Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[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.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Its a boring task and you have to pace your self, its looking good.

[beelee]

@thedog :smiling_face_with_sunglasses:

[Black_Elk]

Hehe right on. I meant to dive back in yesterday but got distracted by real life for a few. I'll chip away at it some more tonight probably for the labels. Meantime though I gave Germany another pass on the baseline to blob the TT lines there a bit by ditching some nodes. Just a seemed little busy with those lines compared to most the surrounding lines, so I tried to get rid of some of the jagged edges.

I went back to a few more regions around the main Berlin-Brandenburg tile. I could see a few ways to break it up with some more abstracted lines, but the advantage I see would be more adaptability for earlier/later timelines. Main areas that would throw a wrench for that are probably Eastern Germany, the Balkans, and Northern Italy, but with some shiftier lines I thought we might pull off something that could work for more alt scenarios. Maybe something a bit more like this?

Basically with a few smaller transit tiles as buffers between the main spots, but I think if we did the breaks a bit more like that, it'd be a little easier for someone to do WW1 or Cold War type scenario from the same map without really having to alter the baseline. You know like just reassigning different ownership to carve out a Poland or do a W. Germany/E. Germany thing for a cold war game, or reassembling an Austro Hungary from surrounding tiles for a WW1 scenario and the like. Since the Eastern front is pretty carved up, it seemed to balance a bit better visually to me that way. Not sure if that works you guys?

[Black_Elk]

OK just about got the TT labels all wrapped up.

I made a number of adjustments to the baseline as I was going along, like too many things to list, but I tried to fix some stuff that was bugging me or which still felt off. Seems a bit better to me now. Hopefully the central Pacific will be a somewhat more engaging theater of operations hehe. I also tweaked Alaska a bit cause IL thought it was too compressed compared to Greenland or whatever, so I noodled that out a for a while just so I could say I did. Some other stuff I shifted here and there as well, but I think we're just about in Goldilocks territory now. I still need to finish with the sea zones and do the As and the Bs and such there, but least the TTs are nearly finished. That took forever lol. Like a proper hot minute for GIMP to save out an image, more like an hour actually, just to complete the layer for all the label entries, but there ya go...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/96mbs0smq6ylew8/Domination_1940_painted_labels.png?dl=0

Here it is previewed at 25% in Indexed color to get he filesize down. Shows how a 40pt font would display when scaled out to a quarter the size. For me it's borderline, but still fairly legible at a glance. Everything reads pretty clean at 50% which I figure is how many people would probably play. I did the borderlines in black for the label key here, so that the names would be easier to read. Labels in white so they'd pop a bit more.

I'll start typing em out in the txt file tomorrow once I finish all the Sea Zone stuff. I'm debating whether I want to type out designations for those beyond the numbers, cause that'll probably take a while lol, but might be nice for flare. I don't know, we'll see how much juice I have left in the tank tomorrow hehe.

I'd be amazed if there wasn't at least one or two typos, so I imagine I'll be going back to fix something somewhere when I transcribe them again in the txt file, but it felt pretty good just carrying it this far along on the all nighter haha.

Anyhow, let me know what you think!
Catch ya next round!

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Awesome work !

I will check the spelling when I get the text file.

[Black_Elk]

Right on! I found one already lol. I updated just now. I'm sure there's bound to be a few

Hopefully won't take too long to transcribe, just kinda tedious hehe. I'll do the sea zones first, cause I'm sure I'll notice something when laying those down.

I'm already thinking about making a WW1 themed 54px unit set, just to have it, cause I think the map could work for both periods. A Cold War game could probably build off the WW2 unit set for something more 1950s or 60s, just with more early jets and such probably, but for WW1 it'd be cool to see a Frostion style set for that.

Sadly the 1914 file I have is incomplete, as it lacks almost all of the units. I'm not sure if they were ever created? I seem to remember some posts that showed some Americans and Brits at one point, but Hepps only sent me the stuff for Germany. That might be enough to get started for a Central Powers upscale at least though. There's certainly a bunch of flags ready to go lol. Perhaps we can get some aces high action going with the biplanes and such if people are interested? But that's for another night. We'll get this WW2 one up off the ground first, and then do some rewind to blood and mud in the trenches somewhere down the line. It'd be a shame for the killer Cav unit not to trot it out eventually lol.

This is what I have left over at 48px... Though there's probably a fair bit in some of the other WW1 mods too that might be worth revisiting, like to do a tinted set similar to the one we got going for WW2. When I finish the current map I'll do a 1914 style paintjob just to see how the baseline holds up for that sort of vibe.