New Axis & Allies Global War Variant (free map)

All right, here’s my complete A&A variant, Axis & Allies: Global War.

The varient includes a new map, new country cards, control markers for Italy, and a PDF file of the special rules that pertain to this map.

This first link is just to a reduced size .jpg of the map, and is only so that you can get an idea of what the map looks like before you decide to download the whole variant or not.  (DO NOT PRINT THIS FILE.  The map is too small to play on, and the reduced size and JPEG compression make some of the text undreadable.  Download one of the .rar files linked to below if you want the full size map.)

http://img139.imageshack.us/img139/7113/axisandalliesglobalwarmqc2.jpg

This next link is what you should download if all you want to do is play A&A:Global War.  The .rar file contains the map, the player cards, Italian control markers, and the rules PDF.  The images are all in .jpg format, however I set the JPEG compression at the lowest setting possible, so there shouldn’t be any noticable artifacts.  The total file size is about 23MB.

http://rapidshare.com/files/2035267/AAGlobalWar.rar.html

This final link is what you should download if you plan on making any modifications to my variant.  The .rar file contains everything listed above, except that all the images are in .psp (Paint Shop Pro) format, and items within each file are still in seperate layers.  The images were saved in Paint Shop Pro 7.02, so you’ll probably need that version or newer to open the files.  You might also be able to open them in Photo Shop, but I haven’t tested that.  The total file size is about 74MB.

http://rapidshare.com/files/2038592/AAGlobarWarPSFiles.rar.html

If anyone has any comments, or if anyone plays this variant, I’d like to hear what you think.

Feel free to redistribute or rehost these files anyway you want.

Also, if any mods are reading this, feel free to delete my first post in this thread and point people to this post.

@Imperious:

What format is the file under? More succinctly: what program do i need to open each file?

If you download the smaller .rar file, they’re just JPEGs, so you can open them in whatever you want.  In the larger .rar file, the images are Paint Shop Pro files.  You’ll need Paint Shop Pro 7 or newer to open them.  You might also be able to open them in a Adobe Photo Shop, since I believe both programs can open each other’s file formats.

Paint Shop Pro used to be made by Jasc Software, but they got bought out by Corel a little while back.  It looks like Corel is now making Paint Shop Pro 11.  Corel has free trial downloads on their website.  The trial downloads for older version of Paint Shop Pro used to be fully functional expcet they had a 30 day time limit.  I don’t know if the trial downloads still work the same way, though, now that Corel is running things, but I think it might still be the same.

Oh, and if you’re just asking about how to unpack the download archives, you can use WinRar which you can get at the link below…

http://www.download.com/3000-2250-10007677.html

@Craig:

I downloaded the first file, but it is telling me that I can’t have the second one because I have reached my limit of free downloads.

I would like the second one, but I am not going to pay for it.

If you can change this, great!  If not, then too bad.

Or at least put that info in the post with the link so that people know about this.  I may have just downloaded the second file so as to have the working version instead of the playing one.  That is if I had know that it was a choice of one or the other.  Then again, the site might be set up such that the second file is too big for me to get as a free download and I would have been stuck only taking the first.

I just would have liked to know ahead of time.

Craig

PS- I just noticed that it is giving me a time in which I can come back to try again.  I think.  I will see.

Yeah, Rapidshare just puts a limit on how often you can download files.  The bigger the files are that you download, the longer it makes you wait between downloads.  You only have to pay if you don’t want to have to wait between downloads.

@Craig:

I did notice a few things now that I have the map put together.

The Persian Gulf doesn’t have a number designation like other sea zones.

Yeah, I totally missed that, and didn’t even notice until you pointed it out.  I guess it helps to have a second pair of eyes go over the map.  The Persian Gulf should have a number designation.  However, since no ships are placed there in the starting setup, its not too big of deal.  Just make sure that players are aware that the zone is still a valid zone for ships to enter.

There are a few major island territories that don’t have a name printed for them but would seem to be places that you should be able to go to.

Ceylon
Corsica
Sakhalin Island

I contemplated putting names on more of the smaller islands, but at some point I felt the map was just getting too crowded, and that small islands with no IPC value and no real strategic value didn’t really add anything to the game.  I should have put it in the rules, but any territory that doesn’t have a name is supposed to be a non-valid zone that cannot be entered.

Are the island in sz 49 considered to be all one territory?

Yes, I didn’t think it was worth it to try and split them up into seperate territories.  The “Cuba” territory represents all the important islands in the Caribbean.

I take it that if a place has a name on it that it is a separate territory?  I ask because Nova Scotia is kind of hanging out there on the edge of the coast but I am not totally sure if it is a separate territory.  I think that you mean for it to be.

Yes, Nova Scotia is intended to be a seperate island territory.

