Cold War map
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I was trying out a cold war map i found while looking for a world map for a mod i want to make. I was wondering if any feedback on it is useful or not. It doesn't look like it has been updated in a while, so I am guessing not, but figured i would ask anyway.
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I think it used to be a popular map some time ago, I don't think it has an active maintainer.
I certainly really like it, though personally I think it's axis imbalanced even with a pretty substantial allied bid.
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@ff03k64 Here is the old thread for the map on the old forum...
http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Cold-War-1965-REVISED-v1-0-1-td7580946.html
The original map designer was Conarymor. I do not believe he ever joined the new forum and his activity was pretty hit and miss even when he was on the old forum. I think it would be pretty tough to try and track him down, so I'd have to say at this point the map would be considered abandoned and free for use making a mod from the original.
The old thread might have some good info in it as to the things he had done to get a "good" balance when it was still being worked on.
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I was just going to say i think it is kind of imbalanced in the Axis favor. But if not maintained, doesn't really matter.
Thanks
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@Hepps said in Cold War map:
@ff03k64 Here is the old thread for the map on the old forum...
http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Cold-War-1965-REVISED-v1-0-1-td7580946.html
The original map designer was Conarymor. I do not believe he ever joined the new forum and his activity was pretty hit and miss even when he was on the old forum. I think it would be pretty tough to try and track him down, so I'd have to say at this point the map would be considered abandoned and free for use making a mod from the original.
The old thread might have some good info in it as to the things he had done to get a "good" balance when it was still being worked on.
No.
Sadly "Cold War" suffers the usual bad abit of TripleA that the first one that comes by making a scenario about a period time (aside from "World War 2"), no matter how good or bad it is, calls it with the common name of that period time, like just "Cold War", and anybody following has to call it some other ways, usually something like "Cold War Something", adding much to confusion, as the next ones sound like mods, or anyways you cannot refer to the period itself or the first map with clarity.
I really hate that TripleA has around maps called "The Great War" or "The Great Northern War", like if that is the one and the only map about the Great War or the Great Northern War. Since anyone can make maps about the Great War, I think nobody should be allowed to take the name of the scenario itself.
Getting over the rant, what you linked is not the main thread of "Cold War". It is, instead (as you can read in the title), the one for "Cold War: 1965"; a totally different game and map (beside only being broadly about the same time period).
To, be clear, this is "Cold War" (jpg 90% quality of the map shrunk to about 25%):
Instead, this is "Cold War: 1965" (jpg 90% quality of the map shrunk to about 25%):
I see that "Cold War: 1965" is not currently available in the repository (or at least I'm not seeing it). If so, that rates as a pretty big loss, actually, as it seemed at least the most interesting scenario about the "Cold War", and for sure the best looking one. Not sure why Veqryn didn't get it in, but seems like he was talking with the author about some updates, then the matter probably got forgotten. Too bad.
Not that "Cold War: 1965" is much better a name than "Cold War". How about if I want to make a map about the Cold War that starts in 1965 too? If I were to get it in the repository, I would change the name to "Cold War - Conarymor : 1965"
Or maybe TripleA would benefit from having a "author name" thing beside the title, so that you can have multiple games called "Cold War", that would be differentiated by the various author names.
Mostly off topic rants, I know, thank you very much for reading.
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@Cernel Given that he was looking for a global map... I think most everybody knew what he meant.
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@Hepps I've no idea what he meant. I actually guess he was talking about "Cold War", even tho that one is not global, so it wouldn't really make sense.
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And you should be able to DL it via...
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/889/roger-s-scenario-thread/68
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Cold War 1965 was really fun, it had some updates that really altered it and AFAIK it's popularity dramatically dropped off. I do not have context why it was dropped from maps, I think it was dropped before the migration to github. If we can find a version of it around, it'd be a good map to bring back into the fold.
Cold War and Cold War 1965 are very quite different. Both are fun though.
@ff03k64 on Cold War, a bid of around 25-35 is standard, not sure why but house rule has that money going to US. Usually it's to buy a number of transports. At that point the map can be more balanced. Personally I've thought that if you play axis well, it's still not enough, but I've been able to win a few times with an allied bid of around 20.
