Hi everyone!
We are about to drop a large patch at the end of this week which is going to include a lot of bug fixes, a new form of progression, and some updates to the Crimean War campaign. And now I'd to take some time to discuss what our plans our for F&M's campaign mode and the lessons we've learned since we released into Early Access in July.
The current campaigns included in F&M are the Crimean War Campaign, the Peninsula Campaign in the American Civil War Expansion, as well as the Overland Campaign which is also part of the American Civil War Expansion. In my opinions, all three of these campaigns have a rather poor design, and bugs as well as a lack of tutorials have hampered any kind of fun that can be had on those campaigns. So, we are taking a new approach.
Before the end of the year, we plan on deleting the Peninsula Campaign and Overland Campaign. We then plan on adding a large "Eastern Theater" Civil War campaign as well as a "Western Theater" Civil War campaign, which will both be playable on multiplayer. We will keep the Crimean Campaign but it is being reworked and will function as more of a short introductory campaign. Our new goal when approaching the design for F&M's campaigns is to make them more of a sandbox in large recognizable locations. The current campaigns provide players with many large cumbersome armies and little opportunity to customize and build your own forces that match your particular play style. We want to start the player with less, but more funds/manpower so they can customize their forces from scratch. Furthermore, we are deleting the two Civil War campaigns because the area they focus on is too small, and we'd rather have larger open-ended campaigns for players to take in their own direction. Below you can see a size comparison of the Peninsula Campaign (in the red box) overlaid within its actual location on our giant new Eastern Theater campaign map.
This is will be a free update for all owners of the American Civil War Expansion.
We also soon plan on adding large sandbox style campaigns for the Franco-Prussian War as well as the Austro-Prussian War for owners of the "European Empires" Pack.
Finally, all free-to-play users will get a sandbox campaign expansion for the Crimean War: the Caucasus Front, fought between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. Here is a preview of the Caucasus Campaign relative to the Crimean War campaign (which has been downsized in the top right corner)
To reiterate, the Caucasus Campaign and Crimean Peninsula Campaign will both be free-to-play for all users. The Eastern and Western Theater Campaigns will be free updates for owners of the American Civil War Expansion. And, the Franco-Prussian War and Austro-Prussian War Campaigns will be free updates for owners of the European Empires Pack.
In addition to more open-ended sandbox campaign experiences, we will continue polishing the campaign system to be more stable and engaging. Once we start rolling out these larger campaigns, we are going to also release a tutorial series to go along with them.
That's it for now, I just wanted to share something we're working on!
Let us know if you have any questions or suggestions!
Griff