Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[TheDog]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

anchor motif, Sub some kind of periscope

Great ideas I'm off to find placeholder icons

[Unternehmer]

Dear @Black_Elk,

what impassable territory on the map is located in the north of Ukraine?

If it is Pinsk Marshes, then maybe it is more reasonable to make this territory passable by infantry or vice versa by mechanized units on tracks and half-tracks?

If I understand geography correctly, Pinsk Marshes are an obstacle for any army. But they are not more an obstacle than any other major rivers and mountains in Europe like Rhine, Alps, Danube, Carpathians, Dnieper, Don, Volga etc.

For example,
Dnieper is the very wide major river in Ukraine and crossing Dnieper is a nightmare for any army in any month of the year whereas Pinsk Marshes are quite a normal passable territory in winter and summer.

[Black_Elk]

@unternehmer Yeah that's correct. It is meant to correspond to the Marshes tile in G40.

I'm not sure how I feel about impassible territories in general though, or for a custom game. "Impassibles" are map features introduced in Revised A&A, which didn't exist in Classic A&A, and they're a bit weird. In AA50 and 1942.2 there are quite a few, since every neutral is impassible there.

In Global the concept of neutrality becomes more of a tangle with pro-side and true neutrals, but even that game still has 3 completely impassible spots: The Sahara, the Himalayas, and for some reason Pripet which exists solely to separate Western Ukraine from Belarus.

For my part I don't like True Neutrals and Pro Side neutrals. I like attackable neutrals handled in the sort of standard TripleA/Pact of Steel way. Basically using PU value and static defenses rather than a hard rules type thing for that stuff. Though I suppose movement into/out of/through a tile can definitely be handled in different ways than either OOB or the more simplistic Attackable Neutral type rendition.

One of the admirable things Heppster attempted on his map was the inclusion of 'Seasons' into the gameplay, which would make movement in particular tiles 'slower' during a set time of year. Which might be another approach to such a spot.

The idea of seasons feels novel in A&A, but also somewhat difficult to track, requiring more visual information to be displayed on the map in order to clue the player in to what's happening. Also, in the case of the Hepps maps, with many more tiles than just those 3 mentioned in G40. Like he did the same for monsoons in the jungle tiles and such. A somewhat simpler method would be to abstract everything into a situation where Odd rounds=Movement Open, Even rounds=Movement Closed/Restricted, for any territory that one marks off as having seasonal movement restrictions. Basically keeping the cycles there as simplistic and abstract as possible. But then I worry that stuff like this may be biting off more than one want's to chew for a game like A&A.

Sometimes I think tripleA WW2 maps try to do too much at once. Like the seasons things alone would be sufficient for newness, but combine that with half a dozen other new things and it might be a bit much. I'm sort of an odd duck, in that I don't think G40 is the best A&A game ever. Like not at all, honestly lol. I think it tries to do way too many things, and moves too far away from the familiar A&A. The manual is a brick, and it's just not a very accessible game. I also don't think G40 is too complicated because the map is larger with more TTs/SZs, or because it has a few more unit types. That's not really the issue there. Rather G40 is too complicated because the ruleset involves too much tracking and bean counting, too many factions, too many one off situations/mechanics, and critically because the game is set in 1940 rather than 1941/42, with all that entails for an opener lol. Like pretty much my main preoccupations with G40 are more in finding ways to somehow streamline it and make it just simpler to get into or just to parse. But then people do love it, and I do too in my way. It's probably still our most popular game in tripleA, so even if it's not exactly my favorite favorite thing ever, I still wanted to make sure we had a revamp for that hehe.

For another gain of salt to toss on my salty pile here lol, I'll admit, I'm not a huge fan of basic timelines or timescales in A&A generally. The sort of thing that says "a single game round = 3 months" or whatever. This almost always breaks down immediately, with time moving either too fast or too slow for the gameplay to sync with the impressionistic vibe that the player's got going on in their head. I much prefer a scheme where this is left unstated, so that the player can determine what "Year/Month" it is, based more on the position of forces on the gameboard and what's actually happening with the gameplay, rather than on the game round. In my view this provides more flexibility for the players to suspend disbelief and abstract their playpattern to harmonize with certain timeline expectations in a more freeform way. In other words if the Normandy landings happen in round 7, then round 7 is June 1944. If instead the Normandy landings happen in round 11, then round 11 is June 1944.

