Do you burn out in SPWAW Campaigns?

[Irinami]

Originally posted by Mogami
Some people like tricks, myself I do not care for tricks. I prefer straight forward missions "Commander the Regt is to make an advance this afternoon. Hill #xxx is an enemy observation point overlooking the route of the advance, therefore you must capture and secure Hill #xxx not later then ^^^^. You will have blah blah and blah as support. Then the objective will be held by a reasonable mix of enemy troop types. Not the 1st Ski Mechanized Airborne Guard Super Heavy Monster Tank/Panzer Super­calli­fragilistic­expiali­docious Division. (a word like that deserves an eek)
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I agree; I always had a problem with "Victory Hexes" and turn limits. Dammit, the point of war is to make the other bastard die for his country, and I'll choose the effing time and place I make him do that!! If you want to limit my time, then schedule enemy reinforcements to arrive on XX turn... but I should either try to beat them or be smart enough to retreat if I take too long. Don't force me to play your tactics. >.< The only thing I see VH's as good for are, well, strategic necessities. A hill with a good overlook. A road. A bridge. A city, a factory. But some hill in the middle of nowhere with terrible spotting? Puh! Don't make me laugh. I'll take it in my good sweet-@$$ time.

I liked Conflict: The Arab Israeli Wars. Every hex was a 1-point VH; Golan Heights hexes were 5 pts., and cities were 100. You could bypass Damascus and win the war... you could retreat from the GH and the Suez to draw the Arabs out, then stiffen and blast their supply lines to smithereens. You didn't HAVE to take xx hex... it just may have been a good idea.

On the other hand, SP:WAW is a smaller scale, and I can blame stupid VH's on "The Brass." I do see VH's and turn limits as a trick, though... tell me the objective in the mission notes, note it on the map... send in enemy reinforcements (or my own and--if I wait that long--consider me to have lost the battle because another allied commander won it) after a certain time...

But doggonnit, leave me be to take the objective in my own special, painful way!

[Orzel Bialy]

is very real. (of course that doesn't mean the game itself isn't a winner )

I've started generated campaigns and by the fourth or fifth battle they become, as others here have stated, somewhat stale. They tend to travel the same path after a couple battles and therefore lose some of their flare.

The best solution I have found was already mentioned...and it's one simple way for designers to keep battles interesting: limit the amount of turns for the given battles.

Less turns mean quicker action and less time for the battle to go into that predictable cycle. You can't sit back and pound someone to death or wait for them to bash themselves against your defenses if you only have a dozen turns to take the VH's. This forces you to push forward into the AI forces...rather than sit back and take full advantage of it's known weaknesses.

Resetting the AI values is another way to "toughen" the AI forces, but time limits are a much easier method in my opinion...and they keep a campaign fresh and flowing, since you don't have 30 monster battles of 25-30 turns each to burn the player out with.

Anyway...that's my 2 cents worth

[Jim1954]

I noticed this problem first when I went from SP to SP2, and even more with SPWAW or SPWW2. It takes soo loong to complete battles now with all the chrome that's been added (mostly at gamer's requests for more) that it seems like that beats me down. I don't have as much time as I would like to pursue this hobby and I do get discouraged.

What I have tried to do with the campaign problem is organize all of the pre-made scenarios in chronological order and play them that way. At least you experience different designers along the way and the battlefields don't tend to be so vanilla. If the designers have been true to historical facts, at least you get to experience what the evolution of equipment was like and the tactics needed to overcome them. I try to avoid the "what if" types.

I personally like battles with smaller #'s of units and less turns. I just recently started another long campaign as the Germans with a core force comparable in size and make up to that in MCLV and it seems a bit more manageable.

Just an opinion.

[BryanMelvin]

One solution - try the Mini Campaigns. These are 3 to 5 battles long with short amount of game turns.

The Core force can be limited in the short campaigns to the AO and one or two support units and the repair points adjusted to fit the scale of the game.

Mini-campaigns can be full of nasty little surprise

Another thing about normal, large size, and Mega campaigns is to play these over a period of time - say a year and this way you'll be able to complete these.

[Kraut]

If you do a randomly generated campaign you can make it more difficult by giving the AI twice or more battlepoints.

[Grenadier]

Once you get past the flak guns the real fun begins. I have finally gotten through the city to the Volga banks. My best purchase was 2 nebelwerfers and 2 Wurfrahmen 40's. They have racked up the highest numbers of kills. Over 50 for each one. The Red October and The Barricades battles are the most challenging. Now I am at the moment of decision. Can I get to Kalackh and get out side the encirclement or will I be trapped? I routed the Russians attacking the Rumanians but now I have to race to Kalach. This is the 12th battle

[darroch]

Shameless plug follows:

Ever wonder what Kalach was like as the Russians?

Russian Steel 1.4 lets you find out.

Campaign burnout:

Definitely happens - too many units and excessive length are factors....

We started RS with 350+ units and 30+ turns - I am now designing battles with 150 units (not counting player's core) and 20 turns or less if possible....

No plan to go back and rework the original battles to be leaner but future battles Feb 1943 onwards will be tighter and leaner...I will offer a "save" game file that will allow you to time travel to 1943 and do Russian Steel Lite if so desired...

But I'd encourage any burnouts to try RS and see what a user-generated game offers.

Cheers,

Brad