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Greetings all!

When playing a campaign is it better to have....

Small core (say 20% of the total of units on the front)
Large core (say 80%)
No core at all, only scenario units
No scenario units at all, full reliance on the core?

Just looking for opinions.

I am with core units. At the firsts scenarios, player maybe needs some aux units, but basically core units 100%

RoyalBengalTiger wrote: ↑2025-08-07 02:41, Thursday Greetings all!

When playing a campaign is it better to have....

...
No core at all, only scenario units
...
Just looking for opinions.

A campaign without core units is pointless. A very important part of a campaign is the individual purchase and development (experience, upgrades) of units. Otherwise, the fun factor = 0.

Incidentally, I agree with Dimitris .

Generally a core of sufficent size is preferable but there are many variables. As Para noted, core development (leaders, prestige management, upgrades, attachments, strengt points) is a key part of the game and it's a big part of why players like to play it. And why players may wish to play the same campaign again and again with different units. Or to "perfect" their army with every new campaign run.

The size and composition of the map is of course an imortant factor when it comes to army size/units deployed.
Maybe the core is small at the beginning of a campaign but a big map has to be filled with units, so you need a sizeable number of aux units.
Maybe you want to deploy some specialized aux units that are needed for one reason or the other in a scenario, like carriers, bridging units, armoured trains, etc... (and that are not or not yet part of the player's core).
Maybe there are aux nations you want to show on the battlefield (that are not represented in the core army of the player).
In later stages of an campaign you still can have smaller scenarios with limited deployment of core units, so a big core does not have to be used in every scenario.
You can also use the scenario intro and story to explain what is going on.

As a rule of thumb I'd say, that when the core army is gradually growing over the course of a campaign the number of aux units can gradually decrease.
(Of course the only way to create a historically correct camapign would be a no-core campaign, but that would contradict the players love for their core units and the development of the core army over the course of a whole a campaign. Maybe that's why we don't see such campaigns.)

Well, the way I'm building the Poland campaign right now is with the core starting at maybe 15 units, and that will probably grow to like 30-40 towards the end.
The battles are about 120-130 units per side though.

The idea is to have lots of filler units - infantry (sometimes regular, sometimes reservists or even non-regular), 75 mm Schneider artillery (pulled by a horse), a semi-obsolete tank over here, and a second hand fighter there, because it would add a bit of realism.

Then the player obviously will use much more high end stuff, being the commander of the only mobile division.

Hence this topic. Just want to make sure what people like before I release something and get the inquisition after me.

Ah - follow up...

What do all y'all think of scenarios with heavy losses on both sides?
Is this a good reason to have a bunch of non-core units to be the first wave?

RoyalBengalTiger wrote: ↑2025-08-12 04:02, Tuesday Ah - follow up...

What do all y'all think of scenarios with heavy losses on both sides?
Is this a good reason to have a bunch of non-core units to be the first wave?

Sure! This works. Sometimes you need aux units to be slaughtered, so the player's core can come to the rescue!

(I was confused seeing Leon's avatar. This is really the only forum where personal avatars are available for everyone )

It seems like only selected avatars can be used, I did not find the function to submit my own (and I have a fun one I'd use, so if it's there, please point to it).

And yeah, that's going to be the theme. I am also reducing the size of the core a bit, because every battle in 1939 and 1940 is a s***show that barely gets the case forward at all, and it wasn't fun to have a unit I can't replace go off with an Earth shattering kaboom.
I'm hoping for a bit of a not typical campaign where the amazing core with all units being the best possible, elite, half with leaders just plow through the scenarios.

Then there's low resources, so damaged units might still have to fill in the gaps as the battle progresses - so move to reserve during the main shootout and then back to the front when everything is going nowhere, just to get that extra push.
The AI 2.0 is also clever every now and then. I was surprised how good it is compared to the original PG 2.

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