SP campaigns any better

[kmansp]

Are the "Dynamic" campaigns actually Dynamic now?

[Bulgaricus]

it's changed by a lot. you will only fight battles at cities, and fight on the map with companies.

[Zyhgar The Phoenix]

No they're not they made it worse lmao they removed company to company battles instead of adding something to them. You still don't have town battles or anything its just a boring turnbased game now with a few RTS battles from time to time.

[kmansp]

Well this is disappointing. I'm confused though because the above posts conflict; are there city/town battles or not? How is this better or worse?

[Diogenes_Digits]

So, they've changed the way companies interact with one another on the campaign map. If you have a company attack an enemy company in the open, the battle will be determined by autoresolve. If you attack a company garrisoning a town, or an enemy company attacks a town that you have garrisoned, it will trigger a skirmish battle. There is now more of a rock/paper/scissors approach, with certain company types dealing more damage to others based on whether they're infantry/armor/artillery companies. Health and veterancy of your company plays a bigger role in autoresolve, too.

The goal is so that you aren't fighting like 5 skirmishes every time you end the turn, which got kind of exhausting by the end of a campaign; instead, using your strategic map abilities and making sure companies are fighting the appropriate enemies is really important. Before, you could fight all the battles manually even if you picked a very unwise fight; now you need to actually be careful about how you're advancing into enemy territory. The bespoke campaign missions are still present.

The AI is also much more active now, using its recon planes, bombardments, etcetera to really push back. A couple players I've talked to have said they actually managed to lose entire companies (something that was pretty hard to do before, let's be real) because the AI launched coordinated attacks.

They've also split up difficulty into Battle and Campaign difficulty to give you a little more control over your experience.

[Ocelot]

^ But does this make it more fun? Asking, not telling.

[ShodaN]

Sounds like a reasonable change though, since you could otherwise always just stomp the AI in any manually fought battle and that became extremely tedious after a while. Now in theory you should get to the good bits faster and maybe that rps approach to the autoresolve makes the in-between not so entirely pointless.

I would love to confirm that, but the damn game still crashes every second time it loads into a map for me. First time is fine. With how the campaign works though, that makes it unplayable for me...

[Sifer2]

Sounds like a bad change since before you could choose to fight the skirmish or autoresolve. Now your just forced to autoresolve?

[Diogenes_Digits]

Originally posted by Ocelot:

^ But does this make it more fun? Asking, not telling.

Nah I gotcha. I played a little bit of the campaign last night and I've actually been really impressed and having a lot more fun. They also raised pop cap early on so you can have more companies in the field. Even the intro/tutorial mission is pretty fun now! I got bored with the campaign my first playthrough because I had to either play a bunch of boring skirmishes or autoresolve them and get punished for it. Once played *7* skirmishes at the end of one turn. I'm personally a big fan of the changes and they make all the other things in the campaign feel a lot more impactful.

[Diogenes_Digits]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Sounds like a bad change since before you could choose to fight the skirmish or autoresolve. Now your just forced to autoresolve?

You autoresolve if it's two companies meeting in the open. It still triggers a skirmish if one of them is garrisoned and the other attacks. I've only had a little time to try out the improved campaign but it's been more fun for me; means I have to make real decisions about where my companies are deployed, make sure I have recon to make sure an armored column isn't gonna come smack my artillery company around, and can't just airdrop my way to victory anymore. (well, you can, but not as easily)

[Zyhgar The Phoenix]

Originally posted by Hobofingers:

Originally posted by Ocelot:

^ But does this make it more fun? Asking, not telling.

Nah I gotcha. I played a little bit of the campaign last night and I've actually been really impressed and having a lot more fun. They also raised pop cap early on so you can have more companies in the field. Even the intro/tutorial mission is pretty fun now! I got bored with the campaign my first playthrough because I had to either play a bunch of boring skirmishes or autoresolve them and get punished for it. Once played *7* skirmishes at the end of one turn. I'm personally a big fan of the changes and they make all the other things in the campaign feel a lot more impactful.

Yes but completely removing it just isn't the best idea. They could of added so much to the campaign but no they took the route that just feels lazy to me. There's no creativity or any attempt to add something to the game. We have these fun scripted missions why not have missions like those in company to company battles? I know there was the defend 2 objectives missions that kinda sucked but they were unique vs the skirmishes. They could of made unique missions for company to company scripted ones and generic modes to split between and for towns/fortifications to have rts battles like an attack mode where you have to fight and destroy fortifications with a limited force of units (i guess that's the same as that ahead of company battle but i was thinking more scripted type) clearing a town of enemy defenders, paradrop missions, commando missions, convoy missions, resistance missions ect instead of just tying stuff to certain places/events.
Also campaign modding would make it so much better you could have unique maps for skirmish at least or even hardcore mods in the campaign or hell just better less annoying ai to play against.