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@LaFayette hmmm, it is hard to believe that 3 transports is enough of a difference to change it around, unless i just suck against the AI.
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@ff03k64 3 is certainly on the low side, it is more like 4 or 5 typically. At the same time, it's a race for US to get into the fight, moving land units first round is pretty big.
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@LaFayette said in Cold War map:
Cold War 1965 was really fun, it had some updates that really altered it and AFAIK it's popularity dramatically dropped off. I do not have context why it was dropped from maps, I think it was dropped before the migration to github. If we can find a version of it around, it'd be a good map to bring back into the fold.
Cold War and Cold War 1965 are very quite different. Both are fun though.
@ff03k64 on Cold War, a bid of around 25-35 is standard, not sure why but house rule has that money going to US. Usually it's to buy a number of transports. At that point the map can be more balanced. Personally I've thought that if you play axis well, it's still not enough, but I've been able to win a few times with an allied bid of around 20.
I think it was just a matter that maps needed updating, and Veqryn was doing it only for the maps not actively owned; eventually the update came late, and Veqryn was inactive, then everyone forgot (and the author is either dead or he lost interest completely).
I've never played any of the two, so maybe you'll tell me what you think of the points I'm going to make.
Looking at the version 1.0.5 (@RogerCooper the wiki says the version is 0.6.1, instead), "Cold War: 1965" needs at least a few tweaks, without considering balance (as I have never played this game, and I'm just looking at it):
- The notes really need to be updated, to give the info about the game. Mostly, it would just be a matter of copy pasting what the author wrote down, instead, in its own thread (like the how the various neutrals interact, etc.). In particular, the information about the fact that China and SinoPact cannot attack is in the changelog only, and other things, like the fact that China cannot move into SinoPact territories, or at least some of them, are completely not documented. It is impossible to even really guess what are the restrictions between China and SinoPact, as, for example, China cannot enter North Vietnam or North Korea, but can enter Burma. If any of these are intended, they should be fully documented, if not explained. Moreover, the China and SinoPact ships are restricted to a number of sea zones only, without any of this being documented at all.
- Contrary to the changelog entry, stating that China cannot attack anyone, it can attack SZ 105 (a 99% win battle).
- Contrary to the changelog entry, stating that SinoPact cannot attack anyone, it can attack South Vietnam from Thailand (and also from Burma through Thailand), and it can also attack SZ 105, and sea borne attack South Vietnam from there, while the units from North Vietnam can move nowhere at all. Hard to believe all this is intended, and anyways it is against what little is currently documented, but anything like this should be documented, in case.
- I like the lower-left legend hack that uses dummy territories to show the powers' colours, but there is no point in it if, then, you make them all impassable, so you see only that colour, instead.
- I'm generally cool with having the AI taking a part in the game, even though that much reduces the competitive value of the game, but, in this case, I don't really see the dynamics about that, in the moment China and SinoPact are AI controlled and unable to attack anyone. Especially it doesn't make sense that North Vietnam cannot attack South Vietnam. I get that Russia and China were not in the best terms, so you don't want to have a single alliance for all the Communists, but is this solution really good?
- The income should be reduced (at least cut in half), as now you can buy unnecessarily too much stuff, that only makes for massive stacks (in case, also reducing the cost of the Factory). The only concern would be making SBR even more broken, but that should be fixed anyways, already.
- As being a historical map, the income needs to be redistributed in a way to be at least not silly (like China worth three times Japan or Southwest Canada worth more than twice Central Canada or Iceland worth almost as much as Italy or Indonesia worth as much as the United Kingdom or Brazil worth more than West Germany or Australia worth more than West and East Germany summed up, what the hell). This is 1965, so it is really easy to find good GDP (or other indexes) economic data for pretty much all countries (of course, cutting the subsistence out of the GDP). I can see the values are supposed to give a huge premium to oil countries (like Saudi Arabia at 9, more than West Germany), but I think they are really way too off in many cases, relatively to each other.
