Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Cernel]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

@TheDog @cernel Sounds good!

For bombers, I'd hesitate to design too much of the map just around the single unit, as I think there are other ways we could simulate bombing that would probably be about as satisfying from a gameplay perspective, if somewhat gamey. For example, perhaps in the early game Britain/America can bomb the Ruhr and such, but to really start carpeting Berlin and central Europe they have to actually start making some inroads first, beyond just holding England. You know, to have that as part of the incentive to invade Normandy and take the Low Countries or Norway and whatnot. Or same deal vs Italy in the Med, where to hit their marks they'd need to actually do a little Torching first.

Torch and following was needed for bombing Rome, but not for bombing the economically more important Milan. Nothing was needed for Berlin (beside the fact that the British lacked a fighter able to escort their bombers to that distance and their bombers were ridiculously defenceless with their puny machine guns). Overall, the British heavy bombers were (and will always be) dumb-conceived garbage: it was only with the the Americans that you would start seeing decent (B-24) and good (B-17) heavy bombers.

Berlin is 817 km from Norwich and Milan is 937 km from Carterbury if you don't fly over Switzerland.
I guess the maximum operative range of heavy bombers early in the war was surely at least 1,000 km and likely a few hundred km more taking some risks and reducing the bomb-load. For a game in which you cannot easily have a trade-off between distance and bomb-load, I think 1,000 km is a good assumption for the safe bombing radius of heavy bombers early in the war.
About this, one of the putative reasons Hitler decided to take Crete in 1941, was that English bombers from Crete were able to target the Ploest oilfieds of Roumania, whereas they were unable to do so from anywhere in North Africa or Cyprus. Crete to Ploiesti is a distance of about 1,100 km, whereas from North Africa it is about 1,400 km. This would imply a radius of at least 1,100 km but less than 1,400 km.
With the arrival of the American B-24 heavy bombers, only in August of 1943 the Allies conducted a massive (and almost useless) bombing of the Ploiesti oilfields, flying for a range of about 1,600 km forth and back (so about 3,200 km in total) from Cyrenaica.
Assuming you are not flying through the Turkish straits (as that would be violating Turkish neutrality and would realistically make the vojage longer), in your map it takes 4 movements to go from Crete to Ploiesti, which would imply that heavy bombers should have at least movement 8 early in the war.

Generally speaking, what the "bomber" really is in the basic games is quite unclear, but it can be assumed it is a mix of medium and heavy bombers, which would explain its main tactical role. We can exclude the "bomber" is representing light or dive bombers (like the German Stuka) because of the fact that it cannot stay on carriers and the fact that in-game fighters are the only units which can stay on carriers which can sink battleships (which implies that the fighter unit is also representing dive bombers and other light bombers). Pratically, the unit called fighter could be better called as "light aircraft" and the unit called bomber could be better called as "medium and heavy aircraft". As for Global, the bomber of that game is not necessarily a heavy bomber. For what is worth, both the British and the German bombers of that game are visually represeted by two-engine bombers (talking about the unit images of the map). However, the British Vickers Wellington two-engines medium bombers were longer ranged than most early four-engines heavy bombers.

Either way, the fact that in the Global game you cannot bomb Berlin from London and fly back to Great Britain is stupid. The simplest fix is to have airports giving +2 bonus (instead of +1). A better fix would be getting rid of the airport unit from the set-up and the rules (besides, no airports in Germany and Northern Italy what the fuck) and adding some air only connections like making air units able to go to and from United Kingdom and Holland Belgium in one movement (so that you can get to Berlin in 3 movements).