You don't need to tie it to a hard timetable where 1 round = 1 year or .5 or .33 or .25 years, because the player can create this sense of a timeline in their heads and it's a lot less disruptive. To put it another way, players shouldn't feel like they're running slow and way behind schedule, or playing into the 1960s simply because the endgame goes on longer than expected. The way I see it there is only one time that really matters, and that's the start date of the opening round. If the playpattern for that date feels right in the opener, meaning the playpattern and opening moves fit that sense of a "starting point" that's all you really need. The player will supply everything else in their imagination, and it's better when this isn't hindered by an hourglass that could only ever be a distortion anyway, since the game is turn based hehe.

I don't know if my take on that stuff is a majority view though. Many tripleA map designers seem to like the idea of attaching a game round to a set length of fixed time, but I just think it inevitably comes unhinged. As soon as you state the timeframe in terms of game rounds, something on the gameboard will happen to shatter that impression. So I like something that's more binary on/off, if one wanted to include such a feature for restrictions on army movement in spots like the Marshes, or the Desert, or for some of those Sea Zones in the Arctic or whatever.

As Cernel mentioned somewhere, I think earlier in this thread, virtually no territory on the gameboard would have been truly impassible for a modern army, and there are mountain passes and such going back to ancient times. Just like it's hard to imagine Spain or Turkey being totally impassible based simply on a political situation. It might be more costly and logistically challenging sure, but not really an invisible wall like the game tends to treat this stuff hehe.

The whole purpose of the Sahara seems to be just making Egypt a more critical tile, and to make it somewhat harder for either side to just sweep the African continent with a couple blitz moves like in Classic. The Himalayas seems to do something similar with China/India vs Japan's movement. Pripet seems to exist to force the Germans to split into 2 main stacks rather than just a single big ball of fury on the Eastern Front, but it's kinda slim even for that, and just sort of makes the importance of Bryansk and Belarus more pronounced relative to their neighbors. Not sure that people would even want to see stuff like that in a more subdivided map, but they exist here purely for the G40 adaptation.

Here is a quickie paintjob, showing White border lines and standard color fill for G40

Here's the same but with Black border lines, and punched up/colored borders. Basically you can change the opacity/gradient depending on how much of the terrain one wants to show through or how much color one wants to see on the borders vs interior of the tiles. Black lines tend to make the boundaries feel a bit more subdued, whereas white makes them pop a bit more. Some of it comes down to the value of the colors chosen (how light or dark they are, especially relative to the SZ color choice.) I'm not sure which presentation I like better, so I keep bouncing back and forth on that one. Also because it helps me to locate floating pixels while working hehe.

Looking at the way that one previews when downscaled I almost think something wider than 5 px might be better. It's basically that odd/even split thing again, when depending on the scale the machine will struggle to fill in a 1px gap. Since for the preview I had to go under 20%, some of those lines display slightly thicker than others in the preview. Or could just be the hard and fast way I did the baseline layer there, cause I didn't isolate the Ocean tiles like I should have they show some opacity changes which could be creating that visual effect. Not totally sure. I think as long as they don't completely disappear we're probably ok and I can clean up the final for either approach lol.

I also tried a version with White lines at Sea and Black lines on land, then another version that just showed colored borders with no interior fills for either color, just the terrain at 100% opacity, but I quite didn't like the way those carried as visuals. Just felt too frenetic and too patchy somehow.

I think most players would have clear preference for one or the other, either White boundaries or Black, sorta the same way they might like light blue or dark blue for the Oceans, depending on whether they vibe more on a Classic or Revised style palette overall. I think digital players will almost certainly prefer a color fill/gradient, since this is the main advantage of the digital game over the physical one where people have to use roundels to indicate ownership. Also for the whole "paint the map your colors" appeal.