- The Tank is way overpriced or underpowered, with respect with Artillery, and also considering that the CargoPlane may bee too good at cost 9, movement 5, and able to transport 2 Infantries or 1 Infantry and 1 Artillery, especially in combination with the Helicopter. I would make the Tank able to give support (a Tank is an artillery piece too) and increase its attack and defence to 4 (so you get a +1 attack and +2 defence for +2 PUs over the Artillery).
- I guess the Truck has been coded wrong, as now it is just a 0/0 fodder that moves 3. I suppose it was intended to be able to transport 1 Infantry, and I'm not sure it should be eligible as casualty (very rare having a movement 3 cheapest fodder).
- The lack of mechanized infantry is not acceptable in a 1965 map.
- The NuclearBomber is incredibly overpowered for combat, but I guess this may be intended, for historical consistency.
- I wonder if the ICBM is too pricey to be bought, but this would need playtesting. I also wonder if it actually should be possible to be hit by AA guns, but at least this for sure makes its use very luck dependant (if the AA hits, you have just wasted 95 PUs completely!).
- If you are going to use nuclear weapons, why would you not use chemicals? If the map allows you to use nukes, I suppose you should also have a "gas" unit.
- The Bombing Raiding ability is largely broken, so much that I guess it has been badly coded, and not intended the way it is. For the nuclear bomber, it makes averagely 35 damages if surviving the AA, which is an incredibly overpowered bombing ability, making it by far the best strategic bomber of any TripleA games, even if you take into consideration that most territories won't be able to receive all that damage, being capped at twice the production. Also, what is the point of rolling all those dice, if you are just going near to to always bring the damage up to twice the territory value, since the average you do is 35 with little variance? Also, this whole deal is extremely luck dependant, since it is a 50 TUV unit that can be just lost for nothing on a 1/6 AA roll. Instead, for the ICBM, this ability is worthless, as it costs 95 PUs and makes averagely 35 bombing damages if it survives the AA, which means only 29.16... average bombing damages at 95 PUs cost (so less than 1/3 the damage than the cost!), making it by far the worst strategic bomber of any TripleA games. On top of this, damage is capped to twice the territory value, so the actual damage is even lower than that even on the best possible target, that is an undamaged value 18 territory, and more and more an enormous waste the more the territory is lower in production.
All considered, at the current state this map is very good (and very nice looking), but the game rates as beyond broken, as the lack of documentation doesn't even allow you to be sure about what is intended or not, in some behaviours (especially referring to the ability of China and SinoPact to move into each other territories).
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@LaFayette Yeah, I would say anyways TripleA lacks a very good/interesting/balanced Cold War game, which is a pretty big miss, as World War 3 is probably the next thing you want to explore after World War 2 (I believe there are also some mods that use the Classic map for a World War 3 scenario right after the end of World War 2). Personally, I'm a picky person, so I don't feel any of those games are good or interesting enough for me to play them, but I would be surely open to play some, if a good Cold War game would be finally made or fixed up.
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@Cernel That's a pretty good list; 1965 has a number of issues. One thing to mention is that ICBM's always die in a nuclear strike unless there is an AA hit. It was interesting then to have one on hand and your opponent none. It then creates an incentive to not build any, if you do, the opponent would just wipe it out. Nuclear bombers have this first-strike capability as well, typically russia on it's first move would sacrifice a nuclear bomber to take out one of the US ICBM's.
Trucks were completely underpowered, basically never used.
Cargo planes did have balancing problems, probably should have been more expensive. Allowing kamikaze really increased their attack potential.
The mentions with China are good, it was not well documented. I did play a 3-way human player game and had China gang up on the allies, mostly for the lulz; it was really annoying.. Having the AI play china does add a nice level of tension/non-determinism as you are never really sure if china will take the opportunity to attack allied units.
Figured I'd mention those points as they were some of the more interesting and subtle aspects of 1965.
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@LaFayette Right. I suppose I should add the ICBM behaviour on defence as another issue with the map, as I cannot believe that is wanted, or makes any sense whatsoever. That can be easily fixed by setting that units suicide in attack only (as you don't blow up your ICBM in your own territory...).
