Flames and Steel (official thread)
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@KurtGodel7 How about if I make a full set of names changes for the Great German Realm and you ask Claude about what it thinks on the whole new set of names compared to the current one for 1941 Germany? Would that be feasible? (I mean not name per name but all together.)
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AI does not look good at drawing maps, territories, and naming things. Like Krakow being connected to Konigsberg through the northeast while bypassing Warsaw makes no sense at this map's scale. Or Kiev bordering Krakow.
Also, for consistency, it is better to name every land territory with its biggest city, like Prague instead of Bohemia. Having impassable Pripet Marshes would be great, too.
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Recent changes to Flames and Steel:
- SPCs have been nerfed. They now produce 1 special unit every two turns. (Or one every four turns if it's Superfortresses.)
- Speer's industrialization has been nerfed. An SPC produces a free Panther once every two turns.
- SPC maxes have been changed. When the U.S. got chopped in half it gained +1 to the SPC limit. Britain and Germany have now each gained +1 to the limit as well. The new limits are these:
America Atlantic: 3
Britain: 2
USSR:3
Germany: 5
Japan: 3
America Pacific: 2 - Bomber stats have been changed, as per @cernel 's way of thinking. The final version of the Flying Fortress has 4 hitpoints, compared to 3 each for the Liberator and the Lancaster. The Flying Fortress and Liberator have an air defense value of 2, compared to 1 for the Lancaster. The Liberator has a range of 10, compared to 8 for the other two. The Lancaster does 5 PUs of damage for strategic bombing raids, compared to 4 PUs for the other two. The Lancaster has Window (-1 to interception value for each enemy air), the other two do not.
- Bombers can no longer be mixed nation for strategic bombing raids. Therefore, American bombers can no longer benefit from Window.
- Nerf to late game air techs, most notably for Germany and the U.S. German jets are still the best in the late game, but not to the same degree they had been. American jets lose their afterburner tech. America loses its Stratofortress tech. German flying wings are now a little easier to kill (-1 hitpoint). Germany's swept back wings tech is now nerfed. Also, a small nerf to the final version of the King Tiger.
- There is a player-selectable option for the game to start with some tech already researched. Japan gets Kate and Long Lance torpedoes, Germany gets the Stuka, the USSR gets the KV-1, Britain gets radar, America Pacific gets the Dauntless dive bomber and the Norden bombsight, America Atlantic gets the Norden bombsight and the Flying Fortress.
- Alterations to the Pacific map to create more accurate island shapes.
- Bombardment is limited to one bombardment shot per unit unloaded. (As per Anniversary Edition rules.) There is now a tech which allows this to be upgraded to two bombardment shots per unit unloaded.
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@KurtGodel7 How about if I make a full set of names changes for the Great German Realm and you ask Claude about what it thinks on the whole new set of names compared to the current one for 1941 Germany? Would that be feasible? (I mean not name per name but all together.)
Yeah I'll take you up on this.
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AI does not look good at drawing maps, territories, and naming things. Like Krakow being connected to Konigsberg through the northeast while bypassing Warsaw makes no sense at this map's scale. Or Kiev bordering Krakow.
Also, for consistency, it is better to name every land territory with its biggest city, like Prague instead of Bohemia. Having impassable Pripet Marshes would be great, too.
Map changes, including some border changes and the creation of the Pripet Marshes.
As for naming conventions: I don't require 100% consistency. I am fine with naming some territories after cities, such as Berlin, and other territories after regions, such as Bohemia.
The Pacific after its changes.
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@KurtGodel7
Hilfswilliger was the name for the local auxiliaries that Germany recruited in Russia, would be a good fit for "Crush communism."Panzerschreck for Advanced Panzerfaust?
Sturmgewehr for assault rifle
The B-52 is way too far ahead of the timeline, didn't enter service until the 1950s. Use the B-45 Tornado, that was America's earliest jet bomber.
Go 229 is the flying wing model.
Name changes for tech:
Hilfswilliger has been added as a description to crush communism
Panzerschreck was not an advanced Panzerfaust. It was a somewhat different line of weapons development. That being said, I changed the names, such that Panzerfaust is now the 60 meter range version of the weapon, and Advanced Panzerfaust is now the 150 meter range version of the weapon.
I changed the Assault Rifle label to include the Strumgewehr label.
I eliminated the B-52 tech. Partly for game play purposes: the Superfortress is a good enough unit as it is, and does not need a jet engine upgrade.
I designated the flying wing as an Ho 229. Either Go 229 or Ho 229 is a correct designation. I chose Ho 229 because it's more widely recognized, and because it gives credit to the Horten brothers who'd designed it. -
On TripleA, I will sometimes be a spectator for Total World War (TWW). I saw the exact same type of thinking which led to Totaler Krieg. Terrain effects. Lots of special rules. I've been told that TWW takes about 2 - 3 times longer to play than Domination 1914 No Man's Land (NML). But, a game of TWW doesn't give you any more strategic depth than NML. TWW asks for double or triple the player's time, without providing anything more in exchange for all that extra time.
