💥 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread
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@Black_Elk thanks for the reply. I should have been more clear about the Seattle build limits. I understand perfectly what you said and, in fact, assumed that was the case. For some reason however my notes and recollection on this suggested an actual problem with that territory. It’s possibly I simply got that wrong so I’ll reassess that.
And it’s GREAT TO KNOW that this is in Alpha!!! It’s so good now that when the game gets more finished it will be TRULY AWESOME!
I don’t make the next offer lightly but…. I’d be willing to write a comprehensive manual for this thing if any would prefer me to do that. And I actually have relevant experience , lol.
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I didn't put that one together, but I liked the look for the color grading.
Here's the source...
https://hoi3.paradoxwikis.com/index.php?title=File:GIP-HoI3.png&mobileaction=toggle_view_desktopA manual would be cool!
I feel like the main thing that distinguishes it from an A&A game in terms of how the combat works or the units interact is just that it's more variable. Owing mainly to the lower hits at values of the attacking units, whether coming from terrain or targeting or just the way those units tend to work. Hitting at lower values like the 1 and 2 on a D6 (or sometimes a D10) as opposed to A&A where you have more units with reliable attack at 3. This makes it harder to count pips or approximate how things will shake down in the smaller battles. Forces need to be larger for the odds to stabilize in a direction that favors the attacker. You can use the battle calc, which is sorta the adjutant officer giving advice using the best intel available I guess, but when trying to approximate the results it can be pretty swingy.
Of course then the economy is much higher here too though, and many more units in play, so there is an offset for the attrition from random results. For production I think the big difference is the very low production values per tile kinda similar to AA50 or the old Big World games, but having more of those spread about the board. In the smaller A&A boards this pushes down the inf spam and encourages the purchase of heavier hitters like tanks and such. The difference between Moscow at say 6 PU, vs Moscow at 8 PUs on one of the smaller maps. You have more reason to buy tanks when the production ceiling is a bit lower, this is sorta the more extreme version of that where everything is held to either 1 (From the base) 2 from the Small, 3 Medium, 4 Large factory. I think it's probably familiar enough at the low end because that tends to be the scale in A&A which caps production at the TT value. Mostly they are 2 or 3 or 4 production except for the core tiles like Capitals. I think it makes it more relevant to stage things a round ahead so you have time to group the units together when they move out esp at the M3 distance, which is a novelty.
I guess on the high seas main difference is that the cruiser is actually pretty useful now for the cost, the M3 carrier with a tactical bomber, a couples cruiser with a pair of elites. It's expensive but works pretty well for island hops or the shuck. And then the whole dynamic with the HQs that could probably be expanded upon since once they are involved it changes things a fair bit just cause the boost is so potent. I'd be interested to read a kind of guide or even just ballpark strats. Glad you're having fun with it!
ps. took another crack at Japan just now. Here it is again on J4, this time I went after Hawaii and New Guinea as well, slightly stronger line probably. I think the J2 Yunnan take is pretty solid, even if giving up ground along the coast was able to recover position via shifting the amphibious units around. China put up a good fight and advanced pretty far, but then got turned back. I think New Guinea is like a coin flip. Hawaii I think is probably more reliable. I went in light to Wake and still managed to get on it with all the fighters in range. Anyhow feels like that's probably the turning point. From this position I'd maybe just mop up the islands and pick a direction for the push vs UK for the income and most straight forward logistics.
2024-7-27-1941-Global-Command-Decision_Elk_Japan_round_4_rematch.tsvg
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sweet
Yea GCD seems way badass. Same as TWW and ebbe's oil and snow. Wish he'd update his notes because it seems way cool but idk how to play lol
Anyway, my brain just can't comprehend it all.
Like anything, the more you do it, the more you get used to it, but ... I'm just ... overamped with tmi.Doesn't make it a bad thing, some will be able to rock on it, just saying I'm not one of em lol
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@JohnnyCat
Here is a first draft of the Politic Relationships.