I'm surprised trucks are considered underpowered. They cost as much as infantry, and have 0/0 att/def, but they are still movement 3 fodder. I would say they may be pretty good, tho those cheap cargo planes really are the best for rushing fodder to the frontline at a very convenient price.
I assume nobody ever bought any tanks right?
Isn't the nuclear bomber overpowered? It costs 50 PUs, but has offensive power 20, that is a 2/5 power/cost ratio, thus better than a WW2v3 bomber, that has a ratio of 1/3, plus it moves 10 (amazing, but historically correct), and it is also a very good bombing raider (tho the risk of losing 50 PUs on a AA roll at 1/6 is very scary).
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@LaFayette said in Cold War map:
@Cernel That's a pretty good list; 1965 has a number of issues. One thing to mention is that ICBM's always die in a nuclear strike unless there is an AA hit. It was interesting then to have one on hand and your opponent none. It then creates an incentive to not build any, if you do, the opponent would just wipe it out. Nuclear bombers have this first-strike capability as well, typically russia on it's first move would sacrifice a nuclear bomber to take out one of the US ICBM's.
I'm not seeing that move, actually, but now I see that Russia on round 1 can send 1 ICBM to New England to kill a fair amount of stuff plus also getting 2 American ICBM wasted for nothing. That is definitely a very bad dynamic, and shows how the game is still very much in an alfa state, as the maker could have had least assured that suicide units worked in attack only (though this way you can use them as fodder in defence, which for an ICBM really doesn't make sense, tho you are not going to use an ICBM as fodder unless you must).
It would be cooler if the NuclearBomber paradrops a NuclearBomb, but that way it would not be able to raid or drop it on naval units, so that would need some engine changes, to make it more in line with what it should be.
I also wonder if 1 ICBM for Russia and 3 for USA, all in the national territory, is historically consistent for the time. I'm looking around, I don't see any other rockets anywhere.
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AFAIK the 'first strike' was intended, if an ICBM lands on another and is not shot down via AA, then it auto-kills the other ICBM. It's been some years, so I forget if the bugginess was fixed with edit or if ti actually worked.
The nuclear bomber I think was more imbalanced on LL games. I recall 1965 typically was played with dice! Rolling 10 dice and hitting at 2 added a good amount of variability. You're also right about it being really scary to bombing run a 50 PU value unit with 1/6 of being shot down. I don't think it happened too often that someone would risk it unless you had the PU to spare.
Tanks were not bought too often. I think mid or late game Russia would start to buy them to get better punch power when it was ready to start making a breakthrough into europe.
The idea of a nuclear bomb paradrop is pretty appealing, I like that idea.
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I was just trying the "Cold War" and found the graphics look terrible.
For reference, here's what the map looks like:
https://github.com/triplea-maps/cold_war/blob/master/map/map.pngIf you look closely, border lines are very pixelated and sometimes lines are 1px in width and other times 2-3px.
I was wondering why that was. I used TileImageReconstructor to just draw the polygons - and looks like there are simply gaps between all the territories. So instead of them bordering, the polygons are such that they often don't match for borders. And I think what was done to make the image is just fill all the gaps with black.
I was wondering if that's generally the case for maps (that their underlying polygons don't match and the image background just fixes that) and that appears to not be the case. The "Great War" map has no such problem when I draw its polygons.
So anyone have any idea of what happened to "Cold War" polygons such that they don't match? Can it be easily fixed? Was it some weird conversion process that upscaled things badly - and if so, how did this get fixed for other maps?
I'm interested in trying the map but just can't get over how ugly it is.
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@Alexei-Svitkine Clearly they took the Domination map and cut and resized it. Yeah, probably this is one of the least polished map in the repository, as a matter of the skin. Normally the borders never match, as the mapmaker tools oblige you to leave at least 1 pixel between the zones. You don't need the base tiles to fill anything with black, either, as black is default for anything not having a zone assigned that is a land territory in the xml. You can leave more than 1 pixel between the zones; look at "World At War", for a polished yet simple example of that.
