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.