Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Schulz]

@black_elk

I've always though somethings should be really done by out of box thinking to make the Pacific/Chinese fronts as interesting as European/North African fronts in WWII scenarios.

1. China is not really enjoyable country to play with for me. Its due to having only one front and lack of Chinese naval aspects. If China designed too strong then it would further discourage Japan to fight in the Pacific. A very weak China would serve only as a speed bump which wouldn't make sense. And the Chinese front was very stable until late 1944 compared to other fronts.

2. Unhistorical Japanese-Soviet front also discourages Japan to fight in the Pacific.

3. Naval units are too expensive whereas there is usually no money in sea zones, pacific islands are not much worth and distances between factories are too great in Pacific.

[Black_Elk]

No doubt hehe

Like I can understand the logic laid out in the manual for China rules OOB, but I don't think they're terribly fun for the gameplay, and I'm not a big fan of different rules for different factions. Especially since I liked the old handling in Classic, that didn't treat different parts of the map differently, but just found a simple way to approximate a front with the US controlling that part of the board.

I mean part of the typical rationale offered for why the IJA couldn't get a Siberian invasion going, is cause they had like a million heads tied down fighting in China, but it's typically a blowout with Japan going Mecha Godzilla stomp immediately lol. For me it's like, does it really matter if China has a regular type mobilization of forces, and can buy an occasional mech or artillery unit if they think they can afford it, or even a tank or gulp a destroyer? lol I think they could probably be made into a more regular faction and it wouldn't break the disbelief.

I'm kinda weird maybe in thinking the Japan Soviet conflict is fun to keep on the table, like it's sorta baked in to all the A&As, but it really requires the USSR getting more than a Mongolia bonus to keep Japan from just taking shots along the coast. I've tried to do different spins on the NAP, but have never found one that I really liked. I think a dynamic that has Russia reinforcing China and making that part of the main front there works, cause you can imagine it like Soviet aid, but the border clashes between like Russian and Japanese tanks going down in the Far East feels over and done with by 1940. Anytime the whole dynamic of the entire game hinges on Japan marching across everything up there is pretty goofy in every version of A&A. But I don't know, it's still fun to have that be an option, just not the go to. I'd start by adjusting the TT values of the islands and the production rules surrounding them to make the central pacific more of a draw. You can get a lot done that way. Also if the USSR isn't so weak that Japan can just cut them in half by driving north would help too. I think it could definitely be approached in different ways. In general I like it when everyone is sort of playing by the same rules, and to try and get things going in the desired directions by just adjusting production values and starting forces and the likely deadzones, but the Japan Soviet Union dilemma is a big one. The handling in G40 I don't think was super satisfactory, so there's gotta be another approach that would work.

I also like the idea of a Japanese campaign vs ANZAC being more viable. Like they added the faction, but the draw just isn't there, since it's not a very useful springboard and not valuable enough compared to juicy stuff for Japan. I mean basically you just want a situation where Japan is fighting China, the USA, ANZAC and the British in India/Burma over a situation where they're just trying to break Russia as fast as possible to help Germany and team Axis to win the game heheh.

[Schulz]

@black_elk

What about making Japanese land units expensive and naval units cheaper? This would discourage Japan to advance inland Asia too deeply. Splitting Japan can be another alternative.

[beelee]

@black_elk yea more dough to the Islands helps the most imo. Making China a little stronger and limiting movement to 1 in soviet far east and china helps as well.

Oztea added an AA Gun to his 41 setup. A small but potentially impactful piece. Usually good for at least 1 air kill

[beelee]

@schulz cheaper Naval Units would definitely help
For everybody

[TheDog]

@beelee said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

cheaper Naval Units would definitely help
For everybody

As it turns out your wish is my command

Its actually down to the way I point units, its not based on the A&A way. The PU cost comes from my Fantasy & Shogun maps and its the same method.

