Soviet Cities by population - the top 60

[Cpl GAC]

I'm trying to make sense of how to size Soviet cities on the map. I'm seeing we might over-rate some cities and under-rate others. For example, in 1939; Minsk had 270,000 people and is often shown with dense urban and multiple hexes versus Baku is shown as one, maybe 2-3 hexes, urban, but it actually had a population of 520,000.

quote="Curtis Lemay" post_id=5201189 time=1732687168 user_id=97418]

Another scenario question relating to scale.
Going with the 6.5 km scale: At what population point does "Urban" become "Dense Urban"?

If it's closely packed masonry instead of wooden structures, its "Urban". If it's closely packed multiple story masonry, it's "Dense Urban".

But then there is the issue of the size of the place. If it only fills a quarter of the hex of Dense Urban I would demote it to Urban, etc.
[/quote]

I got the next bit of information from ChatGPT;

[Cpl GAC]

In 1940, the Soviet Union was an industrial powerhouse, and its largest cities reflected its focus on heavy industry, centralization, and strategic development. Below are some of the largest cities at the time, along with their approximate populations based on historical records. Note that population figures are estimates, as official Soviet data was sometimes inconsistent or unavailable.

Top 50 Cities in the Soviet Union by Estimated Population (1940)

1. Moscow - ~4.1 million
2. Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) - ~3.4 million
3. Kiev (now Kyiv) - ~930,000
4. Kharkov (now Kharkiv) - ~840,000
5. Odessa - ~600,000
6. Tbilisi - ~530,000
7. Baku - ~520,000
8. Gorky (now Nizhny Novgorod) - ~505,000
9. Rostov-on-Don - ~500,000
10. Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) - ~430,000
11. Tashkent - ~425,000
12. Stalingrad (now Volgograd) - ~400,000
13. Novosibirsk - ~400,000
14. Yerevan - ~380,000
15. Samara (then Kuibyshev) - ~350,000
16. Kazan - ~340,000
17. Voronezh - ~300,000
18. Chelyabinsk - ~280,000
19. Perm - ~270,000
20. Minsk - ~270,000
21. Dnipro (then Dnipropetrovsk) - ~260,000
22. Ufa - ~250,000
23. Astrakhan - ~240,000
24. Tula - ~230,000
25. Orenburg (then Chkalov) - ~220,000
26. Omsk - ~215,000
27. Irkutsk - ~210,000
28. Krasnodar - ~200,000
29. Vladivostok - ~200,000
30. Barnaul - ~190,000
31. Kalinin (now Tver) - ~185,000
32. Ivanovo - ~180,000
33. Kirov (formerly Vyatka) - ~170,000
34. Tomsk - ~160,000
35. Murmansk - ~155,000
36. Smolensk - ~150,000
37. Chita - ~150,000
38. Taganrog - ~140,000
39. Sevastopol - ~140,000
40. Bryansk - ~135,000
41. Grozny - ~130,000
42. Yaroslavl - ~130,000
43. Ulyanovsk (then Simbirsk) - ~125,000
44. Saratov - ~120,000
45. Kemerovo - ~120,000
46. Kaluga - ~115,000
47. Penza - ~115,000
48. Vologda - ~110,000
49. Arkhangelsk - ~105,000
50. Magadan - ~100,000

Sources:

- Soviet censuses (1926, 1939) and extrapolations for 1940
- Historical urban studies and population reconstructions
- The Cambridge History of Russia for demographic context
These numbers are rounded estimates due to the lack of precise contemporary statistics and disruptions caused by World War II.

Cities 51–100:

51. Orenburg (Chkalov) - ~115,000
52. Simferopol - ~95,000
53. Ulyanovsk (Simbirsk) - ~120,000
54. Syktyvkar - ~85,000
55. Nalchik - ~80,000
56. Batumi - ~90,000
57. Poltava - ~90,000
58. Zaporozhye (Zaporizhzhia) - ~95,000
59. Lugansk (Luhansk) - ~90,000
60. Kerch - ~85,000
Remaining cities include other major industrial and administrative hubs. The exact order and population numbers beyond the top 50 vary due to data inconsistencies and regional disruptions prior to World War II.

[Cpl GAC]

I understand that in the West the cities have a greater probability of being dense urban because of all the influences (space, style, etc) but are maps often showing an urban hex when it should really be a dot recognizing it's place but because of it's small size there's no defensive benefit?

Does anyone have rules or advice besides looking at population size?

[cathar1244]

My take is that population density is the key aspect.

Ignore structural materials. TOAW gives us two options for urban hexes. Look at their effects on combat and determine what the trigger point is in terms of density for the dense urban tile to be selected.

The other consideration is scale. The combat effects of dense urban are not the same for a company and a corps.

Cheers

[Simon Edmonds]

Does anyone have rules or advice besides looking at population size?

Are you using the 1:300,000 German maps from WW2? The better ones have a wealth of detail on the smaller towns and villages.
Scale is everything. An urban village in a 5km scale may well be insignificant in a 10km scale. Does the village/town dominate the hex and does it significantly enhance the defense of the hex.
You mentioned the West. I am currently doing eastern France at 6.5km. I look up each significant town on the internet. Many have a population history. Takes a bit of time; but is very interesting.
Unfortunately, German 1:300,000 maps of France and Italy are hard to come by. If anyone knows of any sources please let me know.
CPL Gac. If you PM me with the scale and basic outline of the scenario I might be about to point you to some specific stuff to help.

[Cpl GAC]

Thanks, Simon. I'll let you know if I need help. Right now I'm just tinkering on a 10km/division scale and playing with an idea of city/town size and "towns as historical reference markers".

