Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Black_Elk]

Yeah the big board is a trip on that one hehe. I'd just put the borderline on either side I guess. Maybe change the color of the water there, to indicate the whole thing is closed from the Dardanelles to the golden horn and grinding rocks. No Argonauts allowed? lol

Frostion has this graphic we can use to help clarify the location of the straits. He has the image titled Bosphorus as well, but the way it's shaped, I'd just stick on the Dardanelles. Probably fits a bit better there, with the focus more on the Med side than the Black Sea side, since that's where most of the starting ships are located.

[Black_Elk]

Here is the Med again... I used the double line like Bung did for Straits/Canals, with a slightly lighter shade of blue. OOB and the current tripleA G40 have the break at Skagerrak for the Danish Straits, though I'd probably hang the little graphic pointing more Kattegat, just because of the angle it's at. Basically looks like the Bosphorus graphic above just at a slightly different angle in Frostion's set. He has half a dozen at different angles I think, but nothing quite that vertical.

I'm not sure if you want to add any more?

Singapore comes to mind, but the way the OOB sz divisions are set up, it's not very convenient to do a choke point there. Same deal with Malacca. Basically G40 has SZ lines already riding the narrows, so the split just doesn't really work, cause the existing SZ lines are running parallel rather than perpendicular for a clean break. Like it'd have to cut across more than 2 sz to actually block movement effectively, and the control would probably feel a bit off. Frostion had both in Iron War and it was kinda cool, but he also had a totally different geometry for the Sea Zones in that area than G40 does. They work better with the splits in Iron War, but here not so much.

Messina might work if inserting another SZ tile I guess, but it seemed sorta pointless, since you guys wanted fewer sea zones rather than more in the Med from what I'm gathering hehe. Plus the Med already had 3 weird waterways in neighborhood. So I don't know, just seemed like overkill lol.

If there's something else you can think of let me know and I'll make the adjustments.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4740bj0l87sbb57/World_War_II_Global_1940_baseline.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnvwl23sf092dia/Domination_1941_baseline.png?dl=0

ps. One last quick thought on Singapore...

So if we used this one... or that one, or a flipped version...

Then we could set up a choke between sz 37 and sz 41, and that might carry better as a visual controlled from the Singapore TT.

I guess it could just block sz41 and sz36 from sz 37 simultaneously?

I feel like you'd need to reinforce the idea with the visual if doing that, cause usually Straits only cut across a single border between only 2 sz, but from the tangent of the graphic (if we placed it right and then did a little double line with the blue) maybe we could get that to work? Just so it's not too hard to parse.

Or it could just block at sz 36 I suppose, and that would still be mechanically kind of interesting, even if sort of Alice in Wonderland level suspension of disbelief hehe. Either way it'd be kinda nice if we could get something going. Having a Strait there would be cool as a way to make that pearl a bit more valuable to the gameplay and maybe get the dynamic bouncing between Japan and India to be a bit more engaging. Also it would be nice just for parity with the Europe side of the board. I mean to have at least one in the Pacific, since the other side of the map has 5 OOB.

[beelee]

@black_elk Frostion's Frontier Icon is way sweet Reminds me of James Bond lol

I think you got it dialed in pretty good. People can just erase stuff right ? I guess adding is different ?

Anyway Rock On !

Hmm Heppster's Rock On Image is gone.

Well anyway Rock On ! lol

Edit
Here he is. Was kinda bummed for a minute lol

[Black_Elk]

Haha the rocker!

Yeah I've been giving the units another pass to see if I missed anything. I found one factory-it tech unit that was off and a couple shadows, but otherwise I think it looks pretty good. I was going to put all the current 48px graphics into a sub folder so nothing gets overwritten even if they got the same names or whatever, cause there's quite a few nice graphics in there. Maybe we can upscale more of them as time allows.

