Proposed Map: Domination 1941
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I think Mercator is the best projection but everything above Leningrad definitely should be cut to preserve realism. Because Mercator enlarges Europe to fit more units plus it preserve the original shapes of land masses and north-south direction.
Without any cut, I'd go with Robinson.
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@schulz yeah Mercator is the best you're going to get for the standard map projections if what you want is just a larger Europe. The Classic A&A board projection is sorta like Mercator, except that you have two very large theater insets basically, but they're handled as like invisible telescoping distortions, just grafted on. Also on the first classic board, you had a few insets at the top that kinda hammered the impression home further. But the handling on the main board was to sort of just pretend I guess lol. Europe is easily like 3 times the size that it should be on the Global A&A board compared to even Mercator hehe. But then they didn't have any rescaling option for units or the map. I can't remember but I think tripleA didn't have them either for a long while at the start.
It's funny to look at now, just how mappy that map is. I mean since it's gone in a bit of a different direction since then.
just snagged those right quick from boardgamegeek for the glancing comparison.
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If we are talking map projections consider, equirectangular
No problem with infinite polar regions.
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@rogercooper yeah that one's got charm too. I think it probably comes down to whether or not the mouse scaling is smooth enough in gameplay to overcome the shift to view on Europe and the South Pacific. Like I don't know about others, but I'd prefer to zoom in/out to hop around the map rather than drag-and-pull in most situations, like unless I'm in the middle of the movement phase and issuing orders. I mean more for the glancing view. I guess it's also a trade off between fidelity to the gameboards and the desire for something that has more realistic contours.
Here's another map that essentially has the approach of G40, with that kind of warp. Its pretty large, I'd say a good 5 ft or more across. Like it's basically taking up the whole folding table lol, but here it is just laid out on the floor. At that scale, you can just about get it working with official sculpts/hbg expansion unit stuff, but even then, it can still be pretty tight.
I think a lot of the WW2 themed games are shooting for a playscale with a lot more TT and SZ divisions, a bit more like that, or even more carved up. Doing something like domination on a standard projection would mean a pretty big jump to scale from the play view to the survey view, like going from a Europe/Med view to the Global view. Not being able to play at max zoom-out is a definite downside I'd think. Like you kinda want to be able to issue commands while zoomed way out too, but the font and icons and such start getting pretty tiny.
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This XKCD cartoon is worth looking at. What your favorite map projection says about you.
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haha! That's a good one!
I mean this works for me provided the scaling is smooth...
It's already in svg format, so like the Dog mentioned we could upscale that to 13000 or whatever for the high def. I'd probably crop at the Antarctic just for a tighter zoom at whatever height. Then isolate by color to add in the basic borders from there. That one shows modern political boundaries, so you'd still have to decide how to divide stuff up in Europe for the 1941 theme or for the larger TTs like USSR, USA, India, China etc. Prob on a separate layer with the SZ stuff (pacific would be quite large there), or terrain features like mountains or deserts etc done the same way so it could be revisited or revised later.
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@KurtGodel7 @Black_Elk
bad ass! Agree the Pacific theatre in WAW/Rising Sun is one of the most dynamic and interesting theatres in all of TripleA! The island chains being connected by 'canals' is a key ingredient.@KurtGodel7
Elite infantry at 5PU? Needs amphibious +1 modifier and/or 1PU reduction.
I almost never buy 14PU bombers. 16 is too high. Am I missing something?
otherwise, kudos on tech and PU balancing. I started to complain about some of the other choices until I read through it all.country-specific units look fun! My nephew loves stuff like that. Assault rifle and jets and megaships :zany_face:
Tangent - can someone make a fix so that 1 destroyer does not negate infinite subs? A tech scale would be cool, like the battle of the atlantic, in september Germany gets n+1 tech, subs are much more effective, in october the allies get n+1 tech, sink 30 subs
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@luhhlz said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
Tangent - can someone make a fix so that 1 destroyer does not negate infinite subs?
This been a Feature request for many years. Maybe you can persuade one of the ISU kids to take it on
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@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
haha! That's a good one!
I mean this works for me provided the scaling is smooth...
It's already in svg format, so like the Dog mentioned we could upscale that to 13000 or whatever for the high def. I'd probably crop at the Antarctic just for a tighter zoom at whatever height. Then isolate by color to add in the basic borders from there. That one shows modern political boundaries, so you'd still have to decide how to divide stuff up in Europe for the 1941 theme or for the larger TTs like USSR, USA, India, China etc. Prob on a separate layer with the SZ stuff (pacific would be quite large there), or terrain features like mountains or deserts etc done the same way so it could be revisited or revised later.
You've posted several maps to this thread since I last posted, including a Global War map; as well as the above-quoted equirectangular map. The Global War map definitely has some merit to it, but the Pacific is way too small a percentage of the total map. (At least for what I'm looking for.) On the other hand, the Pacific is plenty big enough in the Equirectangular map. Perhaps even too big. I mean, it takes up roughly half the map! Yeah that's realistic, but not ideal from a game play perspective. The Pacific needs to shrink somewhat. Not too much though, because it still needs to be a nice, large area for plenty of naval and amphibious war!
