Argo's Middleweight Map for 1939 & 1942

@SS-GEN Yup, I’m just really busy. I’ll come back eventually!

Update: I decided to manually trace a brand new vector map so that I can squash and enlarge continents as I see fit and then rescale when I’m done so that the smallest tiles will still be enough pixels wide to hold a few unit types each. Here’s Europe and Africa – you may notice that Africa is only half the height it ‘should’ be compared to Europe, and that the UK is about 140% of its proper size, and that the English Channel and North Sea are about triple their proper sizes. I plan to continue abusing geography for our wargaming convenience until I’ve finished the whole globe. This project is taking several years longer than I originally anticipated, but I do not plan to quit. Thanks again for all your support. :)

Is it possible to get TripleA to allow transports to move or unload only during noncombat? I was thinking it might be interesting to have two kinds of boats that move land units:

1. Transports, which move 3, carry any 3 land units, and can only unload during noncombat
2. Landing Craft, which move 1, carry 1 infantry, bombard at 1, and can load/unload at any time.

This would make it very challenging to win a beachhead, but very easy to reinforce a beachhead once you’ve got one – you could even follow up the same turn, e.g., landing craft to get from London to Normandy, and then if you actually capture Normandy then maybe transports can unload some tanks into Normandy from Canada or even New York during the non-combat phase of the same turn.

I’d like to find out if this is possible before finishing my sea zones.

Thanks! I’ll give it a try and let you know. :)

And I bet it does work; I bet that’s the same option that’s used for the AAA guns.

Progress continues. The circles (victory cities) are 180 pixels wide, which means that every territory should have plenty of room to host a reasonable number of units.

I’ve got a reasonably functional prototype in TripleA again with the new map – here’s the unit list:

And here’s a snapshot of the European theater of operations – as you can see, the units are fitting comfortably! This is with map size at 60% and unit size at 100%; players will naturally want to adjust their settings based on monitor size and personal preference.

Lots of work still to do on the XML file – I just managed to get air superiority battles up and running, and next I’ll work on submarine behavior, and then probably head over to canals. It’ll be a while, but I’ll keep at it.

OK, an alpha version of the 1939 map is now available for download! You’ll need to unzip the folder at the link below and put it in C:/Users/[your name]/triplea/downloadedMaps. I’m still working on this, but it’s very much playable (I finished one game with each side), and I’m excited to share. Let me know if you give it a try, or if you have any feedback, or if you want to help with graphics or playtesting – it’s easier to change things now that it would be after it gets more polished.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RTTR2kzgPeV82avij5ZI6mXuN5M9ezmi/view?usp=sharing

@Navalland Thanks for giving it a try! I’m sorry about the error messages; I’m not sure what’s causing those. I hate to bring up obvious points, but are you sure you’ve unzipped the folder so that the unzipped folder is directly inside your C:/Users/[your name]/triplea/downloadedMaps folder?

You should be able to see the unzipped XML file at:
C:/Users/Navalland/triplea/downloadedMaps/argo/games/argo.xml.

Sometimes if you unzip a folder then Windows will place it at:
C:/Users/Navalland/triplea/downloadedMaps/argo/argo/games/argo.xml, which can cause errors similar to the ones you’re describing.

As far as Western Russia being too powerful, are you saying that just because it is centrally located, or what is it about Western Russia that you feel is powerful? I was surprised to hear that because it is only worth 1 IPC, it starts with zero units in it, and there are paths around it to both the north and the south – you can invade Lithuania -> Leningrad -> Archangel -> Moscow, or you can invade Romania -> South Ukraine -> Caucasus -> Stalingrad. Curious to hear more about your thoughts on that one.

What, specifically, would you like to see redrawn in the Middle East, and why?

Were you able to get the game up and running, or did the error messages crash the game? If you can play the game, do you have any other feedback?

Good, glad to hear it. And thank you, that’s super-valuable feedback!

I also feel awkward about the income imbalance between UK and US. I agree with you that that’s a problem. I’m not sure how to solve it, and I’m open to advice. My difficulty is that I don’t want fewer territories in, e.g., Australia because I think it would make the combat less interesting, but I also don’t want the average Australian territory to be worth less income, because I want some variation among the territories (they shouldn’t all be worth just $1). Same issue with Canada, India, etc. – it’s not that I consciously decided that Britain should be earning $88, it’s just that I gave them what I thought of as their minimum income for their minimum set of territories for the kind of game I wanted to design, and I was already up that high. There’s a little bit of room to reduce the income of some of the territories in the UK proper – I could make, e.g., West England worth $2 or $3 instead of $4 – but I don’t think it would help enough, and I don’t want the UK proper to be worth less than, e.g., India. Right now the UK proper is earning $20, which only makes it first among equals compared to India, Canada, etc. – if I reduced UK any further, it would be earning less than a commonwealth.

You mentioned that places like Canada or South America are non-combat zones, but I don’t agree – the cruiser can transport commandos all the way from Normandy to Quebec (or vice versa) in one move, and Germany starts with a toehold in Argentina that can grow if the Allies aren’t careful. They’re not usually major combat zones, but the possibility for conflict exists all over the globe, and that’s on purpose.

I could increase the US income, but then the overall Allied income would be too high. I could increase German-Italian-Japanese income to compensate, but then French and Russian income would be too low…you get the idea. So I’m not thrilled with the way that shook out, but I don’t see how to fix it, either.

I like combat move first just fine; I can make that available.

Thanks for explaining about Western Russia. I guess I see Western Russia as being the direct approach to Moscow. The northern strategy is to go Lithuania -> Karelia -> Archangel -> Moscow. The central strategy is to go Belarus -> West Russia -> Central Russia -> Moscow. The southern strategy is to go Kiev -> East Ukraine -> Caucasus -> Volga, which doesn’t get you Moscow, but does get you rich. That said, I suppose there would be room for 1 more territory if I really wanted – the line could be Leningrad-West Russia - East Russia - Caucasus, with East Russia bordering West Russia, Central Russia, Caucasus, East Ukraine, and perhaps Stalingrad. Would that make things better? Why or why not?

I’m not sure I understand what you mean by saying the Middle East looks squeezed. In terms of total number of pixels, its territories are some of the largest in the game – Persia, for example, is almost the same size as all six mainland French territories. Syria is a bit small, but I don’t know how to fix that; I already got rid of Lebanon and Trans-Jordan and Cyprus. It gives the French a presence in the region, which I think adds interest.

Are there any specific changes you would recommend in the Middle East?