Campaign discussion

I decided to raise the subject of a wargame camapign here. We may well be a good way off realising this just now, not least because of the courier bug in Scourge of War:Gettysburg (SoW) but I wanted to throw out some ideas and see what the response was. I've been a wargamer using miniatures since I was about 10 and my first formal wargaming was done in the SYW period using Charles Grants rules when I was 14. Right from then until now I have always preferred fighting battles where there was context behind them, attacking or defending for a reason always struck me as far more enjoyable that just lining up opposite the enemy and whacking seven bells out of him for the evening, then packing up, going home and doing the same thing the following week.

I have played in and umpired more wargame campaigns than I can remember, many fail, sadly but some remain in my memory as great examples of design, co-operation, and skillful play. Whether we can ever get to those dizzy heights using SoW I don't know but I'm happy to give it a try.

I'm sold on the idea of a nodal map, that is one based around nodes or map squares, each of which represents a battlefield, these being linked by lines which represent roads, rivers or in the case of an ACW era-game, railroads. The basic idea is shown here, where the Mediterranean island of Sicily hosts a map set in the ancient period.

miniaturewargames.homestead.com/MagnaGraecia.html

The beauty of a nodal map is that each numbered box has its wargame terrain pre-determined so that the teams can assess the ground and plan strategy in advance based on a position they could defend, or outflank. The second benefit this kind of map has for a game like SoW is that each nodal box also represents one of the fixed maps that comes with the game.

The umpire places these maps in a sequence and in locations that make geographical sense, so maps with towns or open farmland might represent the floor of a valley or an open region while the hilly maps such as Devil's Den, South Mountain or Culps Hill would represent more upland areas or hill ranges. The point being that the terrain is known by every player beforehand and you can go some way to adjusting your tactics and strategy in advance. To add extra flexibility to the maps we could rotate them 90, 180 or 270 degrees as needed to represent different alignments of terrain though given the compass rose on the toolbar this might be more trouble that it's worth and end up frying people's brains. Likewise it would aid us in being more flexible if players had the Antietam add-on and the Pipe Creek maps as these give us yet more options. Even if all players did not have those maps but some did, we could introduce operational limitations by stating, for example, that player X's force is from a certain army or department and while it can operate down one side of the map (made up of Gettysburg map nodes) it is not permitted (by Washington or Richmond) to operate elsewhere (where the Antietam or Pipe Creek maps were in use).

The other benefit is that you do not need to be any good at playing MP games online with SoW, or even able to connect. In fact, not only that but you don't even need to OWN the software in order to play in the campaign. As long as you're a wargamer or military history fan, you can play, and I think we have a few of those scattered around the forum. With some kriegspielers here we could have the senior command teams of both sides as non-MP gamers and those who can and do play in the MP games will fight the encounters out using SoW. All we'd need is for the MP players to be divided up into a USA and a CSA pair of teams.

Now, on to some basic campaign rules:

The black lines linking nodes represent transport routes (roads and/or railroads and/or rivers) that permit forces to move between them. For simplicity I call these roads. It costs 1 "march" to traverse a road between any two nodes.

It also costs 1 march to cross a node from one entry point to any exit point.

Each turn of the campaign represents 1 day. In a day a force containing infantry or foot artillery can move 1 march. A force containing entirely cavalry and/or horsed artillery can make 2 marches. Supply trains make 1 march per two days. Note that this is not a half a march per day since that would result in them possibly being encounterd by an enemy at the half-way point along a road. Supply trains are not considered to have arrived at, nor departed from, a node until 2 campaign days have passed. Once those 2 days have passed they instantly teleport from one node to the adjacent one to avoid encounters on a road.

Forces may be resupplied with food, ammo, replacement troops and sundries such as clothing and equipment as long as they are within a certain number of marches of a supply train (lets say 4) and can trace a line of communications (LoC) free of enemy forces back to that supply train along the route they have moved. Enemy forces may occupy nodes along an LoC as long as friendly forces of at least 150% of their numbers occupy the same node. Thus a raiding force of say, a 1000-man cavalry brigade, would require at least a 1500-strong force (say an infantry brigade) in the node to guard that LoC and keep supplies flowing. The 150% ratio can be changed, of course, its just a suggestion for now. In densely wooded or hilly terrain the defenders may need to be even stronger, thus encouraging raiding forces to strike at LoCs in suitable terrain.