[Chance]

Choice. If I want to autoresolve 7 times or skirmish 7 times I should decide. Worst case. Best case let me actually battle when I want.

[TheSuit]

Originally posted by Chance:

Choice. If I want to autoresolve 7 times or skirmish 7 times I should decide. Worst case. Best case let me actually battle when I want.

Exactly, let the player decide like before
I am already annoyed that emplacements take up limited supply

[kmansp]

Originally posted by Hobofingers:

So, they've changed the way companies interact with one another on the campaign map. If you have a company attack an enemy company in the open, the battle will be determined by autoresolve. If you attack a company garrisoning a town, or an enemy company attacks a town that you have garrisoned, it will trigger a skirmish battle. There is now more of a rock/paper/scissors approach, with certain company types dealing more damage to others based on whether they're infantry/armor/artillery companies. Health and veterancy of your company plays a bigger role in autoresolve, too.

The goal is so that you aren't fighting like 5 skirmishes every time you end the turn, which got kind of exhausting by the end of a campaign; instead, using your strategic map abilities and making sure companies are fighting the appropriate enemies is really important. Before, you could fight all the battles manually even if you picked a very unwise fight; now you need to actually be careful about how you're advancing into enemy territory. The bespoke campaign missions are still present.

The AI is also much more active now, using its recon planes, bombardments, etcetera to really push back. A couple players I've talked to have said they actually managed to lose entire companies (something that was pretty hard to do before, let's be real) because the AI launched coordinated attacks.

They've also split up difficulty into Battle and Campaign difficulty to give you a little more control over your experience.

This is extremely helpful; thanks a bunch. With all that said, in your opinion is it worth purchasing game based on the campaign experience now? I enjoyed COH 1 & 2 campaigns; in particular, I enjoyed the COH2 expansion that added a total war style campaign map, but felt that the campaign side of things was lacking. What excited me about COH3 was the "dynamic campaign" and it appeared to be marketed as similar to the total war series.

Thanks again for your input!

[chopper [FD]]

Originally posted by kmansp:

Originally posted by Hobofingers:

So, they've changed the way companies interact with one another on the campaign map. If you have a company attack an enemy company in the open, the battle will be determined by autoresolve. If you attack a company garrisoning a town, or an enemy company attacks a town that you have garrisoned, it will trigger a skirmish battle. There is now more of a rock/paper/scissors approach, with certain company types dealing more damage to others based on whether they're infantry/armor/artillery companies. Health and veterancy of your company plays a bigger role in autoresolve, too.

The goal is so that you aren't fighting like 5 skirmishes every time you end the turn, which got kind of exhausting by the end of a campaign; instead, using your strategic map abilities and making sure companies are fighting the appropriate enemies is really important. Before, you could fight all the battles manually even if you picked a very unwise fight; now you need to actually be careful about how you're advancing into enemy territory. The bespoke campaign missions are still present.

The AI is also much more active now, using its recon planes, bombardments, etcetera to really push back. A couple players I've talked to have said they actually managed to lose entire companies (something that was pretty hard to do before, let's be real) because the AI launched coordinated attacks.

They've also split up difficulty into Battle and Campaign difficulty to give you a little more control over your experience.

This is extremely helpful; thanks a bunch. With all that said, in your opinion is it worth purchasing game based on the campaign experience now? I enjoyed COH 1 & 2 campaigns; in particular, I enjoyed the COH2 expansion that added a total war style campaign map, but felt that the campaign side of things was lacking. What excited me about COH3 was the "dynamic campaign" and it appeared to be marketed as similar to the total war series.

Thanks again for your input!

Value is relative. You can definitely try it for 2 hours and refund us you don't like it.

But I'll say the Dynamic Campaign is not like a total war strategic map and doesn't play like a sandbox. You are moving companies around the map to get to certain scripted battle locations (certain towns). It's a guided experience, not a sandbox. They are telling a story and they let you fill in the little bits between story missions as you move your companies from south to north.

There are also time limited events that push you to capture certain locations in a number of turns (e.g, get to location X within 3 turns or else partisan group is in trouble).

[Montecalm]

Not for me. I hate hand holding games.