Terrain that remembers
Every shell leaves a mark, and the marks stay. Craters fill with rain, ruins stand, old trenches turn to grass, and the map becomes a record of the war.
Every shell you fire leaves a mark on the Lowmarch, and nothing tidies it away. Craters, ruins and old trenches stay where they happened for the whole war. Come back to a place weeks later and your own work is still there, softened by rain and grass.
Craters
| Shell | What it leaves |
|---|---|
| Heavy HE | A real crater, pressed into the shape of the ground |
| Smaller shells and grenades | A crater mark on the ground |
| Shrapnel | No crater: it bursts in the air |
From above, craters read as a stipple of dark dots. The denser the stipple, the harder a sector has been fought over. See Shells.
Rainwater and cover
Craters fill with rainwater over time and turn into small ponds. They also give cover to advancing infantry. That means carpet-shelling no-man's-land in front of your own charge actually helps it: every hole you make is somewhere for your soldiers to drop into on the way across. See The living battlefield and Seasons and weather.
Ruins
A depot, gun pit or base you shell stays ruined in the world unless the enemy rebuilds it. On your map it shows as ruins, and only fresh recon would show you a rebuild, so the map can be out of date. Towns and villages keep their ruins too. If Brennhof falls, it stays a ruin on the map, and when your side pushes back in, the ruins are still there to return to. See The intel map remembers.
Old trenches
A trench never pops in or out. Every change shows on the ground.
- Shelling. A crater bites into a bay, the walls cave in, sandbags spill and the bay is blocked.
- Disuse. Over the days of the war, the walls of an empty trench slump, water gathers in the floor, grass creeps over the edges, and it grows shallower. In the end it is a grassy scar, but it never vanishes.
- Repair. When soldiers use it again, they clear the bay and the slump slowly reverses.
See Trenches.
When the front moves
When your side captures ground, it turns live and shows the truth: your old craters, the ruins you made, the trenches you collapsed. The ground your infantry cross is the ground you shelled. When the front falls back, the lost ground stays on your map as last known, frozen at the moment you lost it. See Fog of war.
A record of the war
Over weeks of game time the map becomes a record of the war: grassy trench scars, ponds in old craters, dense stipple where the fighting was heavy. The Lowmarch is one map for the whole campaign, so every place you have fought keeps its scars when you return. See One continuous war.