I'll probably do at least 2 versions, one black lines and one white lines - and then probably 2 versions of the paintjob, one that has a more Digital play color fill, and another more Analog (Terrain) like the OOB look, just to keep everyone happy hehe.

The colors chosen for each nation here would depend somewhat on the desired opacity of the painted layer atop the terrain relief layer. The more opaque that painted layer is, the closer it will display to the nation's HEX color. Also the darker the color-value of that nation's HEX, the more the terrain layer underneath will read through it. For example if I make Germany 100% black, rather than 50% Gray for their HEX color, then the terrain in TT's they control will show through completely, and the German TTs will just look like whatever the terrain color is underneath, mostly dark green where they're starting. So it's a bit of a balance there. The closer the HEX color is to a midrange value, the better it tends reads in that sort of display, showing the difference in Hue more than Value/Sat. People have wildly different color preferences though, so I'd anticipate players may just change the HEX codes in mapProperties to suit their tastes there. So really we're just giving a default suggestion there, for something that the player should be able to change. The limiting factor there is mainly the unit tints, since I don't think tripleA has a built in colorize feature for that yet, and it's been a few years since the idea was first floated. Doing it manually can be annoying, just because of the sheer number of tiny images involved. Like you might take the time to open 30+ units in GIMP and colorize each one individually for one Nation, but doing that for each nation is a definite chore. I'd maybe try for 2 tint sets for each basic nation/color, and then just put those somewhere that players could quickly download them. So for example, if you want Japan to be Orange instead of Ochre, or Germany to be Blue/Gray rather than Black, you could just download that set and be good to go in a few quick clicks.

Also thanks for the feedback! That was big old ramble on my part lol, but just kinda sketching out my thoughts for some of that stuff, to see what resonates with others or if I'm way off base heheh.

Catch ya in a few!

ps. Also talking about the marshes made me realize that somehow the Bryansk connection is off lol. I thought I fixed it but maybe got lost in the shuffle. Basically just need a line to split that connection W. Ukraine to Bryansk cause right now the Ukraine TT is separating them. I'll fix it in the baseline and on the next pass.

Here is the corrected baseline with the Oceans painted back in. I caught a couple openings in a few spots so closed those up. I folded E. Prussia into W. Poland tile, and the stuff along the Gulf coast, just so it could match the OOB presentation. For Tibet I'd just make it part of the mountain tile there. Some extra islands are depicted that aren't really necessary, but they can just be folded into an adjacent tile I'd think. Just give a few more places to put some centers. I beefed up Smolensk and Volgograd a little bit as well.

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

Here's the Domination one to match
https://www.dropbox.com/s/khxkql58g73q1n3/Domination_1940_baseline.png?dl=0

[TheDog]

@black_elk
I notice that the Domination map has lots of extra SZ, this means ships will have to move 3, maybe 4.
I thought for SZ we were going for the same SZ as Global 40 ? So ship movement was 2.

I am not a A&A WW2 player, but my gut tells me that ship move 2 would overall be better.

[Unternehmer]

Dear @Black_Elk,

thank you very much for your feedback!

I am sorry, but I still don’t understand why Pinsk marshes are impassable when they are “much more passable” than Rhine, Carpatians, Danube, Dnieper, Don, Volga etc.

To my mind, “impassable territory” should only stand for real impassable territory (like the Sahara Desert) impossible to cross by any army. Impossible means “really absolutely impossible at any time of the year”.

Pinsk Marshes are passable difficult terrain only in spring/autumn and are passable normal terrain in winter/summer.

So, Pinsk Marshes are passable at any time of the year and are more passable than any major rivers or mountains in Europe. And of course, Pinsk Marshes are much more passable than any jungles in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

To the idea, that “Pinsk Marshes divide front in two separate parts”:

If Pinsk Marshes divide front in two separate parts, then this statement even much more corresponds to Rhine, Carpatians, Danube, Dnieper, Don, Volga etc.