I'd love to help get this off the ground in any way I can, so by all means let me know if you have any questions or if there's any input you'd like me to provide.
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@luhhlz said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
@KurtGodel7 @Black_Elk
bad ass! Agree the Pacific theatre in WAW/Rising Sun is one of the most dynamic and interesting theatres in all of TripleA! The island chains being connected by 'canals' is a key ingredient.@KurtGodel7
Elite infantry at 5PU? Needs amphibious +1 modifier and/or 1PU reduction.
I almost never buy 14PU bombers. 16 is too high. Am I missing something?
otherwise, kudos on tech and PU balancing. I started to complain about some of the other choices until I read through it all.country-specific units look fun! My nephew loves stuff like that. Assault rifle and jets and megaships :zany_face:
Tangent - can someone make a fix so that 1 destroyer does not negate infinite subs? A tech scale would be cool, like the battle of the atlantic, in september Germany gets n+1 tech, subs are much more effective, in october the allies get n+1 tech, sink 30 subs
It's funny. The high cost of elite infantry has been eating at me ever since I posted that OP. Instead of 5 PUs each, 4.5 PUs would make more sense. I want elite infantry to provide less bang for the buck than regular infantry, but not too much less. They are intended to be the right tool for certain circumstances.
To be honest I'm a bit concerned about redundancy. Does an elite infantry fill a substantially different role than a heavy gun? If not, it might be necessary to eliminate heavy guns.
Why do bombers cost 16? My reasoning is as follows.
- In NWO, I'll sometimes buy 15 PU bombers for the U.S.S.R. Do I use those bombers for strategic bombing? No, not unless my opponent has a nearby factory with no aa gun. But think about back-and-forth battles. You could spend 16 PUs for 2 early fighters, or 15 PUs for one bomber. Either way you're getting 4 firepower on attack. The early fighters give you a lot better defense, and more cannon fodder if you're looking to sink Germany's Baltic fleet. The bomber gives you more range, more flexibility, and has the threat of strategically bombing someone.
- If you take a close look at my proposed tech system, the "combined arms" tech makes all your aircraft provide artillery support for infantry. Once you get that tech, bombers become better than NWO bombers, and so should cost more.
- I'm not a huge fan of strategic bombing raids, because they are luck-based. If you're getting bombed and your aa gun keeps missing, there is literally nothing you can do as a defender. I don't want strategic bombers to be overly affordable, because then I'd be encouraging players to emphasize an aspect of the game which comes down to blind luck.
If you look closely at my tech system, you'll see that early fighters start off costing 9, but get reduced to 8 with working women. Working women tech does not reduce the cost of bombers. Combined arms allows each of your aircraft to support an infantry or other supportable unit. In the above example where it's either 2 early fighters or 1 bomber, this means that the 2 early fighters will, together, benefit twice as much as the one bomber. At least in most circumstances. In some back-and-forth battles there will be more air providing support than there will be infantry to support. Admittedly you're nerfing the bomber at least a little in relation to the early fighter. But I think the additional range of the bomber still justifies it as a unit purchase, because you never know when that extra range will come in handy.
All this being said, I'm not wedded to the idea of 16 PU bombers. Depending on play testing I could come down to 15 PUs. But I would not want to go any lower than that, due to my concern about making strategic bombing too viable an option.
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@zlefin said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
There's also TWW for larger maps, which has just as good a tech system as NML.
Your post inspired me to take a closer look at TWW. It does have a very good tech system.
One could argue that the most important characteristic of a map is the ratio of complexity to strategic depth. In TWW, there is a chart which lists 208 different interactions between units and terrain types. That does far more to increase the game's complexity, than it does to provide strategic depth. Terrain effects are just one of a number of things which make game play more complex than NML or WAW. The bad ratio of complexity to strategic depth is why that map isn't played much. It's unfortunate that the map's creators didn't do a better job at paring away complexity, because that map does contain a number of good ideas. The strongest of which is the tech system.
So adding another larger map wouldn't necessarily help things if it doesn't get played much. It's not easy for a new map to get played alot.
You are right. It is not easy for a new map to get played a lot.
What I'm focused on now is being part of a team which creates a map which people fall in love with once they play. A map which has a great ratio of complexity to strategic depth. A map which is unique and memorable. Will people play it a lot? That's not something I can control.
Tech is a double-edged sword; while it can spice up a game, it can also make for pigeon-holing in much the same way you describe WaW strats. The tech in nml tends to not be well-balanced, with some very strong trends pushing it in certain ways.
Are there cases where your critique of the NML tech system makes sense? Absolutely. Smaller nations, for example, should generally go for the resource-producing techs first. However, the same is not necessarily true of larger nations. Let's say the German player wants to make a heavy push in Africa. He should research innovation tech, because increased factory placement capacity and the ability to build tanks will both be very useful for conquering Africa. If he's going for Paris, land offense tech might be the right choice. Creeping barrage and mobile warfare are both very useful for that! If he's pursuing a more generic strategy, the income-producing techs from the economy and land defense categories will be what he needs. Land defense also helps defend against British amphibious attacks. If he seeks a naval showdown with Britain, he'd be well-advised to research either or both naval tech categories. Tech strategy and military strategy are deeply intertwined.
