Argo's Strategic Map

Argothair

All right, here’s another attempt at some of the same ideas, this time using the more realistic “Jason Clark” base tiles. My big innovation here is that all bold circles are victory cities, and vice versa – that way you can tell at a glance who’s winning and where your targets are, instead of having to squint to find the little red VC markers underneath your troops.

Note that all victory cities contain starting factories, which are not separately shown on the map. Some non-VC territories also have starting factories, which are shown on the 1939 map.

When conquering a territory with a factory, the factory is automatically destroyed, however, you are free to rebuild the factory on your next turn if you still control the city. Turn 1 Conquest, Turn 2 Build Factory, Turn 3 Recruit new units. That way there’s a bit of a delay in the city becoming 100% yours without the need for an extended ruleset about contested territories.

As always, let me know what you think!

Argothair

The 1942 map.

CWO Marc

Nice graphics, and the new VC circles are certainly easier to see than the traditional dots or squares. It looks a little odd to me, however, that Juno, Alaska, is a victory city whereas Washington, D.C. (unlike every other major-power capital) doesn’t even appear on the map.

Black_Elk

Cool concept for the 39 map.

Just one thing to note, from Manchuria to Moscow there are only 4 spaces along the northern route.

A Japanese tank column blitzing from Manchuria to Novosibirsk has the direct line on the Russian capital in just 2 turns. One turn to land/build tanks in Manchuria, one turn to move them to Novosibirsk, and the Soviet purse is under threat.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it also means the Russian armor could do the same thing in reverse to screw Japan.

Here the thing that matters most is whether you give the Russians enough units to sustain a far eastern front. If the set up is designed for Soviet collapse in the east (e.g. the usual model of, “rush the infantry home! to defend Moscow”) then this sort of territory design would encourage the Japanese tank drive to Moscow. Basically Russia needs to have enough income/units in place to fight rather than fold, otherwise it would be pretty easy for Japan to overwhelm them along the northern route.

Frederick II

Wow! Your getting better at this. :-D This looks great. Also what CWO Marc said that there’s no Washington D.C. did you like forget about that?

CWO Marc

There are several large black areas on the map. Am I correct that they represent areas which are impassable for either political reasons or for topographical reasons or for a combination of both? The area that mainly caught my attention was the one in the middle of South America. As near as I can figure it vaguely corresponds to a combination of the Amazon jungle (minus its eastern half) and the neutral country of Paraguay (plus part of Bolivia).

Argothair

CWO_Marc, yes, the black areas are impassible, mostly for topographical and political reasons, but also partly to give some structure to the map – it would have been possible for the major powers to invade Mongolia, but with Mongolia closed, Asia has a much more strategically interesting shape. If you open up too many areas then Asia and Africa just become this formless enormous mass.

Frederick, thanks for the kind words. I can see that by popular demand, I’ll have to put Washington DC back on the map, which is fine – it can fit nicely between the Northeast USA and the Southeast USA. I left it out on purpose for game balance; the Germans shouldn’t really ever have a viable attack on Washington, and so making a Washington a victory city further adds to the already high count of starting Allied victory cities. Still, I guess people like to dream – I’ll put it back in.

Black_Elk, I didn’t originally intend to have only 4 spaces between Manchuria and Moscow, but now that I’m looking at it, I think it works for me. It almost mimics the path of the Trans-Siberian Railroad – you’ve got a direct beeline across Russia’s southeast, and then lots of space to go wandering in Russia’s northeast. I absolutely would want to give Russia enough starting troops in the east to hold out against a Japanese attack, and maybe forcing Russia to hold the ‘railroad’ will help deter KGF players from just immediately marching all their Siberian soldiers west. Also note that Russia can set up a roadblock at Omsk (a factory) and Novosibirsk – if Russia can hold those two territories (or hold Omsk and trade Novosibirisk) then the tanks aren’t going to get through to Moscow on any northern route. I am a little nervous about having Manchuria connect to SZ 60 – I would rather that tanks unloaded from Tokyo be one space away from Manchuria; I didn’t realize I’d left that connection open. What do you think about extending the Korean border west so that it cuts off Manchuria’s port access?