[TheDog]

@Black_Elk
For the canal lines Gibraltar, Danish Straights etc I don't think they should go on the baseTiles png. (As it will mess with the polygon grabber). They are better represented on the reliefTiles or as Frostion has done, they are in the decorations.txt file.

@Cernel
Any more SZ that pop out at you and look wrong?

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good. That would be preferable, because I think with white borders in the relief the straits would slip too far into the background and not be quite noticeable enough anyway. Those subtle changes in color information or the double line, they just kinda recede a bit when the lines are all thicker and white that way, so decorations would be better. The Graphic will convey what's going on with more impact hopefully.

I updated both base files in the dropbox links. Just let me know what further tweaks you'd like to make and I'll bang them out. At this point it kinda feels like whackamole could set in if we linger overmuch lol. Like we could probably hang at this phase till the New Year and split the hairs till we're balder than Lobot, but I would suggest just kinda doing what you think would work well for whatever distribution of starting forces you're vibing on hehe. The stuff we put in the zones and the production values assigned are what will determine the playpattern more than anything else, so it's hard to see it clearly until we start tooling around with more of that stuff. For what it's worth think it's possible to justify many things in this kind of game. Like provided the resulting gameplay delivers the appropriate feel for the start date. Although I definitely like having a consistent conceptual framework to build on for the sense of realism, the OOB game often isn't terribly consistent or realistic either, so that colors it a bit. The shorthand on some of this stuff for me is 'can we make it more fun for the WW2 gameplay if we do X or Y or Z?" Cause if we can, that smooths over many things that might otherwise stick in the craw haha.

Anyway, hope your Tuesday is entertaining! I rewatched Andor for a second time and just hung the Xmas lights! If we can somehow have the troops home for the Holidays, that would kick ass! Maybe it's a target we could actually pull off for G40? The new one will surely take a while to suss out and playbalance, but I'm itching to dive in. I will even try to learn these damn utilities I guess, if it helps things along lol. Though I know myself - flying solo I'd burn out on it for sure and it'll never get finished, so going to need a G40 wingman and a cobra commander to keep it pushing, no doubt! haha

Catch ya in a few!

ps. @Cernel, did you follow along with Hepps' naming conventions for the main tiles in that 1914 map? I have all his labelling for that map which is somewhat similar, cause we started there for the Dom one, but there are a few tile names that wouldn't make sense to me in a 1940/41 context. Also the shifting between urban centers and regional labels feels a little problematic sometimes. Unlike the Alpha Numeric approach of the building off the G40 SZ divisions, the Dom TTs sorta require the names hehe. Once we have the divisions settled, I want to do label key for it, so we have a point of reference for that, but I could definitely use an eye. I think there are spots where it could do with a name change or two, for sure. Also I never trust myself as a typist. These clumsy thumbs lol. I'll post it when I'm finished, but I'm only like a tenth of the way there, cause there's a ton of tiles.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
For my part I'm done with TT & SZ. I would merge a few more SZ, but like you I wish to keep backwards compatibility with G40.

So I'm waiting on @Cernel critical eye for any last comments.

Black_Elk when we have finished with the TT/SZ, for 1941 Command Decision (detailed G40) do you fancy numbering the TT and SZ and putting the numbers & name of the TT/SZ in a text file?

Then for 1941 Command Decision (detailed G40) I will be doing the boring bit, making the centers, polygon, place text files. The xml, bar the TT/SZ and unit positioning is almost ready for testing.

[Cernel]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

ps. @Cernel, did you follow along with Hepps' naming conventions for the main tiles in that 1914 map?

Absolutely not. Didn't even know about that until I read this post.

[Cernel]

@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

So I'm waiting on @Cernel critical eye for any last comments.

What map image?