I was thinking of allowing Confederate forces to be able to trace an LoC of a longer length to represent the ability of the CSA armies (if the game is set in the east) to march faster which seemed to be a feature of the operations at least as far as the ANV was concerned. Lets say a CSA LoC can be 6 marches long. All numbers are adjustable depending on the size of map we use, since balancing these variables is critical to game success or failure.

I would suggest a pretty small map at first to run a test campaign of very limited duration and forces. Once we iron out the bugs we can try something more adventurous.

I was thinking of taking a single large valley or open region or a coastal peninsular as the basis, with, say, impassable hills one side and a swampy area or major river the other, or coasts along both sides of a peninsular. One side would be attacking and would have stronger forces, the other defending. At the defenders end of the map would be a feature such as a major river or a coastline across which supplies were shipped but which was effectively the edge of operations in that direction as well. The defender would initially be required to garrison several towns on the map and thus disperse his forces to some extent. He would then have to determine teh attackers main axis or axes of advance and manouver to stop him. Cavalry forces would be the chief means of scouting.

On the map at various points decided by the umpire would be a number of objectives. These could be fixed such as a POW camp, an ironworks, a weapons factory, a town or a major railroad yard. The attacker would gain a certain number of VPs for occupying the node in which these are located for 3 consecutive turns. A couple of other objectives of equal value would be mobile and represent large supply dumps which move at the speed of supply trains. While these are mobile they need only be captured by the enemy for them to gain their VPs, no need to hold them for 3 turns. To capture a mobile VP would require defeating any defending force. If the VP is caught on its own (for example by a cavalry raid) its automatically captured/destroyed and its VPs awarded to the attacker. The VPs would add up to 100 and if the attacker scored 60 it would be a minor victory, 80 for a major victory and 100 would be a crushing and glorious result.

As to forces I'm thinking of starting quite small and we also need to bear in mind how many players we might get for the online battles and how many troops people can handle. The defenders might have 5 divisions and a small cavalry division, the attackers 8 and a large cavalry division. Cavalry would mostly not show up in the battles but would be off scouting. The system should make their scouting value so high that players won't wish to get them destroyed in battles. The cavalry would operate in as small a unit as the owner player wished (even down to companies) but their strength vs what enemy force they encounter will determine how accurate their scouting reports are.

Some form of campaign management software to cover the detailed work of losses, replacements and varying troop quality would be very useful. We could of course create a series of new commands in the GCM and use these only for the campaign. This would make things very easy though Garnier would need to be involved to give some small aid there in structuring the starting forces.

Those are very much the bare bones of the ideas I have right now. Comments please, and also if you are interested in playing, please say so here.

Some excellent ideas there Diggers, and I am certainly interested in participating.

I agree that fighting battles in the context of a campaign does add a dimension to the experience.

I also thing you are right to start with something quite small, and I like your idea of a nodal map. To save folks playing around with the link you provided, here it is in the usual format

miniaturewargames.homestead.com/MagnaGraecia.html

The only suggestion which didn’t enthuse me was the use of victory points. Rather than granting these for occupying a supply depot or whatever, why not let such events give rise to an appropriate military impact – eg in that case the opposing commander cannot make offensive marches for a while, or cannot arm and clothe a proportion of any new recruits. Or if a key bridge is taken and destroyed, then a large river cannot be crossed. The current game uses VPs of course, and they are perhaps a necessary abstraction in a random sandbox game, but your campaign context may allow you to break free of that.

You mention that some form of campaign management software would be useful to keep track of losses etc. Ike has been thinking along similar lines to you, and has mentioned the Berthier application in this context. You might look at that. I first heard of it years ago, so it has been around a long time, which suggests it’s reliable. No doubt it’s been through several iterations.

Martin

I mentioned VPs because these are easy to measure and thus victory is easy to define. While a military objective such as a bridge being destroyed or supply dump captured could easily be converted into actual in-game penalties, I like to have political objectives as well, such as a factory captured or a POW camp liberated and there still needs to be some definition of the effects of their loss. A points score seemed easiest.

It's almost always political objectives that define how and why campaigns are fought. Wellington had to protect Brussels in the 100 days campaign and both sides entire strategy in the east in the ACW was defined by the location of Washington and Richmond.