Tech systems often have a problem of pushing towards excess focus on specific units.
Granted.
I look at every unit as a tool. Each tool should have a purpose--a circumstance in which that unit, and no other, would be the best-suited for the task at hand.
I generally wanted nation-specific units to be better than the standard equivalent. I'd be perfectly happy if the U.S. and Japan eschewed standard battleships completely, instead building Iowa and Yamato battleships.
Other than stuff like that, however, I want to see all the units get built. If in the course of play testing it becomes clear that some units just aren't getting built at all, or stop getting built after certain tech are researched, it might be time to tweak things a little.
If you want more strategic variety in waw, it'd seem to make more sense to fix the balance problems in it that make certain strats too effective compared to others.
I've played WAW maybe once or twice in my life. My two favorite maps are NML and NWO. Most people who play both WAW and NML say that NML is a significantly better map. My goal is not to make a better WAW. It is to take the things I love about NML, add to them, and migrate them to a WWII map.
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I have small disagreements with (2) but I don't want to get hung up on something I think is an incredibly small issue. The gameplay difference to me from 14/15/16 is almost nothing since I think attempting to extract tiny amounts of PU gain from mass SBR is a losing strategy compared to investing those PU into typical power projection (compound growth >>> arbitrage).
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More theory - applies to large maps like WAW. I am no expert on vanilla sized maps.
I find that because SBR runs can originate from only a few territories, a mass of bombers performing SBR end up providing a lot less flexibility than their range would imply. So they end up devoted to that purpose, and not to power projection.
edit-KurtGodel7 showed me this math is wrong!
SBR provide expected value of 3 PUs per run * 6 runs until they are shot down minus cost (15) = .5 PU per turn. This is a pathetic return on investment. Imagine you used that bomber instead to capture a small 2 PU territory on a frontier somewhere, that is 8x more profitable than a bombing run (your income increased, opponent's income decreased). And on a large map there are ALWAYS many options to project power.If I do some napkin math. your fortresses are much more appealing as SBR. And given their range, they are able to SBR while still projecting power (unlike normal bombers). And the US is typically the nation for which SBR is most appealing in the first place. So if you are trying to nix SBR, you may want to reconsider the +2SBR ability (and then lower cost).
Also, you mention you are not a frequent WAW player, so FYI - Japan will sorely miss having super bombers in the Pacific. This represents a significant Japan nerf that will need to be balanced in other ways.
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I think the advantage of starting with something that shows the political boundaries circa 1945 rather than 1900 or 1914, is that they really haven't changed all that much. I mean aside from what's going on now, and then you can kinda get the vibe like WW2 into the Cold War era. Most of the warps I like kinda stretch out the south pacific and subtly enlarge most of the islands around the globe, so they're more visible. I like the idea of parking a fighter on malta for example hehe. But sorta recognizing that you're going to have some jumps in scale for stuff like that too. I lot of maps use circular motifs around capital cities say, kinda riffing on the original A&A Europe I suppose, but the downside there is that it's somewhat less adaptive across timelines. So a city circle that makes sense in 1914 might make less sense or just be unnecessary for 1941. I think if going through the effort, it might be better to avoid circles or graphical elements like that, since they're easier to add in later anyway. So for example, maybe just a Brandenburg blob, as opposed to a Berlin circle. You could still set up the boundaries so it's maybe totally encircled by East Germany or whatever, but just making it look more "terrain-y" as opposed to geometric abstraction. Basically an Oblast blob for Leningrad rather than a Leningrad Circle, if that makes sense lol, and just keep it consistent throughout. I think if upscaled to 13000, using the equirectangular Europe, you could get what maybe 3-4 territories for larger TTs like Germany, Poland, France, Italy? Any more than that and it's probably just going to spill over I'd wager, but I think you could still get something that's tactically engaging with that. Eastern front is a bit easier cause the TTs are generally larger. I'd say it's mainly making sure the SZ are large enough, like when 2 or more friendly powers are co-locating there. Having so more blue up north would probably help. Like you could still crop in at the very top of the arctic, but giving it just a bit more room for the shuck lanes that tend to develop up there.
