent on the sum of its parts and needs all of them to work the way it should). If you are interested in trying this kind of campaign, I urge you not to make any changes until you have played a campaign or two. I think you will find this campaign concept (I've refined it over the course of several years and dozens of campaigns, with extensive playtesting) to provide one of the greatest challenges I can think of when playing a Long Campaign. Happy gaming. Postscript -- For the masochists among you. After each battle add 2 or 3 more to the AI Level in the General Preferences. This will have the effect of letting the AI keep pace with the ever-increasing experience levels of your core troops.
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