Napoleon Lives

Okay, I got my time frames a little messed up.  So the American Revolution did happen and America is it’s own country.  Which means the American Civil War could have happened as well, but not the Spanish-American war if, as I understand it, France owns Spain.  One other thing, was it the French or the British that supported the Confederacy in the Civil War?  I ask this because it might be possible that the US Civil War might have had a different outcome and America could be 2 separate countries:  The USA and the CSA.  I once read an “alternate history” scenario where the North didn’t win the Civil War and there was still a Confederate States of America into the 1940s.  There was also some Federation of Western American States west of the Rockies so basically we had 3 separate countries here.

CSO Marc brought up another interesting point:  What about the Russian Revolution.  While there were many reasons leading up to it, the revolution was kind of sparked by Russia’s long involvement and rather poor performance against the Germans in WW1.  Sort of a “last straw” thing.  In this scenario, there was no WW 1 because there isn’t really a Germany or Austria/Hungary Empire.  So, I’m guessing the Russian revolution never happened either?  Is Russia even a country?  It looks like most of the Soviet territories are part of that “Coalition” which I guess is friendly to Britain.

@knp7765:

One other thing, was it the French or the British that supported the Confederacy in the Civil War?

Neither really, but if you have to pick one I guess it would have been more likely the French than the Brits. The Brits imported too heavily from the North to risk a conflict with them.

If you ever create an alternate-history scenario in which France and/or Britain get directly involved in the American Civil War, one element you might want to incorporate would be the armoured ship factor.  The Monitor-Virginia engagement (the Battle of Hampton Roads) is correctly cited as being the first battle between armoured vessels, but its fame sometimes overshadows the situation of the United States relative to that of France and Britain in the development of armoured warships.

France and Britain had both constructed armoured floating gun batteries – roughly in the same league as the Virginia – during the Crimean War.  Some of these vessels were used in September 1855 to bombard a Russian fort at Kinburn.  By August 1860, France had commissioned the ironclad La Gloire, the world’s first ocean-going armoured ship.  Britain followed up in August 1861 by commissioning HMS Warrior, the world’s first iron-hulled ocean-going armoured warship.  Both these ships outclassed the Monitor and the Virginia, which were small, shallow-draft armoured gunboats only suitable for use in coastal waters and rivers.  So in an alternate-history scenario, you could have either France or Britain (or both) tossing their seagoing ironclads into the naval side of the American Civil War, with potentially interesting effects on the Union blockade of the Confederacy.

I’m not sure what you mean by the problem of putting the maps online because you mention the issue of finding suitable pieces, which implies a board game rather than an online game.  I think developing your game as a board game is the best option: it avoids any scanning problems, and I think it’s more satisfying to move pieces on a board rather than electrons on a screen.

If you go the board game route, your best bet would be to use the existing board from an existing Civil War board game – of which there are probably tons on the market.  That would save you the work of creating your own board from scratch.  You could even use combinations of boards from different games: for instance a board showing the U.S. as a whole (which would serve as your overall situation board for the Civil War), combined with a board showing the world as a whole (to allow you to track the overseas elements, such as the British and French involvement).  The world board would ideally be for the mid-19th century, but there may not be many wargames that are global in scale while being set in that time-period, so perhaps using a global Napoleonic-era wargame (I assume there must be some on the market) would be a good compromise for the British/French side of things.

Getting waterline wargaming models of Civil War ships is no problem:
http://www.panzerschiffe.com/Warships_from_the_American_Civil_War.html

There must also be lots of companies that sell Civil War plastic units in all kinds of scales.  Ditto for Napoleonic pieces, which could serve as your British and French units.  One game that comes with generic pieces that have a Napoleonic flavour is:
http://www.viktorygame.com/.

[Edit: Here’s another source for ships: http://navwar.co.uk/nav/ .  Look on pages 6 and 8 of their PDF catalogue (http://navwar.co.uk/nav/pdf/webcat.pdf): they sell 1:3000 scale models of La Gloire and Warrior.]

Sad thing is: Japan was in no way or form a world player during this period.

If the game is in any way historical, they should not be included and their territories should be impassible.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edo_period

The Far East should just have some limited Naval Action between France and England, with a few key bases.