[beelee]

@thedog

[Black_Elk]

Here it is with a quick 1940 paintjob, just cause I already had that one mapped out from earlier. I updated the baselines to remove the unnecessary minor lakes just for the cleaner view.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dddwznw5ix9m41x/Domination_1940_painted_terrain.png?dl=0

I was going to start dropping in the labels tomorrow, probably beginning with the sea zones. For the territory labels we're probably looking at a 40 pt font for the 16816px display. At 40 pts I can read something with serifs like Times New Roman down to 25% just about. Like it's tiny, but it still reads. I think that should fit most TTs. Much smaller than 40 pt in the font size and the characters start to become illegible or blurred out when zooming way out so I think that's the floor. Will see how it looks when I get to that part.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Are you going to put the TT labels on their own layer of the svg?

You could just use numbers as the TT labels on the map and give me a text file list with all the numbers and TT names, then you dont have to worry about font size and fitting the name in the TT.

As I was thinking to reduce visual clutter not to display the TT name on the TT. It will show in the status bar.

[Black_Elk]

Wasn't planning to make it part of the gamemap itself, just an image for a key. I think the display will be a lot cleaner if it's just a hover over w/ cursor rather than drawn on. Especially in territories that are thin and tall and also a mouthful, your Bessarabias and whatnot hehe. I can number them if you think it's helpful, but I was just going to leave them blank in the main map view, like you say, for less clutter. There wouldn't be enough room to dance the units around them anyway I wouldn't think. Like they'd just end up illegible anyway from that I'd wager lol

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Ok just the TT text file, it saves you time.

I will ask Google, then you if I'm unsure where a TT is.

[Schulz]

But the problem is reducing naval unit costs would render air units very cost ineffective against naval units. Therefore air cost will need to be reduced as well.

But cheaper air units would make mobile land units very cost inefficient.

The only way to reduce naval costs while maintaining the balance of air-land-sea units is IMHO requires new costings and stats. For example;

Inf: 2/3/1 3ipc
Armour: 4/4/2 5ipc
Fighter: 2/2/4 4ipc
Destroyer: 1/2/2 3.5ipc
Cruiser: 3/3/2 5ipc
Bomber 1/1/6 6ipc

They are maybe not the best costing, my point is it is not easy to find correct costs and stats after reducing naval unit costs.

[TheDog]

@schulz
You might be correct, we will have to play test.

If you have not already, download this
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/3326/1941-command-decision-code?page=1

Look at Help> Unit help to give an idea as to pu costs and stats.

It has evolved from that version and my play test is now on a random map placement to see what the AI buys and how it plays.

[beelee]

@schulz yea you'd have to adjust air costs as well. i should try and find Baron's pricing change. It's probably hiding somewhere in the A&A sites history.

He revamped the entire unit roster. I never tried it but looked promising. Being a math professor, he had everything crunched down to the nth lol

[Black_Elk]

Yeah I always thought Baron's unit roster ideas for a total conversion had a lot of promise, or at least he always seemed to be putting in the legwork and crunching those numbers to really let you know where the price should land lol. If you can find it I'd be interested to see what he settled on in the end.

I'm kinda wishy washy with it myself, since there are so many potential unit interactions and so many different directions one could go, depending on how far you're willing to take it with changes and what the floor is going to be for the entry level hitpoint in whatever class/unit type.

To me changing the cost of individual units nation by nation would fall into that category of different rules for different player-nations, which I think makes things rather harder to parse. Particularly if the game aims to change many other things at the same time, like say the map itself or the production spread or the starting distribution of forces or the victory conditions or whatever else. Since A&A is already pretty complex for a boardgame when it comes to the units, I feel like that can become a pretty tall order. The situation I'd prefer to avoid is one where the new player has difficulty determining what the opponent's units can actually do, or has trouble figuring out the TUV at risk in any given exchange.

When the unit roster is universal, it's a lot easier to read the board at a glance and I think that helps, in the same way I prefer to see the PUs on the map rather than National Objective bonuses for trying to keep track of the income/economic game, I think I lean the same way when it comes to units. One of my frustrations with Iron War, and many tripleA games honestly, is when you first open the game and don't really have a clue what you're looking at or how the various forces measure up. It tasks the player with keeping track of not just their own situation, but every other faction's unique rules/unit-interactions as well, and sort of requires the player to be everyone and once. Like holding all that in mind at the same time, rather than just "pick a nation and go, since everyone plays the same" or where you can gauge what every one else has going on based on your own stuff hehe.

