Book III Campaigns and continuity

Campaign victory follows a concrete operational objective package. Control of named places, installations and routes matters; accumulated kill or territorial points cannot override an essential requirement. Tactical battles retain their own declared mode rules.

Objective contracts

Each objective has a stable ID, geographic footprint, initial owner, contested state, required capture or defence condition and a declared conclusion or confirmation interval. Where the mission requires it, control also requires a usable installation, a garrison, a connected supply route or an open exit. Touching a marker is not necessarily occupation, and capturing a destroyed bridge does not satisfy an intact-crossing objective.

Evaluate both factions from the same final state. Termination can follow completion of the essential package, the operational deadline, surrender, or destruction/withdrawal that makes further resistance impossible. If neither side fulfils its package, an indecisive result is valid. Deadlines must be disclosed; they cannot secretly cancel a completed victory.

When all opposition is eliminated and no reinforcement can intervene, resolve reachable occupation without an empty-map grind. Do not teleport ownership to unreachable places or resurrect opposition to force another battle.

The five operations

First Orders

The opening deployment introduces a local company/squadron action within the Helmstedt operation. The tactical mission can secure a specific crossing or junction; its exact landmark depends on the final mission map. Losses and detachments belong to their Helmstedt parents. A tutorial success is not a separate army-wide victory.

Helmstedt Corridor

The operation covers the corridor and the British concentration. The current runtime board is a schematic 13×9 grid covering Königslutter, Helmstedt and neighbouring localities. Brunswick is theatre context outside that board. An earlier proposed Brunswick capture objective therefore requires an enlarged map; it is not a valid current-board objective.

The current-board proposal centres on holding or taking Helmstedt and maintaining the appropriate rear-base connection through Königslutter or Marienborn. Final control conditions, deadlines and secondary targets remain to be authored. The 7th Armoured player slice sits within a larger BAOR situation.

Bavarian Front

The enlarged southern operation connects Franconia, Cheb, Waidhaus–Weiden and Domažlice–Cham, with shared rear communications through the American zone. Prague and Vienna remain off-board theatre context. The 36×35, approximately 288×243 km planning lattice is not a validated terrain map.

Proposed Western essentials are Amberg and Regensburg with an open Nuremberg supply connection. Proposed Soviet-aligned essentials are their capture with supply to the Bohemian entry area. Weiden, Cham and frontier gains can determine the extent of success; Nuremberg can be a further Soviet exploitation objective. Exact footprints, duration and balance remain proposals.

The American core initially bears the fighting. German reservist security and a Free Czechoslovak organising force precede their fuller formations. The Bohemian Soviet source must be resolved before the opening OOB and film are frozen.

Northern Front

Lübeck and the approaches protecting Holstein’s communications anchor the proposed objectives. Polish forces must concentrate and organise. Each faction’s essential package includes sustainable access to its rear; an off-board Hamburg or Kiel objective cannot be imposed without expanding the map. Actual crossings, ports, routes, losses and mobilisation carry forward.

Summer Decision

This is the densest theatre presentation, reflecting sourced mobilisation rather than multiplying earlier markers. Its operation depends on spring results. A held Allied corridor can support exploitation eastward; a lost corridor can create recovery or withdrawal; an exhausted victor may need consolidation. The Soviet viewpoint follows the same territory and force record.

If earlier success makes the baseline summer battle impossible, choose a compatible start, substitute a board or omit that operation. Never reset the front to April merely to play the original film.

Results and cost

Store each faction’s result and operational cost separately. A defeat can impose a pyrrhic victory on the opponent. It is not necessary to label that “pyrrhic defeat,” or to assume that every minor defeat equals an enemy major victory. Readiness/casualty thresholds remain tuning proposals, not settled constants.

Epilogues

1. The ground: freeze the actual final map, name the places captured, retained and contested, and show the dated front.
2. The cost: display surviving, depleted, captured and destroyed formations, with actual losses and mobilisation events.
3. The next operation: pull back to the theatre map and explain the next orders using available troops, routes and territorial control.

The historian stays dispassionate. A pyrrhic success can say that the corridor was held but its defenders needed rebuilding. A defeat can acknowledge successful evacuation or preserved troops. Neither must be rewritten as a different result.

Persistent world contract

Retain the world and campaign IDs, played faction, start/end time, contract version, objective ownership and installation state, supply connectivity, front line, entry/exit access, persistent unit IDs, parent identity, strength, readiness, position, losses, surrender, defection and replacement events. Record French release, Polish assembly, German recruitment/equipment and Free Czechoslovak formation stage as events rather than consequences invented from a victory label.

Narrative clauses require predicates on that state. Switching faction changes viewpoint, not history. Separate standalone runs do not merge automatically. Events from an overlapping operation cannot arrive before their dates. Destroyed formations only return after a dated, funded reconstitution, with the new strength recorded.

A force destroyed at Helmstedt remains absent. A later threat must come from a separately identified, available formation; destroying one campaign force is not the destruction of the entire Soviet army. If no new concentration exists, the narrator must not invent one.

Implementation boundary

The existing operational code still totals landmark victory points at campaign conclusion; this source inspection exposes a known gap against current direction. The private ending prototype demonstrates the new contract, not a shipped evaluator, persistent linked history or completed branching film system. Campaign contracts and production status keep that distinction explicit.