bf4c4 campaign system discussion

[o1oo1]

Game Length (number of tickets, 64p maps) - 75%
Game Length (number of tickets, 32p maps) - 150%
Game Length (Bleed rate) - 100%

75% is much too low for 100% bleed.

I notice the 2 person max player difference is gone

Should the battle day end prematurely due to a lack of numbers on the defensive side, then this side will be required to forfeit one round for every twenty (20) minutes lost before the scheduled end of the battle day.

when is there a lack of numbers?

THE ATTACK TURN FORMALLY BEGINS WHEN THE PREVIOUS TURN ENDS AT THE END OF SATURDAY'S BATTLE.

move this up to the first mention of the term "attack turn"

All territories must remain occupied at all times by at least one division.

Each army will receive 16 divisons. These divisions will be placed by the army's HC. Territories may be left empty.

The attacker can move its divisions to any adjoining occupied territory.
However, each territory must always remain occupied by at least one division.

contradiction

Due to battle fatigue, any division used in an attack cannot be moved until the next turn.

which turn? attacking turn ? Only attacking turn is defined, but surely you dont mean you can only move fatigued divisions until your next attack?

Each division can move by one (1) territory.

why only 1 ? You can move replacements however many territories you want

One division may be placed on an owned Theater .

A theater is a group of five connected and geographically grouped territories.

on each one ? you can have territories empty ? i dont get this rule

THE ATTACK TURN IS NOW OVER.

on a tuesday. This contradicts the statement:

THE ATTACK TURN FORMALLY BEGINS WHEN THE PREVIOUS TURN ENDS AT THE END OF SATURDAY'S BATTLE.

which says attack turn ends on saturday

Attacker must capture 5 MCOMS to succeed.

why 5 ? i just want to know how that number was reached .

Capture the Flag - Defender chooses side. Map played for one round.
Played with vehicles.
Scored by number of attacker captures minus defender captures.
Attacker captures must = one or more.
A tie equals a defeat.

This means the defending army can put all their players as defense and doesnt have to worry about attacking.

Movement Perks

Quick March: +1 Move for a division.
Resupply: Remove attacker fatigue for one division.
Paradrop:
One division can skip one enemy territory OR
+2 move over friendly territory for a division.
Quagmire (defensive): Played at start of defensive week. If the enemy attacks this territory, they cannot blitz off of it.

How are these earned ? How are these used ?

[CognitoCon]

I have no idea about the bleed.

I think lack of numbers is under 5, but I could be wrong on that.

It probably makes sense to put that first. I haven't really looked at the wiki.

That contradiction likely comes from some confusion about how "garrisoned" units work. I can explain if you like.

I assume battle fatigue means those divisions cannot be moved until it becomes your attack again, but it could mean no movement until after that second attack. This needs clarification.

I assume the division movement stuff is related to divisions already in place, but I believe we've set it up where newly refunded divisions can only move one tile as well in order to increase strategy, etc.

As a bonus to theaters we've granted an additional division per territory upon taking said territory. This rule also allows you to spawn a unit there every turn that you own that theater (IIRC).

I assume an attack turn begins after the battleday and ends after the next battleday, so that probably needs revising.

The 5 number for rush existed last campaign as well, not sure why.

We're still working on Black Ops. That stuff may be from last campaign.

Again, we're still clarifying some of this Black Ops stuff, we'll probably have a meeting about it shortly and then the wiki will be updated accordingly.

Full disclaimer: I did not write the wiki and the above may be entirely wrong. I'm basing most of what I said off of what I remember from meetings. TL;DR: Don't yell at me.

[matsif]

From discussions 2 weeks ago the bleed was going to go back to the 60% we used in C2. If this didn't make it to the wiki then it was just missed, I know we discussed it.

[Ghoul]

My understanding is that each army gets 16 divisions at the start. at the end of the battle day each army gets all their lost armies returned to them. If a army holds a theater for 1 week they get the WCP bonus plus one additional division to use (17) (+1 division for each theater owned) If a theater is lost then the extra division is lost. When a theater is owned, the army that owns the theater has the option to place 1 division anywhere within the theater that is owned instead of placing the extra division at a HQ

All territories have an invisible division on them called a garrison. These divisions do not move nor can attack. The line in the wikki that states all territories must have 1 division on them needs to be removed.

Divisions that were used in an attack can Blitz to another territory following a successful attack but can not move during the preparation to defend stage (attacking teams defensive movements after the battle day) So yes, divisions used in army A's attack will not be able to be moved again until army "A" preps to attack again.

The only thing the defending team does after the battle day is place their returned divisions on their HQ's

All divisions can move one space during the prep to attack phase. Then on the battle day all divisions can move one space to attack an adjacent territory. After the battle day all divisions that were not involved in an attack can move one space to defend. All returned divisions (ones that were lost) can also move one space away from the HQ on which they were placed.

Hope this gives some clarification. Someone can correct me if I am wrong on any of these points.

[StarfisherEcho]

Yeah I think our rough draft went live here. Active discussion on a lot of points.

Still, this is why crowdsourcing is good. Thanks for the review o1, it's always good to get more eyes on these things.

The overall intent is captured in the changelog. We're basically trying to tweak the C3 system, which is bascially the same old risk system that we've been using for years. Still work to be done to tighten it up, obviously, but that's where we want to get to.

[CognitoCon]

I think Ghoul has everything right, except I'd like to clarify that I believe we agreed on getting the additional division immediately after taking a theater, while the additional WCP only go into effect the week after. I assume we would get the additional division after the battleday ended, and then we could place it somewhere to defend against the next weeks attacks, if that makes sense.