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Here are some Mansteins if you want to choose one. Pretty sure one of them is already in the folder somewhere, or maybe in the UHD, probably just flipped or whatever with a different person doing the tint. You can see the first at the top is a standard colorized photograph from the wiki entry. The second is a similar image taken and used for a painted illustration
Artist Boris Chaliapin, 22 Sep 1904 - 18 May 1979 sourced from a Smithsonian article. https://www.si.edu/object/erich-von-manstein%3Anpg_NPG.88.TC46
I like the second image for it's bold graphic qualities, but 'usage conditions apply' there, so not sure if it's really above board. When cropped into the circle the graphic part of the Iron Cross is sorta lost too so that's another thing like getting it into the circle just so. Anyhow I liked that one cause it's from a painting, but probably the period colorized photograph is likely more appropriate for fair use
Then for this next pair of Mansteins you can see the difference between a period colorized photograph in scene vs one that's set against a background color field. Both from the wiki if I recall. It also depends a bit on the size of the head like if you want to show more of a hat or the features of the face with a tighter crop. In this case the images almost look like two completely different people, but it's basically just the cast shadow on his beak being slightly less pronounced in the first image vs the second, lower angle photography and probably a candid rather than staged portrait like the second one that's used for all the book covers hehe. Also like with the hat and everything, it elongates his face a bit to give the very recognizably Manstein mug. To me that's like a coin toss though, cause a less recognizable image might be preferable sometimes, like if it still fits the bill. Not sure. I'll let you make the call. I tend to just prioritize some vague quality I liked, such as overall color balance or how it looks when loaded up and sitting on the board which is harder to see without running tripleA
I think it just comes down to little things like the accent color, if it's too overpowering, or just cause one wants maybe some flash of red or something for the uniform to pop. There are a bunch for Generals like Manstein.
For the Italians the pickings are much slimmer. There is artwork for HoI and World of Warships, but I was trying to find a source to work from that wasn't like already owned by Paradox or whoever.
Here's a Bastico, it's cropped from an Italian Postage Stamp. The source image is that one where he's chillin' next to Rommel in the dugout. For the other famous image where he's wearing the cap haven't found one in color yet, aside from the paintovers from the games mentioned above. I'll keep hunting around
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@black_elk
Thanks a Manstein & Bastico in game for v180 -
@thedog Cool. Thanks for posting that. What does, "USA 1-3 Rounds for TripleA benefit so USA can add Gulf States &" mean??
Also where, and perhaps WHY, do the rules state that USA can invade neutrals only during rounds 1, 2, 3?
By the way, I finally played two games in full. In both I had to save and restart a few times as has been "normal" for the past year - and like I said, I am sure that this is a tripleA thing. The game will sort of freeze but allow me to save before it actually freezes or crashes so no worries.
And while I still encounter some crazy unexpected combat results even with Low Luck checked, I am now getting rather intuitive about what the units can do as well as how terrain and SUPERHERO COMMANDERS affect things.
NOTE: that for the year of play all other TripleA games had that display details option but it was cosmetic only so I really had no idea to turn that back on thus I missed the terrain type effects that entire time, duh...
Anyway, THIS GAME IS EVEN MORE TRULY AWESOME now that I have figured out how to play it as intended. So my sincerest compliments again...
The only thing that I notice, and this is no surprise, is that the game as is setup in the default, is heavily favoring the Allies. But that is easily corrected with some startup bid adjustments.
I am still interested and willing to write a comprehensive manual for this game.
-Johnny
Finally, does anyone reading this know if anyone plays the old Avalon Hill Panzer Blitz and Panzer Leader games online?
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@black_elk Your new faces are VERY NICE. I would like to suggest, however, that all these commander icons have a collar.
Apologies for the poor quality but I just want to convey the idea here - if there is interest I would fire up Photoshop and make this very pretty. In any case I envision this to draw some attention to the commander as I found them easy to miss. I could see the Nazi's having a tiny Iron Cross... the Yanks with national colors, etc. But maybe they all have some sort of Gold Band to draw attention and standardize the unit to some degree.
Does anyone have any good suggestions for this collar thing?
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@johnnycat said in
1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:the old Avalon Hill Panzer Blitz
Idk of any online version. I have the old boardgame. If you know anybody who wants it, I will mail it to them on my dime, as long as they donate the same to the site.
That and they aren't halfway acrooss the world from me
Heartland of America my current locale -
I imagine there are a few Panzerblitz players floating around here or there. That one was a bit before my time. Unless I'm mixing it up with something else, that one uses hexes right? My era/speed was more like Panzer General on the computer, but I tend to gravitate towards Iron Blitz and more bare bones A&A lineage than some of the more advanced full on war games. On the PC if I wanted to go all long haul campaign mode I'd probably get into some Hearts of Iron or maybe Command and Conquer games like if it's Sega Genesis back in the day heheh. It's sorta like the Military History or WW2 section at Barnes and Noble, like "Wow, how are there two dozen bookshelves for every conceivable biography or campaign of the Second world war and everything else gets like maybe like half a shelf?' just dwarfing the other sections hehe. Same deal for the grand strategy games I think, where there are just always a gang of options for WW2.
