Proposed Map: Domination 1941
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@unternehmer Not a bad idea, but I'm not seeing how you would do this nicely but by using an equal-area projection. You should be aware that, in doing so, Europe will be a very small part of the map. For example, you will have almost as many territories in Brazil or Australia as in the entire Europe.
The area of Europe (with European Russia) is 10.18 million square km, Brazil is 8.5 million square km and Australia is 7.6 million square km. Once you take out the irrelevant Komi and Nenets republics in the north of European Russia, Europe will be about as big as Brazil or Australia.
Still, this is not an actual board-game, so it is not bad having most of the map being virtually useless (because it is not actually taking space).
I understand you are not asking to apply this method everywhere, but, if you don't while using an equal-area projection, the alternative would be having bigger territories in non-key areas (like many maps already do, but even more extremely so than, say, WAW). -
@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
@black_elk
You have probably seen the method used below, but just in case you have not. A thick black line represents an uncrossable mountain range. It's easy to add later and maximising unit spaces, but it does not look good.
The image was taken from one of my early attempts at a Samurai map.
the moutains look cool
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Here it is with all the mountains removed
Some interesting points on the previous page. I can definitely see advantages to redrawing the entire globe with some kind of different scale for every TT in km, but then I'd also like to make use of this work I've put in over the years.
I mean basically I drew this thing out by hand. Hand and mouse, at any rate. There are easier ways to quickly produce a world or regional map by copy pasting satellite images or whatever, but to me it loses some charm doing that hehe. Everything that's a little off here, is at least a little off cause of my shaking hands or random cartooning anomalies or a hepps curve ball lol - but at least it's kinda original in that way, which I think counts for something. Clearly I'm partial, but if the choice is between scrapping it or noodling it across the finish line, I'd like to attempt the later lol.
Ps. Here, I just finally got around to reworking the French contours to match the new warp there. I put the basic regional divisions, so you guys could decide how best to subdivide or collapse them. I think whatever ends up happening there, the Germans should roughly balance (in terms of neighboring TT size) like where the fronts meet, just so both sides have enough room to operate.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yx2kasbwjb7tuxk/TripleA_4k_baseline_france.png?dl=0
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Oh also, here, I keep forgetting to do the draft examples it in white too, in case it's easier for people to see the border lines that way when it's smaller hehe. There ya go
Oh and one more thought regarding the relative power balance, or whether or not to allow Japan to attack Russia etc. On the one hand there is some interest in creating a game that follows a set historical sort of play pattern, on the other, it's fun to paint the map your colors through conquest, like in a SP type situation. It would be kinda sad if there wasn't the possibility of Globe trotting there, like Axis doing crazy stuff once their primary objectives are sorted. From what I recall the main reason Japanese couldn't execute a campaign into Siberia like the IJA were pushing is because they had so many dudes tied down fighting in China. So then they went with the Navy's plan right to sprawl across the Pacific vs the British and Dutch and US. But like I kinda dig the idea that Japan could choose to invade the USSR again, but it should have a domino type effect somewhere else. I think the main way to make it work is to give the Soviets production and money in the far east. Basically the opposite of the Classic board approach. By making the TTs more valuable and encouraging their defense, it makes it less of a simple prospect for Japan to just funnel unopposed there. Also with the USA more in the backfiend out of Alaska, I think you could set up a fighter transit that way to make it tougher for Japan to just blow out in all directions at once heheh. No soviet Co-location rules would be a bit of a double edged sword in that instance, but I think it could work for more realism. The alternative is that the game sorta defaults to a Risk form of play where factions aren't as tied down, but just immediately start growing in ahistorical ways. That can still be fun though. I just feel like it should happen more endgame.
Really what you need is a way to get the first few rounds to feel like they nailed the timeline, 1941, all the big plays and lead out from there. If you can get it so that stuff like Torch or Guadalcanal can happen in round 3 I think that's a good way to quickly get from a 1941-ish frame, to 1942 turning point time frame. Like anything that happens there could tilt one way or the other, so maybe you end up with multiple high castle alt realities by the end, but it still feels cool. I think the idea to frame out the technology as a core component is a fun approach, cause then you can get a vague timeline going from that too. But basically I think it should open with a couple set piece campaigns that make sense. So the idea of Japan just instantly flipping the script to burn the treaties and attack the USSR seems kinda weaksauce. I don't know if we need a hard rule for it though. I mean provided we have other ways through map production/starting unit design, to address the usual dynamic (the one that has Japan just gunning towards Moscow inevitably hehe) we should probably explore those if we can, and save an impassible zone or a non-aggression restriction as the last resort. Like if it still can't be made to work right and feel fun using those other methods.