I'm not sure players typically learn how to play from the Unit Help notes, I'd wager they do it more from the purchase screen and playing out the opening turns, either vs the AI solo or in solitaire mode. So for that I think things work a bit better when you don't have a ton of wild cards in the mix. Like maybe one or two you can slide in, but if everything is tweaked that's a bit different. I also think transparency/universality with the units is part of the charm of A&A, compared to other games like Total War or Hearts of Iron that are more RTS 4X oriented rather than a boardgame based on miniatures and dice. You know, how in those games, the player almost never knows exactly how their forces stack up or what's going to affect the outcome, or what variables might be in play there distinguishing one faction's forces/armies from the next faction's. That stuff is fun in a different way there, and keeps ya guessing and save scumming I guess, but part of the reason I dig A&A is that it's a bit more straightforward and easier to see what's what, even if it's sorta gamey at bedrock hehe.

In fantasy variants using similar mechanics its a bit different, because I don't have any expectations going into it. You know if it's an Elephant or a Dragon or a Trebuchet, it's like OK whatever this all new anyway, but if it's Tanks and Fighters and Transports and such from a more familiar WW2 A&A type setting, I think they are more expectations going in and a greater desire for some touchstones and stuff to cling too.

[Black_Elk]

ps.

@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

@black_elk
Ok just the TT text file, it saves you time.

I will ask Google, then you if I'm unsure where a TT is.

Ok cool cause I didn't get terribly far hehe.

Here's a very quick example though of 40 pt font in case you did want to do a display option down the road, or if we get a display labels on/off type feature at some point.

Immediately I was confronted with the dilemma of doing regional/provincial labels or more of a "pick one" metro and amp it up, or else to lean more Hollywood movie in the up naming conventions hehe. Since it's bound to be a bit arbitrary. But for some reason when I wrote them out, TTs with names like N. Italy, Italy, S. Italy etc didn't look terribly compelling. Then I tried it just picking a large metro designation that people would be more familiar with seemed not half bad, where the player can supply the et al and it's just kinda understood that something is highlighted. Like you can call it Brandenburg-Mecklenburg-Saxony or just Berlin and have it kinda like shorthand. Or then, when I say Hollywood movie, it's like take a spot like Picardy, I write Picardy and Flanders or Amien or whatever and it felt more WW1 all quiet somehow, whereas when I typed out Calais suddenly I drifted towards thoughts of Patton the movie or whatever hehe. So maybe that has a kind of appeal too, like focusing on that element at play in some TTs? Other spots like Normandy you gotta just call Normandy I figure, and not like Rouen or whatever, but it really is sorta like pick 1 out of half a dozen options for any given spot . So I don't know. Especially if we wanted the option for regional labels ovetop somehow, you know where it says UNITED KINGDOM, or FRANCE, or GERMANY, like that in all caps above the other stuff. There's definitely quite a few labels I think we could change from the 1914 map hehe. I'm sure it'll take a hot minute

Anyhow, like I said, just a quick example of serif font at that size. I did it pain white for simplicity. I indexed the image as well, and it seemed to hold up alright for that with the text and border blur. I put down a few different examples, of how one could ride the line, or abbreviate. You know like whether you want to write out Denmark or Corsica or clip with a period. I tried to go inside the TTs just to see what kind of display we'd have for characters at that size without switching the angle on the txt, just keeping it on the level. Another option for smaller islands or coastal territories would be text outside the TT like into the ocean field. Bung's sorta bounces between the two options, but at 40 pt you can fit a fair number of characters in most spots. I was able to write out Gibraltar inside the TT, so it must be at least a little bigger now right lol. Anyhow, we could probably do a separate label layer at some point if there's a way to get that to toggle differently from the relief details eventually, but I wasn't going to sweat it for the time being.

