Official Answers

Bear in mind that at the time Hawaii was not a state, but a territory, although a strategically important one. It was one among many Pacific island territories of the USA, and while a nearby Japanese presence would certainly have raised eyebrows, it would not have had the same effect that such a presence closer to the mainland would have.

While Alaska was also still a territory at the time, the fact of its closer proximity to the continental USA makes it worthy of inclusion in the restriction.

Yes you could choose a chart in AA50 and G40, but it was one of 6. I like the idea of groups of 3. I agree with you guys that 6 is too broad, but I also think picking the tech you’re going for (group of 1) is too narrow. I just really like that group of related 3 idea.

I apologize I haven’t even tried to read every post that’s here about tech, but just wanted to suggest the tech token idea from AA50. Nobody played with tech in G40 for good reasons, I think. First of all, they were kind of lazy in just keeping it with 2 charts of 6, and getting rid of the tech tokens made it too risky at 5 IPC’s anyway, but I think the biggest reason is because with so many more options in G40 than AA50, it was too much (for serious players anyway) to be worried about whether your opponent would suddenly get paratroopers or long range aircraft or something. I’ll just stop here, just wanted to toss those ideas in the soup.

Thank you very much for the update. I am feeling well enough to work every day, so my morale is a lot higher! I am getting caught up pretty quickly, but have big days with long commutes so tend to wind down with a movie or the PS4 on weeknights. But soon, on a weekend most likely, I will have the time and energy to play Japan. It’s a testament to how tough you guys are playing, FWIW Thanks for the patience and understanding

@Navalland OK, so that is your background layer.

In brief:
On other layers apply an image of a greyscale streetmap to the territory outlines and create some cloud-like effect on the seazone-layer. The territory layer should have a high level of transparency, you need to experiment here. When you are ready merge the territory layer and the seazone layer to one png-file, preserving transparency there. This will be your relief-image. Of course you can apply whatever visual effect you want there.

I found this tutorial for creating “clouds”:
https://forums.getpaint.net/topic/17972-make-real-clouds/

Maybe something similar exists for GIMP, too.

For further details please try to reach out to active map-makers. I can only give you this quite superficial information.

@Navalland
Have you already created a working basetile-image?

@Navalland

In that case you need to be familiar with image editing software as I mentioned above.

Which software are you using for image editing? There should be tutorials on the web on how to work with layers, transparency, etc.
This is more about image editing rather than TripleA, then.

@Navalland

What exactly do you mean by “make good relief tiles”?
You make tiles by breaking the image into parts (tiles).

Or are you talking about a tutorial on how to create/paint a relief-image itself, before breaking it into tiles?

(For map-making in general, this is a good source:
https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/blob/master/docs/map-making/map-and-map-skin-making.md
Just in case you don’t know this link.)

@creeping-deth87

The rulebooks explicitly say:
"Place new facilities in any eligible territory that you have controlled since the start of your turn. "

So you are of course correct, you are not allowed to place a new IC in a just converted friendly neutral territory.

This is one of the aspects that TripleA handles incorrectly when dealing with “neutrals”.

So the correct handling of the rule must be player enforced.

I move this topic to the TripleA Support category.

@LennardF Ah ok, but this added information doesn’t change anything, unfortunately. The pro-axis neutral doesn’t change its status until the end of the NCM-phase. In other words: During non combat movement the territory still is neutral.

Rulebook, page 9:
“However, a power that is at war may move
land units into (but not through) a friendly neutral as a
noncombat move (see “Noncombat Move,” page 21). This
moves the territory out of its neutral status at the end of the
Noncombat Move phase.”