Winning In This Game

Kevin Russell · Post by **Kevin Russell** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 7:19 am

I'm new so forgive me this question. I started the long WWII campaign last night (regular, not the mega) and played the first scenario. Me=US, Enemy=French Foreign Legion. (Didn't realize the FFL was our enemy in WWII. Did the Germans hire the FFL?)

Anyway, I thought I had completely kicked their butts. I advanced and they defended. Final scores were:
Me Men-136, Art-1, APC-3 and AFV-7 ... all lost.
FFL Men-417, Art-29, Soft-1, AFV-20 ... all lost.

I even secured all Victory hexes yet somehow the score came out to me having 6501 to FFL having 6743 resulting in a draw. How do above results equate to a draw? I broke their morale and either killed everybody, had units surrender or they dispersed. What do you have to do to win?

kao16 · Post by **kao16** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 7:38 am

Originally posted by YouBet:
(Didn't realize the FFL was our enemy in WWII. Did the Germans hire the FFL?)

The FFL was on the Vichy side and as such tended to side/fight with the Germans.

Anyway, I thought I had completely kicked their butts. I advanced and they defended. Final scores were:
Me Men-136, Art-1, APC-3 and AFV-7 ... all lost.
FFL Men-417, Art-29, Soft-1, AFV-20 ... all lost.

I even secured all Victory hexes yet somehow the score came out to me having 6501 to FFL having 6743 resulting in a draw. How do above results equate to a draw? I broke their morale and either killed everybody, had units surrender or they dispersed. What do you have to do to win?

To win you need something like 3:1 points.

One thing to remember is that your individual units may be worth more than the FFL ones and thus a simple list of losses won't accurately describe the balance of points.

Without seeing the battle I can only assume that there were a number of "points per turn" victory hexes that the enemy controlled for much of the game.

If at all possible open a save game of the battle and examine all the victory hexes (leave the cursor over them until a dialog box appers describing the hex).

Remember.... When playing a game one of thefirst things you should do is examine all VH's so that you know which ones you need to take first (the "100pts at end of game" ones can wait until you have the "xxx pts per turn" ones)

Kevin Russell · Post by **Kevin Russell** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 7:57 am

kao,
Thanks for the info. What you said probably accounts for my point results. I'll take your points into consideration in my next battle.

I still personally think I should have gotten the win. It just seems to me looking at the bottom line that I kicked their butts. In real life, I completely annihilated their force and secured the entire map. I just don't see how this is a draw unless the boys in charge decreed from the get-go that regardless of the outcome even minimal losses such as mine are not acceptable.

I've never been in the military and have no idea what I'm talking about, but am I completely off the mark with my point?

Resisti · Post by **Resisti** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 11:44 am

Originally posted by YouBet:

I still personally think I should have gotten the win. It just seems to me looking at the bottom line that I kicked their butts. In real life, I completely annihilated their force and secured the entire map. I just don't see how this is a draw unless the boys in charge decreed from the get-go that regardless of the outcome even minimal losses such as mine are not acceptable.

I've never been in the military and have no idea what I'm talking about, but am I completely off the mark with my point?

Ok look it this way:

The AI, whatever game designers try to do to improve its skillness it's dumb, very dumb, and ANY average human player can quite easily wipe it out of the map and take all VH locations.
So the marking line is NOT if you can achieve this result but how many casualties you achieve this result with.
An at-all-costs victory will result very seldomly in a decisive victory and only sometimes in a marginal one.

Keep in mind these figures:

Against AI:

DRAW < 3:1 points ratio
MARGINAL VICTORY 3:1 to 6:1
DECISIVE VICTORY > 6:1
The reverse is tru also,of course

Against Human opponent:

DRAW < 2:1
MARGINAL 2:1 to 3:1
DECISIVE > 3:1

Hope this helps.

Mai Thai · Post by **Mai Thai** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 1:05 pm

to all:

An at-all-costs victory will result very seldomly in a decisive victory and only sometimes in a marginal one.

And in Europe, don't know about USA, we will call it a "Pirro's" victory
Bye

Charles2222 · Post by **Charles2222** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 4:37 pm

If there were timed objectives involved, and they were taken very late in the match, this would also account for the score being even.

Larry Holt · Post by **Larry Holt** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 5:22 pm

Generated long campaigns do not use timed/per turn VHs. 6,000 points is a lot of points for a single battle with those few loses. Generally killing all the AIPs early on (when your experience and thus total AIP buy points are low) earns around 1,000 points. Without seeing your battle, I can not explain it.

achappelle · Post by **achappelle** » Thu Aug 30, 2001 7:07 pm

I see "per-turn" VH's on long campaigns. Only when it's a meeting engagement and both sides are advancing. Even still it's not as common as "end of battle" VHs.

john g · Post by **john g** » Fri Aug 31, 2001 3:16 am

Originally posted by Aleksandr Morozov:
I see "per-turn" VH's on long campaigns. Only when it's a meeting engagement and both sides are advancing. Even still it's not as common as "end of battle" VHs.

You just haven't played enough, I have played assault battles in 2 different WWII campaigns that the defenders had per turn hexes. Better yet the weather was sandstorm, so movement was cut to a crawl. The back hexes were taken by commandos/spec ops, the front were taken by Armored cars, and later held against counterattacks by tanks and infantry. In both cases I was happy to take the marginal win.
thanks, John.

Dean Robb · Post by **Dean Robb** » Sun Sep 02, 2001 12:43 am

[QUOTE]And in Europe, don't know about USA, we will call it a "Pirro's" victory
Bye[/QOUTE]

Um...that's "Pyrhhic victory".

Pyrrhus was the king of Epirus in Greece in approximately 280 BC. At that time Pyrrhus assembled an army of 25,000 men and 20 elephants to conquer the Romans. He won several battles, but took such high losses that after one of these battles, Pyrhhus remarked: "Another such victory and I shall be ruined." He was right - his losses were so high that the Romans overwhelmed him the next time around.

So, a Pyrrhic victory, while a win, is one in which losses exceed gains.

[ September 01, 2001: Message edited by: Dean Robb ]

[ September 01, 2001: Message edited by: Dean Robb ]</p>