Please. let me disagree.
TWW is the best game on TripleA at the moment. I have played a lot of games and we (me and 2 italian friends) all agree that TWW is the top.
Maybe there is soem Player Enforced Rule that requires edit mode nbut this is a techical issue of the engine.
I strongly suggest you to give TWW a try, I'm offering to help you, you will appreciate it !
Terrain effects are realistic and add no extra brain-effort, you just have to use BATT CALC before every battle, but I use B.C. every time even when playing other games.
About special rules, I think that tech in TWW are easier than in Flames&Steel (if I undesrtood F&S tech rules) and also the part about airplanes, in TWW it is like in any other TripleA game so the effort to understand rules regarding air battles in F&S is higher than in TWW. In TWW you just have 4 standard fighting type of planes instead of basic 1/2 in other games.Please let me know if you want to try TWW and you won't be disappointed, trust me.
To my mind, a player's time and attention are a finite resource. Yes, there are some areas where my map is more complex than a normal TripleA map would be. But that means that, where at all possible, I need to say no to any additional sources of complexity.
I appreciate your offer to play TWW. I can't take you up on that now, because all my TripleA time is going into Flames and Steel.
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AI does not look good at drawing maps, territories, and naming things. Like Krakow being connected to Konigsberg through the northeast while bypassing Warsaw makes no sense at this map's scale. Or Kiev bordering Krakow.
Also, for consistency, it is better to name every land territory with its biggest city, like Prague instead of Bohemia. Having impassable Pripet Marshes would be great, too.
The main issue I see with the map at present is that the borders don't conform with the outlines of the pre-war countries at all. Try to picture how things would look here If you were to dial the clock back to 1938. Who would get Silesia, for instance? Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland? It's impossible to answer because that province is drawn over territory belonging to all three of them, and whoever you give it to leaves the other two messed up.
Or why I brought up the Posen vs. West Prussia example... Posen is Poznań, a city that was in Polish hands before the war started. But German Silesia actually extended past it to the south, between Posen and Bohemia. West Prussia is the territory on your map that's above Silesia, where Posen ought to be. And yes, when you're drawing the provinces at this scale, Danzig and West Prussia essentially belong in the same space, so you should probably just be using one or the other. So relabel West Prussia as Posen, and make Posen something like Brandenburg. But Brandenburg belongs above Saxony, not east of it... kind of a headache.
Meanwhile you've got Königsberg separate from East Prussia, but it's shaped so that its hooking down behind Warsaw, between Warsaw and Polish owned Bialystok. And Kiev is that oblong shape that cuts in Bialystok and Lwów, which was also Polish. And should Kiev really be a border province that Germany invades on turn 1 anyway?
And then Austria is just a squarish blob and it's fully east of Bavaria, when it should be extending between Bavaria and Venice.
The bottom line here is that there are too many issues to solve in just a couple of spot fixes. Figuring out how to draw the borders is just not something that AI is good at. Even with terrible art skills, if you spend a few nights on drawing things out yourself, you're going to end up doing a better job than it just because you have a spatial sense of where things should go in relation to other things that AI really struggles with. What AI might be able to do is take a map where you've hand drawn crude outlines of the borders with a black marker in MS Paint, and polish it up - refine the shaping and re-render it with the better quality outline style your current map has.
At the end of the day though, it's up to you what standard you want to hold yourself to. A map can still play well even if it doesn't look right, and if it plays well right now, I'd understand if you decided a substantial redo would be more trouble than it's worth.
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I think @kurtgodel7 could perfectly fine go with these territories for the Eastern Front. All he needs is to redraw Poland and its surroundings for the 1940 borders. Tsarist-era names have to go, too.
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Map changes, including some border changes and the creation of the Pripet Marshes.
Specify to Claude that's 1941.
When either can be chosen, I've chosen one. For example, Wurttemberg can be called either Wurttemberg or Baden, and I've chosen Baden.
Also, you should be consistent: either have Koenigsberg and Wuerttemberg or Konigsberg and Wurttemberg. Your call.
(Current : New)
Koenigsberg : eastern East Prussia
East Prussia : Koenigsberg
Danzig : Danzig - West Prussia
West Prussia : Wartheland
Posen : Lower Silesia
Silesia : Upper Silesia
Pomerania : Pomerania
Bohemia : Bohemia - Moravia
Vienna : Austria
Bavaria : Bavaria
Wurttemberg : Baden
Saxony : Saxony
Berlin : Berlin
Hesse : Rhineland
Ruhr : Westphalia
Hanover : Hanover
Hamburg : Hamburg -
The main issue I see with the map at present is that the borders don't conform with the outlines of the pre-war countries at all. Try to picture how things would look here If you were to dial the clock back to 1938. Who would get Silesia, for instance? Czechoslovakia, Germany, Poland? It's impossible to answer because that province is drawn over territory belonging to all three of them, and whoever you give it to leaves the other two messed up.