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@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
I think the advantage of starting with something that shows the political boundaries circa 1945 rather than 1900 or 1914, is that they really haven't changed all that much. I mean aside from what's going on now, and then you can kinda get the vibe like WW2 into the Cold War era. Most of the warps I like kinda stretch out the south pacific and subtly enlarge most of the islands around the globe, so they're more visible. I like the idea of parking a fighter on malta for example hehe. But sorta recognizing that you're going to have some jumps in scale for stuff like that too. I lot of maps use circular motifs around capital cities say, kinda riffing on the original A&A Europe I suppose, but the downside there is that it's somewhat less adaptive across timelines. So a city circle that makes sense in 1914 might make less sense or just be unnecessary for 1941. I think if going through the effort, it might be better to avoid circles or graphical elements like that, since they're easier to add in later anyway. So for example, maybe just a Brandenburg blob, as opposed to a Berlin circle. You could still set up the boundaries so it's maybe totally encircled by East Germany or whatever, but just making it look more "terrain-y" as opposed to geometric abstraction. Basically an Oblast blob for Leningrad rather than a Leningrad Circle, if that makes sense lol, and just keep it consistent throughout. I think if upscaled to 13000, using the equirectangular Europe, you could get what maybe 3-4 territories for larger TTs like Germany, Poland, France, Italy? Any more than that and it's probably just going to spill over I'd wager, but I think you could still get something that's tactically engaging with that. Eastern front is a bit easier cause the TTs are generally larger. I'd say it's mainly making sure the SZ are large enough, like when 2 or more friendly powers are co-locating there. Having so more blue up north would probably help. Like you could still crop in at the very top of the arctic, but giving it just a bit more room for the shuck lanes that tend to develop up there.
In New World Order, Germany consists of 14 territories at the start of the game. In No Man's Land, it starts with 17 territories. Roughly that number of territories seems about right for Germany, with the rest of Europe done on a similar scale.
Historically Prussia had been part of Germany, but after WWII it and Silesia were ethnically cleansed of Germans and added to Poland. The eastern half of Poland was ethnically cleansed of Poles and added to the Soviet Union. Because clearly, the Soviet Union did not have enough space.
The question then becomes: do you draw a pre-1945 map, in which Prussia still exists? Or should it be post-1945, after Prussia had been erased? The former option would obviously be better for WWII, WWI, the Franco-Prussian War, the Napoleonic Wars, and any other European conflict prior to 1945. The latter would be better for cold war type maps, or anything after 1945. I'm envisioning a WWII map, so my vote is for the boundaries Europe had in 1941.
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@luhhlz said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
More theory - applies to large maps like WAW. I am no expert on vanilla sized maps.
I find that because SBR runs can originate from only a few territories, a mass of bombers performing SBR end up providing a lot less flexibility than their range would imply. So they end up devoted to that purpose, and not to power projection.
SBR provide expected value of 3 PUs per run * 6 runs until they are shot down minus cost (15) = .5 PU per turn. This is a pathetic return on investment. Imagine you used that bomber instead to capture a small 2 PU territory on a frontier somewhere, that is 8x more profitable than a bombing run (your income increased, opponent's income decreased). And on a large map there are ALWAYS many options to project power.
If I do some napkin math. your fortresses are much more appealing as SBR. And given their range, they are able to SBR while still projecting power (unlike normal bombers). And the US is typically the nation for which SBR is most appealing in the first place. So if you are trying to nix SBR, you may want to reconsider the +2SBR ability (and then lower cost).
You make good points. Let's do some math.
Strategic bomber (dedicated to strategic bombing raids). Expected damage per raid: 3.5 PUs. Expected number of successful raids before being destroyed: 5. (Presumably it gets destroyed on the 6th raid before getting a chance to bomb.) Total expected value of bomber: 17.5 PUs. Cost of bomber: 16 PUs.
Now let's take the Superfortress. Expected damage per raid: 5.5 PUs. Expected number of successful raids before being destroyed: 5. Total expected value of bomber: 27.5 PUs. Cost of bomber: 22 PUs.
The above numbers tell me that either the cost of a Superfortress needs to go up, or the SBR damage needs to come down. If the cost stays at 22, but the bonus for bombing is reduced to +1, that would yield the following. Expected damage per raid: 4.5 PUs. Total expected value of the bomber: 22.5 PUs. Excellent. It seems to me that the price of the Superfortress could go down to as low as 20, but the bombing bonus should only be +1.
Also, you mention you are not a frequent WAW player, so FYI - Japan will sorely miss having super bombers in the Pacific. This represents a significant Japan nerf that will need to be balanced in other ways.
WAW nerfs Japan in the following ways:
- Divide it up into three "little Japans," making it extremely difficult to sink the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
- Give each little Japan a capital bordering water, making them all vulnerable to naval bombardments.
- Make Tokyo face east and west, so that you can't defend it from bombardment by defending any one sea zone in particular.
- Make naval bombardment unlimited (Revised rules). One infantry + 100 battleships = 100 bombardment shots.
In my proposed map there is one Japan, not three little Japans. There will be only one capital bordering the ocean, and it will border the ocean only on one side. Naval bombardment shots will be limited, as is the case in NML. (Anniversary edition rules.) 1 infantry + 100 battleships = 1 bombardment shot.
Japan may not have access to Superfortress tech, but it does have some other really good techs. Long Lance torpedoes are unique to Japan and improve the attack ability of subs and cruisers. It is the only nation in the game which can build 3 hit battleships. Kate technology allows Japanese fighters to attack on a 4. With all that stuff, I'd say there's plenty to balance out the disadvantage of no Superfortresses for Japan.