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@black_elk yea i think theres plenty of ways to discourage an early JPN soviet war without hardcoding it. Making China a bit stronger and PU penalties for early DOW seem to work well imo.
Other ways one could approach it as well. Extra dudes activate like the Mongols in global, making soviet asia TTys 1 move only for land units, china too for that matter, etc ...
Just depends on what the mapmaker wants
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For sure!
OK so here is an example with Roundels.
It looks somewhat nicer when you go larger than 30% on the view. So here is the big map...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/erkn0bt72fad9pa/TripleA_4k_baseline_roundel_key.png?dl=0
And then at the preview scale. The forums would allow me to attach it at 30% but not 33, so I guess that's the max for the boards heheh.
I started with Frostion's set. It's pretty solid, but not exhaustive. I had to create a new flag for the USA, cause it was showing 50 stars rather than 48. I'll change the Soviet flag as well, cause the sickle is wrong there, though less noticeable because of the perspective. Italy also needs a crown. I'll have to double check, some of the others are alright I think, but some may need work.
Overall I really like his elliptical design concept. It makes it possible to display a more accurate banner, particularly for the British. In my mind these roundels would be purely decorative, not suggested as playable factions, but I do feel like they give the map/game a sense of being a more Global conflict. I think something like this could work in place of a VC star for example. It'd could have the same function, but look cooler. Or no function, but just look cool lol.
I'd like to cook up a few more - say for Singapore or Hong Kong, to round out Asia, or maybe Nigeria in West Africa and Free France in Equatorial Africa. Vichy could also be like that I suppose. In China we could do a more CCP flag long march for flare in that more northern tile, or Manchukuo last Emperor style lol. Or Mongolia or for any puppet power that has a key spot occupied at the start, if it makes sense, just for historical shine. Basically they could go anywhere that makes sense for stuff like that, but they don't have to be actually in the game unless one wants to view the key, if that makes sense. More of a decor type thing.
In Frostion's roundels the Allies all have a black elipse border. I think Platinum Silver might look better maybe, to pair off the Axis who are sporting gold, but not sure. These are pretty nice honestly. Right now it's basically just the belligerents and their puppets showing, but one could conceivably do it for Spain or Portugal or Turkey etc. if one wanted an alt War type scenario that allows the conflict to bleed over there. This technique could also be used to do that Soviet fallback Capital too. I'd maybe add Mexico too, just to have one on that side of North America etc.
I tried to avoid doing any duplicates, but we could also show an alt banner or seal that follows the same theme. So like one for Manila could work that way, or at Hawaii or San Francisco you could use the Territory flags as roundels for those secondary spots, the ones that aren't national capitals, but still important. Like New York could have their great seal, but DC gets the Stars and Stripes. Stuff of that sort. It's an embellishment, so it should be on a separate layer, but just to give an idea. I don't know that the ellipses necessarily need to be in perspective like that, but Frostion's were already finished that way at like 72 pixels, which just about works at this scale, so I included them for an example of what I'd like. I can either do them in that perspective style, or just a flat ellipse, either way. But if you're cool with it, I'd like to build on that work, since it's half finished already and it looks pretty clean, I think anyway.
Ps. @Unternehmer
if you like, it's possible to extend either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean almost indefinitely, to suit your taste. The way the breaks are set up, you can stretch horizontally pretty wide. The Med/Baltic is obviously more challenging, because that distorts the warp so much, but if you can tolerate separation at Gibraltar or Egypt or Denmark you could stretch vertically a fair bit there too. Just depends how picky you are with the shapes.
I'd agree that in general A&A totally subordinates the naval warfare aspect to transports and land. That's just a feature inherited from A&A and also why the map display is narrower at the oceans cause the middle of the sea just wasn't really as relevant for say AA50, which was the purpose of the initial projection draft.