[Black_Elk]

@cernel Yeah I'll admit to be being kinda disappointed with the bases in G40. Almost everything about them seemed confusing/weird to me the first time I read the rules lol. The fact that they are basically permanent infrastructure added to the Tile that then can't be removed either, also seems problematic, along with a pretty high cost and strange placements in the starting unit set up. Like if they were conceived more as a cheaper AAgun type unit that could be destroyed, then you could maybe pull off a bomber command type thing based on where those were located and just let the player make runs at whatever distance made sense, without having to fly around along certain paths as part of all that. You know where 'strategic bombing' is just a thing that can happen during the 'combat phase' if the player made an 'SBR purchase' that round, without necessitating big bomber sculpts to actually fly around during the Combat/Non Com Movement phases.

Seems like that would be a lot simpler, no takeoffs and landings, have the escort/intercept handled abstractly, stuff like that maybe, cause then you could put movement at 10 or 12 or whatever range, and it wouldn't break the rest of the game lol.

Submarines could probably have been treated in a similar way, as essentially sea strat bombers of that sort, with more mobility, but a focus purely on economic damage rather than regular combat. But instead the game has all these extra phases and specialized rules/interactions and dual role units, to try to simulate stuff that could probably have been handled more simply somehow, with less tracking and rules overhead lol.

Movement is so key to this game, but to me it's just kinda wild that they built the whole thing (the whole basic game) around the idea of combat units that move 1 or move 2, at most move 4 (like fighters), but then they got a combat unit that comes in with 6 movement all of a sudden, as if that wouldn't upend everything? lol Or those bases that add +1 to movement, which I guess works for ships, but feels way wonky for aircraft.

I feel like highly mobile units should probably not be combat units. You know, like if you want the transport to move 3, in order to accommodate shucks on a larger G40 mapboard, that sorta works, cause the v3 transport doesn't have a hitpoint right, so it's not like you can spam em as fodder and then rush across the board to jack up a combat balance. Probably strat bombers and submarines could work more like that, and it wouldn't feel quite as goofy to me heheh. Maybe even mech could work like that, though that might be a bit weird on the ground. But yeah, using the normal A&A model, I feel like we're bound to hit some snags, cause M6 bombers are just kinda nuts already, so you know 8 or more would be kinda insane without changing how they work heheh

Not sure, but I'd think treating the Strat Bomber as an abstract "economic attack" unit, rather than an actual combat unit, would make it a lot easier for the HardAI to handle right? Like if the machine didn't have to parse all the various places that the 1 hitpoint might end up across half a dozen or more tiles?

ps. On that last point, I think the HardAI could probably serve as a proxy for the human player on some of this stuff. Meaning that if the AI has issues parsing and crunching the numbers for combat units with very high movement rates, that probably means the regular human player will also find that challenging. I mean without the benefit of a machine brain, but still having to figure out where a given unit in a given position might be able to reach in a given round. If the movement during combat is just 1 or 2, or 3 (in the case of fighters that have to land after attacking) that's one thing. But take that up to move 6 or more, and the player (just like the HardAI) has a lot of possibilities to puzzle out hehe. I definitely take Schulz earlier point about unit versatility though. I mean at the end of the day it has to be fun as a game too. If all we wanted was an exact WW2 simulator, I mean at that point we can just go read a book or something right lol. So not trying to buzzkill the strat bomber as a super fun combat unit, but I do think it puts a lot of strain on the game to accommodate them. Same deal with Submarines and the issues they have, trying to straddle two pretty different roles, as a combat unit vs an economic damage type unit.

[beelee]

@black_elk yea i guess i could give A0C5 Bmbr a +2 from AB so it can hit Berlin from London. Might have to give the Luftwaffe an extra Ftr to protect Berlin.

I can't remember why they didn't get M8, I think it was so you couldn't take off from E US and hit Europe. Could make a different AB for E US that wouldn't give that extra range.

for OOB map

[beelee]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

But take that up to move 6 or more, and the player (just like the HardAI) has a lot of possibilities to puzzle out

yea that's why i like your A0C5 Bmbr as a no HP in regular combat. Still have to worry about facilities but they have built in defense even without FTR protection, so gives em a chance to hit back.

