Does someone know if there has been any progress so far? It’s a pitty we always end up having new iterations of the global maps or pacific/europe scenarios and not other theaters of operations.
Axis and Allies Complete
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I prefer general geographical/demographic terms to political terms, so no “Vichy France” nor any “Nazi Germany”. Vichy was called this only from summer '40 to november '42 when the Germans moved in. Nevertheless it follows the same borders; the Germans deliberately drew them so that the entire Atlantic coast would be German occupied. Note that point, mapmakers.
Also, I don’t like naming territories of hundreds of square miles after a single city. I stand to be corrected, but you won’t find any on my map.
Canton, by the way, is the western name for the large region in south China as well as it’s principle city. It’s also a major language “Cantonese” so this is acceptable.
Gibraltar cannot really be called anything else, and the territory it represents is only the size of a city anyway. -
I prefer general geographical/demographic terms to political terms, so no “Vichy France” nor any “Nazi Germany”. Vichy was called this only from summer '40 to november '42 when the Germans moved in. Nevertheless it follows the same borders; the Germans deliberately drew them so that the entire Atlantic coast would be German occupied. Note that point, mapmakers.
Also, I don’t like naming territories of hundreds of square miles after a single city. I stand to be corrected, but you won’t find any on my map.
Canton, by the way, is the western name for the large region in south China as well as it’s principle city. It’s also a major language “Cantonese” so this is acceptable.
Gibraltar cannot really be called anything else, and the territory it represents is only the size of a city anyway.But it’s not just called Vichy because of the city. That was the name of the country. Vichy France was a minor axis power although technically neutral. It wouldn’t be called Vichy just becuase of the city. The country itself has been changed to Vichy France. It should especially be called Vichy since it is an actual player in your game. And also even though the Germans occupied it in '42 it was still Vichy France till '44.
Also just my 2 cents the map is good but it seems cluttered. How do the ports work? Like Pacific or some way else. What is the point of 2 in the Danish Sea? I don’t like the abbreviated things. Eng Cha looks ugly. Ndl for Netherlands? If you can’t fit the name of the country in the space maybe you should combine it with France. If things don’t fit either reduce the size of the font or label the sea zones by #. The yellow IPC values are IC’s right? No IC in Italy? Australia controlled by the USA? Should be under the UK banner or a separate power. This really cuts down any UK involvement in the Pacific War. Too many cluttering meaningless islands. How far does your fighters fly in your game? You can’t even fly a fighter from the USA to Hawaii its 5 spaces. That doesn’t seem right on a gameplay level. Sorry if I said too much. I don’t want to offend you. Those are just somethings I thought about it. There are many good things that are superior to the Revised map. -
Some things I really liked about your map. :-D
1.The spearated China-Represents history more.
2.North Africa-Allows for more see-saw battles with more spaces. Vast improvement over AAR and AAE. They really cheated it in AAE with one space for Libya and Eygpt.
3. Pripet Marsh
4.Moscow in Europe not in Asia
5.Neutral Powers
6.Minor Axis Powers-Definitely needed.
7. Soviet occupied Iran-More historical
8.Other things too but, I am sleepy.
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I welcome your comments, good and bad.
Italy should of course have an IC. This is a mistake I made while simplify the map, even though you say it’s still cluttered!
I’m not sure Vichy France ever called itself that, but you may be correct. I’ll look into it.
The ports are Naval bases and are the only place damaged capital ships can repair. They also help with movement insofar as it cost no mps to move into/from a port, therefore ports which border 2 szs can be used to “jump” a sz. They therefore play a vital role in my naval refueling rule, which requires every ship to dock in a friendly port to refuel every turn. (Though my proposed tanker piece can be used to bypass this). I’m also considering that ships can only be constructed at NBs, only one per turn per NB; OR they are built at the IC itself, then launched at the NB the following turn. Finally ships can take refuge in NBs giving them protection against enemy attacks, rather than having to stay at sea every turn, which leads to the unrealistically high loss rate of fleet in the early rounds under standard rules.
I’m not keen on abbreviating titles myself, but on a map which has to be readable at a glance I don’t want to use tiny fonts. Maybe I’ll rename all szs by number in future.