I definitely agree, keeping the names (whatever they end up being) in the status bar/hover over would be my preference for the gameplay. Not as busy visually with only the units showing, rather than units standing on top of the letters and all the rest hehe

[Black_Elk]

Heheh as soon as I started in with the sea zones I had to make a map correction, cause sz 1 didn't connect to 2 on the G40 map lol. Only the most obvious of goofs. Just updated the files for the correction

ps. I caught another bit of weirdness on my G40 in the South Atlantic. Just fixing that up now.

It's funny cause the G40 map has a near perfect boustrophedon pattern for the Sea Zones across the Pacific right until that skip from sz 52 to 53. Then it's like they forgot New Zealand and had to double back or something, instead of just continuing the count onto the Europe side, they cut back to the right. If they'd just done it a little differently they could have avoided that skip and maybe kept it going, but it's like they just gave up. And then when you get to the Europe side it starts skipping around all over lol.

Anyway, I followed the G40 count obviously. Here's how it looks with a quick SZ number key, just to clarify what's going there with the main zones.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xjnfpt8wug33ncq/World_War_II_Global_1940_baseline_sz_labels.png?dl=0

[beelee]

@black_elk yea I always wondered why they did it the way they did lol You're going along and then it's like well where is it ?

[Black_Elk]

@beelee No doubt! I think they could have done it in such a way that it at least only skipped over 1 or 2 tiles at most, instead of jumping far away. The skip from sz 81 Red Sea to sz 82 along the West African Coast was another surprising one. Like why not just carry the count from the Pacific side of the board to the Indian ocean and have the Europe map begin the count at the bottom right instead of the bottom left? Weird hehe. Part of me wanted to see if I could make it better, but fidelity to the G40 board seemed more important even though it the numbering there feels fairly arbitrary. Kinda raises the question of whether it's even worth keeping the numbers the same on the Dom map heheh, though I suppose people are used to the Global one by now.

I realized while trying to type stuff out in txt that it was actually pretty hard for me without the visual. Might be just the way my brain works, but I kept having to close out notepad to double check and kept missing things. So instead I just started label layer in GIMP. This seemed expedient because it saves out each entry as a separate layer, so when I finish I can just go down the list and control c/v to paste them into the txt doc one by one so I don't miss anything or screw myself with typing errors. Then I'll just alphabetize them like I did for Hepp's stuff so it's easier to follow.

I got this far earlier today... so probably a couple more days and I'll bang it out I'd guess. I have the sz labels saved out in another layer so I can do the alpha-numeric thing with those.

As I was going along, I had the thought that if the labels aren't actually displaying, there's really no need to have the names be all super short. Like we might as well include more information just to kind of even things out, cause with the hyphen you can read it like an "and" as well, and just gives on opportunity for more insight. Players will just refer to whatever we put first, or whatever name we list that is easiest to abbreviate or type out, so more options might be good. I was winging it a bit here, so if we come up with something more thematic or just with a better ring, I'm fully game. I mean we can change anything really in terms of the labelling, but I just wanted to get us a way to at least start referencing it more easily. I did use a few compass labels North South East West N S E W, I think Cen. or Cent. for 'central' could be a kind of catch all. Tried that in a few spots, like if it was more of a metro name to have it followed by something more regional that way.

Anyhow, I'll update it again when I get further along. I hit the pause button right quick after finishing up Europe and the USSR cause that took forever. Most of the stuff in China can follow Bungs, Pacific should be faster since I can just follow my old Domination labels or Hepster's labels, and it's not as oddball as some of the WW1 themed stuff that was going in Europe and like the Ottoman empire and such. Africa might take a sec cause there's a fair bit there also needs adjustment from the WW1 stuff. Least I got a good bite out of it handled though.

Here I saved out a quick image of where I'm at right now...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l5ss19b5j2dw3yp/Domination_1941_baseline_labels.png?dl=0

[Schulz]

BTW I think there is another huge benefit of having unit costs close to each other. It gives more reversibility. Losing a battleship or bomber because of a random dice will be less severe.