The Fortress map just posted could probably get closer to what you want cause it shows many more tiles in the Oceans. Compared to this which currently has none heheh. But yeah, if you wanted it at say 21,000 wide to make a ton of blue for fleet carriers and such that's probably doable (maybe not on my laptop, but somebody's) otherwise you could just shrink the scale from 16000 down to something more manageable and then stretch the seas. Then carve up the east more to do that aspect.
I'm almost at the limit of the amount of work I'll likely put in lol. I'd like to dial the contours for all the regions, once the TT divisions are in place. Almost any tile could be morphed to look more accurate once we know what all the connections will be. But yeah, when it comes to SZ design, that's very specific to how the units will work. I'm sure Kurt can mull over that one. I just want to get a map done, so we can call it, and I can make a version of Global or HBG36 from it using the same base, but I'm happy to lend a hand for the Dom! Long as its still rolling in haha
Take care, and thanks for the ideas! catch ya next round!
Elk
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@black_elk
Just fell over this map, its huge, 29755x11442=340million px with 6px border, it comes from Terra Firma 1939 a TripleA map, its so slow on my PC, also it has too many TT for the UK blitz and the bomber raids on Germany.
Terra Firma 1939 FULL.zipYours is 13000x7850=102million px
Frostions Warcraft War Heroes is 9500x8500=81million pxI posted it for your reference, as you and this map maker obviously had similar choices and dilemma's.
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@thedog said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
@black_elk
Just fell over this map, its huge, 29755x11442=340million px with 6px border, it comes from Terra Firma 1939 a TripleA map, its so slow on my PC, also it has too many TT for the UK blitz and the bomber raids on Germany.
Terra Firma 1939 FULL.zipYours is 13000x7850=102million px
Frostions Warcraft War Heroes is 9500x8500=81million pxI posted it for your reference, as you and this map maker obviously had similar choices and dilemma's.
Actually, you can download Terra Firma from the repository.
Unless I'm missing anything, with 29755 pixels wideness and 11442 pixels highness, this is the biggest map ever in TripleA. Total pixels are actually 340,456,710.
The total number of zones in the game is 1515, making it the only game in TripleA having over 1,000 zones, unless I'm missing something (Are there other TripleA games having 1,000 zones or more?)
Unfortunately, it is not as historically based as one may expect it to be. It is bad that Jugoslavia and Greece are the same polity (as Italy was fighting against Greece for almost a year while Jugoslavia was still neutral), but I think the biggest absurdity goes to Poland, Lithuania and Czechoslovakia being the same polity in a game which is presented as being 1939 based (but actually must be starting somewhere between 1935 and 1937 (Then why it is called Terra Firma 1939?)), whereas historically Czechoslovakia was liquidated without any substantial war in March 1939 (and Poland itself, that at the time had a non-aggression agreement with Germany, participated in the invasion and partitioning of Czechoslovakia) and Lithuania was certainly not a friend of Poland.
It always upsets me when I see a map which is highly detailed and, at the same time, highly a-historical. I wonder what's the point to go into such details if at the end you are not actually improving historical consistency but rather making it worse.
It also does not present itself well by having numbers (instead of proper names) for the land zones, but I guess it is better than those maps (like NWO) which have very bad territory naming.
I doubt I'll ever play this map. Haven't ever seen anyone playing it, either. I wonder if @RogerCooper ever played it.
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@black_elk As far as I researched, Japan consider to invade the Soviet Union in 1942 if;
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Kwantung Army in Manchuria triples the size of the Soviet Far Eastern army.
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Germany captures the Caucasus and Moscow.
Basically Japan would never attack the Soviets unless the Soviets would on the verge of collapse. The Soviets wouldn't attack Japan either.
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@schulz Do you have a link to that? I thought the Germans taking Moscow was a sufficient condition for the Japanese to go at war with the Sovietics.
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@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
For sure!
OK so here is an example with Roundels.
It looks somewhat nicer when you go larger than 30% on the view. So here is the big map...
https://www.dropbox.com/s/erkn0bt72fad9pa/TripleA_4k_baseline_roundel_key.png?dl=0
And then at the preview scale. The forums would allow me to attach it at 30% but not 33, so I guess that's the max for the boards heheh.
I started with Frostion's set. It's pretty solid, but not exhaustive. I had to create a new flag for the USA, cause it was showing 50 stars rather than 48. I'll change the Soviet flag as well, cause the sickle is wrong there, though less noticeable because of the perspective. Italy also needs a crown. I'll have to double check, some of the others are alright I think, but some may need work.