I deliberately wanted wider oceans to make naval combat more significant. Perhaps the USA-Hawaii gap is too wide, I’ll look at this again. One effect of having wider oceans is the increased importance of small islands as naval/air stops/refueling bases. Places like St. Helena or Midway are of course economically worthless but can be logistically vital. Perhaps I have overdone them here, but at least it gives authentic names to sea zones rather than another sz number…
The US Australia thing is correct for Summer 1942 onwards. By that time the Allies had agreed to the US taking complete command of the entire Pacific war, including the armed forces of Australia and New Zealand, while the UK dealt with things in the India Ocean. Australian units from here on were under effective command of MacArthur’s SWP Command:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_West_Pacific_Area_(command)
Gameplay wise this has several effects.
As you point out this excludes the UK from the Pacific, however in most games the UK tends to abandon the area anyway in favour of more critical theatres such as North Africa and India/Burma.
With the US in Australia, the importance of the Pacific theatre can be boosted because:
Sydney is now an American VC AND has a (2 unit/turn) IC, making it the closest US production centre to Japan. This makes it much more important than in Revised, and worth fighting over for both Pacific powers. The likely combat in this region is therefore entirely authentic, witness the Coral Sea and New Guinea campaigns.
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You are correct about the USA-Hawaii problem, this has been corrected.
Regarding France, the Vichy regime simply called itself “The French State”, with the South/East area the “Free Zone”. “Vichy France” was a derogatory name used by the Allies, so I’ll stick with the neutral South France for now.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France
Corrected simplified version:
http://elbowmaster.com/web1/flashman/1942/CompleteJune_1942simplified.jpg
And the more “cluttered” complete version:
http://elbowmaster.com/web1/flashman/1942/CompleteJune_1942.jpg
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I was wondering why there is no Impassable terrain in the Saharra. I love the map, though, good work.
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It was possible to cross the sahara from south to north. A small force of Free French from Equatorial Africa drove north through the desert to attack Axis outposts in Libya.
Can’t see this being done across the Himalayas, but just possibly the Amazon and Congo.
There are plenty of desert territories in the Sahara, but I’ve yet to decide just how they work. Perhaps a unit limit? This is complicated by making Libya and West Egypt desert, which is true enough for the terrain, but of course the forces in this campaign were supplied by sea.
Also considering Sinkiang, Kansu and NW Australia as deserts; the final decision on these depends on exactly what desert rules I adopt.
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Update with improved Africa:
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Yeah its hard to decouple rules and map.
But must try to decouple or things go around the circle.By the way, I find your continent lines fairly accurate.
(Was checking it against the 8MB earth lights map.)And are you using vector drawing?
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To be honest, I made the mistake of starting with a scan of World at War. That put me wrong in so many ways the map has had a painful evolution. Several times I’ve had to cut out whole sections and relocate them, and add strips of map in three places to get the oceans an accceptable width. Most of the coastlines have been redrawn several times.
Tip: get the outline right before you do anything else!
What are vectors? I just use paint.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Paint works with pixels. Vector works with objects.
So with vector you can have shift things around very easily. Continents, names, and icons are all separate.
Also, vector is scalable. No pixelation when enlarged.
By the way, use gif instead of jpg for textureless maps (and cartoons). Its actually smaller yet lossless compression.
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I actually send the maps to Elbowmaster as PNGs, so as he’s hosting them it’s his decision to use Jpegs, which admittedly blurs the images.
This board doesn’t allow Gifs, by the way.
[attachment deleted by admin]
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Finally answer C. pretty colours. reminds me of LSD. :mrgreen: :lol:
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Oops, I meant PNG.
By the way I think you should just host it yourself and put it in your signature.
Use mediafire is pretty good. -
Is your map 95% finalised or are there any plans to go to the next level?
Continent lines
Real continent looks nice.
This 1929 map is the only map I know of with real continent lines.
http://www.basesproduced.com/images/oil2.gifArea
The 1929 map seems to be a type of true area map too.
Europe is small but doesn’t look impossibly crowded.
Pixel calcuation shows it to be about 50cm wide for a 2m map.Territories colors
I feel its better to keep to single color fill for territories.
Its easier on the eye.
I imported your picture into illustrator and did a few clicks for muck up.