Or why I brought up the Posen vs. West Prussia example... Posen is Poznań, a city that was in Polish hands before the war started. But German Silesia actually extended past it to the south, between Posen and Bohemia. West Prussia is the territory on your map that's above Silesia, where Posen ought to be. And yes, when you're drawing the provinces at this scale, Danzig and West Prussia essentially belong in the same space, so you should probably just be using one or the other. So relabel West Prussia as Posen, and make Posen something like Brandenburg. But Brandenburg belongs above Saxony, not east of it... kind of a headache.
Meanwhile you've got Königsberg separate from East Prussia, but it's shaped so that its hooking down behind Warsaw, between Warsaw and Polish owned Bialystok. And Kiev is that oblong shape that cuts in Bialystok and Lwów, which was also Polish. And should Kiev really be a border province that Germany invades on turn 1 anyway?
And then Austria is just a squarish blob and it's fully east of Bavaria, when it should be extending between Bavaria and Venice.
The bottom line here is that there are too many issues to solve in just a couple of spot fixes. Figuring out how to draw the borders is just not something that AI is good at. Even with terrible art skills, if you spend a few nights on drawing things out yourself, you're going to end up doing a better job than it just because you have a spatial sense of where things should go in relation to other things that AI really struggles with. What AI might be able to do is take a map where you've hand drawn crude outlines of the borders with a black marker in MS Paint, and polish it up - refine the shaping and re-render it with the better quality outline style your current map has.
At the end of the day though, it's up to you what standard you want to hold yourself to. A map can still play well even if it doesn't look right, and if it plays well right now, I'd understand if you decided a substantial redo would be more trouble than it's worth.
Claude said that nearly all your points were correct. The one place it pushed back was your assertion that AI could not do this task well. While it acknowledged the flaws with the earlier map, it expressed the view that it has the ability to correct those flaws.
Claude looked up borders from 1938, borders from June 1941, census data from 1910 and the 1930s, etc. This was all preparatory to a substantial redo of Eastern Europe's borders. A redo which your post inspired. Ty for pushing me on this.
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I think @kurtgodel7 could perfectly fine go with these territories for the Eastern Front. All he needs is to redraw Poland and its surroundings for the 1940 borders. Tsarist-era names have to go, too.
I like the map you've posted. Ty for this.
However, there are two issues.
- I'm less than 48 hours into my usage week, and I'm already at 74% of my weekly usage. I was close to finishing the Europe redo when I saw your post.
- I'd envisioned Flames and Steel being roughly the same scale of map as Domination 1914 No Man's Land or World at War. The map you've posted implies a significantly larger map than that scale. If I adopt your map for Europe, I have to redo the world map to keep that same scale.
In earlier posts, I'd talked about being open to having multiple maps using my rules set. I want version 1 to have a map that won't intimidate someone who plays NML, WAW, or Global. But I absolutely believe there's room for something which uses the Flames and Steel rules, and which uses a large map like the one you've provided here.
Edit: your map inspired me to make Moscow six spaces from the German front instead of five. Two territories were split to achieve this. I think that six spaces away will allow the game to last longer.
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Map changes, including some border changes and the creation of the Pripet Marshes.
Specify to Claude that's 1941.
When either can be chosen, I've chosen one. For example, Wurttemberg can be called either Wurttemberg or Baden, and I've chosen Baden.
Also, you should be consistent: either have Koenigsberg and Wuerttemberg or Konigsberg and Wurttemberg. Your call.
(Current : New)
Koenigsberg : eastern East Prussia
East Prussia : Koenigsberg
Danzig : Danzig - West Prussia
West Prussia : Wartheland
Posen : Lower Silesia
Silesia : Upper Silesia
Pomerania : Pomerania
Bohemia : Bohemia - Moravia
Vienna : Austria
Bavaria : Bavaria
Wurttemberg : Baden
Saxony : Saxony
Berlin : Berlin
Hesse : Rhineland
Ruhr : Westphalia
Hanover : Hanover
Hamburg : HamburgThe new map of Europe
I was doing this while you were creating your list of names. I will hit Claude with that list. But if the new shapes inspire any thoughts about name changes lmk.
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@KurtGodel7 Wait then. I'll make the new list based on the new map.
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The new map of Europe
(Current : New)
East Prussia : East Prussia
Danzig : Danzig
West Prussia : West Prussia
Posen : Wartheland
Silesia : Lower Silesia
Pomerania : northern Pomerania
Neumark : southern Pomerania
Bohemia : Bohemia - Moravia
Vienna : Austria
Bavaria : Bavaria
Wurttemberg : Baden
Saxony : Saxony
Berlin : Berlin
Hesse : Rhineland
Ruhr : Westphalia
Hanover : Hanover
Hamburg : Hamburg -
@KurtGodel7 The outlines for Hungary, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland. and Romania are a lot more coherent now. There's still a bit of weirdness with with how far north Bessarabia extends and Lwow curling around Slovakia, but on the whole this is a major improvement over the previous version.
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