Overall I really like his elliptical design concept. It makes it possible to display a more accurate banner, particularly for the British. In my mind these roundels would be purely decorative, not suggested as playable factions, but I do feel like they give the map/game a sense of being a more Global conflict. I think something like this could work in place of a VC star for example. It'd could have the same function, but look cooler. Or no function, but just look cool lol.
I'd like to cook up a few more - say for Singapore or Hong Kong, to round out Asia, or maybe Nigeria in West Africa and Free France in Equatorial Africa. Vichy could also be like that I suppose. In China we could do a more CCP flag long march for flare in that more northern tile, or Manchukuo last Emperor style lol. Or Mongolia or for any puppet power that has a key spot occupied at the start, if it makes sense, just for historical shine. Basically they could go anywhere that makes sense for stuff like that, but they don't have to be actually in the game unless one wants to view the key, if that makes sense. More of a decor type thing.
In Frostion's roundels the Allies all have a black elipse border. I think Platinum Silver might look better maybe, to pair off the Axis who are sporting gold, but not sure. These are pretty nice honestly. Right now it's basically just the belligerents and their puppets showing, but one could conceivably do it for Spain or Portugal or Turkey etc. if one wanted an alt War type scenario that allows the conflict to bleed over there. This technique could also be used to do that Soviet fallback Capital too. I'd maybe add Mexico too, just to have one on that side of North America etc.
I tried to avoid doing any duplicates, but we could also show an alt banner or seal that follows the same theme. So like one for Manila could work that way, or at Hawaii or San Francisco you could use the Territory flags as roundels for those secondary spots, the ones that aren't national capitals, but still important. Like New York could have their great seal, but DC gets the Stars and Stripes. Stuff of that sort. It's an embellishment, so it should be on a separate layer, but just to give an idea. I don't know that the ellipses necessarily need to be in perspective like that, but Frostion's were already finished that way at like 72 pixels, which just about works at this scale, so I included them for an example of what I'd like. I can either do them in that perspective style, or just a flat ellipse, either way. But if you're cool with it, I'd like to build on that work, since it's half finished already and it looks pretty clean, I think anyway.
Ps. @Unternehmer
if you like, it's possible to extend either the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean almost indefinitely, to suit your taste. The way the breaks are set up, you can stretch horizontally pretty wide. The Med/Baltic is obviously more challenging, because that distorts the warp so much, but if you can tolerate separation at Gibraltar or Egypt or Denmark you could stretch vertically a fair bit there too. Just depends how picky you are with the shapes.
I'd agree that in general A&A totally subordinates the naval warfare aspect to transports and land. That's just a feature inherited from A&A and also why the map display is narrower at the oceans cause the middle of the sea just wasn't really as relevant for say AA50, which was the purpose of the initial projection draft.
The Fortress map just posted could probably get closer to what you want cause it shows many more tiles in the Oceans. Compared to this which currently has none heheh. But yeah, if you wanted it at say 21,000 wide to make a ton of blue for fleet carriers and such that's probably doable (maybe not on my laptop, but somebody's) otherwise you could just shrink the scale from 16000 down to something more manageable and then stretch the seas. Then carve up the east more to do that aspect.
I'm almost at the limit of the amount of work I'll likely put in lol. I'd like to dial the contours for all the regions, once the TT divisions are in place. Almost any tile could be morphed to look more accurate once we know what all the connections will be. But yeah, when it comes to SZ design, that's very specific to how the units will work. I'm sure Kurt can mull over that one. I just want to get a map done, so we can call it, and I can make a version of Global or HBG36 from it using the same base, but I'm happy to lend a hand for the Dom! Long as its still rolling in haha
Take care, and thanks for the ideas! catch ya next round!
Elk
Going from Manchukuo to Moscow is 8 movements and from Berlin to Moscow is 7 movements.
Of course, the distances in Europe are going to be increased by virtue of making Europe relatively bigger and more detailed than most of the rest of the world (with which I've no problems), but I think the relative distances can be made some less inconsistent by simply removing that meaningless ultra-wide Sovietic territory adjacent to the north of Mongolia. This should increase the distance from Manchukuo to Moscow to 10. I mean, I get that distances are going to be distorted in favour of Europe since it is wanted to overrepresented an otherwise very small Europe, but I see no reason to make matter worse on purpose with a drawing that create a "bullet train" territory to the north of Mongolia (It almost seems like that is meant to represent the Trans-Siberian Railway, but I assume it is just the aftermath of removing the impassables).