[Necromancer]

I didn't see the system was posted, but from your comments here:

16 divisions when owning 25 maps (start) means 9 territories are defended by 1 division (garrison).

If attacks are massed 2-3 divisions and cannot move after attack (defensive movement) , that means most territories will be defended by 1 division next battleday.
Or most attacks will have to be made by 1 division -> a lot of one-rounds. Which can result in a large shift of WCP in a single battle.


Whats the reasoning for the magic number 16?

[CognitoCon]

We're limited to 2 division attacks and 1 division (+1 garrison) defenses in order to make 3 rounds the max for a map. The number 16 was decided upon after sloth simulated campaigns a few times and 16 seemed about right for having to be strategic while also not having to worry about having battledays with no rounds played as was possible with 12 if I recall.

[Ghoul]

A big complaint in C3 was too many rounds played on a single map and also attacking the same maps week after week. These new changes to the campaign system are trying to address these complaints by making it possible to play more maps on a battle day. This system does diminish the meta game somewhat but the majority of the community doesn't pay attention to that anyways. I'm just glad we are not using a Hex board as it was originally suggested.

[Necromancer]

Lowering the number of divisions is a good idea.
All other changes are cosmetics. Each positive change comes with a negative aspect. Zero-sum overall.
More maps per day also leads to more WCP gain/loss in each battleday. Which plays a part in morale and when thinking about surrender.

You try to change the map, but the map is just the result of bad principles. Think about the principles that lead to the creation of this map and its current state, find which ones are at the heart of the problem, and change them.
you'll get an overall better map/system.

[CognitoCon]

Lowering the number of divisions is a good idea.
All other changes are cosmetics. Each positive change comes with a negative aspect. Zero-sum overall.
More maps per day also leads to more WCP gain/loss in each battleday. Which plays a part in morale and when thinking about surrender.

You try to change the map, but the map is just the result of bad principles. revise the principles that lead to the creation of this map and its current state, and you'll get an overall better map/system.

Care to elaborate on these bad principles?

[Necromancer]

For one, the number of territories on the map. Its a result of wanting each BF map just once on the RISK map (reasoning: otherwise we might play the same map twice in a single battleday). Is it a good idea in the first place?

You have 4 HQs on this map, and statistically HQs are rarely attacked. Which, practically, means you already not going to play 4 of the maps in the map pool this campaign. Add to that "corner" territories you never get to fight over and you pretty much start the campaign with 8-10 maps less in the map pool then intended.

[CognitoCon]

Considering there are plenty of maps in that 50 map pool that aren't particularly great and the TA's are assigning maps to territories (I think that's right), having corner maps shouldn't be too big of a deal. This is also why we setup divisions the way we did so that there is incentive to attack different places (ones that aren't defended as much). I forget how we have HQ's setup, but I remember us discussing not having them respawn instantly after being taken, but I'm not sure if that resulted in a rule change.

[Ghoul]

Lowering the number of divisions is a good idea.
All other changes are cosmetics. Each positive change comes with a negative aspect. Zero-sum overall.
More maps per day also leads to more WCP gain/loss in each battleday. Which plays a part in morale and when thinking about surrender.

You try to change the map, but the map is just the result of bad principles. Think about the principles that lead to the creation of this map and its current state, find which ones are at the heart of the problem, and change them.
you'll get an overall better map/system.

I'm not sure what you mean by the map being the result of bad principles. If you can elaborate I'd like to hear it. The map is nothing more than a tool we use to determine what maps we play on the battle day.

The Risk system at its core was developed to give reason to play as many different maps as possible and not just the popular ones. The system accomplishes that well in my opinion. A nice unintentional consequence of our system is that its something that has set us apart from other BF communities. Now I'm the first to admit that the selection process could be different, a blind list of all the maps that we play through for example. Or removing the HQ limitation from the risk map and allow divisions to be placed on any territory you control just like the real risk game. Or remove divisions completely and just play best two out of three on all maps, and allow an army to attack anywhere they want to on the risk board.

When the system fails it is always when one army gains momentum and begins to steam roll the other which regardless of the map selection process used, creates the drama, bad morale and complaining. There have been ideas floated over the years on how to address this issue. Everything from Neutrals playing for the loosing team* (usually the team fielding fewer players) to a division of highly skilled players that play as mercenaries that switch back and forth to the team that is loosing. Its even been suggested that all drafted soldiers be treated as free agents and that a loosing army accumulates points with which they can buy soldiers from the other team to balance things out.

*Neutrals were specifically created as a group to combat low server numbers on the loosing team as well as the +2 rule (used to be the +4 rule) TA's only in recent years have become our Neutral players.

Point is that there is a ton of discussions going on that you probably can't see on how to evolve GC every campaign. The reason that not everyone can see these discussions is that they are between the Generals, TA's (possibly some of the HC) and any of the Exec that wish to chime in. I personally wouldn't mind letting these discussions be seen by everyone if they are not already (read only) And I say read only because too many people discussing every detail would grind the already slow process of getting a campaign up and running to a halt.

[A Docile Sloth]

RE Units. In case anyone cares, the most relevant of the runs I did. Probably worth hitting that 2x speed button if you plan on watching the whole thing as they are ~40 mins long. Run for 6 weeks, about the length of the last few campaigns. Also, does not include BOs.

12 Units. Can't remember if this had the +1 for theaters or not.

Spoiler: show

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18 Units

Spoiler: show

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The system as it is now

Spoiler: show

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