I take it that the Japanese home islands are considered to be one territory?

Yes.

Is the Sinai Peninsula a part of the Cairo territory?

Yes.  I wanted the Suez Canal, the Panama Canael, and the Dardanelles/Bosphorus to each only have a single territory that controlled their use.

Now onto some of your choices concerning placement of sz boundaries and ports.

You have Hong Kong set up to be a two sz port but you rob Singapore of such an honor.  I would see Singapore as being a much more appropriate choice for such a use.

Yeah, it probably wouldn’t have hurt the game to move Malay’s Naval Base onto the border between Sea Zones 70 and 85.  As for Hong Kong, even though the Naval Base touches two sea zones, its not a huge benefit.  The only Naval Base that is three zones away from SZ 91 is the naval base in Japan that effects SZ 125.
Â

It would seem that the northern UK port should be up in sz 14.  Scapa Flow was up there.

That would probably work, however my rational for putting it in SZ 15 is that its then exactly 3 zones to the naval base in Great Britain, no matter which way the player decided to go around Britain.  (I don’t know if that’s really that good of reason, though.)

With all the sea zones around the UK home islands, it is interesting that sz 27 is as big as it is.

Yeah, at an earlier stage I may have had SZ 27 split in half, however I wanted to make sure that during non-combat an allied ship in SZ 25 could get to SZ 23 in one turn without having to take some convoluted route that involved going between Nova Scotia and Quebec first.

Did you contemplate splitting the Black sea into two sea areas to cut down on air ranges.  You could have bombers in Romania and/or Bulgaria bombing Stalingrad by going over the Black Sea.  They couldn’t make it near there at all by trying to go over land.

No, I didn’t contemplate that, but thanks for pointing it out.  To be honest, though, I’m not sure what I would have done even if I had noticed it.  I don’t have enough knowledge of WWII history to know if German bombers flying such a route would have been possible or not, plus I’m not sure if such an option would be bad for gameplay or not.

It looks like sz 124 actually borders the Manchuria territory.  Is that true?

That’s a good question, and to be honest I don’t have an answer.  In A&A:P, the Manchuria territory doesn’t touch the equivilant of SZ 124, however in A&A:Revised it does.  If it doesn’t touch SZ 124, then that means that Vladivostok touches Korea, however if Manchuria touches SZ 124, then Vladivostok doesn’t touch Korea.  Which do you think would be a better option from a gameplay point of view?

As someone else stated, maybe there needs to be an impassable area representing the Sahara.

I thought about doing that, but I didn’t think it would add that much to the game.  Even without an impassable area below north-western Africa, there’s still very rarely any reason for any player to actually try going through that region.  Also, I’m not sure if the Sahara would have proved an insurmountable obstacle if one of the powers in WWII had put their mind to overcoming it.

On the topic of impassable areas, can air units fly over impassable areas?

For the sake of simplicity, I would say no, however if you wanted to alter the rules to allow aircraft to fly over impassable areas, I don’t think it would hurt the game.

I know that you put out the files for us to work with (and I finally downloaded them) but I put these questions up so as to get your thoughts as to why you made the choices that you did.

I have printed out the country charts and will set up the parts to see what it looks like.

Well, thanks for pointing these things out.  However, to be honest there wasn’t a ton of deep thought put into some of the choices I made.  This is the first time I’ve map a custom Axis & Allies map.  It was hard enough for me to get friends together for play testing even just one time, and at some point I just decided that it was best to go with what seemed interesting and figured that any major problems could be corrected later by altering the starting setup.

Basically, my main goal with this map, besides just creating something new, was to try to put together an A&A where bad dice at a few battles or a few bad mistakes in strategy here and there wouldn’t mean certain defeat for your side.  I also wanted to make a game where either side could still conceivably overcome the loss of one of their allies, i.e., a rich US and UK could still potentially recover from the loss of Russia, or the Axis could potentially recover from the loss of one of their members, assuming the other two were in aggressive strategic positions and had increased their income a decent amount already.

With all the sea zones around the UK home islands, it is interesting that sz 27 is as big as it is.

Yeah, at an earlier stage I may have had SZ 27 split in half, however I wanted to make sure that during non-combat an allied ship in SZ 25 could get to SZ 23 in one turn without having to take some convoluted route that involved going between Nova Scotia and Quebec first.

I don’t see anything wrong with that.  The North Atlantic was the shorter route.  They can still go the longer route, it just would hang the ships out there a bit more.

Yeah, that’s true, however after looking at the map again, I realized there was one other big reason I didn’t split SZ 27 in half, and that is that I wanted to give Germany the option of researching Long Range Aircraft and then being able to hit the US with bombers launched from Western France.  Making SZ 27 the way it is and giving Western France an Air Base that touches SZ 28 seemed the best way to do that.

