Proposed Map: Domination 1941
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@kurtgodel7 Yeah he had a lot of cool ideas about convoy lanes and the politics and the revolution stuff. It's one of the more elaborate maps I've seen for tripleA, but I only have the wip.
So my thought would be to take that world projection, and basically do a contour of it for G40. That way we'd have a version for the 1940 game which is consistent with the v3 shape, but just much larger, since it'd be modelled on the same basic world projection I used for v3, but like 3 times as large. Hepps has a lot of detailing in coastlines that I dig too, and mountains and stuff like that. Just the shape of everything is cleaner, he went over the entire world with the finer toothed comb hehe. Some stuff is definitely 1914 and he took it pretty far along that direction, like the way the tiles are divided up and such. I'd think for a 1940s WW2 style map probably some detailing would be extraneous, but it seems like what might be desirable is just Domination draft style map that is more interwar era in the territory divisions and kinda stripped down. So for that stuff I'd just aim for something where the map maker could remove borders rather than drawing them in, if that makes sense. Or with sea zones to create whatever divisions make sense for their idea. So you start super detailed out to the Nth degree on land, like Hepps has, but then could collapse some stuff into single tiles just with the eraser rather than the pencil, or divide other TTs up into whatever the map maker has in mind, with those draft guides to go off of. You know like having North Borneo too, or splitting an island chain or whatever, it's easier when you have the surrounding info as a guide.
His map at scale is slightly larger than the current Global at 7944x3646. The one I did for Dom was 7556 on the long side, but I made it with a lot of ocean compression esp in the Atlantic, like as narrow as I could possibly manage for that one lol. So basically the stretch is just kinda moving the continents further apart if you want more ocean, and respacing the islands, which is easier to do than morphing the shape of the continents. Hepps cleaned it up quite a bit, all the border lines are smoothed out and a lot less jagged than Domination, so I'd want to follow his contours. Once it's drawn I mean, it's easier to move stuff than it is to reshape stuff, if that makes sense. Anyway that would be my thought, just to do something consistent for G40, like legacy style.
Basically the world looks like this... and then we divide it up again. For G40, and then whatever other idea that's more like Domination flavor, super divided etc up but WW2 theme.
Here it is at scale... which is too large to attach on the boards, but I mean the for essential shape of the continents. The shape of the world basically, so it's more like that (and still closer to OOB G40) than Mercator, just with a somewhat more realistic look to the contours than we have currently for the 1940 game.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/le1ijw4qtq457v1/triplea_world_projection_elk_and_hepps.png?dl=0
I'd actually want to upscale it again probably. Like here it is 9999x4588 just to get some more room... So there the Baltic and the Med would be about the same scale as current Global, but with the surrounding land TTs a bit larger (with more room for units, or maybe to house larger unit sculpts more like Frostion's set). Or we could probably push it even larger if there are areas that are too tight still, or on the current G40 map, to try and make it more play friendly like that.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/k706nnhyglmpl0c/triplea_world_projection_elk_and_hepps_x9999.png?dl=0
Basically you'd want to figure out what the standard size/scale of the board is going to be and then retrace everything at 1 pixel, for at that size, like for all the black lines, all the TT/SZ divisions etc. The contour is easy, cause you can just isolate the blue or the white and then add in the black at 1 pixel. It's the TT divisions that take longer, but once you have a guide it's simpler. The trick with G40 is more the labelling of the TTs, cause even with the warp it's still hard to make Archangel touch Belarus or whatever sometimes hehe. For that stuff you probably just blob it, but it's easier to make the blobs once you know vaguely where stuff is relative to the other stuff. You can always move lake Bakail a bit north or shift the Caspian further to the right or whatever, and kind of subtly reshape the whole slant of Eurasia that way, if you need china bigger say (basically the current G40 approach). But I like the way Hepps had it dialed and split up, with all the cool mountain ranges and such added in. I feel like those could go into G40 for flavor in some spots, even if they don't really effect the gameplay, or like same deal grouping smaller islands into larger island TT 'zones' where that makes sense, for the simpler map I mean.
For WAW you can basically get the baseline from the PolygonsImage
It's 9921x3815 there, so around the same height at scale, but a fair bit wider. Here it is rescaled to x1920 on the long side so you can compare.
current V3 at x1920
current G40 at x1920
Kinda just depends how large you want Europe and the Pacific relative to the rest of the globe, or what you're willing to trade in relative scale vs accuracy lol.
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@black_elk and others
The Shogun Advanced map works well with 11264x6290=71million px and
Frostions Warcraft War Heroes is 9500x8500=81million pxI would go for a world map of 13000x6500=85million px or similar and use a units.scale=1 of 1.25. This will be helpful if a player has a 4K screen.
Check this out, a new way to make a map.