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@kurtgodel7 So on the 1914 baseline Germany has 21 TTs I believe. That's probably more like what you're after, or maybe more than you'er after? lol So it has the 17 TTs I drew for Domination with the Berlin circle, but then Hepps added Stuttgart, Hamburg and Frankfurt as additional TTs in the west. A lot of the TTs sorta alternate like that between regional labels or more urban center labels, just cause of the way the gameplay/production spread was conceived. The Eastern half of G looks basically the same as Domination, so still showing Prussia, 1914 theme there. I'd think you'd want to do a slightly different division/labelling there for something set in the 1940s.
Here it is at 50% with the unit details turned off to show the tiles more clearly.
At 100%
I think if going for something like that, then the map would prob need to be quite large to accommodate the units. The planned unit roster for that game was pretty deep, like more than a dozen ground/air units that might need to fit a given tile. Not sure how it would actually play, as my version is incomplete. Perhaps Hepps sent Prastle or Redrum a version that is further along, mine is still missing some stuff, but if using the same basic Domination world projection for the baseline, I'd prob just build on that work for the contours of the shape of the world and whatnot, cause it's kinda aces. Like basically we just want to englarge the scale even further to whatever 4k and then redraft it for the late 30s/early 40s right?
If going from scratch, like to redesign the whole projection, or using a standard one like the equirectangular morph for Europe/World, I'd think you'd want a map that's pretty large overall to handle that many TTs in Europe. Just to support even a more regular unit roster like AA50 with that number of TT divisions for a WW2 map, the tiles need to be beefed up in scale I'd think. How many unit types and factions co-locating overall would be a consideration as well I guess, for unit for overflow, to tamp that down if possible, just for fewer overflow lines everywhere.
Here is a view of the vector from the wiki with a similar scale on Europe just so you can compare the shape and available space there at a glance.
I think my ideal WW2 game would have a fairly complex map (more TTs than Global), but also a relatively simple ruleset and a pretty straightforward unit roster. Sorta modelled on the familiar A&A games, just to offset that added complexity of a more carved up map. Basically a big ass map, but that plays more or less like AA50 in the nuts and bolts, just with more TTs hehe. I know everyone has a different play preference though. For the 3-4 divisions I mentioned with G, that'd be more like to draft a Global 1940 or expansion playscale off that same baseline map. Sort of a tradeoff there between the number of TTs and the complexity of the unit roster and the overall scale of the gameboard. Basically if you start very divided up for the first pass/first draft, then it's easier to just erase the lines afterwards to make larger tiles out of them. I enjoyed Frostion's Iron War map quite a bit, which kinda split the difference between an expansive unit roster with many factions, but also somewhat more simplified TT divisions. Not sure what would play best for what you have in mind. I still like the idea of somehow banging out a revamped map for Global though at the same time. It would be nice to have something with some fancy reliefs like WOPR did for AA50 but for the Global 1940 game, and some national sculpts like Frostion made, so I could deck out my digital dreamboard for that one too heheh.
So Domination 1941 would be the super divided up TTs, after that's drawn collapse the lines into larger TTs to match the Global 1940 divisions. But both with the same world shape basically, or same relative size, same ratios anyway. Global might not need to be as large in scale overall, but we just do it in vector to 4K so the resizing isn't as big of an issue, like the Dog suggested. I'm still trying to figure out inkscape again hehe.
ps. oh also just cause I was rambling about it on the previous page, some Empire TW views that I snagged from the Tactician's site. Also an NTW mod idea for the Great War I've seen floating around, that just used the Napoleon tiles hehe. It funny to see how they tried to push it into the 20th century there, despite not being able to redraw the Map Territories in that game.
I kinda always liked the idea of a hybrid A&A Total War game, and was bummed they didn't carry the Empire idea further like into the late colonial era. Would have been fun if they did the whole world instead of just the 3 theaters in Empire. Anyhow, just a ramble
Oh and here are some views showing the Frostion units. They are larger than the default scale in most games, but I feel like that's probably a good thing if trying to upscale the whole package.
I just like the designs and the fact that they're larger. Even if done as a uniform tint rather than individually painted, either way looks pretty good to me.
If we wanted to make an entirely new unit set, like for at 4K, then I think the best approach would be to photograph HBG sculpts or actual models at 1:72 or larger scale stuff for the vehicles and aircraft. Like just with a controlled/constant light source on a flat background. Snap em, then downscale them, and put em on a transparency with a dropshadow. That would probably look cool. I think the uniform tint or national colors w/ roundel should be an option that one could switch from a setting on the fly. That'd be a nice touch. I like how he gave some symbols though to differentiate unit type by basic shapes, or like for the colorblind.
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So glad you pointed this out to me, you're right on the averaging and on the run it gets shot down it doesn't bomb. Thanks!
The change to Super sounds good!
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@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
@kurtgodel7 So on the 1914 baseline Germany has 21 TTs I believe. That's probably more like what you're after, or maybe more than you'er after? lol
Thanks for showing me that baseline 1914 Germany. After looking at it, I've decided I like the extra territories!
The Eastern half of G looks basically the same as Domination, so still showing Prussia, 1914 theme there. I'd think you'd want to do a slightly different division/labelling there for something set in the 1940s.