Map keeps looking better and better

Edit
Really think them being able to Air Battle at 1 in 12 would be the cat's meow. I like moving the Bmbrs around the board myself

[Black_Elk]

Yeah that could work I'll admit I keep waffling a bit in terms of what sort of actual game to try and create lol.

Initially my thought was to create a baseline templet that wasn't attached to any particular game, but conceived more as a map creator's resource. When doing that, certain divisions recommend themselves more than others. Like for example, it doesn't really make sense to remove lines and collapse TTs for that, because that just makes it harder for someone to come along later and modify in a sensible way. If for example, the number/shape of territories are defined in terms of occupation zones at some specific point in time for a specific game, that baseline will be less useful generally, than one which shows many more lines, but where those can simply be erased later, once someone knows what they actually want to achieve with it. But then I'm already like halfway along in the process of ignoring a lot of that stuff, to just make the map for the requested scenario lol.

I'll use Italy as a quick example. So the modern state has what something like what 20 provinces? If I draw all 20 of them in the baseline templet, then a map maker can come along later and decide like "OK I want Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria to be a single tile in my game" or "I want Tuscany and Umbria to be a single tile for my idea" etc and they will know how to get there by just erasing lines. If instead I start with say the Gothic line or the Gustav line, because it makes more sense for the specific WW2 game we have in mind, that's cool, but it's use is then much more limited. Basically for the exact sort of reason Cernel mentioned. If I show you first where Piedmont is, or Lombardy or Liguria, then you can know "OK that's Turin, that's Milan, that's Genoa" etc and they'll have a better sense of how to attack and redraw the baseline for their specific idea.

You could do the same thing in the Balkans as well, and that's probably an even better example. So like do we want a broader region that shows Dalmatia, Panonnia, Bosnia etc or do you want to see a divided Croatian rump state where the lines fall according to occupation zones in the 1940s? See what I'm saying.

This is my main dilemma for the generic baseline thus far, because the more information I erase at this point the less adaptive it is for other uses. I mean conceivably we could draw a baseline that works for anything from like the 16th century on probably, provided we do enough mini regions lol. But then if we get sucked into the minutia of "that tile is too small" or "that line/ownership doesn't quite make sense for November 1941" or "that place isn't far enough from the other place for tanks, or too far for strategic bombers" etc then it's sort of a different convo right. Cause then it's about adapting the template to a specific purpose rather than trying to make a generic one.

One of the things Hepps did when constructing 1914 game out of the Domination baseline, was that he created circular TTs or more abstract blob TTs, that were essentially cities. So sorta vaguely you'd have a regional province and then some adjacent urban center next to it (just going off his labelling I mean) that sorta abstracted many regions. But that definitely makes it trickier for me to go in and repurpose now, as I'm basically adding back information and redrawing a lot of lines, where they wouldn't make sense for 1941 compared to 1914. Drawing is a chore, whereas erasing is much easier, provided you understand the referents at the start. Part of me wants to go in and just break up Europe by like provinces/counties or whatever, so people could create pleasing shapes/combinations out of them, but then that's going to take forever again lol. So I don't know. I guess I can be happy enough that I got a set of Global divisions that felt fairly decent. Perhaps 1 baseline templet to rule them all was a bit too ambitious heheh.

I think we should make this one the best we can for WW2 I suppose, with that start date and that sorta playscale, and if people want to adapt it for other stuff down the road, they can figure out what needs to be redrawn to adapt it lol.

That one has a blocking that seems somewhat more sensible for me, in terms of the Balkans and such. I think the only reason to consider giving Germany that portion of Thrace is just so they have a tile somewhere in the Med. I think I'd prefer to give all of Greece to Germany just for that reason maybe, although I guess it depends who controls Bulgaria and those minors, or Vichy, whether that goes to G or Italy. Just seems like it would be nice for Germany to have a toehold down there at the outset haha. Here for Japan I selected the next yellow down in the web palette, just for something slightly less vibrant. More Ochre/Mustard than Yellow, little easier on the eyes maybe hehe.