What will make life either wonderful for us, or hellishly hard, is the ease of redefining a forces' strength and quality in the online battles as the campaign develops. If we can use the OOB editor to easily modify unit strengths and their combat factors and its a simple task, then we will have an easy time of it.

If it turns out to take hours to tweak these things between battles, with lots of book-keeping then we may have to think again.

It was I who mentioned Berthier to Ike but Berthier won't help us here (in the context of the SoW OOBs). Garnier who wrote the GCM app would be able to provide exactly what we need but I have spoken to him, as have others and I know he is not interested in doing any work on his application beyond what he uses it for now, nor giving the code to others to develop for their own needs, so we must look to the tools which come with the game to adjust force strengths.

I haven't even begun to look into what's possible yet - has anyone done this?

Some good blue sky thinking here, and its common ground that battles have much more meaning if they form part of a campaign. There are clearly vast possibilities with this game, but its equally clear that we have a steep learning curve to negotiate.

You can certainly count me in if/when the current issue with freezing one hour in is overcome, and if the game can be tailored easily to campaign play – for campaign purposes we would need to avoid the regiments of widely varying strength we are seeing at present.

Also, don't like the 'objectives' locations in the game at all - they have the potential to distort tactics away from the historical, and the sooner we can get them out of the Kriegsspiel oriented games the better.

Could I also make a plea for people to try and post under the correct headings - makes it much easier for folks to follow the many and various debates being carried on here. Ta.

I have been looking into using the OOB Editor program for updating unit OOB files in SOW. After each MP game is played, there are files which remain in the "NetServ" folder. They are what is downloaded to each player's PC from the host, containing the various files for the battle. Among those files is a copy of the Scenario-dot-csv file and it contains the strength, morale, fatigue, location and facing (among other information, I'm sure) of each of the units that were in the battle. I don't see any difficulty in using the OOB Editor to open that file and to save it as the current file for the Corps and Divisions involved. It is my present belief that saving the current OOB information for each of the corps or divisions involved in the campaign, separately, as if those files were the 'Master' OOB files, will work best. That is to say, using Longstreet's Corps as an example, we would have one file for the Corps which would include all of the units presently assigned to it and their current SOW map locations and variables of interest, but without any Union forces in the file. Each of the divisions would be included as well as all of the other units which are a part of that Corps. As changes are made caused by battlefield results or other campaign-level events - e.g., being out of supply long enough to begin to starve - then changes would be made to the appropriate stats in that file. When the Corps faces an enemy force, the current file is copied to the Scenario-dot-csv file for the Battle Mod and the Union forces would likewise be copied into that same Scenario-dot-csv file, thereby creating one of the files for the Battle Mod. Current stats and strengths could be maintained in this way with a minimum of confusion on the Umpire's part; particularly, a file-naming convention needs to be followed and out of date files need to be deleted without delay, once they are determined to be in fact no longer of use.

This is an outline of a basic method which I believe will work for a campaign, regardless of how the campaign rules are written or the maps drawn. I will be experimenting with whether this in fact will work during the test of the rules, etc, in a tiny MP campaign that will be made for that purpose.

King_Rufus, thank you for your input. However without an objective in a campaign, how do you propose to have it make sense and be cohesive? All wars and campaigns were fought for a reason, so at the most basic level we need to have an objective/series of objectives of some kind. I'm not suggesting anything so crude as a 'capture the flag' style game but something with more subtlety. Surely all your Kriegspiel games have an objective and some kind of background story/setting? Armies don't wander the countryside hell bent on mutual destruction without a purpose.

And regiments would certainly be of potentially different strengths after a couple of battles, if some got roughly handled and others did not. I would generally start a campaign though with mostly homogenous formations.

Ike - yes, this is what Garniers GCM Mod does. I was just worried that plugging in reinforcements and working out experience levels would be too tedious/difficult. The GCM mod also does this automatically but we cannot have a stand alone version of it, sadly.

I believe that the end of game files in the Scenario file in the NetServ folder contains all the correct strength and stats as of the battle's end. Updating can be done simply by saving that file as the "next battle" file. Uncertain about that, but I'll test and see if that is so. Sorry, I'm still a bit groggy from our SOW battle just over. Lots of sprites!

I have a map drawn up in an excel workbook and I'm working now on a document of notes and rules. I should have something to show everyone towards the end of this week.

