AARHE Historical Map

What software program do you use to edit the map?

Nice ideas. Thanks for posting. You have probably seen that many here do the same thing.

@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.

here is a 2009 post from me at HGD: ( note this applies to when AA50 came out)

All you have to do to extrapolate these GDP numbers is to divide the GDP by 15

using 1941 numbers:
Axis: 911 divided by 15= 60.73

Allies: 1798 divided by 15= 119.86

IN AA50 the axis are at 60 total

IN AA50 the allies are at 112 total

This is why the game is somewhat accurate, and the balancing is all force projection with the advantage going to the axis, and the US and UK player facing the commitment of their forces all over the map.

For 1940 you have to make additional considerations because the game will have say 50% more territories than AA50, so the number you divide will be smaller and the total will be greater in the game so that you don’t have too many worthless territories.

So lets do June 4th, 1940:

Germany: 387, plus Poland 76.6, Czecho-Slovakia 30.3, Netherlands 44.5, Belgium 39.6, Norway 11.6, Denmark 20.9, Austria 27=637.5

42.5 IPC

Italy:147 = 9.8 IPC

Japan: 192= 12.8 IPC

Allies:
USA: 943
US colonies: 23.9
Total: 966.9= 64.4 IPC

UK: 316
UK colonies 14.4
Total 330.4= 22 IPC

France 82
French colonies 10.9
Total 92.9= 6.2 IPC

USSR 417
Baltic states 12.9
Total 429.9= 28.6 IPC

Now you have to account for peace time status vs. total war mobilization for both USA and USSR. The amount of GDP used for wartime purposes was at least twice as great for the current belligerents than neutrals. So i would put USA and USSR at 50% rate with the difference going to domestic purposes.

So problem solved. Game balanced unless your trying to make the game unhistorical with notions that the axis had ZERO chance to win, which is a bogus argument even by economics.

I am planning on printing one of IL’s maps. I’ll probably use his smaller AA50 and size it to 48x24.

ok thats fine then.

the debate was never settled. i said why i didn’t think it should be liberty ships are no one rebuted. i never thought US DD’s were on the table, it was Essex CVs (cheap because rushed into production and fast) that I thought had the lead spot.