[TheDog]

@cernel
If you would be so kind, to give this file your critical eye/opinion.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/xnvwl23sf092dia/Domination_1941_baseline.png?dl=0

[Black_Elk]

@cernel Right on I was trying to remember who was following along on that one, cause I wasn't quite sure. Like I remember reading some thoughts from Schulz, but I wasn't there for that part and was just curious if you were. Guess not

@TheDog
Yeah, I figured that would be a necessary final step for contributing the map materials. I have the working files for 1914, so basically I was just going to give it a pass and rename anything that jumped out to me. Many tiles just follow conventions similar to the ones laid out in that first domination 1900 map, many others were adjusted by Hepps. I think there's maybe a quarter altogether that would need adjustment just to fit the timeline, but for others it's a bit like whether you want to keep with a concept of alternating between urban and regional type designations or just to find something that is more generic/consistent?

You know, like whether you want a TT to be called something like Berlin or Paris, instead of say Brandenburg or Île-de-France, or something yet more generic like Central Germany or Central France etc. Just to give a quick example from my neighborhood of the world, so Hepps has a TT in California called "San Francisco" which is clearly a labelling abstraction. I mean the TT extends from the Bay Area to LA over like 500 miles and doesn't correspond to anything particularly real as a local region, it's clearly a blob/zoom. In the 1914 game this happens quite a few places, though it's pretty consistent in inflating the scale of these spots relative to the surrounding TTs, giving them Urban/City designations, and using different visual patterns and production rules to set them apart. I'm not sure if that same approach is desirable here?

Most of the work I did over the past month involved removing many of these spots particularly in some of the more familiar regions of the board like say Europe and the Mid-East, often following requests to make the borders or TT shapes look "more accurate" for whatever region. But mostly it was coming down to that stuff, that Hepps had inserted a more abstract TT somewhere and that in turn made some other border feel a bit wonky to peeps at a glance. Some fit with a regional re-designation better than others, so I didn't nix everything, but anyway there's a fair bit left to parse and modify I think.

Just for an example of the number of entries we're probably looking at, below is a centers txt from the 1914 gamemap... The coordinates would be meaningless and the sz designations too (since we blew up the map and changed all those sz divisions), all the political/inset stuff as well, but otherwise it gives a rough indication of the number of land entries we're likely to see. In the WIP files I have for the 1914 game, nothing in that list appeared to be in order, so I ran it through an alphabetizer real quick and this is what I got... You can see just from reading the list of names, the sort of things I'll likely have to deal with over the next few days to find suitable replacements lol.

1914_centers_alphabetized.txt

Anyhow, that's the txt list I mentioned. I will just produce something along those lines as I fill out my label key rough draft, though again, I think at least a quarter or these will need changing to fit the timeline and the changes we already made in various spots. I'm not sure fancy is the word for my level enthusiasm with the the txt slog, but I'll get it done one way or another, just might take a little bit heheh

[TheDog]

@black_elk
I know you dont fancy doing it, but someone got to shovel it.

Thanks for volunteering.

[Black_Elk]

Sounds good, I was going to follow 2 quick rules of thumb...

First rule would be to avoid redundant labelling out of G40, meaning that if the TT is named in G40 but split into multiple TTs here, those smaller TTs need different names. Basically so we could do a graphic that displays the G40 designation regionally if we wanted, but then the names written in wouldn't add to confusion or be repeated on top of each other. For example G40 has a capital TT called "United Kingdom" and then Scotland. In the subdivided map we've got Scotland, Wales, Northern England, England. So a regional graphic display might still say United Kingdom or Great Britain or whatever over those and it'd still look decent and make sense. Like ideally you'd like the G40 map to kinda make more sense as a result.

Second rule, add some hyphens or go generic for anything that's overly abstract. So for that example earlier of the San Francisco TT in Hepster's, with the right designation that blob can still work. You know, just calling it Coastal California or whatever, which is a made up name, but gives an impression like 'OK everything from there to there' kinda swept into one thing. That can be done in most places I'd say and you could make something work that otherwise might be weird.

