Order of Battle is returning to the war against Japan in the region of Southeast Asia. Many battles were across the Malaya Peninsula, India, and of course Burma as the Japanese sought to acquire war materiel such as oil and rubber while the British and Allied forces stood against them.
Unlike the island hopping campaign of the United States across the Pacific, the Southeast Asian conflict was coloured primarily by ground warfare. Such warfare was markedly different from the land war of Europe and Afrika as dense jungles were ever present and presented a major obstacle for both sides. That's not to say the entire campaign consists of skulking through the jungles of Burma, battles such as the action at Imphal in 1944 were sizeable affairs fought with many armoured units engaged in major fighting.
One very important campaign tenant is the concept of presenting degrees of success in almost every battle. Because of the nature of a game like this, where a Pyrrhic victory is as good as a defeat since it effective ends your ability to continue a campaign, we've taken extra measures to help lessen the seriousness of such a situation.
These degrees of success are very important and very prominent throughout the campaign, and to explain them succinctly, they are bonus objectives that reward special units, commanders, resources, and specialization points are very challenging to acquire, especially for a player trying to acquire every single one of them, while primary mission objectives that continue the campaign progression are more accessible to complete. It's up to the player to find the difficulty level that suits them best, and then within that difficulty level, they can still experience many degrees of success ranging from simple scenario finishing or true scenario domination with all bonus objectives fulfilled.
On the other hand, if the player is struggling they might want to hold their forces back from full committal for a scenario or two, focusing only on the minimum objectives required and not over-extending their forces in an attempt to grab all the glory. Then once they are back to strength, they can start hunting for those extra difficult bonus objectives once more in the remaining scenarios!
So with that in mind, we have some content diaries to share with you regarding the history and gameplay of a few of the scenarios this DLC will have in store.
Visual Map Diaries
As has been mentioned, we've taken special care to make the scenarios and maps of this campaign strongly resemble history. That's not to say the battles are 1:1 representations of every situation, we absolutely want to push strong and entertaining gameplay elements first and foremost, but a little historical dressing really gives excellent context and relevance to those gameplay elements. We'll now talk about a few of the scenarios and exactly how this worked out for each of them.
We'll be looking at a few locations in Burma as well as a location in India, and this illustration will give you a good idea of where in the world these events are taking place!
Scenario V: Sittang River
Location: Sittang River February 19 1942
A historical map we found of Sittang and the surrounding area looks like:
And the battle itself reflects the names and geography of the location we saw in image above.
Scenario VII: Quit India Denied
Location: India August 7 1942
In a scenario we plan to discuss in detail in the future, we visit the city of Bombay. This city, known as Mumbai today, is where Gandhi's Quit India was launched from.
To roughly rebuild the city for the game, we had to find a non-modern map of the city, and we primarily used this reference to aid the designs.
And here's how the city appears in the scenario preview image. The semblance of the shape of the city to the historical map is instantly recognizable!
Scenario VIII: Operation Cannibal
Location: Arakan region January 7 1943
This scenario turned out to be a bit trickier, because it wasn't suitably covered in any single map. The operation was launched from a place called Cox's Bazar, and the end goal of the operation was to reach Akyab. Today Akyab is called Sittwe, but Cox's Bazar is still Cox's Bazar, and it's really called that too!
We used these 2 maps which when placed together, fit together to show the layout of the terrain and locations from Cox's Bazar all the way down the coast of Burma to Akyab.
Scenario IX: Operations Longcloth
Location: Behind Japanese lines, February 13 1943
For this particular scenario, we actually found a non-digital map to help us out. On page 109 of Stilwell: Ballatine's Illustrated History there is a great little map that marks the names and locations of various resupply points that the Chindits used, as well as some directional arrows mapping out the Japanese routes of attack on Imphal and Kohima. Being a non-digital map we don't have a link for you, but it looks something like this:
And in game during this mission, you will encounter these historically named locations, and they serve to provide your troops with supply, an important feature of Order of Battle. Without reaching these vital supply drop locations, your forces suffer severely as their efficiency rating drops into the red!