Best Elk

[beelee]

@black_elk looking way sweet ! Glad you included Thrace. Maybe someone will do a Spartacus one

[Black_Elk]

Hehe right! On

So here is the same, but with Greece under German control. I think it actually looks cool both ways for a visual balance, so I'm not sure which is best lol.

To the question about assigning control of say Romania or the Balkans states, that might not be a bad idea, if only for the fact that (due to A&A gameplay) Italian units are likely to end up on the Eastern Front anyway for can opening type stuff. So in that sense, if say Hunagary/Romania were assigned to Italian control, it might make that seem less weird. Not that Italians didn't fight on the eastern front too, but you know what I mean right, with the checkerboard coloring that tends to happen. If that's an unavoidable reality, it might be nice to just say well those aren't just Italians but Romanians/Hungarians etc too.

Any thoughts on how to subdivide the Med Sea Zones?

I'm pretty sure we can get another SZ into the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian, or split the sz around Greece into Aegean and Ionian zones or something. Then try to get those to split across some of the Islands, like Crete and Sicily/Sardinia.

Not sure about the stuff around Africa though. Like if we want to try to get another horizontal division going there for a bypass/transit sz or for convoys, or just keep it to mainly verticals?

If I shift Malta a bit to the right, we could break the Libyan sz in half and have Malta riding that line. Basically we'd have a SZ for Tripoli and then another for Tobruk, which might be fun.

Or nearby, I think the Black Sea is large enough to divide horizontally was well for 3 or 4 zones instead of just 2, which might make that sz a bit more interesting even with the Bosporus closed.

[beelee]

@black_elk Going by the oob map, if you split the Malta zone vertically to meet the Sicily one by moving Libya/Tobruk slightly west, so they'd all line up, would be cool imo.

That way, using G 40 rules with NB boost, one couldn't move from GIB, S France to Egypt or vice versa in one move/turn

Edit
Ahh ... yea what you said above lol

[beelee]

@Black_Elk i like your more generic approach and let people adjust as desired, as opposed to hardwiring it one way or another too much

[Black_Elk]

So for the Channel and the Med etc how about something more like this?

Basically the idea there is to give the Regia Marina a few fall back points. You know, instead of just getting blown out of the water instantly like in Global hehe. Or to have at least a few cat and mouse type zones in there. Or for the Channel I thought we could maybe do it that way to sort of break it up without messing with the air transits too much. Kinda gives the low countries more of distinct flavor from the Channel/Normandy sz.
Anyhow, let me know how it feels. I can dive back in on it wherever.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/tugjcvsb5y106rl/TripleA_4k_Domination_1941_painted_more_sz.png?dl=0

[beelee]

@black_elk nice I wonder if that might be one too many off Algeria ? Be nice to still hit GIB to Malta in one turn G 40 wise. And you couldn't hit Italy from the Atlantic still. Of course, as you said, it'd be easy enough to erase.

Guess i"m thinking two things at once lol

[Black_Elk]

@beelee You can still do the Gibraltar to Malta thing, you just have to fly through the Majorca sz instead of going through the coastal Algerian subdivisions. I was thinking it might be fun to have a zone inserted there for like Axis early invasion in that part of N. Africa, or for when the Allies make their landings.

I tried to put in a few shortcuts like that in various places, just so it doesn't turn into a complete slog. That was part of the dilema with Italy too, cause too many breaks and their reach gets nerfed. I couldn't find a great way to bisect Sicily that I liked, so I did it for Sardinia instead, which was probably more important anyway, for the King at least lol.

[beelee]

@Black_Elk like the way way GIB Norway is 2 turns now too. I guess the Azores already did that. Makes that Normandy NB more important. Maybe G want's to fight for it a bit more ?