Black_Elk

I remember making the case that having less territories in the soviet far east might actually be better for the Allies on balance than having more territories, I can’t recall the exact thread. But the idea was that more distance ends up hurting the Allies because they have no way to reinforce their line, and it makes the KJF positioning harder since you have a lot of empty worthless Russian spaces in the east. With a lot of low value territories Japan has it way easier to set up their their logistics train and Japan doesn’t need the income to be effective, whereas Russia has no incentive to stay and fight if you do it that way. I believe the original intension/argument that people made was “well, you need to stall the Japanese somehow, so lets just put more speed bumps in their way.” But I don’t think that really worked, as AA50 proved, to me at least. Better if the distance is short, so Russia can move ground units quickly.

I actually have the same view about the Pacific ocean. I prefer shorter distances, for rapid naval redirects. And instead of distance just give the two sides enough units to fight back and forth haha.

Yeah you could probably get away with having Manchuria be an inland tile, to avoid the dead drop from Tokyo.

Black_Elk

ps. on the subject of map structure and the Russia vs Japan situation, I’ve often felt that it would be very helpful if the “far eastern” front, wasn’t quite so broken up in terms of territory connections. Or at least not as broken up as the normal eastern front with Germany. Basically to tighten up the Russian line against Japan, along whatever front the JTDTM is most likely to occur.

For example, in the OOB 1942.2 map, if the territories corresponding to Novosibirsk and Kazakh were a single large territory boarding Moscow, rather than two smaller territories, it would be possible to defend the line at China, instead of having to turtle back to Moscow.

In general having more territories along a front favors the attacker over the defender, and since its always Japan attacking, and its always Russia defending along this particular front in 1942.2, I think it makes more sense to have fewer territories bordering Moscow in the East (rather than more, as seems to have been the trend over the last couple OOB boards.)

Just an idea. To a large extent your map eliminates this problem with respect to the Russian capital (since here Moscow borders only 3 territories, rather than 6 like OOB 1942.2) but you might still see a similar issue with Stalingrad or Omsk.

Still I think the best way to deter the Japanese tank drive to Moscow, has more more to do with the starting unit/production distribution than the map design per se. With enough starting units or enough income, the Soviets could likely handle a full war with Japan. It’s only when they get stuck with 24 ipcs at the start, no attack power, and a weak production spread, that the territory design of the East becomes so easy to exploit for the Japanese in the OOB game, since they have more money more starting unit attack power, more production in the area, and basically nowhere else to go, except straight at you! haha

So yeah, even at this rough draft stage, I already think the map you designed has charm.

Oh yes, one last suggestion. It may be worth considering how many city circles you end up dropping into it right now. Save the cities for last is my recommendation, or at least after you design the sea zones.

I put a lot of city circles in my domination draft, and tried to work out sea zones at the same time, but then ended up regretting it later, as I never saved an intermediate baseline map. You know, in case I wanted to alter things later on. It’s always easier to add in a circle, than it is to take it out, and redraw the borders again. That’s my advice for staging it, to get your basic territories drawn, save it, then sea zones drawn, save it, and then add in your city circles at the last minute. This helps in case you ever want to make a map with a different timeline. And also helps if you decide you need to make the circles large/smaller at some point to accommodate more/less units.
:-D

You can see the circle thing taken to an extreme below…

And also the silly Boxer Rebellion circle that is all outsized and impractical for most maps, because the original game was supposed to be set in 1900. This was a gimmicky tile that played a role in randomizing the opening for that specific game. But clearly, its just an eyesore for a map that is set in the 1940s, or during WW1, or at any point in history, rather than one set exactly in 1900 lol. There are many circles here that don’t serve much purpose for a map outside the timeframe I was interested in at the time, which was basically the Spanish American conflict up to the Great War. And of course, any time you put in a bunch of city circles, then you get into an issue of “why a circle for city X, but not city Y?” as people have differing ideas about where to highlight things or how to justify any particular circle, once you put a whole lot down. Just some ideas.