Prussia still existed during WWII, and had been reincorporated into Germany. No need to eliminate it. What might need a little changing around is Austria and the Balkans.
I think if going for something like that, then the map would prob need to be quite large to accommodate the units.
Understood. I think that large map might be exactly what a Domination 1941 needs.
The planned unit roster for that game was pretty deep, like more than a dozen ground/air units that might need to fit a given tile.
My proposed unit roster in the OP is somewhat deep also. I could pare it down a little if necessary. I'm on the fence about whether to include heavy guns. Also there are two nations which are currently capable of building conscripts, regular infantry, and elite infantry. That also can be pared down if need be, by prohibiting elite infantry to any nation capable of building conscripts.
Another thing which could be done to prevent unit crowding and add realism is this. Disallow combined Allied forces on Soviet soil. Two ways you could achieve that. 1) Treat the U.S.S.R. the same way it's treated in NML, except now it's on the opposite side. Meaning, that it would be neutral with respect to the other Allies. Non-Soviet Allied forces would not be allowed on Soviet soil. 2) Create a Lend-Lease rule. At the beginning of the Soviet player's turn, any non-Soviet Allied units on Soviet soil are automatically sold for cash. You'd want to impose a penalty for doing that, to prevent the U.S.S.R. from becoming overpowered. If a fighter is worth 10, for example, maybe you sell it for 8. If option 2 is onerous to implement, option 1 would be perfectly acceptable.
Like basically we just want to englarge the scale even further to whatever 4k and then redraft it for the late 30s/early 40s right?
Yeah that sounds true. I really like the Hepster/Hepps maps you've posted, so a WWII version of those would be absolutely perfect.
If going from scratch, like to redesign the whole projection, or using a standard one like the equirectangular morph for Europe/World, I'd think you'd want a map that's pretty large overall to handle that many TTs in Europe.
Makes sense.
Here is a view of the vector from the wiki with a similar scale on Europe just so you can compare the shape and available space there at a glance.
I see.
I think my ideal WW2 game would have a fairly complex map (more TTs than Global), but also a relatively simple ruleset and a pretty straightforward unit roster. Sorta modelled on the familiar A&A games, just to offset that added complexity of a more carved up map. Basically a big ass map, but that plays more or less like AA50 in the nuts and bolts, just with more TTs hehe.
I've played Global a number of times. Transports not participating in combat took a little getting used to! But once I was used to it, it seemed fine. Ditto with limited naval bombardment and the new sub rules. Naval bases made things a bit more tricky--a little harder to tell at a casual glance whether an opposing navy could get to you. The naval base has been bombed, but has it been bombed enough to prevent the bonus to fleet movement? What I liked the least about the new rules was airbases. They significantly slowed down naval combat due to the defender deciding whether to scramble aircraft. Also they made it a lot trickier to figure out which enemy aircraft could hit which targets. Yeah you could figure it out, but it was just one more thing to pay attention to.
I've spent the past ten years or so periodically thinking about new rules sets for this game. I've had lots of good ideas during that time, most of which involve added complexity. If I implement all or most of my ideas, that would be too much complexity, and a map that's cumbersome to play. So I developed the instinct of strongly pushing back against added complexity. I might have a dozen ideas, but maybe only one or two have a good enough ratio of complexity to strategic depth to make it past my filter.
That being said, I have at least one rules change which might be worth considering. Under all TripleA maps, units have an attack value and a defense value. That makes sense for infantry fighting other infantry. In real life, a defending infantry will dig a foxhole or use a building or large rock as cover, and so will be more combat-effective than an attacking infantry. But in naval combat, there is no meaningful distinction between attacker and defender. It's not as though the "defenders" will dig a trench in the ocean water, and use that water trench to give themselves an edge over the attackers.
With that in mind, why not replace attack/defense values with the following:
- Anti-land
- Anti-naval
- Anti-sub
- Anti-air
- Strategic bombing value
Doing things this way makes it possible to create meaningful distinctions between different aircraft types.
- Fighters would be great at anti-air, weak at anti-land and anti-naval.
- Dive bombers would be great at anti-land, decent at anti-naval and anti-air.
- Torpedo bombers would be great at anti-naval, decent at anti-sub, anti-land, and anti-air.
- Strategic bombers would be specialized for strategic bombing raids.
All this sounds well and good, but there is a problem. A fly in the ointment. That problem is what I call a destroyer going crazy. What do I mean by that? Imagine a naval combat. Destroyers are fighting cruisers, with everyone using their anti-naval combat value. Fine. In another combat, destroyers are fighting subs, with the destroyers using their anti-sub combat value. Also fine. In a third naval combat, destroyers are being attacked by enemy air. The destroyers are fighting back using their anti-air combat value. Also fine. Now imagine a large scale combat situation in which each side has surface ships, subs, and aircraft. This group of destroyers would be firing at their anti-naval combat value, and their anti-sub combat value, and their anti-air combat value. The destroyers are going crazy! That's not what one wants, because it punishes players for using multiple categories of units.