Random aside, but in thinking of ways to switch from the G40 vibe to the Domination one, the way the Pacific is handled will be fun to explore when we get into unit distribution and PU values and such. I think the dynamic in G40 for Japan vs China and Japan vs USA/ANZAC in the central Pacific kinda suffers from not having enough going on compared to say Europe. Like obviously one theater was more important, but given the nature of the game and the way things tend to work, you'd like both sides of the board to be engaging. Or you know, how Japan is set up to go so monster, in like every version of A&A, and USA is always like 'pick a direction and don't look back!' lol. I think it'll be fun to see how that can be addressed in other ways. I'd like to see a game where China was maybe not so nerfed or quite so strange in terms of their production rules. Like I get the idea that they weren't punching at the same weight in the same way, but why not just give em a Minor production hub, an Air-base in Chengdu or whatever and call it abstraction of US/British aid. Maybe a cool Tac B unit they can use along with their Flying tiger on D, and just pretend it's an extension of the USA a bit more like classic did things?

Just something to make the threat in that theater a bit more credible, so it's not merely a speed bump lol. Wouldn't take too much I don't think. Then for Japan vs the USA try to get the same thing going for the islands that mattered and were contested, to try and encourage play there. You know, like making bombing out of the Marianas more important to the endgame with a Tinian twist or whatever, and all those earlier contests over the spots like Midway, and Guadalcanal and whatnot. Trying to hit the Hollywood high notes basically lol. Like we know what it is, you just want to get that playpattern flow. Once we free up the production/pus or find a cool way to get the AB/Carrier overall naval dynamic to pur I think it could open up the game quite a bit.

[TheDog]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

Yes, Compass direction-Region/Country like Northern-England (with a hyphen as Notepad++ likes hyphens) there will be a lot of Northern's etc.

For me, you could even shorten to N-, S-, E- & W-Spain for example.

As to a fun game Im hoping that by having lots of Factory's (3 types) and lots of pretend/real Capitals the AI will work as hoped/intended, therefore play well for a human player.

[Black_Elk]

Yeah that would be my thinking as well, particularly if we're relying on tripleA to write the labels, abbreviations are helpful. There are a number of entries in the 1914 map that utilize compass qualifiers like "Northern or Southern" probably half a dozen with a term like "Central" or "Greater" followed by some metro/provincial label, which I guess works in some instances, but I'd prefer something short and sweet. As you mentioned N-W-E-S- is easy to follow, like everyone will know what it means.

Then there are also the perennial labelling conundrums, like for territories under occupation at the outset for whatever timeline, or prioritizing anglophone designations or local or period specific designations. You know your standard N-Korea/S-Korea Manchuria vs Chosen Manchukuo type situations. Again I'd probably shoot for short and sweet, and familiar, cause some spots are rather smaller here. The hyphen can also be used to elide in the case of TTs with longer names or multiple name groupings probably since that's relatively simple to follow.

For Sea Zones I'd use the 3 digit designation so the txt is easier to parse, so 001 or say 001-A, over "1 Sea Zone" for example. Abbreviating "Sea Zone" to SZ would be better than writing the words out, but I'd actually rather remove it entirely just to keep things short. Esp since people can supply that last part for themselves. We don't write the word "Territory" or "Land Zone" after all the land tiles, and there aren't any land territories referred to by numbers, so I don't think it's necessary to do this at sea. Like there's nothing to confuse them with. Everyone will already know that they are all Sea Zones right? So in Bungs we have "100 Sea Zone" for the zone corresponding to the Black Sea. In the Dom Base that same spot is divided into 4 sea zones, giving us 100-A, 100-B etc. Not writing out the words Sea Zone each time, cause that just seems inefficient to me. Like if you're going to dedicate that many characters, better to include some information. 100 Black Sea, takes about as much real estate as "100 Sea Zone, but is much more informative. So if anything I'd go that route. Anyhow, that was my thought for how to approach it.

I agree more factories or factories conceived more as deployment centers than actual factories will open things up across the board, so players can push their fronts. I'm excited to see how that pans out

[TheDog]

@black_elk
OMG, SZ = 000-999 my thoughts as well.

