Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Byzantine Productions Pike and Shot is a deep strategy game set during the bloody conflict of the Thirty Years War.

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kongxinga
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Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by kongxinga »

It has been a week since the announcement but I have yet to see a single thread on it? I myself am very excited, because campaigns was the exact thing that was missing from this great game. I don't believe no one else is as excited about it as I am. I also notice that the campaign will model supply, some sort of siege attrition, and economic damages to provinces. This is great, and now we can actually have our campaign layer instead of trying to tie in thirty years war as it.

Other things that make me excited are the dedicated Ottoman campaign, as well as the fact that Pike and shot and Tercio to salvo owners seem to be getting some kind of offer when this is released.

So any thoughts, wild speculations, expectations? I can't be the only one excited.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by jomni »

Everyone's doing the beta and are under Non-Disclosure Agreement. Hehe.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by Waldorf »

I'm not doing the Beta, I wanted to play it when it is finished. I *am* excited about it since I've recently finished all 40 historical scenarios from P&S and Tercio.

The Campaigns announcement is not clear on how many battles are included in the new campaign mode, or if there's much duplication between original P&S battles and the new campaign mode, or whether all the battles in the campaign are randomly generated.

I guess we'll find out in a couple of weeks!
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by rbodleyscott »

Waldorf wrote:The Campaigns announcement is not clear on how many battles are included in the new campaign mode, or if there's much duplication between original P&S battles and the new campaign mode, or whether all the battles in the campaign are randomly generated.
In the campaigns, forces raised are initially chosen from historically-based army lists. (You can let the AI set up your starting forces for you automatically, or choose them yourself).

The game keeps track of all field army forces, including individual units, with their current Strength (in men), Experience (which increases when they are bloodied in battle, but decreases somewhat when new men are drafted in as replacements for losses) and Elan (which increases when they are victorious in battle, but decreases if they are defeated, or when they are short of supplies, forced to retreat to avoid battle or involved in a long siege).

In addition to field army forces, local garrison and militia forces may be mobilised to assist the field army of the province owner when a battle is imminent.

Campaigns do not therefore consist of pre-built scenarios strung together. The setup for each battle depends entirely on the campaign situation. The same random map system is used as for Skirmishes, but the scenario type, terrain and forces involved depend on the actual campaign situation.

In practice this generates a lot of variety, and very interesting tactical situations, with knock-on effects on the rest of the campaign depending on whether you are victorious or not. Even if you are victorious, your best units may have suffered such heavy losses that they have to be disbanded or have their excellence diluted by a large draft of recruits.
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Waldorf
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by Waldorf »

This sounds like the ideal scenario and even though I was excited before I'm even more excited now. It will allow for some very exciting "alternative histories" and I look forward to playing the ECW *I'd* have prosecuted!

Thanks for the extra info.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by kongxinga »

That's more like it. I did not know there was a beta with NDA, that explains a lot. I had been checking and checking the forums for people to post for nearly a weak before I gave in and posted. I was beginning to think that I had hallucinated the announcement.

Once the initial standing army has been raised, can we recruit new units to the standing army? I know we can split the army, but can we recruit local and domestic forces to reinforce losses? I think that would be an interesting angle. For example, when the Ottomans take HUngary, they should be able to recruit Haiduk or other similar unscrupulous troops that often were mercenaries on both sides. This would be similar to province special troops in other game/sims.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by TheGrayMouser »

Not sure how specific the "local recruitment" happens, but , for example, if you playing the Turkish campaign as the "allies", you can raise Polish armies form Polish provinces and Austrian armies from Hapsburg lands. Not sure what happens if you take a Turkish province :) Not too long of a wait to find out!
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by rbodleyscott »

kongxinga wrote:Once the initial standing army has been raised, can we recruit new units to the standing army? I know we can split the army, but can we recruit local and domestic forces to reinforce losses? I think that would be an interesting angle. For example, when the Ottomans take HUngary, they should be able to recruit Haiduk or other similar unscrupulous troops that often were mercenaries on both sides. This would be similar to province special troops in other game/sims.
You can recruit only from originally owned provinces. We could have allowed recruitment from captured provinces, but chose not to - on the grounds that the campaigns generally aren't long enough for previously hostile local forces to be reconciled to the new ownership.

If the troops were available as mercenaries, they will usually already be in the army list.
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TheGrayMouser
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by TheGrayMouser »

Good stuff, BTW, are the late Imperial armies equipped with bayonets for the campaign timeline?
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by rbodleyscott »

TheGrayMouser wrote:Good stuff, BTW, are the late Imperial armies equipped with bayonets for the campaign timeline?
No, because bayonets were not generally used by Imperial Austrian units until the War of the Spanish Succession (even though many units abandoned the pike after 1690), and other German contingents only adopted them when they abandoned the pike circa 1689 (by which time the campaign will usually be over).

As the Imperial infantry units have 20% pikemen, they don't need bayonets anyway. The pre-1689 German units have 34% pikemen so don't need bayonets either.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by AEWHistory »

jomni wrote:Everyone's doing the beta and are under Non-Disclosure Agreement. Hehe.
And I always thought NDA was Latin for "No Discussa or itsa you Asse". I think the universal symbol is a dude with a red hot poker.... Making the "shhhhh" face.

