Slitherine

I'm somewhat new to the game and absolutely love it (I say somewhat because I at least have extensive experience with Allied General from the 90s). Anyway, I played through the 6 tutorial missions several times in order to learn as much as I could about the different units and tactical strategies. Then for my first scenario, I played the British in "Sidi Barrani" - the objectives, capture Sidi Barrani and at least 2 other objectives in 18 turns. Well, I captured Sidi Barrani and 3 other objectives in 12 turns, but the scenario continued all the way to the 18th turn. Now during the tutorial and I'm assuming the campaign missions, the AI only gets one more turn after all the objectives are met. If this is the norm for all of the scenarios, shouldn't the manual say so - or am I missing something here? Secondly, I couldn't purchase new units or upgrade existing ones at the start, but even though I didn't need to, it seemed like I could during the mission when a city was captured. Could somebody set me straight about the how the rules differ for scenarios. One more quick point: During this scenario, I moved a couple of infantry units by transport at least 12 hexes from any enemy units. Sure enough, an enemy tank travels half way across ther map and clobbers one of my units. What the hell, am I on drugs or what?

Maybe this post is a little bit of a spoiler but,
Just took a look at the Sidi Barrani scenario in the editor and it looks like the "victory" condition in "scenario parameters" is set up to end on the 18th turn even when the player takes the assigned objectives for the campaign objectives. The only result that doesn't use the time condition to end on the 18th turn is "triumph". The reason for this is probably so you can still achieve a triumph once you have taken enough objectives for a victory. If the game ended once the player meets the conditions for a "victory" than they would never have the chance to win a triumph. For the scenario objectives there are two "allied victory" possible. Taking 4 secondary objectives would have ended the scenario after the next AI turn, according to the mission parameters in the editor. Not sure why it was designed that way but maybe there is some reason.

Hope that helps and doesn't give away too much.

-maguro