[Black_Elk]

Right on, that's what I'll do then.

Here are the reliefs for those updates made in the Med and such, with the blur corrected.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcvl7jjpenpld7t/World_War_II_Global 1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/x1qei5rhc137hip/Domination_1940 relief 25 opacity.png?dl=0

Doesn't take all that long to do the turn around from base to relief. I noticed just now that I need to clean up the board in Mexico. Prob leftover from when I moved the N. America map break. Anyhow, as I clean up the base, I'll update the file for the reliefs.

Tomorrow I want to do a paint job and start in on the labelling to see what font/size looks good at this scale.

[Schulz]

@black_elk

I've always though somethings should be really done by out of box thinking to make the Pacific/Chinese fronts as interesting as European/North African fronts in WWII scenarios.

1. China is not really enjoyable country to play with for me. Its due to having only one front and lack of Chinese naval aspects. If China designed too strong then it would further discourage Japan to fight in the Pacific. A very weak China would serve only as a speed bump which wouldn't make sense. And the Chinese front was very stable until late 1944 compared to other fronts.

2. Unhistorical Japanese-Soviet front also discourages Japan to fight in the Pacific.

3. Naval units are too expensive whereas there is usually no money in sea zones, pacific islands are not much worth and distances between factories are too great in Pacific.

[Black_Elk]

No doubt hehe

Like I can understand the logic laid out in the manual for China rules OOB, but I don't think they're terribly fun for the gameplay, and I'm not a big fan of different rules for different factions. Especially since I liked the old handling in Classic, that didn't treat different parts of the map differently, but just found a simple way to approximate a front with the US controlling that part of the board.

I mean part of the typical rationale offered for why the IJA couldn't get a Siberian invasion going, is cause they had like a million heads tied down fighting in China, but it's typically a blowout with Japan going Mecha Godzilla stomp immediately lol. For me it's like, does it really matter if China has a regular type mobilization of forces, and can buy an occasional mech or artillery unit if they think they can afford it, or even a tank or gulp a destroyer? lol I think they could probably be made into a more regular faction and it wouldn't break the disbelief.

I'm kinda weird maybe in thinking the Japan Soviet conflict is fun to keep on the table, like it's sorta baked in to all the A&As, but it really requires the USSR getting more than a Mongolia bonus to keep Japan from just taking shots along the coast. I've tried to do different spins on the NAP, but have never found one that I really liked. I think a dynamic that has Russia reinforcing China and making that part of the main front there works, cause you can imagine it like Soviet aid, but the border clashes between like Russian and Japanese tanks going down in the Far East feels over and done with by 1940. Anytime the whole dynamic of the entire game hinges on Japan marching across everything up there is pretty goofy in every version of A&A. But I don't know, it's still fun to have that be an option, just not the go to. I'd start by adjusting the TT values of the islands and the production rules surrounding them to make the central pacific more of a draw. You can get a lot done that way. Also if the USSR isn't so weak that Japan can just cut them in half by driving north would help too. I think it could definitely be approached in different ways. In general I like it when everyone is sort of playing by the same rules, and to try and get things going in the desired directions by just adjusting production values and starting forces and the likely deadzones, but the Japan Soviet Union dilemma is a big one. The handling in G40 I don't think was super satisfactory, so there's gotta be another approach that would work.

I also like the idea of a Japanese campaign vs ANZAC being more viable. Like they added the faction, but the draw just isn't there, since it's not a very useful springboard and not valuable enough compared to juicy stuff for Japan. I mean basically you just want a situation where Japan is fighting China, the USA, ANZAC and the British in India/Burma over a situation where they're just trying to break Russia as fast as possible to help Germany and team Axis to win the game heheh.

[Schulz]

@black_elk

What about making Japanese land units expensive and naval units cheaper? This would discourage Japan to advance inland Asia too deeply. Splitting Japan can be another alternative.