For example, Carpatians really divide front in separate parts much more than Pinsk Marshes because Carpatians are always a passable difficult terrain whereas Pinsk Marshes are passable difficult terrain only in spring/autumn and are passable normal terrain in winter/summer.

[TheDog]

@unternehmer
Im doing my code thing over here
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3326/1941-command-decision-code
and will be using Black_Elk map.

The Pinsk marshes are 480 kilometres (300 mi) west to east and 225 kilometres (140 mi) north to south. This is taken from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsk_Marshes;
and so is this quote.
They often needed to build tracks with logs, over which they could pull light loads in horse-drawn vehicles.[6]

My take on the Pinsk marshes is Infantry can move through it, but anything else cannot.

[beelee]

@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

My take on the Pinsk marshes is Infantry can move through it, but anything else cannot.

Till there boots fall off heh heh

Yea, that seems reasonable. Can't remember, but I thought retreating commies hid in the marshes while trying to make there way back to there own lines, only to be sent to penal battalions for there failure. lol I could be wrong though.

@Unternehmer
I think Larry was looking a little more big picture without getting to detailed. Wanted to represent a more historical path for the Panzers.

Could very well be wrong on both accounts though . The cool thing is, you can use Elks map and change it from impassable or only for some units as Dog suggested or weather effects etc.

It's a Beauty and I dig it

[Cernel]

@unternehmer said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

Dear @Black_Elk,

thank you very much for your feedback!

I am sorry, but I still don’t understand why Pinsk marshes are impassable when they are “much more passable” than Rhine, Carpatians, Danube, Dnieper, Don, Volga etc.

To my mind, “impassable territory” should only stand for real impassable territory (like the Sahara Desert) impossible to cross by any army. Impossible means “really absolutely impossible at any time of the year”.

Pinsk Marshes are passable difficult terrain only in spring/autumn and are passable normal terrain in winter/summer.

So, Pinsk Marshes are passable at any time of the year and are more passable than any major rivers or mountains in Europe. And of course, Pinsk Marshes are much more passable than any jungles in Latin America, Africa, and Asia.

To the idea, that “Pinsk Marshes divide front in two separate parts”:

If Pinsk Marshes divide front in two separate parts, then this statement even much more corresponds to Rhine, Carpatians, Danube, Dnieper, Don, Volga etc.

For example, Carpatians really divide front in separate parts much more than Pinsk Marshes because Carpatians are always a passable difficult terrain whereas Pinsk Marshes are passable difficult terrain only in spring/autumn and are passable normal terrain in winter/summer.

The Sahara desert is not impassable. There are areas within the Sahara desert which are virtually impassable, but most of the Sahara desert is easily transitable. The main issue for the Axis was the near total absence of railways, but that is not the desert's fault.

I already explained it a few days ago:
@cernel said in Fortress World 1942:

• Do you think should Sahara Desert really be represented?

Not the desert as a whole, of course: only the sand-seas are virtually impassable. The main ones are El Djouf, Erg Iguidi and Chech, the Grand Occidental Erg (wich can be represented as a single sand sea together with the contiguous Iguidi and Chech), the Grand Oriental Erg, Idehan Ubari, Idehan Murzuk (there is a very slim passable corridor cutting through these two, the main hub being the city of Murzuk), the Ramlat Rebiana, the Great Sand Sea (which can be represented as contiguous with the Ramlat Rebiana, practically making the Ramlat Rebiana part of the Great Sand Sea). Another candidate may be the Erg of Bilma, but I don't personally consider it to be a proper sand sea, so I doubt I would have it as impassable, but it's disputable. Of course, also don't forget the salt flats, which are about as impassable as the sand seas. Obviously, the most important salt pan is the one south of El Alamein (which is continued eastward by an adjacent sand sea), which is nearby but not contiguous with the Great Sand Sea (as there is a small strip of passable land whose main hub may be the settlement of Bahariya). Also the one almost cutting Tunisia in two is obviously important. Moreover, don't forget to do the same for the sand seas in Arabia (two main ones and a sand sea strip which almost connects the two nearby Riyadh) and, of course, the about as big Taklamakan desert, which is actually two sand seas split by the Khotan river, of course. I'm thinking the only non-African very important salt pans are the one between Pakistan (of course, not called as such at the time) and what is now India near the coast and the one south-west of Afghanistan. All the other ones should be pretty small for the size of your map. Also I guess the sand seas between Ningsia and the Kansu corridor may be too small to worry about in a map like the one you have. Other impassables are the big lakes, of course. Three big ones in Africa, two in Europe, four in Asia (counting also the Garabogazköl), all the great lakes between the United States and Canada plus two or three other ones in Canada itself. I think South America has just a few small salt pans and no deserts, so I think impassables are not needed there (unless you want to do something about the Amazon, which would then require being consistent with similar jungles in other parts of the world), and I would say that none of the Australian deserts is really impassable, especially in a map like this one. A questionable one is, of course, the Changthang, which is, however, not impassable per se (but it has almost no population and virtually no infrastructures).