:D
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by w_michael »

Are the campaigns available as both single player and two-player?
William Michael, Pike & Shot Campaigns and Field of Glory II series enthusiast
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by rbodleyscott »

w_michael wrote:Are the campaigns available as both single player and two-player?
Single player only. MP capability is on the wish list for the future.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by Pixel »

I'm definitely excited for P&S Campaigns. However, I was wondering since the title is standalone does this mean that the server based PBEM MP will be completely separate from the original game? Hopefully if there is going to be a split in the MP community between the original P&S and the Campaigns version it won't impact things too much. Most of those who play MP will probably get the upgrade to the campaigns version anyways. But, I do worry a little about this release possibly splitting up the MP community.

The campaign mode looks really cool from Surtur's twitch stream. Definitely looking forward to giving it a try myself soon.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by rbodleyscott »

Pixel wrote:I'm definitely excited for P&S Campaigns. However, I was wondering since the title is standalone does this mean that the server based PBEM MP will be completely separate from the original game? Hopefully if there is going to be a split in the MP community between the original P&S and the Campaigns version it won't impact things too much. Most of those who play MP will probably get the upgrade to the campaigns version anyways. But, I do worry a little about this release possibly splitting up the MP community.
Unfortunately this is beyond our control. Since Apple no longer accept submissions (even patches) for 32-bit games, the iPad version cannot be updated. As we want to continue to support and enhance the game, we have had to branch off Pike and Shot Campaigns as a new game to avoid breaking cross-platform PC-iPad MP (because MP requires that both players have the same version of the scripts on their machine).

The existing MP server will continue to allow cross-platform games between iPad and PC using the original game. There will be additional PC-only server for the new game.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by Yggdrassil »

I hope that in the future the development team will reconsider the decision not to make a 64 bit version of this game. I know that I for one wouldn't mind paying a full price for a 64 bit version which includes the Campaigns upgrade. I am seriously loving this game, especially when playing on iPad :)
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by Zipuli »

The Twitch stream preview of Campaigns looked promising. Too bad only English Civil War was shown ;)
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by fairfax »

Yes was quite impressed with the “stream” although I have to say I was a bit disappointed at how few provinces there was on the ECW Map, I thought there would be a lot more. Will this give the modders something to do ie add other campaigns or possibly increase the amount of provinces in the existing campaigns ?

Looking forward very much to playing when it comes out. I’m also wondering what the update will contain...Any clues.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by Chaldean »

Stream looked good. Focus is certainly on battles as Surtur had to spend most of his time fighting them and could not show off the campaign :) Which is as it should be. Yearly six turn rhythm with winter quarters and tax revenues looked interesting.

Not sure how long the full campaign would be. 10-20 battles maybe? I'm bit worried about battle variety if both factions have the same unit compositions from start to finish. Could get tedious. What I liked about historical battles was great variety: very different objectives/maps and unit compositions.

At least we know that battle types vary (open, defensive, reinforcements...). And Swedes can't replace their Salvo units which should mean some change over time. But will Parliament gain access to Cromwellian cavalry later? Polish and Austrian provinces have separate rosters but are there other such examples? Cornish pike?

There does not seem to be any research/modernization aspect in campaign. Though I dont want micromanagement heavy campaigns I think that it could be a nice addition. Even Pike and Shot unit designer where one could set the number of men, ratio of Pike to Shot and other properties (Salvo, Light Guns,...) could be really interesting.
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Re: Is no one excited about Pike and Shot Campaigns?

Post by rbodleyscott »

Chaldean wrote:Not sure how long the full campaign would be. 10-20 battles maybe?
There is an optional auto-resolution feature for smaller battles. Unlike most games, this takes into account your performance in previous non-autoresolved battles during the current campaign. Consequently, after you have proved your generalship you really only need to play out the larger battles. Usually 6-8 non-autoresolved battles should decide the campaign.

Testing has shown that there is a lot of variation between the battles because of the different scenario archetypes, province terrain, random maps and the variation in armies that occurs due to non-optimal armies being involved in battles. (e.g. The player puts all his best troops into to what he considers to be his main field army, and then the AI attacks somewhere else).
Chaldean wrote:At least we know that battle types vary (open, defensive, reinforcements...). And Swedes can't replace their Salvo units which should mean some change over time. But will Parliament gain access to Cromwellian cavalry later? Polish and Austrian provinces have separate rosters but are there other such examples? Cornish pike?

There does not seem to be any research/modernization aspect in campaign. Though I dont want micromanagement heavy campaigns I think that it could be a nice addition. Even Pike and Shot unit designer where one could set the number of men, ratio of Pike to Shot and other properties (Salvo, Light Guns,...) could be really interesting.
In the historical campaigns the army lists follow the historical lists. So the Royalist and Parliamentarian lists evolve during the campaign, and yes Parliament will gain access to Cromwellian cavalry. The existing units don't change but new units are raised from the currently prevailing list, depending on the date. You are not stuck with all of the original units forever because some will get amalgamated or disbanded owing to casualties, and others will be used to garrison captured provinces and hence removed from the field army roster. Thus the army will evolve in much the same way as it did historically, with some units having up to the minute organisation and some retaining old organisations.

And yes, there is a special Cornish list for 1643, and Scottish Covenanter lists for 1644-1647 (pro-Parliament), and 1648 on (pro-Royalist).
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