Colonial military practices and tactics were usually regarded as secondary to regular warfare. Due to this emphasis on more direct conflicts, imperial operations and development in colonial ventures often received less attention from the armed forces of nations responsible for them. Locally stationed military officials sometimes developed and conducted their own war policies free from metropolitan restraint. Other times, metropolitan policy was implemented at their discretion. French commanders cared little for state policy when conducting their campaigns in Western Sudan in the 1870s and 1880s, while German soldiers in Africa frequently operated contrary to the directions of the colonial bureaucracy. Colonial wars often strained relations between civil and military officials, who competed for control over policy.