Expand on the "conference" concept

Ask, comment, read.
studwick
Cadet
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2020 6:08 pm

Expand on the "conference" concept

Unread postby studwick » Wed Jun 03, 2020 11:17 am

With the war in the west now complete, i really want to congratulate the devs on a very interesting and engaging campaign.
One feature that i think, especially, sets this game apart from other contemporary wargames is the immersion and contextual bonus of engaging with the Conferences.
Instead of going from Scenario-to-Scenario, the player gets to make strategic decisions, acquire strategic bonuses (cards) as well as develop their armies.

Especially the last two, i think, could benefit from further expansion.
By the end of my last campaign i had essentially created the First Allied Airborne Army, with both the 101st US and 1st UK Airborne Divisions and the Polish Paratrooper Brigade in my deck. It was great fun to use, and obviously screws a bit with the balancing of certain scenarios, but it gave me a couple of ideas on how i think conferences can be made even more engaging. I'll present them in order of how difficult i think they are to integrate into the game as it currently is.

1: Events!

I like event systems. In fact i think it would be a great way to add to replayability as well as provide alternative ways (other than Army upgrades) to really heavily invest prestige in. For example, the player could weigh in on what extent the French Army of the Interior should be armed and integrated into the Allied Armies (prestige cost to acquire more divisions / more experienced divisions). Or weigh in on whether an amphibious force should be used to bypass Italian defences (Are there 0/2/4 Infantry divisions ready to flank Anzio on the Monte Cassino-Scenario). Events/Choices like that would have the same system that current conference paths have, except their consequence wouldn't be new paths or scenarios, but rather changes in current scenarios (such as whether an amphibious force is present on the Cassino Scenario). It might also help make the game easier for some of those people who have been requesting a setting easier than "easy". Even if the goal would be to retain current balance of scenarios, the player could trade off one benefit in one scenario for one later. With the Anzio landing force as an example still: If the player refuses to use an amphibious force to bypass the German-Italian defences, then the Monte Cassino scenario will be more difficult, but it could then be weighed up by allowing more allied units to land in Operation Dragoon for example, or increasing the supply level in the Overlord scenario, since more landing ships and amphibious support vessels would be available.

2: Make individual armies more unique

Now i'm not necessarily talking purely expanding the Army Upgrade system. But if the player is the definitive Allied Commander on the Western Front, make them involved in shaping their armies even further. World War 2 is full of all these fantastically larger-than-life Generals, and exploring that further would also lend a lot of flavor. Specific generals could give specific bonus to their Armies. So that, for example, having Patton as their commander would give +1 movement to all armoured units, or having de Tassigny would decrease the cost of reinforcing French divisions as he arms the Army of the Interior and integrates it into the 1st French Army.

As a lot of these Army-level Generals come and go, that of course would prove to be a lot of work. A smaller-scale addition/alternative to that would be to allow the player to pick their Army Group commanders for the 21st, 15th, 12th and 6th Army Groups, with assorted bonuses (Montgomery or Alexander to take command of the 21st Army Group for example? Who should take over as sub-commander of the Mediterranean theater when the player goes to London).

3: Adding unit management to the conferences.

In its most simple form it would allow players to spend their prestige on reinforcing and reorganizing divisions at the strategic level, rather than doing it in the individual scenarios. This would also circumvent issues where the temporary reassignment of units from one Army HQ to another in a scenario, limits the reinforcements available at the HQ. Such as when a damaged 1st British Armoured Division is transferred from being under the command of 8th Army in the Wadi Akarit Scenario, to being under the command of the 1st Army in the Tunis Scenario, leaving the reinforcements steps as part of 8th Army HQ for the duration of the scenario, and therefore unable to reinforce. These discrepancies where reinforcement-steps don't transfer when their parent-division does, is especially annoying when it comes to nationally specific units (such as Indian, NZ or Canadian steps). I think being able to reinforce from the strategic conference view in-between missions would help fix such an issue.

I also think that it would make the SHAEF elite replacement card more worth a spot in the deck, if you could increase the amount of times you could purchase elite replacements (between missions or only at conferences)
As well as allowing players to reconstitute destroyed divisions rather than having the game itself remake them automatically.

Image

Now that is of course only the system in its mot simple form. Just by having unit interactions on the strategic view opens up a lot of flavour, immersion and management possibilities.
Most notably, the transfer of experience and specialist steps from Brigade units to Division units. For example in the first part the campaign. In the Tunis-scenario, the player has control over the 201st Guards Motor Brigade, and later in the following Avalanche-scenario, the player has control over the 56th Infantry Division (of which the 201st now was attached). On the strategic view the player could then be informed of 201st' attachment to the 56th, and the 56th might then get an experience buff for the Husky Scenario. I think that would make players more invested in the fate of individual units, if they knew that keeping some of them alive might pay off in the end. I, of course, don't know what can be done in your current engine, but an idea for an event could for example be this:

The trigger for this event would be having the 201. Gds. Mot. Bde. have more than 3 steps (as seen in the Unit List on the strategic view) and have over 200 Experience before beginning the Avalance Scenario
Image

Besides events like that (some of them could even be purely for flavour) the unit list in general opens up a lot of opportunities for further managing your armies during the whole of the western campaign. For example, when preparing for Operation Dragoon, the system could have players detach units from the 5th US Army and attach them to the 7th US Army before the beginning of the Dragoon scenario. Instead of automatically transferring 3rd, 36th and 45th US Infantry Divisions. At the theoretical extreme of this idea, the system could even ask players to assign "2 Infantry Units from either the 5th US Army or 8th British Army" to the Anzio amphibious force on the Monte Cassino scenario.