If that territory north of Mongolia is meant to be an impassable, I guess it should not be colour-owned. Also, what about the Himalayas? Is it impassable? If so, why is it colour-owned by Tibet? By the way, Tibet was not a minor of China, rather an enemy of the same.
I'm also not sure it is necessary to represent the tiny territories of Jugoslavia directly annexed to Italy and Germany: they can be part of the Croatian territories which were factually partitioned about the way you show it.
The part of Jugoslavia eventually annexed to Bulgaria can be drawn bigger and that other small territory to the north of it eliminated.
In general, I would avoid having very small territories with respect to the average dimensions of the territories nearby, unless this is dictated by the geography itself (like in the case of Crimea). About this, now France has much bigger territories than Germany: this feels inconsistent, so I would merge or redraw a few of the smallest German territories (or else split some French ones).
You have a couple broken borders in the west of Yamalo-Nenetsia and the south-west of Khanty-Mansia.
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@cernel I don't remember where did I get the information. Germany taking Moscow probably wouldn't enough to convice the Japanese to invade the Soviets. After all China didn't collapse after losing its capital (Nanking).
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@cernel said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:
@unternehmer Not a bad idea, but I'm not seeing how you would do this nicely but by using an equal-area projection. You should be aware that, in doing so, Europe will be a very small part of the map. For example, you will have almost as many territories in Brazil or Australia as in the entire Europe.
The area of Europe (with European Russia) is 10.18 million square km, Brazil is 8.5 million square km and Australia is 7.6 million square km. Once you take out the irrelevant Komi and Nenets republics in the north of European Russia, Europe will be about as big as Brazil or Australia.
Still, this is not an actual board-game, so it is not bad having most of the map being virtually useless (because it is not actually taking space).
I understand you are not asking to apply this method everywhere, but, if you don't while using an equal-area projection, the alternative would be having bigger territories in non-key areas (like many maps already do, but even more extremely so than, say, WAW).Dear @cernel,
what for does any TripleA map need territories of Latin America, Africa, Middle East, Central Asia and Siberia?AI has always difficulty to transport anything around Latin America via Cape Horn and around Africa via Cape Town. AI has always difficulty to take regions far from its own capital or far from capitals of its enemies.
Important are Europe, Mediterranean, Suez, West and South-West China, Japan, South-East Pacific and maybe briefly North America (West Coast, East Coast, Panama) and North Australia.
My idea is to concentrate on key areas + some simplified land way between West Coast and East Coast + simplified naval way between Atlantic and Indian Ocean.
So something more like Empire Total War concept (mentioned above by @Black_Elk) than global but not used by the AI. -
@cernel Yeah, exactly!
So I was banging away with the eraser and paintbucket, skipping around. Nearly removed those long squiggly tiles like the others, but then decided to leave them until we get to the point of refining central Asia. The color was probably a paintbucket miss lol. Divide in 3 or 4, assign control to Mongolia, and then you have something there that looks more G40-esque. I think the Gobi is the same situation, and the Himalayas. It was hard and fast, I was doing this at like 3 am lol.
Basically what I need to know is exactly what you are asking, from Kurt - how many tiles are desired and at what general size for a given region, and what is the start date? Because I'm not yet at the point of refining Central Asia and can't really do that until I know, so I just let it ride in the meantime. I guess after a few more days I'll just starting making the shot calls. In one respect, it would be simpler for me to not show anything until it was all done (drawing with the someone look over the shoulder and all) but then I wanted this to be more collaborative. So instead of just being 'my map', it would feel more like 'our map.' Plus it's just more efficient too I think in some ways. I mean efficient in terms of prodding me along after hours heheh. Like I'm more motivated after someone says, "hey wait, that's weird! that's in the wrong place!" - "wrong connection there. or wrong color." It's spurs me along and makes me want to keep going with it. Hence the many draft postings.
The color choices aren't factional, I was trying to just show what changed, so I used similar hue's but with a different shade/tint. That way someone could tell me, 'OK erase here, collapse there, change ownership here.'
The reason I left some in place is so when I go back later to do Global at 1940 start date, all I'll have to do is erase rather than draw too many lines, if that makes sense. Provided I can make this one look clean.