I really think it would be helpful to have a manual that assumes a background in A&A though, and then explains what's different for the nitty gritty against that backdrop, since tripleA uses those rules as the basis for so many WW2 games. It's a bit above my paygrade here. I would defer to theDog for anything gameplay-wise.
For the collar idea mentioned, challenge there is getting something that will fit within the 68px maximum. It's already pushing the limit on height there since 54px is the space within the windows. The more embellishments around the edges, if the main image ends up too tiny and we just lose all the features to interpolation and fuzzy pixels.
Here's a design element from the 1914 game. I just isolated it out from one of hepsters relief tiles. He used a laurel and a ring for some of the convoy stuff. Might work, but when reduced in scale (here down to 100px) it already becomes sorta harder to read. Not sure
You can see things start to get very small, so I'm not sure how well it reads. But I guess the idea would be to use a different pattern or whatever to distinguish say Air from Ground or Fleet by using something like the mini roundel? I think the dilemma is that it will probably look wonky in the various battle screens because of clipping. Like on the map the display is a bit cleaner, but even there though when zoomed out it might become a lot more choppy. Right now unit sizes have a hard limit, like if they were 100px we'd have more room to noodle around, but 68px already is going to clip. Here's the same image at 54px with no halo interpolation. Already at that scale the read is sorta losing it for me. Something even more graphic would probably be needed for it to really hold up when going that small.
ps. What are the dimensions for the battle window width again? I wonder if they might just have a tank alongside them or something and have that perhaps somehow work? Never mind just tried it, had the same clipping thing happen trying to go extra wide. Still not sure of a great solution for the faces
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@beelee I’m from Chicago but now residing in California!
How do we do DMs on this thing? I’d like to follow up on these topics but don’t think this is quite the right place lol
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hit me up in chat
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That’s PERFECT !!! Love the little Nazi icon at the top. You totally captured the idea I was trying to convey. Let me know if you need my photoshop work. I’m rather skilled with it.
And yea Panzer General 2 is one of my favs. But as a young kid I played those old Avalon hill games and long to play Panzerbkitz again lol.
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@johnnycat
USA 1-3 Rounds for TripleA benefit so USA can add Gulf States &
should of said
USA 1-3 Rounds for TripleA benefit so USA can add Gulf States & BrazilIt means that I could not do what I wanted, so I had set USA to Open-Border so that the USA could gain Gulf States & Brazil as USAs own territory.
Then on Round 4, USA changes to Closed-Border like other allies.So as a USA player if you want to be aggressive do it in rounds 1-3, but this not the intended action for the USA.
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I know its a lot time/effort to produce a manual, even a terse one like mine. If you want to produce one please do so and I will add it to the download. -
Here is another Iachino
It's from that HOI Italy mod for the Italian generals by SteveHarrison2001 that you sent me from reddit.
I just cropped it into a circle and adjusted the color temperature so it would look a bit more like the others. Since it's relatively simple to make adjustments to the graphics in tripleA I'd just say consider these things placeholders. Or to make new ones basically you just want to fit in that 68px circle to match the ones that are already there.
A simple solution to differentiate between Air Land and Sea HQs would be to just choose a color gradient for the background and make them all the same. So for example maybe Air HQs have a blue tinted background gradient, whereas ground might be Red or Green tinted, and have that consistent across factions. For the national designation a roundel in the corner would probably be the simplest to ensure visibility. To me though I think that could be an option on similar to flags for the units.
Here's a quick example using Bock
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@black_elk I’ve been pondering that air/land/sea differential myself and always come up with wanting to overcome the actual graphics limitations of 58 pix or whatever it is….
But in lieu of that , your background color idea is best!!!And I personally feel very drawn to thing having a the thin gold border and nation symbol as shown earlier. Great work mate !
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I noticed that "isStrategicBomber" was removed for Artillery. May I ask why? Are you planning to add it back?
If so, what would you like to happen to those Artillery after the SBR round?
Inquisitive minds want to know...
Cheers...
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@wc_sumpton said
Inquisitive minds want to know...
I always knew you were in two minds
Wow a set of leading questions, you obviously have a cunning plan. (Not sure which one of us is Baldrick or Blackadder)
isStrategicBomber might have been for Artillery-Hvy which got removed, many versions ago.
If you have an army capable of taking a territory why would you want to destroy the Industry you are about to take over, unless it is form of suicide attack to destroy the Industry and then in turn your army is wiped out.
I have to admit I do a variant of the above on the eastern front, win a territory, auto damages an industry, then the Russian counter attack, auto damage and destroy the industry by them taking it off me.
What were you thinking?