If the Events wants to be explored further, some of them could even be random. Such as the reassignment of an Experienced Infantry Brigade to garrison or training duty. For example the before-mentioned 201st Guards Motor Bde. An event could pop up in strategic view that says that the Imperial General Staff has planned for the 201st to become a training Brigade back in the UK, which the player (for a prestige cost) could influence one way or the other. Allowing the 201st to leave would then mean a experience loss for the 56th Infantry Division (not a loss of steps, as the 201st would be replaced) or the player could pay X amount of prestige to have the Brigade stay in Italy.


4: Unit Purchasing System

Having a lot of parachute cards is great, it allows for alternative ways to approach certain scenarios, and makes others easier (Market Garden). So it is a shame that keep 2-3 Para cards on hand removes some interest in the card-system at conferences themselves. As an alternative to this, how about adding a second section at conferences where in addition to purchasing cards, the player purchases these "strategic divisions". Ranger landing forces, Commando Landing Brigades, Airborne Divisions etc. For a prestige cost the player can purchase these units, and in combination with the ideas in section 3, have them be managed and organized on the strategic screen. Notes "suggesting" that players purchase 2-3 Parachute units could then be a part of conference warnings, like the River Crossing ability is in the current game. This might of course shake some of the balancing in the game, but would also allow players to create and experiment with larger strategic forces like SHAEF did during the war. "Is Market Garden worth investing the Allied Airborne Army in?" "How many Airborne Divisions should we involve in Operation Overlord?" "Should we bring over the 17th Airborne Division now?".
To help make the game easier for those who want it to be so, the purchasing system could even count for the fact that extra Armoured Divisions/Infantry Divisions could be purchased and added to the Unit List of some armies . To not mess up the current starting deployments on some scenarios, they would then arrive as reinforcements when that specific Army was engaged in a scenario.

-------

Whew. This turned out a little bit longer than i initially thought. I know a lot of the ideas are not feasible in the current engine, and that some of them shake the balancing on certain maps, and that some of the ideas are even mutually exclusive if all carried out to the furthest of their theory.

But i really think that they would add a lot of strategic management to the game, and make the strategic view / conferences more of an interactive area in the game.

Grognard
First Lieutenant
Posts: 10
Joined: Sat May 16, 2020 2:07 pm

Re: Expand on the "conference" concept

Unread postby Grognard » Thu Jun 04, 2020 11:43 am

Brilliant and super detailed suggestions!

Just to pile on I do think a more emotive connection to both armies and units would really next a great game to the next level. There is a real trade off between allowing customization by the player vs historical accuracy and you see this in decisions other games have made. Panzer Corps I GC is very good at creating attachment but has no realism. The Gary Grigsby games have realism but lack any emotive connection.

I suspect leaving the individual scenarios very historically accurate so you can simulate the battle. But having the campaign OOB diverge more (as e.g, Unthinkable does by being fictional!) would be both fun and create connection AND expand the game to a wider audience. Someone doesn't need to know any history to have fought a unit through 30 battles (and even renamed it) and yet enjoy that.

PS and maybe less flexibility on force composition at Classic and harder difficulties than lower down?

User avatar
Danielefc
2x2 Games
Posts: 1142
Joined: Thu Nov 24, 2011 10:03 pm

Re: Expand on the "conference" concept

Unread postby Danielefc » Sat Jun 06, 2020 8:31 am

Some very good ideas here. Indeed one of our goals is to expand upon the campaign layer - both in terms of immersion and mechanics. Currently it is not clear how much we can do due to manpower/time constraints, so I cant give any details sadly.

Cheers!

studwick
Cadet
Posts: 2
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2020 6:08 pm

Re: Expand on the "conference" concept

Unread postby studwick » Sun Jun 07, 2020 10:21 am

Happy to hear that it is included in your goals!

I'm going to be reading over the organisational and administrative history of SHAEF as background for a class on multi-national and coalition armies during WW1, during the summer.
I would be more than happy to pass on interesting events and changes to you, if time for reading books and documents were part of those manpower/time constraints.

Eqqman
Captain
Posts: 47
Joined: Thu Apr 30, 2020 12:18 pm

Re: Expand on the "conference" concept

Unread postby Eqqman » Tue Jun 09, 2020 8:56 pm

I agree and mentioned this in another post that it is very difficult to have any attachment to your troops since you can't really manage them. It might also be interesting to be able to manage exactly when certain units make appearances (similar to what was already described by the OP). Currently I might know that a unit will appear in X number of future scenarios but unless I make detailed notes after playing the entire campaign I won't know which ones. Maybe I would prefer that a certain unit is available in scenario X knowing that this means it won't be available in scenario Y due to its limited uses, and I'll either have to leave that slot vacant in Y or fill it with some other available unit that might have been less desirable.

User avatar
Tomislav Uzelac
2x2 Games
Posts: 2211
Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2011 11:24 pm
Location: Zagreb, Croatia

Re: Expand on the "conference" concept

Unread postby Tomislav Uzelac » Wed Jun 10, 2020 8:43 am

Hi, just wanted to say briefly that we are reading this thread (and others in the forum) and there are many fantastic ideas.

From our perspective as developers, the campaign is this really big and complicated structure that we now (as of V-E Day/Update12) finally have under control... mostly :D

We plan to continue with meaningful updates to the game, and the campaign is a target in particular.

It's difficult to judge the pace of these updates right now. We must be careful because campaign bugs are nasty: imagine the game breaking for you after 20+ scenarios. Also, since the game balance now holds, more or less, we might want to collect more player stats first, before making any further changes.

TL;DR don't be surprised if you see your suggestion in the game a year from now, don't be upset if you don't see it tomorrow :)

Cheers!