Overall I like the basic thrust of your map! I’d be curious to see how the rules differ from OOB, as that can surely have an impact on how the map works in terms of the production spread.

Black for impassible is fine for a draft, but I’d go with something else for those territories. You don’t want it to mess with your border lines.

I think the only thing that should be black on a map, is the border. That way you can always isolate it easily in photoshop, in case you want to change the color, or expand it or whatever. A very light gray (verging on white) works well for impassible neutral tiles, and some kind of beige (even more bland than UK’s color haha) for the attackable neutrals. So it reads at a glance.

Here is the crazy city circle map…

And here is one showing an idea I had for Russia from the 1942 game map…

Not sure if this idea applies so much to a map with a new system of many new territory tiles (like the latesr one that has all the circle VCs) but I was still in a basic 1942.2 type mindframe. Basically to simplify Russia into a more Classic style formulation for the east vs Japan, but using a different system of territory connections. One that highlights Archangel in particular…

The thought was to combine the territories of Archangel and Vologda into a single space worth 3 ipc. And then combine the territories of Kazakh and Novosibirsk into another single space worth 3 ipcs. Then give them both starting factories to serve as permanent blockers, the way Caucasus functions OOB.

I think this would create a new more defensible line at the center of the game board, and a new situation where Siberia would be the key buffer space in the far east for positioning against Japan. The expanded Archangel/Volodga space would basically do the same in the North. And the Kazakh/Novos would do it for the south.

So basically taking Moscow to a 4 tile defense connection territory, rather than 6. Something along the lines of…
Western Russia
Arch + Vologda
Kazakh + Novosibirsk
and Caucasus

That was my idea anyway, for a simplified redesign of Russia on a 1942.2 scale map. Basically to give them more flexibility within their 5 tile core: Moscow and the 4 spaces surrounding it. I think you could keep them into the mid twenties on income, with perhaps a bit more power at the start, but the thought was to give them a rapid redirect option, the way Germany can redirect from Western to Eastern front. It’d be helpful if Russia could redirect from Pacific to European, fairly rapidly. Since that’s what the gameplay usually requires. Otherwise they just invariably have to turtle Moscow, and let the Axis envelope them. Here they could do more blast backs, out of Arch or Kazakh, without losing so much in defensive positioning. Not sure if those thoughts are helpful, but since we’re talking maps thought I’d toss it out there.

Larger spaces and fewer connection at the center of the gamemap, but with more production/attack projection to compensate.

Argothair

I see important pluses and minuses to your proposed 1942.2 map changes, Black_Elk.

The Good:
(1) It’s now much harder to overwhelm Russia by forcing it to trade for more territories than it can afford on pain of getting Moscow smashed by a Japanese tank stack in Szechuan.
(2) Russia has more tactical flexibility because it can move tanks into Greater Kazakhstan or Greater Siberia and then still use them to deadzone the Caucasus or Karelia

The Bad:
(1) There’s not much tactical flexibility left for Japanese attacks on Russia. With OOB map, sometimes it makes sense for Japan to use a pincer movement, bringing one stack counter-clockwise through Evenki and the other stack clockwise through Szechuan. Now, though, you pretty much just want to make a beeline through Kazakhstan and ignore Evenki and Yakutsk.
(2) Similarly, from the other end, there’s not much tactical flexibility left for a Russian defense of the north against Germany. It used to be that German tanks in Karelia were a serious threat, but not necessarily instant doom for the Russian economy – even if they penetrated to Archangel, there was still a chance to stop them. Now, German tanks in Karelia can reach West Russia, Caucasus, Greater Kazakhstan, Greater Siberia, and Evenki – they can basically hoover up the entire Russian economy minus Moscow, all from their navally-reinforced perch on the Baltic Sea.

The Ugly:
(1) America can now drop tanks into Greater Siberia (via SZ 4, the White Sea) that are one move away from Szechuan, in southern China. That’s wacky.
(2) Conversely, Japan can drop tanks into Yunnan (the southeastern corner of Asia) that are two moves away from Leningrad (the northwestern corner of Asia). That’s also wacky.