What I was hoping to show, is that, once I know the TT divisions, I can reshape the TTs so they look more accurate to the regions or provinces to which they correspond, basically like I just did for France. Now that you can see it, you can say "hmmmm, ok if that's that, then we should do this for the Germany TT divisions." Or trying to do the same for Italy depending on how many tiles one wants. Once we see how large the surrounding tiles are going to be, I can shape the current so that it will look more 'realistic' in the morphology.
Just as an example, if you want say Normandy and Brittany and Pays de la Loire to be a single tile, I can just erase stuff to make it work quickly. Or if someone wants to divide something, I can try to follow a provincial shape, or a river, and draw the border that way or just reshape the tile. The morphology is not equal area or standard projection on this map, so instead what I am doing is actually drawing out contours based on the proposed divisions. With minute rescaling and a bit of verve, in recasting the shapes, so they become less like blobby blobs and more like the real deal, in the basic loo/shape, but according to same general warp that the broader regions are undergoing.
Or take Mongolia as an example in Asia, since you mentioned, cause in Global we know its all blobby and divided into a bunch of tiles there, right. It's also further North in G40 cause of the way China is cartooned in that game, so that's going on too. But what I can do, if one wanted to make G40 out of this baseline, is carve back and reshape those longer rando Mongolian squiggles, which are vestiges of Hepp's mountain designs, so that the block in is more G40 lookin' there, for Mongolia.
What I'd like to do is find some compromise lines, so it's easier to switch from say 1940 to 1941, or possible switching from either of those to something more 1914 if possible, without having to redraw a ton.
There are really only 2 impassible zones that show in the midscale official A&A boards. The Sahara and the Himalayas. Those are the only terrain-y impassible tiles on those boards. Everything else is like a political impassible (say Turkey or Spain or Arabia), so basically the changes are just what color to paint bucket hehe. But when it comes to all the other TTs I think they should be reshaped once I know how many breaks are desired.
The same thing with Yugoslavia or anywhere that looks weird there, as if halfway between two start dates right now. Once I know how many divisions are desired, then I can reshape stuff so it looks somewhat more accurate, rather than just a randomly blocking-in arbitrary lines, which is how I've been banging it out for speed. For the different color shades, I just tried to show who moved where between the 1940 display and the 41. But we don't want a bunch of tiny ass spots right, not in the actual game map anyway, although for a draft baseline it seemed helpful to leave some smaller divisions for now. Just so we could say "yeah erase that, cause we want it look like April 1941, not March!" or whatever heheh. Or in some cases, to just kinda fudge the lines so they fall somewhere between the current lines displayed and the desired final maps.
The fact that I painted it up this early and have posted the working draft is probably adding to some confusion here, but I just wanted to make it easier to see what's been drawn and to give an impression. Just so it's easier for Kurt or you or whoever to say what makes the most sense and what doesn't. I'm taking all your suggestions to heart and jotting notations, but since this isn't my paying job, I'm just trying to bang it out after hours, and a bit haphazardly lol.
I think we're making progress though right? I mean it already looks better to me than what we had going a week ago. So if we give it another week, maybe we'll actually have the baseline set and can start busting into the utilities haha
here I only have like 15 minutes before I gotta take the dogs to the Vet, but just quickly to show how we can do the sorts of things you mentioned about distance from Manchu to Moscow, and it's pretty fast. Obviously we can redraw the Hepps mountain squiggles there, but again just for an impression. I wish I was fast enough to do the whole map totally dialed in one night, but I'm just not that fast hahah
@Unternehmer Yeah, it would be really cool if tripleA could somehow load 2 maps at once, so we could create an effect by Theater (basically exactly like Empire Total War, just with say 5 or 6 regions instead of 3.) But sadly tripleA can only load one map at once, so we are forced to compromise. Basically, like I showed on the first page, we are kinda morphing enlarged regional insets so that they can just stitch together in a single world view, but to have that look slightly less distorted overall than say Revised/Global/HBG official boards. I tend to agree with Cernel that the reality and principles outcomes of the war were still fairly Euro-centric and that official A&A gameboards wildly exaggerate the Pacific and Japan's capabilities. But people seem to want to see the whole world, not just the Theater. I don't know that anyone even plays Europe 1940 or Pacific 1940, they play Global 1940. I'm the same myself, I'd rather see the whole world, even if it's a bit weirdly shaped haha. Still, that said, I think we can get closer. Meaning the world doesn't have to look quite as cartoonish as Official G40, when it can look a bit more like this. Giving us something somewhat cleaner/recognizable in the distortion, but while obviously still being distorted. I tried insets in other games. Great War was the most ridiculous for that, but I'm never terribly happy with how that looks. It seemed simpler to draw out the whole world, which is what led to Domination. Surtur and I had just finished GW and wanted to attempt something new there, but never had a clear idea of what to do with it. I think for WW2 the ideas are much clearer, so I'm actually excited about it again hahah.