The "Pripet Marshes" could be represented with a quadripoint, by the way (and nothing would change for gameplay). I'm not suggesting it.

Marshes are highly disruptive of any normal line of defence because you cannot have trenches in marshes, so they did have the effect to split the frontline in two if the frontline ran through them. I guess the impassable nature of the territory is meant loosely to capture this effect.

[Black_Elk]

Yeah I honestly wasn't sure what people wanted for SZ divisions.

OOB Global has 128 SZ tiles. The old Domination map I made used in NML had 155 SZ tiles. Hepster's Power of Politics 1914 version has 220 SZ tiles and 38 Convoy circle tiles - one of the more divided up oceans I've seen in a tripleA world war map.

I haven't counted them, but I'd guess the above design has something like 200 SZ tiles, which I included mainly for Kurt I guess, since he wanted something similar to NML just with more divisions I think. If using more SZ divisions than OOB Global, there's also a question of how to number them.

In Domination I basically went Left to Right, Top to Bottom and numbered them all in a boustrophedon sweep like the older A&A boards. A&A Global 1940 did not yet exist when I started making the Domination idea with Surtur, so we didn't have that example to go off at the time. The first Pact of Steel game for tripleA was similar, in that we made that one like a year in advance of AA50 coming out, so it is similar in some ways to AA50, but in many other ways not so much lol.

G40 does the reverse for SZ labelling, since it begins the numbering at the Top Right of the map and ends at the Top left. G40 was the first A&A gameboard to change this. In Classic to AA50/42.2 SZ 1 was always in the Atlantic off Eastern Canada, and the count moved boustrophedon to the right, down and back up again to finish at Alaska. G40 starts the count at Alaska and moves left. It's a little weird in my view, but that's OOB for ya lol.

My thought would be to use G40 as the guide, but to do the labelling Alpha-Numeric for any new Sea Zones added in a more subdivided map. So instead of having Sz 1, Sz 2, Sz 3 etc. You might have Sz 1A, SZ 1B, then Sz 2A and Sz 2B, just to keep the overall SZ labelling familiar for players coming from G40, so that the SZ names/locations aren't totally different from OOB expectations.

If one just wants to keep OOB G40 sea zones with no additional divisions, that's relatively simple, cause it's just the eraser. I can isolate the two maps to only use the simpler Sz divisions but the more subdivided landmap.

I think there is also an issue of how to handle any extra Cash awarded for control of SZ stuff. If one simply makes all OOB G40 sea zones worth 1 PU, that's 128 extra PUs in play, but then there's a question of how those are assigned initially, eg who controls that money at the outset and how this might change the playpattern. I think it may be more expedient to use Europe/Pacific style convoys at higher values and just sort of insert them where it makes sense. But for me this is all still a bit fuzzy in terms of what people want hehe. I'm just trying to imagine unintended consequences that might bust it, to see how those might be avoided lol. Speaking of which...