I like your overall approach and framework – it’s important to think logically about how defensible a region is going to be, and not just assume that more territories = better defense – but I think the map needs a little more tinkering. How can we re-jigger the territories in ways that make Moscow easier to defend without sucking all of the tactics out of that defense?

Black_Elk

I’d say the easiest way would be to just give the Russians enough starting tanks and aircraft to fight on an equal footing with Japan, and raise the ipc value of some of their territories so that they are +1 ipc in additional production value.

I’d say the main issue is that Japan has a likely 10-11 production points, and potentially more if they just spam factories all over the place, with enough income to make that production effective in combat, vs Russia’s safe 8 production points at Moscow, and an income so low they can’t even max build infantry there after the first couple rounds.

Given that kind of set up, it’s hard to imagine any conditions under which the Red Army would ever be poised to invade the Japanese home island in 1945. Even though that was basically the situation at the end of the actual war.

I think a Russian redesign is well overdue. I’ve been pushing it for a while now haha. And I know others out there find the Soviet “weak link” kind of annoying. It’s just a hold over from a more jingoistic time… the 1980s, when the game was conceived, and nobody would want to admit the western contribution in WW2 was dwarfed by that of the Soviet Union.

It’s was a game made in America after all (or at any rate made here, before it was made in China hehe) and over in the States we still like to think that D-Day and the Atomic bomb ended World War 2, and we always downplay the Russian contribution, which was decisive. Even the war in the pacific was wrapped up with a nice Red bow. So its just kind of silly that the whole game revolves around the center collapsing.

There should be other ways for the Axis “to win” and other ways for the Allies “not to lose” that don’t just involve sending a bazillion planes and ground units to the middle of the game board, to crush or prop up Russia.

If the Reds could fight on their own, and have a decent chance, players would be less inclined to make their strategies so one dimensional.

The problem really is fairly simple, Russia lacks sufficient starting attack power and income to be effective on their own.

I’m anticipating the counter argument “Well, if you make Russia stronger, then Allies will just do the same thing they always do, and then Axis will never be able to take the center.” To that I say “fine!” give the Axis something else to do in that case!
:-D

The balance should be such that if UK and USA send all their forces to Russia and turn it into an impenetrable fortress, then Axis should be able to mess with UK/USA directly, and threaten the core territories of the Western Allies (instead of Russia’s) for the Win.

I just don’t see the essential dynamic changing all that much, until Russia has more than 24 ipcs on starting income, and more than a paltry 180 in starting TUV!

That’s less than 1/6th the TUV that Axis begin play with, and less than 1/3rd of the combined Anglo-American TUV. Is it any wonder that every winning Axis strategy involves a center crush? And the Russia is always on the verge of collapse hehe

Flashman

I suggest another impassable area - the impenetrable jungle of the Congo; the dark heart of Africa.

Also the Pripet marsh in East Europe.

I find it amazing that people expect a game anything like WWII when USSR and Japan are at war from the off. This can never be other than a parallel universe unless the NA pact is enforced.

CWO Marc

@Black_Elk:

Given that kind of set up, it’s hard to imagine any conditions under which the Red Army would ever be poised to invade the Japanese home island in 1945. Even though that was basically the situation at the end of the actual war.

Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt (or Truman; I can’t recall which) had made an agreement that the USSR would go to war against Japan 3 months after an eventual German surrender, to give Stalin time to shift his forces from Europe to Asia. As I recall, the Soviets launched their invasion of Japanese-held Manchuria three months to the day after Germany surrendered.

Peepette

I have a map to share, an edit of Big World.

CWO Marc

@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:

I have a map to share, an edit of Big World.

Nice! Many thanks.

Frederick II

@CWO:

@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:

I have a map to share, an edit of Big World.

Nice! Many thanks.

Yes I agree it’s really great.

Black_Elk

That’s a clean map Ryuzaki_Lawlie!