Anyhow, I'm a little under the weather today, so I'm going to shelve it for a day or two. I'd like to get Germany/Italy/Balkans dialed in Europe, before focusing on Asia/Pacific. I'll wait to see if people have ideas for divisions. If not I'm just going to start blocking in TTs in Europe and adjusting the shapes of German provinces to accord with the divisions already discussed. So the can look more like the corresponding regional provinces, once redrawn at the desired blob size. That's the aim at any rate.
Oh damn, gotta jet and throw the hounds in the car. I'll stop back by later tonight though and see if we got some more ideas to keep fixing it and making it better. Catch ya in a few!
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Doc says the dogs are both in good health!!! So I'm in a great mood now! haha
I'll dive back in later tonight and try to start dialing stuff a little bit more.
Right now the baseline for this Domination 1941 map is literally twice as large at 16000 px, as the baseline was for Power of Politics 1914 (which was just under 8000 px wide.) The original Domination was only 7500 px wide.
I'm feeling like we can definitely accomplish a lot more now, and the Domination 1941 map is bound to be way less crowded than say NML, so that's good. But I still feel like some of those TTs in Europe are a bit tight even with the upscale. Some need to be collapsed into adjacent tiles I would think. Or redrawn to be more beefy. I mean right?
Who knows, maybe Hepps will come back at some point and want to re-use this new one for an upscale? I mean since it's got the 1 pixel lines, but at twice the scale for the World. Not sure there, but just in case I tried to preserve his work in the initial pass. Now that we've moved beyond it though, and clearly into the WW2 planning, I'd like to really delve in and start house cleaning.
Compared to the current Global map, this one is much larger, by like at least 33%. So we could conceivably take the standard default unit sizes for a game like Global up from 48 px or 54 px to something more like 75 px or even 100 px in those games. Do a new unit set that has quite a bit more detail and polish than we've been able to achieve thus far for the standard games. For something like V3, you could do truly massive units, and then when you scale back down to the actual play view (at say 50% or 25%), everything would look way cleaner. Or of course you could just use the regular units we have at 48/54, in which case we could fit many more unit's in a given G40 tiles, before we get spillover. Either way, we're in a much better position with the upscale.
Using this world projection to make a map for G40 will take much less time than trying to figure out all the TT deets for Domination 1941, so I'm starting with the harder nuts first, to get them cracked, because in know making it fit G40 or V3 will be way simpler once that's all done hehe.
For a general gameplan, I want to get Europe looking aces for 1941 and then move East from there to do the same in Central Asia and the Middle East, since they both need a lot of work.
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@beelee Thanks man!
Ok this might help... It includes the divisions of the Global 1940 game, approximated to this projection. We can clean those up a bit, but least it gives us a way to visualize.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/yp6ulpzggsvnphw/TripleA_4k_baseline_G40_example.png?dl=0
Obviously there is some weirdness on the official game board, trying to get all the labelling and such to match the geographical reality can be a bit tricky at times, especially where the Pacific and Europe boards meet. China is pretty weird on the official boards for example, but I tried to strike a compromise for the boundaries that would kinda reflect both, for familiarity. I can still refine it, of course, but I think this works for a rough example of the blocking. Perhaps it's easier to think of stuff in that frame, like what should be further subdivided and such, once we can kinda see what regular global would look like.
This is sort of what I'm aiming for though, when I said I wanted it harmonize with Global somehow hehe.
Basically the White lines above show the standard Boardgame divisions and the black lines show the subdivisions we've been kicking around.
