Play Guide

From Battleground Europe Wiki

Essential Concepts

Battleground Europe is fought on an accurate half-scale map of 1940's Western Europe. This map is dotted with a network of towns and cities. Each town is a varied collection of facilities, but includes always at least one army base (which includes an infantry spawn point and a vehicle spawn point), one “town center,” and supply depots linking the town to adjacent towns by road, rail or water. The only exception for this is some cities located on islands that are inaccessible by road/bridges do not support vehicle spawning.

Game play at its most basic level is a matter of attacking forces spawning in and forming up then attacking a town with the object of capturing all the facilities and the army base. Defenders spawn their own vehicles, guns, and most infantry at the army base, with a limited ability to spawn infantry at the various supply depots around town.

Everything revolves around the infantryman. As the only unit that can capture anything, all of the weapons systems in the game – from long-range destroyers, to aircraft with tons of high-explosive bombs, to heavily armed and armored tanks – are ultimately only as good as their ability to deliver infantry safely to capturable facilities. There are of course many complexities involved, the greatest of which is the thousands of other human beings trying their best to prevent exactly that.

Choke Points (CPs)

Territory is controlled based on the ownership of towns, also called “choke points”. These sit at strategic locations in the network of road, rail, and river lines across the map. They can be small villages with a mere handful of buildings, or sprawling cities like Antwerp or Brussels.

Capture

The basic mechanics of BATTLEGROUND EUROPE gameplay revolve around capturing the facilities and CPs to move the front lines. Facilities are captured when an infantryman “tags” a radio communications table within a specific building in a facility. These “Capture Buildings” are easily identified by a large flag flying from them indicating their current ownership.

AI Defense

Given the sheer size of the BATTLEGROUND EUROPE game map, even many thousands of players cannot cover all the cities. Integrated AI defenses are placed at every CP to act as a light deterrent to surprise attacks.

Facilities

Every CP is made up of a collection of facilities that all serve different purposes. Some are spawn points, some are supply depots, but all of them can be captured. A capture building will be present for every facility showing the flag of the country that currently controls that facility.

Forward Bases (“FBs”), a.k.a. Fire Base

While some CPs are close together often the distance between Choke Points is large enough to require the establishment of a Forward Base of operations in order to conduct a successful attack. FBs are effectively Forward Staging Points (forward spawn points) in the field represented by two military revetments (a vehicle tent and an infantry tent) that provide vehicle and troop spawning just a few kilometers outside of the CP they are attacking. Instead of using a distant army base as your staging area, FBs allow you to reduce travel time and move your supply line as close as possible to an enemy-held CP.

Capture Mechanics

Spawning

High Command Tactical Orders

ONLINE PLAY

BATTLEGROUND EUROPE is a complex game, with enough scope to keep you busy for literally years. But much of that is hidden out of the way, and the game interface is formatted to allow you to get into combat quickly. This interface guide tells you all you need to play BATTLEGROUND EUROPE effectively and expose the paths to more intricate features as well.

Starting Up

When the game first starts, you will see a small window appears with some important information. This Start Up message shows you the Message of the Day, the approximate balance of forces (whether one side has an advantage in the number of players or if the two sides are balanced) and occasionally has a poll so that you can give CRS your opinion on a question.

Personas

Equipment Operation

The Theater Map

Terrain

Even though it looks flat, and may be a similar color, they can be very different. From very smooth grass (Air field), to open pasture, to a boggy ground that will make driving very slow.

Brigades

Missions

Chat Communication

Text Commands

Heads Up Display (HUD)

UPCOMING MAJOR CHANGES

Brigade spawning (TOEs)

Officer In Charge (OIC)

Links