The color selection is ideal. Though the black impassibles still jump out at me

From a design standpoint the only things that catch my eye are the two round sea zones surrounding Japan and Hawaii.

It feel like you need one in the Atlantic to balance things out aesthetically. Have you considered the possibility of one surrounding the British Isles?

Or maybe Iceland? Or maybe both?

I still think Mercator is a bit tight in Europe, a little stretching there might be ideal, even if it was just along the vertical axis. I think the map would still read fine, but you’d get a few more pixel for units into those key European spots. Also if you were willing to shrink South America slightly you could almost curve off a 10th of the map height at the bottom of the screen (which is notorious for players forgetting units in the south sea hehe) without really needing to change Africa/Australia of the pacific. Basically a slight bend would go a long way, even if using Mercator for the baseline.

Oh and I think the possession colors for Dutch Borneo and British Sarawak and North Borneo should be reversed.

My only suggestions :)

Nice work man. That would be a fun map to form the basis of a 1939 game, or any year from 39 on.

I like that you have not yet imposed on the map any extraneous information such as IPC values or VC. This means the map is adaptive for many purposes. I like the general division of territories. Only that the projection is a bit large at the poles for my tastes. If we could shrink them up slightly I think the map would be ideal. Its really more about screen dimension for me when it comes to the Big World Map that Wandering Head made. These days most screens are very long relative to their height, so standard Mercator always seems blown out a bit in tripleA to me, especially at the south end, and of course Europe is always tight. I wish the center picker for tripleA was better at housing units to smaller scales. Its a little better than it used to be, especially with the guiding lines, but still Europe loves to clutter up haha.
:-D

Again though, great design direction!

Peepette

@Black_Elk:

That’s a clean map Ryuzaki_Lawlie!

The color selection is ideal. Though the black impassibles still jump out at me

From a design standpoint the only things that catch my eye are the two round sea zones surrounding Japan and Hawaii.

It feel like you need one in the Atlantic to balance things out aesthetically. Have you considered the possibility of one surrounding the British Isles?

Or maybe Iceland? Or maybe both?

I still think Mercator is a bit tight in Europe, a little stretching there might be ideal, even if it was just along the vertical axis. I think the map would still read fine, but you’d get a few more pixel for units into those key European spots. Also if you were willing to shrink South America slightly you could almost curve off a 10th of the map height at the bottom of the screen (which is notorious for players forgetting units in the south sea hehe) without really needing to change Africa/Australia of the pacific. Basically a slight bend would go a long way, even if using Mercator for the baseline.

Oh and I think the possession colors for Dutch Borneo and British Sarawak and North Borneo should be reversed.

My only suggestions :)

Nice work man. That would be a fun map to form the basis of a 1939 game, or any year from 39 on.

I like that you have not yet imposed on the map any extraneous information such as IPC values or VC. This means the map is adaptive for many purposes. I like the general division of territories. Only that the projection is a bit large at the poles for my tastes. If we could shrink them up slightly I think the map would be ideal. Its really more about screen dimension for me when it comes to the Big World Map that Wandering Head made. These days most screens are very long relative to their height, so standard Mercator always seems blown out a bit in tripleA to me, especially at the south end, and of course Europe is always tight. I wish the center picker for tripleA was better at housing units to smaller scales. Its a little better than it used to be, especially with the guiding lines, but still Europe loves to clutter up haha.
:-D

Again though, great design direction!

I’ll probably shift the continents (turning their general direction), and stretch out northern Africa and Europe, will probably require North America to get a bit skinny, but I think the big benefit from this, is that potentially more European spaces can be added. This will allow me to add more to the Mediterranean however (and it really needs the space), perhaps round out where Rome is. Africa, I think needs a bit more work. South America possibly as well, but I sort of need an idea of which cities can be considered major not only there, but elsewhere. Vladivostok will defiantly get added in with it’s own space.

I picked black for impassables, since it tells me that there is nothing there, no play space, it’s simply temporary, and they are there for the designer’s benefit.

I’m not sure where else to put a rounded Sea Zone, I’m considering more though.

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