Just need to show terrain with icons or words.Islands
Did you have a system of determining which island to include?
Those too small to deploy a division or too small to sustain a port should probably be removed?I would have the small islands enlarged from realistic but remain tiny. The Oceans look like Archipelago at the moment. (Yet you can’t fit game pieces on them anyway.)
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that actually look alot better!
I guess your AARHE work is paying off with Illustrator.
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Yes, I’m only really a Paint artist, I don’t know about Vectors or any of that high tech stuff.
And IL, I’ve mentioned before that my maps are basically schematic and would have to be considerably polished before printing.
What you did with the deserts makes sense; either show all terrain types or none at all; I just felt that deserts (and the Pripet Marsh) were too important to leave out. On previous versions I included icons for mountainous regions and winter weather, but boy did IL not like that!
Again, showing terrain for desert with a coloured border for control is a compromise that wouldn’t show on a printing version, where terrain would be featured in a more elegant way which doesn’t show on these schematic versions.Including small islands/island groups is in reference to my sea and air movement rules. You’ll note that I deliberately made the oceans much wider than on most maps. Where each ships MUST refuel at some point on every turn, obscure islands can serve as vital oiling stations. Perhaps players should be forced to actually setup stations on some islands? You’re probably aware that techniques developed in the Pacific war made it possible to construct airstrips on some very small islands; however if you’ve information confirming that some of those I’ve featured are too small even for this I’ll delete them in future updates. How many divisions could be deployed on Iwo Jima? Would you suggest a stacking limit for some islands, even if they can sustain airstrips?
At one stage I experimented with drawing a “shallow area” surrounding each island group to ease unit placement, but I never got it to look right - perhaps you could make this work?You mentioned about how finished the map is; I’m lothe to call any map “finished”. But the main consideration now is to tie it in with the rules, for example I STILL can’t decide which rules to implement in regard to desert terrain, and this has an effect on finally deciding if the likes of Sinkiang or West Kazakhstan should be desert or mountains/plains.
Anyway, thanks for the interest in my map. Looking at it from this view I can see that I made India too small, maybe I’ll add another vertical strip to the centre of Asia.
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On previous versions I included icons for mountainous regions and winter weather, but boy did IL not like that!
Because you only need rules to outline this in your rule set rather than delineate where weather effects each territory…(e.g. say all territories in Soviet Union and Scandinavia are effected by snow…etc.)
If you have too many ports in your game you can say… all territories have a major port as long as they also have a printed IPC value and are in non-snow effected sea zones and territories.
That would remove the need for 1,000 port tokens. I do notice you made efforts to remove the aesthetic of the tokens color so that it blends better with the map.
This is also part of playability aspect because the difference is doing it both ways is so marginal as to render the difference negligible.
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It possible I may delete the ports altogether in the future. For the moment I want to keep options open, for example the possibility that ships may only be built in ports, with only one per port per turn so that the number becomes critical. I agree that each territory should have port facilities for refueling, but the bases are meant as places ships can take refuge from air attacks and avoid naval combat, which clearly cannot apply to any territory. Somewhere like Borneo may be worth a lot, but I don’t believe it had a naval base of much use. The placement of some ports over a seazone boundary is deliberate; a ship can enter the base and leave into either seazone covered by the base.
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Ah yeah I recall now how you said the map is a schematic. In that case lets do the polishing and make a print version.
I didn’t check about the island sizes. Just wondering what system you had in place.
Definitely a stacking limit. No sky scrappers on islands hehe. An airstrip compared to facilities for an infantry division isn’t that big after all so airstrip doesn’t say enough. And these miniature airstrips better not whole 5 air division too haha.
Desert rules? Combat? Occupying? I would make it costs IPC to stay in the desert.
I must add I am not too fond of standard axis and allies move/build structure for these relatively finely chopped up maps. As a quick fix I would increase unit costs multiple times to make the timeline reasonable.
In vector graphics you have layers. So you can add/remove/hide/unhide ports, terrain, or other layers effortlessly.
As a map artist you’ve gotta get into vector graphics. Its HEAVEN!!!
Ports…the tiny ports on islands probably can be built quickly? If thats the case we can say you can put up a port in X in one turn?
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