Also here is a Global 1940 baseline at 16000 indexed up, with only G40 boundaries... in case anyone wants to play around with it, or start adding the sea zones and such, so we can try running it through utilities hehe. It just needs a crop probably in the Antarctic, or an ice sheet extension up north to make sure Siberia and such works as intended. I was gunning pretty hard and fast tonight, so might want to give it a double check lol.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2dayaogn6jhtg5y/TripleA_4k_Global_1940_baseline.png?dl=0
Best Elk
ps. for starters I would like to rework Poland, try to lift Romania and Bessarabia a bit. Larry had a kind of weird extension of Poland going on in G40, and Hepps also used some distortion in that region for WW1. But I think think we should maybe round it out a bit, so it doesn't look quite so stretched. Belo is always a pain in the ass, the way Larry had it connecting to Arch and such lol. But I think that could be dialed a bit now that we have a more realistic looking globe. Russia is always problematic. I think the best solution is probably to shift all the lines a bit to the right, just so they don't have to stretch quite some much to land their connections. Not as extreme as the Classic board of course, but Moscow could probably shift slightly to the right, and it would make all the surrounding TT shapes a little more recognizable probably. Not sure what's best, but I just wanted to block em so we could start thinking about it. But yeah, Poland needs some love. Since France was stretched, I think it makes sense to enlarge Poland, and perhaps lift Scandinavia to get a little more room in the Baltic SZ and the Baltic State. Like basically just lifting everything slightly, and then rounding it out to the right, in the ballpark. If that seems good to you guys? I'll try to refine it some more the next time I got a night free.
pps. Tibet is a little weird too. My theory is that Larry could not get a Map board printed in China that showed Tibet, so instead he just clipped the world by like 3 inches lol. What would the Beastie Boys say?! So I'm not sure what our best solution would be there. Essentially the Official board is drawn in such a way that makes that part of the map kinda wonky. I tried to land somewhere in between, but not sure if it vibes for you guys?
Catch ya next round!
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And there was me thinking how hard can it be to trace a map of earth foe WW2, answer very difficult.
@Black_Elk You will not please all the people, as so many compromises have to be made, so I appreciate your reworkings!
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@thedog For sure!
Yeah it's a trip. Basically what we're battling against is a kind of cartographic uncanny valley lol.
The more realistic the contours become, and the more recognizable the shapes (political map of Europe/the World, being very familiar to many people at a glance) the more one notices weird flaws. It's hard to describe how much stretch vs compression is happening, but it's pretty significant. Fortunately you can disguise that to a fair degree, provided you get the relative shapes into a rough balance. You'll note that everywhere in the Soviet Union has this sort of horizontal tendril thing going on right now. That's because of the way Larry labelled stuff. You know, by calling a TT Smolensk, and then it's like well how far does it have to stretch so that Smolensk will actually be inside that TT, rather than outside of it, while still connecting to some other named spot that's probably pretty far away heheh. At some point you kinda have to shift, but that's already happening even now, before the rewarp, so you don't want to push it too far. Otherwise all the sudden Moscow is further east than Baku, and like Cernel mentioned that feels super weird when stuff like that occurs. It only works in Classic/Revised because the map is so cartoonish and misshapen that you hold it to a lower standard. Here the world looks more like the world so we want it to maintain that illusion a bit more.
What I will likely end up doing is just redrawing all the Global 1940 tiles in the USSR and Eastern Europe until they don't bug me quite so much anymore. Then I'll return to the subdivisions afterwards, once I got something I like for those larger G40 divisions. Just seems more efficient at this point.
I do kind of enjoy the way that having smaller regions displayed kinda reinforces the larger divisions though. Like I think it just looks cool as a visual. I don't see why we couldn't leave those in place, even in the G40 map, just maybe knocked back in shade or opacity. Like they could still display to give that extra flavor even if it's purely decorative in the regular G40 game. But then when you load up Domination, all those decorative interior divisions become real divisions (actual new TTs). So that'd be like a way to lead the player naturally from one game into the next. You know, so they have a touchstone there for familiarity. Plus I just think it looks cool heheh
It takes a while, but I don't mind the noodling. I used to draw stuff like this with graphite, so I'm pretty used to it haha. I drew this one the very same year that TripleA came out I think - almost 20 years ago! lol Crazy
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@black_elk I just had a flashback looking at that lol
I'm back in 2022 now though
Edit
That should be on a Acid Rock Album Cover lol I guess they don't do albums anymore.I gotta quit looking at it. i get lost and each time is harder to get back lol