How to solve that problem? One option would be to simply ask the player, "At which targets do you want to fire first?" But that's cumbersome--way more cumbersome than airbase scrambling. Unacceptable. Better to make that selection automatic. Each round of combat the following would happen. 1) Your destroyers would fire until all enemy subs are destroyed. 2) Any destroyers which didn't fire at subs fire against enemy aircraft, until all enemy aircraft are destroyed. 3) Any destroyers which didn't fire at subs or aircraft fire at surface ships, until all surface ships have been destroyed. That would repeat each combat round. So maybe combat round 1 all your destroyers fire at subs. In combat round 2, some of your destroyers finish off the enemy subs, with the rest firing at enemy aircraft. In combat round 3, most of your destroyers focus on finishing off enemy aircraft, with the rest firing at enemy surface ships.
I acknowledge that the above system would slow major naval battles down a little. But major naval battles don't happen very often, so slowing them down a little when they do happen does not represent a major increase in player burden. But there is a major increase in strategic depth, because fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, and strategic bombers each fill a very different role. Doing things this way would also allow a completely new way of handling strategic bombing raids. Each strategic bombing raid would be preceded by a dogfight, with aircraft firing at each other using their air combat values.
I didn't propose any of this in the OP, because I'd rather have a good map which actually gets implemented, than a perfect map which remains in my own imagination. I don't know how easy or difficult it would be to get the TripleA engine to do what I've described above.
Not sure what would play best for what you have in mind.
The Hepps/Hepster maps you've posted seem perfect, except that they'd need to be modified for WWII.
I still like the idea of somehow banging out a revamped map for Global though at the same time.
I won't stop you.
So Domination 1941 would be the super divided up TTs, after that's drawn collapse the lines into larger TTs to match the Global 1940 divisions. But both with the same world shape basically, or same relative size, same ratios anyway.
Sounds good to me.
Oh and here are some views showing the Frostion units.
There are two things to consider with units. 1) The beauty of the units. 2) Does a casual glance quickly reveal what's going on?
For me personally, consideration 2) is far more important than 1). If I'm immersed in a game, I want to know exactly what I have and exactly what my opponent has. I want to have that knowledge quickly and fully, without putting any real work into figuring out what is what. The units from NWO, NML, and Global do an outstanding job with this. It's about as easy to figure out what's going on, from a units perspective, as a person could ask.
Frostion's units look good. Much better than the units I'm used to seeing. But at least for me, a casual glance would not instantly reveal what was going on. Granted, I'm used to the types of units one sees in NWO or NML, not the units from Frostion. If I was used to Frostion's units, would they be just as easy to work with as the NWO or NML units? I don't know. But even if the answer to that question is yes, their use would still create a learning curve. That learning curve might discourage new people from trying the map. Would it be possible to use NWO type units as a default, but give players the option of seeing Frostion units instead? A player new to the map would at least want familiar-looking units. But once a player had played it a while, he might be willing to give Frostion units a try. By then he's already familiar with the map, so he's only needing to handle one unfamiliar thing at a time.
If we wanted to make an entirely new unit set, like for at 4K, then I think the best approach would be to photograph HBG sculpts or actual models at 1:72 or larger scale stuff for the vehicles and aircraft.
I admit that would look really cool.
When I looked at the unit icons you'd posted, I admit I felt the desire to have them, or something along those lines, included in the map. But that's looking at them in isolation. When I see them on the map, I think they would increase the difficulty of figuring out what's going on.
I have an analogy. Let's say I want to use an emoji. I'd use something like this
or this 
. Those are cartoons, caricatures. They simplify and exaggerate the difference between a smiling face or a sad face. Let's say you were to eliminate those cartoons and replace them with emoji-sized photographs of people smiling or frowning. You'd still be able to see the difference in facial expressions. But it wouldn't be as easy. On the other hand, an actual photograph of a person would look better than this emoji: . Depending on the person, of course! 
Why does this discussion board use cartoon emojis, instead of using emoji-sized photos of people's faces? Why does my cell phone use cartoon emojis? Why, in general, are cartoon emojis used, and why are tiny photos of people never used as emojis?
If you give people the option to use both traditional type units and Frostion style units, which will people prefer? Will they go with the ease and simplicity of traditional units, or with the coolness factor of Frostion's work? Having both options available would be good, so that people can choose whatever works best for them.
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Yeah it's always a bit of a bind, cause on the one hand, if recycling material from more familiar games there is an ease of use advantage there (like if I see the same Infantry or Fighter sculpts in all the World War II games, I can kinda hit the ground running a bit faster, since I already know what's going on). On the other hand some of the initial choices about what those default units were going to look like were kinda arbitrary, and the preference is mostly habit I think. Like all the standard units are still building on Logan's work from early days, on tripleA Classic. They've been revamped at least 3 times in the time I've been around, but some major features persist throughout, so you kinda get a hodgepodge effect after time, as the same graphics are re-tinted or redrafted again and again, but still sorta stuck in 2003, with tripleA's capabilities at that time lol.