Hi guys

My first test (small) campaign is ready. I'd actually like to do an even smaller dry run test with a couple of players online one evening to quickly work through the system and rules to see if I haven't forgotten something. This test would just be maybe 2 brigades and a cavalry regiment or two moving about a map to try and find each other. It'd be done over teamspeak and might need 4 players plus me. I doubt it would result in any online battles, it'd be a test of the system.

After that (or concurrently) I can send to the group - or upload here? Can files be hosted here? - the campaign rules and map (but not the forces lists) for upload to the KS site. My thinking now is:

1) We should offer this to the site's tabletop Kriegspielers as well. These are people you know, Martin, so I bow to your assistance with this. They can take the roles of the high command and various divisions and brigades and play the map game, sending couriers and such at the map level. I see this as a unique opportunity to give the non-SoW players a chance to Kriegspiel something rather special - a large scenario, longer than they usually play that will have a fixed duration but where the encounters instead of being wooden blocks on a map table in the middle of the room, will be digitally resolved online via SoW battles.

2) We ask the SoW players to form 2 teams, CSA and USA and these two teams then play out any battles the Map Teams generate. The SoW players in their respective teams would form a player 'pool' and would need to be okay with making themselves available to slot in and take a command within their playing preferences, obviously.

3) There might even be the opportunity to merge the KS players and the SoW players by the KS guys installing Teamspeak and being there to
discuss tactics as an online battle is played.

4) SoW players will need Pipe Creek and Antietam. The basic game simply does not give us enough interesting maps. Antietam is 100% vital because
of the 3 great maps that come with it, but Pipe Creek is less so, we could get by without Pipe Creek.

5) Players will also need to download the GCM campaign mod by Garnier because this allows us to use his Random Map which gives us a very nice
hilly rural farmland and forests maps which has six variations. Thus the campaign battles would be fought under the GCM gameplay which tweaks a few things from vanilla. I can supply details.

I do not think Mods per se are the culprit for the crashes. I think having mods activated when people patched their games is the culprit,
although as we know there is still some odd courier-related behaviour going on.

Players will need to be prepared to uninstall their games and reinstall them patched to v1.4012 before they install any mods. I think several of the regular players are at this status already but we still need to investigate courier stability more before we embark on the campaign.

6) I think we need more players. We have still only played at most division v division level battles. The campaign could throw up corps vs corps games in its biggest encounters, so we need to recruit more players. We currently only have about 6 people we can reply on to show up for a pre-announced game, thus I think we should conduct an e-mail shot to get more players to come along on pre-agreed nights as well as open up this campaign with a thread on the NorbSoft forum, giving the KS site as the site where the game will run.

Following on from this we need to formalise the days of the week and the times we meet. While the GCM boys have the luxury of a huge group of
which sometimes 20 meet EVERY NIGHT at 7:00pm East Coast Time, our smaller group needs to be more focussed and since you seem to be able to
make Tuesdays and Thursdays, Martin, I suggest we make those nights at 7:30pm UK time (2:30pm US ECT) our regular slots. Often after you leave several of us are still around, particularly the Americans, so a second game slot can be 10:00pm-11:00pm UK time (5:00pm-6:00pm US ECT) the same evenings. I can make weekends as well so I will offer Fridays and Saturdays from 7:30pm UK time as well. If these become our known regular times, this should help our small group focus and push player numbers up.

7) For logistics I do not know if the KS site can provide discrete forums/rooms where the CSA and USA players ONLY can see and post. Given the Kriegspiel style of things it would be best if the umpire(s) communicated via PMs there, or maybe e-mails, but a general discussion area could be useful. An AARs area where players could post reports and propaganda would also be fun. I'm a bit of a sucker for in-character shenanigans and role-playing.

8 ) Umpires. I will volunteer to be in charge but an ADC for the CSA and one for the USA could also be helpful. Volunteers?

9) There is no point 9. That is everything! Comments?

http://www.atomic-album.com/showPic.php/22426/RoamawkValleySmall.jpg

Mr. Digby wrote:
7) For logistics I do not know if the KS site can provide discrete forums/rooms where the CSA and USA players ONLY can see and post. Given the Kriegspiel style of things it would be best if the umpire(s) communicated via PMs there, or maybe e-mails, but a general discussion area could be useful. An AARs area where players could post reports and propaganda would also be fun. I'm a bit of a sucker for in-character shenanigans and role-playing.