Edit
Holy Bong Water Batman ! Haven't looked at the Atlantic in a while lol Lotsa of fun to be had there

[Black_Elk]

Yeah it just seems like everything is a bit of a tradeoff. Just based on the ideas floated thus far it seems like the proposed Domination game is quite a bit different than say Global. With a completely different playscale. Like it'd be hard to say, "it's just Global or AA50 but with way more TTs and SZ." Especially if units are behaving differently or there is upkeep or many of the other suggestions. It just becomes a pretty different game altogether at that point. Though honestly when dividing up the map like this, I can't help but think it would be fun to play something like this using the bare bones rules of G40 or AA50 or 1942.2. You know, where the new strategic interest basically being the map design, and all the familiar being basically the units. Though that might not satisfy the real desire laid out in the OP. I guess I'm still just defaulting to what I think looks cool, since it's hard to say what it will transform into once the Unit roster and the Economy and the starting forces are added into it.

[beelee]

@black_elk that's why this map is so badass. it can do multiple things lol

Edit
Ah yea can still hit Malta in 3. Wouldn't want me for a navigator lol

[Black_Elk]

I wonder, just since we've been kicking around ideas about the range on aircraft, and since the G40 templet assumed Air Bases or Naval Bases giving at least a +1.

What if we instead went with something rather simple. Like units can just get +1 (ships) or +2 (aircraft) but only on Non Combat movement? That would preserve the ability to transit units for reinforcement purposes, though not necessarily for running attacks. Seems simpler to me that having a gang of bases everywhere.

Here it is with dark oceans, just to make those sz borders a bit easier to see.

[beelee]

@black_elk yea you'd have to player enforce though. I can't think of a way to do it splitting between CM and NCM. Maybe it'd be a fairly easy feature request ?

One of the ISU guys might take it on Probably not

i know you said the bases make it more complex, but I also found those A0C5 Bmbrs like more targets lol

[beelee]

@black_elk cool That water looks cold :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

[Black_Elk]

hehe it's funny, because the reality is that we don't perceive color in isolation, only in relation to the surrounding colors.

So simply by changing the ocean to a dark blue, the value of the others colors appears to change, even though they haven't (well except for Japan's mustard.) Just kinda one of those curious quirks of the color palette and whatever the overall read in value is going to be lol.

You can see the knock on color effect when I put em right next to each other hehe.

Yeah might be too hard to pull off the CM/NC thing for air. I guess I'm not opposed to Air bases on general principle, but it'd be nice if we could figure out something that's flexible and not too tricky. Might be a tall order lol

[beelee]

another thing that makes it more complex but from redesign ideas, is the base is required to build air or naval with capital ships and Bmbrs only built at home Factories

makes em a lot more important then

9) "FactoryLimited_ChangerMustActivate"
Air and Naval Bases now cost 12. All captured and newly constructed Minor Factories may only produce Artillery, AAguns, Armor, Mech Infantry, Mobile Infantry, Marines, Elite and Infantry. If a NB is present you may also build Subs, Transports, Escort Carriers and Destroyers. If an AB is present you may also build Fighters and Tac Bombers.
ABs are required to build Fighters, Tac Bombers, Bombers and Air Transports. Bombers and Air Transports may only be built in Factories on originally owned Territories that also have an AB. In addition, Bombers and Air Transports may not be built in the following territories: Kwangtung, Egypt, Norway, Alaska, West India and Korea. May not build at an AB with 3 or more damage.
Note: You may not place new Fighters on CVs. All air units may only be placed in the Territory that contains an AB as well as the correct Factory.
NBs are required to build all Naval Units. BBs, CVs and CAs may only be built in Territories with originally owned starting Factories. These Territories must also have a NB (Need not be original NB). May not build at a NB with 3 or more damage.
New Zealand receives a Minor Factory to allow ANZAC Air builds. Quebec receives a NB to allow for Naval builds. The Central United States receives a NB to allow for additional prewar Naval builds.
This addresses Capital Ships and Bombers being built in newly conquered Territories. It should also be noted that UK may only build Air Units in UK at game start. This makes the UK AB a prime Axis target.