Then there's a separate issue, where if the same unit icons are re-used, but there's a change to the actual costs/abilities, that might lend itself to different kind of confusion. I don't have a hard preference really, except I do see that the 'official' games (the ones with the World War II labelling), are kinda stuck with a very particular look, that hasn't really caught up or advanced much, in the same way that other features of tripleA have.
Some of the unit stuff I drew for Pact of Steel or my various WW1 maps as a placeholder, just kinda reappear and refuse to die lol, or you'll see older stuff hanging on for ages, especially for certain unit types like ships or finding vestigial remains in the neutral sculpt sets etc. I think many of the standard unit designs are pretty strong and recognizable, obviously hehe, but there's still a scaling limit that maxes out based on whatever dimensions the unit graphics were drawn at initially. You can upscale them a bit, sure, but there's still that ceiling. I actually don't even have a computer monitor capable of displaying tripleA at a 4k resolution lol, but I'm just guessing there might be a need for new unit graphics for something like that, just so it looks decent, or can scale in the same way that the gameboard can, at higher resolutions.
Sounds like we've got some similar ideas regarding rules overhead and the advantages/disadvantages of increased complexity there. For my part even AA50 felt too rules intensive, so stuff like special Chinese production, DoW politics, or airbase scrambling etc the sort of stuff we see in Global was always bit much for my tastes. It's just a tough game to learn, even if you're a long time player. I mean I can get into it, and certainly have on occasion, but it loses some of that original charm that I think Classic and Revised had going on.
I don't know, I've seen maybe a couple dozen WW2 themed tripleA maps, and the ones that rise to the top for me usually come down to map design over rules design. Like I just think you can accomplish way more with the right PU values and TT divisions or something as simple as turn order sequence, than you can with special rules or production fields in most cases. I like a total war timeline of 1941/42 over say 1939/40, for similar reasons, because then you can kinda strip it down and make the rules more universal, without needing new game phases and such, or special one-off rules to make it thematically appropriate for an earlier start date, when some factions aren't yet at war.
I have many ideas and particular preferences I'm sure, but when it comes down to it, the only thing I can actually contribute is pretty much confined to the map or the graphics. I know how to do that stuff, but not much beyond. Getting into the nitty gritty of the XML, you can be virtually guaranteed I'll just dip and leave that to someone else haha. Knowing myself, I'm pretty good at starting, but not as great with the follow through. With a month on the grind I can probably get a baseline you can run through the utilities. Hepps' map is probably the most beautiful I've seen for tripleA. It's quite far along, but it hasn't been released, so I wouldn't want to just scoop it or steal his thunder there. I mean who knows right, he might still be tinkering, but it has been kinda quiet for a few years now. There are also some features there, in that completed baseline, which I sense wouldn't quite work for what you have in mind, since it's kinda hardcoded for 1914, and we'd have to change it or rescale it anyway. It's easier probably for me to just redraw it haha.
Doing new unit stuff is more involved, so not sure what the best approach is there. Like I can make some unit graphics stuff well enough, but a nice cohesive spread that's aesthetically consistent, that's a somewhat taller order. I'd say it's certainly simpler to reuse unit art assets than it is to create new stuff. Whether that's the default graphics or a riff on some of Frostion's ideas or whatever else, just to plug those in even as placeholders - cause it's easier to revisit units later on, whereas the map itself is more of one and done. Just cause it's somewhat harder to modify the map, once the ball is rolling, but you still kinda need to know how large they're going to be, cause that plays into the centers and how many unit's can fit in a given space before you get the spill over.
ps. Oil and Snow was another WW2 world theater map that I thought had some interesting ideas and some nice sound work. Different vibe than Ironwar in the graphics, but might be worth having a look at for ideas, along with the others mentioned on the previous page. For WW2 the competition is fairly steep, since that's the source, prob would have to really bring the A game for it to stand apart there. But then that's also why I like the idea of backfolding a bit into Global, like trying to create some level of compatibility there for the overall map projection or a unit set, or at least start with that in mind too. Cause I don't think it's really been revisited much since Veq did the heavy lifting for Global a few years back now, though I'm sure it remains one of the more popular games. I use Frostion's units for AA50 and have a set for G40 that just about works, so I'm kinda used to looking at them. But of course it's hard to top the timeless infantry unit we see displayed in all the tripleA icons and such hehe. I mean he's a winner right! Perhaps just sorta redoing the sculpts for that same look, but at a higher res would be the best? I mean a lot of the unit images are probably based on models or box cover illustrations anyway I'd guess, or riffs off stuff like that, as opposed to fully drawn from the ground up with no referents. I think the smallest of Frostion's units like inf are still at 54x54 pixels, with the larger stuff like tanks at 64 or 72, and the largest like warships and bombers at 98 pixels. Compared to NML which uses the standard 48x48 pixel box for all unit types, but I'd think you'd almost want them like twice that size, for a more modern display right?
Here's the dude as we see him at the launch screen, in a box at 136. Bit of an upscale probably even there, judging from some of the blur, but still, you can get a lot more visual information in there when the image is like 3 times the size hehe.
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