This is continuing down a path I started discussing here; https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 6#p5008436

I'm thinking;
Dot - less than 20,000 and historically significant - Yelnya, Shisselberg
Town marker - 20,000-70,000 (like Staraya Russa & Grodno) - more the land/logistics around it than the city itself
Cities over 75,000 - one urban -
Cities over 150,000 two urban - now it becomes more operational as it might take a few days or more and multiple divisions because the city becomes the fight, not the geographic anchor of the space like the smaller ones are
Cities over 250,000 - 1 dense urban, two urban minimum - eastern factory cities more dense urban, southern and east more area than dense
The big 5 - 600,000+ look at the actual city map

[Cpl GAC]

Here's the Town marker I'm contemplating;

h_mapOptional2.png (7.08 KiB) Viewed 584 times

Screenshot (180).png (1.69 MiB) Viewed 584 times

[Simon Edmonds]

You could also try the town or location name in brackets over the hex. Saves the graphic for something more important. Probably worth talking to the map maker for D21 / 41. That's 10km. See how they reasoned it out. I have a hex overlay map at 10km for all of Europe and North Africa if it is any use to you.

[sPzAbt653]

Probably worth talking to the map maker for D21 / 41.

He [Rick] retired from TOAW years ago.
We are lucky he made those maps, cause I never could have made them!

[Cpl GAC]

Is it possible to create another terrain?

"Town" with combat effects like Hills but no additional movement penalty.

Creating the graphics is easy - its the under-the-hood part of terrain that might be the issue for my experiment.

[cathar1244]

Is it possible to create another terrain?

"Town" with combat effects like Hills but no additional movement penalty.

Creating the graphics is easy - its the under-the-hood part of terrain that might be the issue for my experiment.

No. We don't have designer controlled terrain effects in TOAW.

You can re-purpose another terrain tile to use its effects on combat, movement, and supply for your town tile. The language file also has to be changed so that the game reports the tile as 'town' vice, for example, 'rocky'.

Cheers

[Cpl GAC]

Understood. Thank you.

[Curtis Lemay]

Here's the spreadsheet I created in developing my "Soviet Union 1941" scenario:

[Cpl GAC]

Thank you, Bob.

That saved me a lot of asking ChatGPT.

[Cpl GAC]

I think I'm going to sacrifice dry_river for the town tile. Jungle impacts movement and visibility too much even though it isn't used in the scenario.

Also, jungle looks too much like forest . If I see unnamed towns at the ends of rivers that just tells me I didn't delete all the wadi.

Plus, I don't think the machetes were standard Soviet issue. 1941 is hard enough, who needs one more thing.

[cathar1244]

'Jungle' can be retitled as 'wilderness', which might fit mixed old forest and swamp areas found in northern Russia.

Wadi tiles are good for arid regions.

Really wish we could get an option for designers to plug in their own combat, movement, and supply effects for each terrain tile.

Cheers

[Cpl GAC]

I think I'm going to sacrifice dry_river for the town tile. Jungle impacts movement and visibility too much even though it isn't used in the scenario.

So, I just discovered adding reconfigured wadi/dry river tiles actually replaces the river tiles already in place. Apparently, you cannot have both in a hex. Makes sense.

Really wish we could get an option for designers to plug in their own combat, movement, and supply effects for each terrain tile.

Suddenly me too.

[insert F-Bomb here]

[cathar1244]

I think I'm going to sacrifice dry_river for the town tile. Jungle impacts movement and visibility too much even though it isn't used in the scenario.

So, I just discovered adding reconfigured wadi/dry river tiles actually replaces the river tiles already in place. Apparently, you cannot have both in a hex. Makes sense.

Really wish we could get an option for designers to plug in their own combat, movement, and supply effects for each terrain tile.

Suddenly me too.

[insert F-Bomb here]

For operational scenarios, I'm not much of a fan of "light woods" or cropland tiles, or "rocky" for that matter. I've used repurposed cropland for "dot cities", some combat effect, but not much.

Yes, terrain tile interaction is not really documented (or to any real extent). On the other hand, you can place deep water over forest tiles and have submerged woodlands

[Cpl GAC]

Thanks for your comments, cathar1244 - it helps confirm my thoughts.

Here's my next attempt - convert sandy pngs to towns and require an underlying terrain as well. It doesn't work with light woods, forest or evergreen - it replaces those similar to how wadi replaces river.

My thought - the sandy movement and defense modifiers are overridden by the underlying terrain. Most common will be "towns" on cropland (which logically works in that towns are almost assumed to be surrounded by cropland in 1940s Russia. The town would at least get a reconnaissance benefit and the +1 movement effect can be rationalized as the unit had to slow down while moving through as it's still fairly primitive logistics there.

Maybe also start at 25% entrenchment so it can more quickly become something to be addressed by the attacker?

I might be overthinking this, but the area of a 10km hex is 79sq km. A city with a 5km area takes up 25% of that hex - a definite obstacle. A 3sq km area town is 9% of the hex - that "town's" population in 1940 Russia is about 30,000 so it has an impact, but not like an urban impact. A historically significant town but with a population of 10,000 is about a 2sq km area which is 4% of the hex. That deserves a dot because the battle is primarily about controlling the surrounding geography, not the town.

***edited for a typo

[cathar1244]

Messed around in the map editor.

Yeah, looks like sand can be "on the bottom" or "on the top" with some kinds of other tiles (not clear, not any kind of woods).

So you could use sand as the base tile or cropland as the base tile to depict a town in cropland.

The movement penalties shouldn't be sweated; TOAW's depiction of operations is far too efficient for most scenarios.

You're not overthinking but you are leaning in the direction of what user Golden Delicious calls a "simulation" vice a game scenario. Crafting those is fun, to an extent.

Cheers--