North Africa Campaign DLC

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Alarrow
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Joined: Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:28 am

North Africa Campaign DLC

Unread postby Alarrow » Tue Nov 17, 2020 1:29 am

Blitzkrieg has been a lot of fun, and a big thanks to developers for supporting/creating content for it. Obviously, no promises for future content, and it sounds like "Barbarossa" is where the meat of the community demand is. That said, I'd enjoy seeing a North Africa/Middle East centric campaign 1940-1943. I think it'd work well as a successor to "Blitzkrieg" and a sort of prologue to "Victory in the West." I suppose you could launch it as two separate campaign packs, but I think content-wise, you could probably go more with a theater of operation, trading off between an Axis and Allied campaign. I suppose first a German/Italian campaign, with maybe an alternate history branch of capturing Cairo and busting past Suez into the Middle East? Then follow it up with the Allied campaign starting with Operation Compass and following the historical route to where victory in the west picks up. I guess the only things I'm not sure is if it'd make sense to have an "Allied" campaign that includes Operation Torch and Kasserine pass or focus on more of a British/commonwealth campaign vs. the Axis in Egypt and Libya? Also, not sure what an Allied alternate history path would be. Perhaps an attempt to retake Greece or occupy Turkey?
Otherwise, I'm sure there'd be a cool opportunity to play around with logistics to demonstrate the difficulties of desert warfare and the ongoing supply issues both sides faced and so forth. I'd assume most in-game models could be reused, or I suppose they would need slight tweaks for dessert camo and so on. Thanks for reading this rant. Let me know your thoughts or suggestions.

JBerg2021
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Re: North Africa Campaign DLC

Unread postby JBerg2021 » Mon Nov 23, 2020 1:54 pm

Yeah, the Axis version of this campaign seems pretty straightforward, thanks to the many many examples of such campaigns in other games (including counterfactuals). As for the Allies, I've actually thought a lot about an alternate version of the campaign in which Rommel doesn't win the Battle of Gazala, and 8th Army advances on Tunis more quickly. Considering the issues with shipping in the Mediterranean and among the Allies, I don't imagine there's a plausible alternate path where Sicily is invaded early, nor a path to invading Greece in 1943 or anything. But there are a lot of battles in Africa and the Middle East that could help to build out an Allied Africa/Middle East Campaign.

The basic problem with a lot of this is that the game doesn't seem to accommodate losing scenarios and advancing in the campaign very well, so while an Allied campaign could include Operations Compass, Crusader, and the defensive battles in Egypt, it would probably require a fair amount of rework to add Gazala, Unternehman Sonnenblume, and the Greek campaign from the Allied perspective. Evacuations and removal points could help, but those don't exist anywhere else in the game at present.

Articwulf
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Re: North Africa Campaign DLC

Unread postby Articwulf » Wed Dec 09, 2020 8:52 pm

Just adding my 2c again for adding Malta and Gibraltar to any North Africa DLC.

Alarrow
Second Lieutenant
Posts: 8
Joined: Tue Nov 17, 2020 12:28 am

Re: North Africa Campaign DLC

Unread postby Alarrow » Tue Feb 16, 2021 9:36 pm

That's an excellent point you make about the current gameplay formula around defensive battles. Defensive tactics were something I've been considering as of late (Like how could a late-war German campaign even be playable?) To an extent Operation Herbstnebl, and the Buldge feel like a defensive scenario, but a great many battles of sitting on your hands plugging holes in the line could quickly become frustrating/boring. I concur, though, that the allied shipping situation would make any invasion of the continent too risky before 43. I suppose an alt historical track could be if the Allies had invaded Spain to secure the country for the Operation Torch landings. Although not sure if there'd be a logical progression to explain such a move. Malta and Gibraltar were very strategically important in the Meditarian during this time. I think any Axis campaign that's alternate history would have had to subdue Malta to protect Axis shipping. That said, I'm not sure how they could realistically do either for a battle scenario? The game map has malta being so small, so I assume to do a real scenario like Crete, Malta would have to be reimaged. We'd have to go done to the regiment or battalion level of organization to make the scenario playable. So I'm not sure how realistic of an ask that would be for devs.

Articwulf
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Re: North Africa Campaign DLC

Unread postby Articwulf » Wed Feb 17, 2021 8:30 pm

Alarrow wrote:That's an excellent point you make about the current gameplay formula around defensive battles. Defensive tactics were something I've been considering as of late (Like how could a late-war German campaign even be playable?) To an extent Operation Herbstnebl, and the Buldge feel like a defensive scenario, but a great many battles of sitting on your hands plugging holes in the line could quickly become frustrating/boring. I concur, though, that the allied shipping situation would make any invasion of the continent too risky before 43. I suppose an alt historical track could be if the Allies had invaded Spain to secure the country for the Operation Torch landings. Although not sure if there'd be a logical progression to explain such a move. Malta and Gibraltar were very strategically important in the Meditarian during this time. I think any Axis campaign that's alternate history would have had to subdue Malta to protect Axis shipping. That said, I'm not sure how they could realistically do either for a battle scenario? The game map has malta being so small, so I assume to do a real scenario like Crete, Malta would have to be reimaged. We'd have to go done to the regiment or battalion level of organization to make the scenario playable. So I'm not sure how realistic of an ask that would be for devs.


I think adapting the system to some smaller scale battles would be fun:
- Either change the unit size per step or use 1-2 step units
- Either use non-campaign transferable units, or remove losses from the greater unit after the battle
- Possible time / movement adjustments per turn. Might avoid this by says a turn is a few hours rather than a few days, thus move less. This could help work out map scale.

You get the idea.