Do you not hold enemy trenches your men captured between turns?

[wokelly]

So after the tutorial was done, I played a bit more of the campaign. I got my forces massed against a German hex near Arras, and attacked. During the actual battle, I massed on the left and pushed up and took one enemy control point and their command trench behind. However a flood of enemy counter attacks kept me pinned until the timer ran out, so I couldn't capture the two remaining points. Nevertheless my men crossed no-mans land, took the German trenches on the left and captured two control points.

Next turn I wanted to follow up and take the remaining two points, so I attacked again. But when the battlefield map loaded up, my troops were back in their original trenches, and the enemy was once again in control of the control point and command trench I took. Instead of holding the trenches and control points I had won the previous map, everything was back like nothing had happened and my troops had never crossed no-mans land.

This isn't the intended final design is it for the release product? Because this doesn't make sense. WW1 trench fighting was a grinding type of warfare, but generally if you took trenches and held it, you then consolidated and used them to push on to take the next bunch of trenches. You slowly clawed through the enemy defenses and moved forward. But here if you don't take the entire battlefield map you're back to square one the next time you attack that hex.

I feel like if I should be able to hold what I take, expand my trench network to the newly captured areas, and use that as a springboard to get the remaining control point son the map. Then if you capture the map you knock out one star from the enemy and the next battle takes place on a fresh map still attached to that hex. Or are there not enough maps and each hex only has one map for it so we need to reset progress between batles?

[Mogendo]

From my understanding having played the demo, A win on the battlefield removes a defensive star from the map hex, and a penalty in supply for the loser. I get your point regarding the RTS battle not getting control of the map, But the bonus of star and supply reduction to the defender does give an advantage to any follow up attacks.

[Zegobaba]

To remove a star from a battlefield it seems that you have to capture every control point along with the command trench. Even earning a great victory doesn't result in the removal of a star unless you take every point. Honestly the bonuses given to a defender who was attacked multiple times is completely negligible, only suffering a morale debuff of -15, corps supply replenishes immediately after battle I believe as well.

If the developers made it so that infantry units have to take a month to replenish, the player and AI would have to be a lot more careful about using their troops wisely, since damaged infantry would have to sit out of battles until the next turn. This would make attacking from multiple directions more viable as eventually the defender would run out of reinforcements. This would also make attacking be more risky as if you ran out of men on an attack, even if you won, the enemy would be able to easily counter attack during its turn especially if they were more careful and didn't have as many units sitting out for replenishment

[wokelly]

Originally posted by Zegobaba:

To remove a star from a battlefield it seems that you have to capture every control point along with the command trench. Even earning a great victory doesn't result in the removal of a star unless you take every point. Honestly the bonuses given to a defender who was attacked multiple times is completely negligible, only suffering a morale debuff of -15, corps supply replenishes immediately after battle I believe as well....

Yeah, I was getting the highest ranked victories in the debriefing screen (the slider on the victory bar going all the way right), yet I wasn't knocking off any stars. If I attacked a hex from multiple angles (so 3 attacks on one hex from 3 different hexes), despite massacring the enemy, their units are all replenished despite the fact each turn is a month and those units would still be degraded. There is no sense of wearing the enemy out, except from this morale debuff (which didn't seem to affect the actual battles) and the overall strategic national will.

But the battlefield doesn't change, and the units don't reflect the bloodletting that occurred. It is like nothing happened "tactically" speaking. At the very least if I could capture sections of trenches so I could springboard from there to take more of the map, I'd feel like there was some grinding slow progress akin to WW1 battles. But it feels like any progress on the battlefield resets and and doesn't matter. It actually doesn't feel much like WW1 at all, if you read campaign histories there is very much a focus on capturing ground to consolidate so you can push deeper into the enemy's defensive position. But here it feels like you never bite into anything.

I'm hoping this is just a demo thing.

[CaptainSpacetime]

2/3 points getting captured should remove a star, and yeah a larger de-buff for losing a star.

as it is it seems like just never attack wins you the game

[Rin Palora]

Technically it costs you and the enemy 'gold' to replenish those units so you can prevent him, in theory from purchasing new units by bleeding his infantry divisions, putting the AI's gold into negatives (with the infantry autoreplenish), and thus it should, in theory, be possible to destroy all of his tanks, airplanes and siege artillery and make him unable to buy new ones.

I think it's even possible to destroy infantry corps if you kill every single division in them, but that seems like a monumental task given how many regular infantry divisions are in one of those. I have no idea if this actually would work against the AI.

But yeah the actual observable impact of mostly winning a battle is very small. Quite disappointing. When I heard that of the battlefield permanency I was thinking you'd get to keep whatever trench you take, or at least those around a command point.

[XShadowY]

The younger Close Combat titles also had this kind of system (within a campaign) where the enemy could only start a map from objectives he held in the last turn.

20 years later we are back to zero... ;-)

[Turtler]

Agreed with the above. The lack of permanency on the battlefield holdings is aggravating, likewise the lack of unit persistence. If this is an engine meant to embrace the war of attrition and the grind there needs to be a way to grind down the physical number of units in the enemy's command. This was how a lot of the battles were won or lost after all.

It may not be quite as effective as enveloping an enemy force and wiping them out in a cauldron battle, but it should still happen.

[wokelly]

Originally posted by XShadowY:

The younger Close Combat titles also had this kind of system (within a campaign) where the enemy could only start a map from objectives he held in the last turn.

20 years later we are back to zero... ;-)

Close Combat is actually a very good example of what I had in mind. Maybe you can't take the whole map in one go, but you can focus on an area and then springboard from there the next time. I was hoping for something similar in this game.

[CaptainSpacetime]

the "stars" are abstracted way of showing your gains

if you started almost every battle already in the enemy trenches it'd be far too easy

[Turtler]

Originally posted by CaptainSpacetime:

the "stars" are abstracted way of showing your gains

if you started almost every battle already in the enemy trenches it'd be far too easy

But you won't start out every battle already in the enemy's trenches, only those where you are going from a previous battle and have it.

And I get the logic behind the stars but that doesn't mean I don't have to find it somewhat hard to grasp and unsatisfying. Especially given the importance of the physical locations over the course of the war.

[CaptainSpacetime]

that'd work if the maps were way bigger, maybe like 12 objectives on one map where you just continue the same battle after the timer runs out

[Mogendo]

Close combat the bloody first Has a system of keeping captured areas if a battle is indecisive and a follow up attack is needed. Held areas in the previous battles become the new deployment zones. And those maps are similar in size to this game.

[FeedMe]

Originally posted by Mogendo:

Close combat the bloody first Has a system of keeping captured areas if a battle is indecisive and a follow up attack is needed. Held areas in the previous battles become the new deployment zones. And those maps are similar in size to this game.

pretty sure all the close combat games had a version of that where deployment zone was effected by captured objectives and where your units finished that battle at

[Zegobaba]

Although a completely different style of game Grand Tactician the Civil war has a fluid deployment system were you can deploy your troops based on where they ended up the previous day in comparison with the enemy.

[Pancakeman]

ya this gets really annoying, especially when the ai makes it so you cant actually take the whole map by just sending countless men at you. I really much like the idea of holding the ground you just had your men die over and being able to set up a shawty defense of your new lines.