So for the idea that certain Territories might be partially impassible, impassible only for certain unit types, or open/closed in some kind of alternating way by game round, I think that may work, but it also creates some potential dilemmas/exploits. Like what happens to units that end their turn in such a spot, or get cut off, and then whether that can be gamed in ways we don't really want? In other words, I don't think we want a situation where the Russians or Germans can move a large Infantry stack into the marshes, and then just post up there, having those units being immune from attack on the opponent's turn or whatever. Or similarly having a situation where the Sahara unintentionally becomes like the most valuable space in North Africa, but just in some weird gamey sort of way, where only infantry and aircraft can be involved in the fights to control it. It's hard to predict how stuff might be gamed out, but just trying to hold it in mind. Hepster created a whole system for 6 Seasonal Weather effects in the Power of Politics map, but the game file and notes are incomplete. I believe his idea was not to restrict the movement of forces into the tiles per se, but rather to have it effect the combat abilities of the units occupying those spots when a seasonal effect was active there.

As to why Larry and Kevin decided to include Pripet and make it impassible in G40 the way they did, hard to say. Beats me honestly. But it's definitely on the G40 gameboard, so that's why I included it. Though I tried to make it as thin as possible so as not to eat into the other surrounding TTs too hard heheh

[Cernel]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

As to why Larry and Kevin decided to include Pripet and make it impassible in G40 the way they did, hard to say. Beats me honestly. But it's definitely on the G40 gameboard, so that's why I included it. Though I tried to make it as thin as possible so as not to eat into the other surrounding TTs too hard heheh

As I said, it's not strictly necessary to include it as having a quadripoint in its place would give the same game-play. I'm not saying this would be something most people would prefer.

It looks like you already removed the also pointless Yukon Territory.

[Unternehmer]

@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

@unternehmer
Im doing my code thing over here
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3326/1941-command-decision-code
and will be using Black_Elk map.

The Pinsk marshes are 480 kilometres (300 mi) west to east and 225 kilometres (140 mi) north to south. This is taken from here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinsk_Marshes;
and so is this quote.
They often needed to build tracks with logs, over which they could pull light loads in horse-drawn vehicles.[6]

My take on the Pinsk marshes is Infantry can move through it, but anything else cannot.

Dear @TheDog,

please see on Wiki “Operation Bagration” and particularly the part “Bobruysk offensive (23–28 June 1944)”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobruysk_offensive

Issa Pliev's Cavalry-Mechanized Group (consisting of the 4th Guards Cavalry Corps and the 1st Mechanised Corps) was able to travel across the adverse terrain of the marshes without much challenges, and struck the German Ninth Army's southern flank.

If I understand English Wiki correctly, 2 full Soviet Corps with heavy tanks and howitzers were able to pass through Pinsk Marshes from southeast to northwest in summer 1944 without any problems, keep the battle order and have enough supplies to go on flanking offensive without any delay. And it took them only 2 days (24-26 June 1944) to pass through Pinsk Marshes and strike the German flank!!!

So, your take is:
@TheDog: “My take on the Pinsk marshes is Infantry can move through it, but anything else cannot.”

But as Wiki says, Pinsk Marshes can be easily simultaneously passed in summer by 2 full mechanized Army Corps at once in just 2 days!!!

[TheDog]

@unternehmer
I am no ww2 historian, but Operation Bagration/Bobruysk offensive was to the north east of the main marsh area, see map below.

As my scenario does not do seasons, that is summer, Im still going with passable to just infantry as that would appear to true for the majority of the year as a compromise.

[Unternehmer]

Dear @TheDog,

how do you estimate the size of the Pinsk Marshes on the @Black_Elk’s great map?

When I look onto your historical map of the Operation Bagration, I think it is more realistic for the Pinsk Marshes territory on the @Black_Elk’s great map to be 2 times less stretched from west to east and to be 2 times wider from north to south.

[TheDog]

@unternehmer Im not sure which territory(s) @Black_Elk had in mind to be the marshes, hopefully he can answer your question.

[Black_Elk]

I kinda pause the work on the map to just try to get a handle on the unit stuff, but we can tweak it for the marshes or make it as large or small as one wanted, or eliminate it entirely as Cernel suggested. But maybe something like this where we just pull a bit to the left and a little taller. Basically trying to keep as much room for Belarus and Bryansk and Ukraine for stacking.