Yes this can be done as long as people are members of this forum and we can give access rights to specific forums. I have never done this but it would appear to be possible.

When you have a game set up I will endeavour to help you get this sorted.

Certainly can get an area for specific game AAR / communication.

I hope you get some take up.

So do I. Am certainly keen to join and am happy to assist with your testing program, Digby. I do like the idea of having a campaign context for the battles.

3) There might even be the opportunity to merge the KS players and the SoW players by the KS guys installing Teamspeak and being there to discuss tactics as an online battle is played.

It would be good if you can find a way to involve some of the kriegsspielers who are not already playing Gettysburg. Could you perhaps make a couple of them responsible for giving overall strategic directions in the campaign from Washington & Richmond for example? The Gettysburg teams would then fight whatever engagements arose from their orders. Could be a lot of work for you though.

Players will need to be prepared to uninstall their games and reinstall them patched to v1.4012 before they install any mods. I think several of the regular players are at this status already but we still need to investigate courier stability more before we embark on the campaign.

Absolutely. This is something all Gettysburg players should be doing anyway, per Norbsoft, to minimise the risk of game freezes.

Martin

Martin wrote:It would be good if you can find a way to involve some of the kriegsspielers who are not already playing Gettysburg. Could you perhaps make a couple of them responsible for giving overall strategic directions in the campaign from Washington & Richmond for example? The Gettysburg teams would then fight whatever engagements arose from their orders. Could be a lot of work for you though.

Please have another look at my points 1 & 2. I think having the non-computer game players as the campaign command teams (C-in-C and subordinate commands depending on how the CSA/USA chose to break down their forces) would be really neat. These guys are used to map games and written courier orders and reports - they would just be writing them in a forum format instead of on bits of paper - and then the people who are our regulars in the Gettysburg online games will be the lowest level commanders and fight the actual battles.

That would be my preference to involve as many people as possible in the group, from as many diverse backgrounds as possible.

One thing that would be nice for SOW are better printed or jpg maps for all the game maps. A good campaign should include useful and enjoyable maps. This way the campaign GM can work with the 6-10 decent Scourge of War game maps to tailor battles that occur on the fly off of the overall campaign map. As they prepare to enter battle initial orders can be given off the printed maps.

I have done a number of the online battles using Garnier's Campaign mod (every night there can be from 15-20 players on their each commanding brigades or divisions). It's a great vehicle for online gaming though most of those battles lack players operating under a central command to some objective. Combine that with HITS mode, some good planning maps and we approach campaign nirvanna!

Los wrote:

One thing that would be nice for SOW are better printed or jpg maps for all the game maps. A good campaign should include useful and enjoyable maps. This way the campaign GM can work with the 6-10 decent Scourge of War game maps to tailor battles that occur on the fly off of the overall campaign map. As they prepare to enter battle initial orders can be given off the printed maps.

Download the mod Couriers and Mini Maps Mod from the NSD site. In it are the Walker maps, (1867), of the battle. These are the ones I use in the game and give all the needed relevant info you are looking for. They are in dds format so you will need a copy of Irfanview, (it's free), to open and print the maps.

Gentleman,

Now that we seem to have a much more stable courier game setup (SoW patch v1.4026) and we have experienced several stable games over a few evenings play, I am very much inclined to get this discussion moving again.

As I said above the campaign map will be a nodal map and so does not need a historic geographic map at all and the battlefields provided by the SoW GB maps will represent the terrain at the various nodes, so every commander will have an appreciation of what the ground will be like when he orders an advance to that node and he can go some way to choosing his ground to fight on.

The smaller SoW maps are 2.5 miles square and the larger ones (Antietam and the Pipe Creek set) are 5 miles square.

The campaign will be quite small as its a test run, in effect, and there is scope for 5 players on each side at the strategic level. At the tactical level I suggest that the SoW MP players be divided into two teams, Reb and Fed, and the players remain in these teams for the duration of the campaign, formations being allocated to them for each battle.

So that we can involve as many people as possible in the Kriegspiel community I want to offer the strategic command roles first to those who do not play SoW. They will in effect be the campaign players, the SoW MP guys will be the 'soldiers' and conduct the battles.