Did you contemplate splitting the Black sea into two sea areas to cut down on air ranges.  You could have bombers in Romania and/or Bulgaria bombing Stalingrad by going over the Black Sea.  They couldn’t make it near there at all by trying to go over land.

No, I didn’t contemplate that, but thanks for pointing it out.  To be honest, though, I’m not sure what I would have done even if I had noticed it.  I don’t have enough knowledge of WWII history to know if German bombers flying such a route would have been possible or not, plus I’m not sure if such an option would be bad for gameplay or not.

It isn’t about what historically happened, it’s about gameplay.  It creates a kind of loophole in that it is shorter one way compared to another.  Plus if you were to add some kind of paratrooper rules, then you would be looking at the ability to go the length of the Black Sea and drop in behind the Soviet lines (or German lines) while the same geographical distance over land would not be possible because of the many land territories.

Yeah, those are all good points.  I probably should have split the Black Sea in two, however I’m loathe to go back and do it, since it would throw the numbering of the Sea Zones off.  Though if I’m going to leave the Persian Gulf without a number, then I guess it wouldn’t hurt to put another unnumbered zone in the Black Sea.

As someone else stated, maybe there needs to be an impassable area representing the Sahara.

I thought about doing that, but I didn’t think it would add that much to the game.  Even without an impassable area below north-western Africa, there’s still very rarely any reason for any player to actually try going through that region.  Also, I’m not sure if the Sahara would have proved an insurmountable obstacle if one of the powers in WWII had put their mind to overcoming it.

If they had wanted to, yes they could have.  But the point is that there is no representation in this game for the resources that would have been expended to move across such an expanse.Â

Right now troops can easily move south to capture the IPCs.  By having an impassable area, you would be inserting the need for the conquerer to put forth the time and/or resources (transports) to get troops down there.

All that’s true, its just that I didn’t think it would come into play often enough to make it worth the effort of putting it in.  I figured the best way to handle it was just to make sure that central Africa had a lot of territories with no IPC value, so that any player who decided to pass through them would eat up a few turns for no increase in revenue.

@pdel21:

Positronica,

This is an incredible map.  I would like to plaque it for durability.  Before I do that however, I have noticed a handful of errors (typos mostly).  I am not very good at this PhotoShop program.  I have tried to edit this map myself, but obviously I am missing something (I have downloaded the correct files).  The program will not let me select text to edit it.  Here are the errors that I have noticed:

NEUTRALS:
COLUMBIA should be COLOMBIA

GERMANY:
AUSTRIA is incorrectly labelled as RUMANIA
LIBYA should all be part of ITALY (you can change the name of LIBYA territory to FEZZAN)

ITALY:
SARDINA should be SARDINIA
CYRENACIA should be CYRENAICA
ABBYSINNIA should be ABYSSINIA
ITALIAN SOMALIALAND should be ITALIAN SOMALILAND

Would be better served to have a naval base at the heel of Italy since TARANTO was there, home to the majority of the fleet and sight of major battle
Also I have a jpg for the Italian Fascia (the symbol for Italy for World War II), this may make a better marker for Italy since this flag was adopted after WWII

JAPAN:
PALAN ISLAND should be PALAU ISLAND

SOVIET UNION:
VOLGAROD should be VOLGOGRAD
NORTHERN KAZAHK should be NORTHERN KAZAKH
KAZAHK SSR should be KAZAKH SSR
YAKUT should be YAKUTIA SSR
KVENKI SSR should be YEVENKI SSR

UNITED KINGDOM:
GIBRALTER should be GIBRALTAR
MAYLAY should be MALAY
MOZAMBIQUE belonged to Portugal and should probably be Neutral, but that is a minor point

I think that is all of them.  Is it possible for you to correct these (at least the typos) and repost?  Alternatively if you could let me know how to go about editing in Paint Shop I can do it.

Thanks again for this fantastic piece of work!

Yowzah!  That’s a lot of typos.  I figured I probably had a few in there somewhere, but I wasn’t expecting that many.  Well, if I have some time in the next week or so, I’ll try to sit down and correct them and repost.  You could try to make the changes yourself in Paint Shop Pro, but it would be a little tricky.  I got the text in the map to look the way it does by stacking a couple layers together and doing some feathering to the layer in the back.  If you’re not real familiar with Paint Shop Pro, it would be hard to duplicate, even if I wrote out instructions.  Also, if any of the territitories with mispelled names have starting units in them, then the country cards will need to be updated, too.

As for your question about the naval base in Italy, what sea zone did you envision it touching?  Sea Zone 40 or Sea Zone 41?  Also, keep in mind that naval bases only come into play if there’s another naval base three zones away.