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

Fidelity to the OOB game board is the only reason it's there. The thought being that players familiar with OOB G40 or Bung's current G40 map in tripleA, should be able to open this one, parse it relatively quickly to see how it's the same, without being too disoriented. OOB the Marshes tile is quite large both on the board and in Bung's, like it's bigger than Morocco lol, even though it doesn't need to house any units lol, and it extends to cover basically the whole border between 'Western Ukraine' and Belarus, which is maybe not aces for the labelling but is nevertheless what the game board does. I'd ditch it with a 4 point but then worried that might just confuse people. Like they'd see it's gone and think hmmm. I mean I did ditch Yukon but that was more cause I didn't like the grayed out look from the tile that only exists in 1st ed. People would just go by the Second Ed board by now, so didn't really seem needed, though you could add it back like in the earlier draft if one wanted I guess. To me the above felt (as many things do) like a sensible enough compromise for the marshes. Like if you wanted to have it just big enough to fit a few unit types you could maybe still squeeze em in there, but it didn't seem like a huge priority for the G40 scale game hehe.

[TheDog]

@Unternehmer
For my map, 1941 Command Decision, I will be using Black_Elk more detailed map. This is the territory for the marshes, one in the middle.

Dont be too bothered by the marshes size, from my point of view as long as they can hold 3 infantry types Conscript, Regular, Elite) without overflowing that is all I need and they are connected correctly to other territories.

Unternehmer you have probably realised, like me, that it is not easy squeezing, pushing, reshaping territories into the earths outline, then layering political and geographical borders to fit 9-ish units in, so it looks great for game play, go Black_Elk.

@Black_Elk
The end is in sight, again.
How many times have you heard that!

[Black_Elk]

Here's a quick example showing the G40 map in Europe with units at 150%

I had to index the image to get the filesize down low enough to attach it here on the boards, so it's a little choppy, but gives a sense of how things might look.

I think it looks pretty good with the tinted units. I added the control flags to help clarify TT ownership. I figure the flag could go wherever the production value label of the TT would go, for a splash of color and added clarity, esp in TTs that are empty of units to make it easier to see which power has ownership. I forgot to upscale the French flags there I guess lol, but something sort of like that. I think I'd still like to try and make a harbour unit that looks a bit more like a base, but worked well enough for a placeholder. I think a design that showed the naval flags might be cool, sorta like the ABs have the air roundel, except for the soviets hehe. I'll need to hunt that one down again cause it wasn't in the old folder. But anyway, something along these lines for a G40 look. Like we can play with the colors, but just for a general vibe.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Looking clean and very good! (nods approval)

Currently unit size is maxed at 125%, so you can get even more unit types or allies in the same TT without overflow.

[beelee]

@black_elk Looks way cool ! The French guys look like they are getting ready to surrender lol

This Map is HUGE ! :beaming_face_with_smiling_eyes:

[Black_Elk]

Right on!

Yeah I was wondering if there might be an upper limit on upscaling the units before we hit a snag. I guess that limit is 125% hehe

In a perfect world it'd be cool if the player could double the size of their units, since there's really not much difference between an upscale to 125% and an upscale to 200%, at least in terms of the fuzz you end up seeing.

Any size other than 100% and you'll see some blur, even rescaling with No Halo. Like it's just never going to look as good as it does with units at 100%, but the blur doesn't seem to get any worse the smaller or larger you go from there. Half as large, or twice as large, you basically get the same amount of blur. I honestly couldn't notice the visual artifacts from rescaling myself, unless the rescaled units and the 100% units are shown side by side. Then it's noticeable, but when you don't have anything to compare it to, they still look pretty good up to about 200%. It'd be nice if the units could just downscale automatically to fit the Calc or battle window rather than clipping, while still being extra jumbo for the map display, but sounds like 68px is as tall as it wants to let us go, so I guess that'll have to be the plan haha