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3318/easier-map-making-with-inkscape-reusable-art-assets -
@thedog Yeah that's such a better idea!!! Let's make it like that! I think the original I did in like MSpaint lol, but it seems like using inkwell to create a vector and then some kinda system that's more user friendly like you laid out to modify would be the ticket. The world projection is kinda tricky, cause some of that is personal preference. My only beef with mercator is that for A&A you really have a situation where the gameplay recommends heavy distortion, and just cause the A&A map that's the basis is so abstracted. You get the idea that Larry was looking at those same two page spreads in the history book where you see the European theater and the Pacific Theater at a zoomed in scale and just kinda wanted to stitch them together hehe.
I think the way that the world is split on the gameboard also lends itself to some wonkiness. Like the real split should probably be in the middle of the Atlantic, you know with Europe/Africa on the far left of the gameboard and the Americas on the far right. Cause that sorta disguises the distortions. I liked how Hepps included that curved inset element at the top, because that's kinda how I made the initial warp. Basically I tilted and blew out Europe and kinda wrapped the Siberian arctic zone around almost like an ISO view or something, but it seemed to work hehe. Anyhow I just liked how it carried that suggestion through, since it was kinda deadspace and seems like maybe a good area for graphics or illustrationy stuff.
For unit crowding some of those north Atlantic tiles could probably be raised, since Allies tend to stack there. Basically getting the Baltic and some of the E. Front territories to be as large as possible without making it look goofy, is sorta the aim lol.
Anyhow, just reading through that other thread, and I like that approach. Basically something that is easier for others to come along and still work with, without having to go back from the ground up to make the indexed raster base.
I have inkscape, I used it once for some illustration stuff. I hadn't considered it for the maps, but that makes total sense! Good call
ps. I always thought the og Classic projection was basically a riff on this one. But where the map was split down the center, and the two sides of Eurasia just kinda slid into one another. Then the Americas were scaled down and Europe was scaled way up to give basically a theater map there, and that's essentially the look of the classic board lol. Like even some of the TT divisions and the labelling seemed to follow. Sorta like a playable version of that one haha.
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What about using Goode's Homolosine Equal area Projection and use the sea zones to correct the distances between land masses?
or
Robinson Projection and use the zea sones to fix the Pacific distances?
No tracing of this map required
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blank_map_of_the_world_(Robinson_projection)_(10E).svg.
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@thedog Yeah I've always been partial to that one as well. I think I used Robinson for the earliest ballparks, before warping it out like a madman lol.
Couple things have changed since then though, in the intervening decade, the biggest one probably being the center mouse zoom we got going in the pre-release now. Once you have a smooth and convenient zoom I think it makes some of the scaling distortions less of an issue. Or similarly, like when a map is fucking gigantic, but the gameplay is organized around a more theater/zoomed-in view anyway, some of the issues you get in A&A seem less pronounced, cause you're not really needing the survey view at a glance when the gameplay focus is tighter on the area view throughout.
In Classic or Revised or AA50 etc, at the time I felt that scrolling/drag-to-view was the enemy, and that what many people wanted was the max zoom distance, or at least as zoomed out as one could get while still being able to see what's going on (ie legible the font, and still being able to distinguish the units at a glance.) And it seemed like a bit of a bummer that most people would just be playing the games at like 75%-50% map view, even though that crushes the graphics and makes everything worse, just because 100% was so inconveniently large that it was almost unplayable. That's why v3 was relatively tiny, cause I was shooting for something players wouldn't have to reduce in view. Screens were smaller then too, with many still using the 4:3 aspect ratio on desktop, whereas now 16:9 is undeniably the norm for everything hehe. But just that idea that people didn't want to drag around a bunch of deadspace, having Africa or the Americas be all realistically massive or Europe realistically tiny, seemed ill advised cause none of the official A&A maps actually looked like that lol.
I recall being impressed around that same time with the approach taken by Empire Total War, you know where you had basically 3 theater maps that were integrated into a pseudo world view. I was disappointed that Napoleon Total War reversed course and didn't expand on the Empire connected theater idea to give views for Africa or the Far East, or the rest of S. America etc, but just went back to a Europe map like MTW. Shogun was probably my favorite game for ages, another reason that post caught my eye! haha
Anyhow, I think when it comes to original TripleA games, using the latest features, it'd be a lot easier to create a world map that works well without massive distortion. But then you still got the issue with the legacy tripleA games based on A&A, which are still probably the reason most people end up discovering tripleA in the first place. I always get nervous anytime the franchise is sold. They just sold it again, like yesterday, right? Hasbro farmed it out to Renegade for the table top stuff. Hopefully they keep it cool. It was so demoralizing when AH pulled the rug out from under TripleA when AA50 dropped. I wasn't around when Veq and the gang relaunched TripleA and created Global, otherwise I'd probably have worked on the baseline there, but I was so bitter about AA50 getting the can that I didn't come around again for a while after that lol.
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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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