Europe map?

[trees]

good answer. and a good idea, I never thought about putting FORTs in Italy before....

[po8crg]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: po8crg

United Kingdom - note corrected rail lines

Yes, and they're not right. The LMS express should go directly to Glasgow, not via Edinburgh. The correction here is to change the mountain hex Newcastle 1W - it should connect to Glasgow and to the hex marked "Pennines", but not to Edinburgh. The connection to Newcastle is optional - there certainly is a line along the English side of the border, but it's pretty minor; if such lines were represented elsewhere in England, then almost every hex would connect to every other.

First, thanks for the feedback.
About this, well, the UK is a place where the MWiF map is nearly verbatim the WiF FE map. Only a couple of areas on the border of the map were changed (very slightly) in some remote places. I think that editing UK is out of the picture.

This said, the railways of this map may not be as bad as they seem, especially if one consider that the hexagon is 70-80 km across, and considering also that the program has the railway automaticaly converge to cities when there is a city in the hex. So, a railway may seem to go through a city when in reality if only passes 70 km from it. If you look at the attached illustration, it shows what I mean, by comparing the WiF FE map (left) the the MWiF map (right). On the left, we see that the railway indeed pretty much go directly to Glasgow without going through Edinburgh. On the right, we see that the program has the railway going through Edinburgh automaticaly.

Yes, the map on the left is about the right shape. I can at least now see how it ended up looking like it does.

[Plainian]

True but the map is still wrong. East coast rail line should run north east from Edinburgh over the River Forth up to Aberdeen. Not to mention the terrain is wrong in a few places.
But this isn't the place to fix it. WiFE purists would not be happy if we start making changes just because Harry got the wrong map maker.

[delatbabel]

A few things concern me about the Russian map, and have done since WIF/5e. I don't think they've been corrected in WiFFE but if you have a look at a few other games of the period in terms of how they treat some of the Russian rivers and area around Leningrad, you'll see some differences. Also check google maps.

Firstly, Leningrad is not a major port. The major naval port is Kronshtadt, an island about 50km W of Leningrad, I'd put it one hex west. It's hard to reach from the mainland, and is quite heavily fortified. I can't remember exactly how Europa treats it but from memory you can only get to it from Leningrad, it's a fort hex and you have to use a strait crossing to get there. Someone with a copy of Fire in the East can go check. You can look for Kronshtadt on google maps, it's fairly easy to spot, although it helps if you can read Russian.

Secondly, some of the rivers in the south, especially around Kiev and the Volga. The entire stretch of the Volga north to Saratov and to some distance south of Stalingrad is pretty much a lake hexside rather than just a river. It's not really passable. You can run ships across it, and the Russians had ferries that ran across it, but to rate it the same as all other rivers is a bit misleading.

Similarly, there's a piece of land called the Okhosha (sp?) landbridge, which is basically what Kiev sits on. Either side of that, north and south, the Dneiper is pretty much impassable. I'd rate the 2 hexsides N and 2 hexsides S (and a few others to the S, check google maps for example or an atlas, the geography hasn't changed much since 1945) as lake hexsides. This is what makes the defense of Kiev so important, as it's the only way across the Dneiper in that area. Without that, Kiev loses a lot of its historical importance, the gameplay loses its historical accuracy (you should't just be able to run a narrow encirclement of Kiev, you have to come from quite wide, perhaps around Smolensk and through Dnepropetrovsk, to get in behind it), and damages the gameplay.

The Dneiper river hexes south of Dnepropetrovsk should also be marked as lake hexsides.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: delatbabel
A few things concern me about the Russian map, and have done since WIF/5e. I don't think they've been corrected in WiFFE but if you have a look at a few other games of the period in terms of how they treat some of the Russian rivers and area around Leningrad, you'll see some differences. Also check google maps.

Firstly, Leningrad is not a major port. The major naval port is Kronshtadt, an island about 50km W of Leningrad, I'd put it one hex west. It's hard to reach from the mainland, and is quite heavily fortified. I can't remember exactly how Europa treats it but from memory you can only get to it from Leningrad, it's a fort hex and you have to use a strait crossing to get there. Someone with a copy of Fire in the East can go check. You can look for Kronshtadt on google maps, it's fairly easy to spot, although it helps if you can read Russian.

Secondly, some of the rivers in the south, especially around Kiev and the Volga. The entire stretch of the Volga north to Saratov and to some distance south of Stalingrad is pretty much a lake hexside rather than just a river. It's not really passable. You can run ships across it, and the Russians had ferries that ran across it, but to rate it the same as all other rivers is a bit misleading.

Similarly, there's a piece of land called the Okhosha (sp?) landbridge, which is basically what Kiev sits on. Either side of that, north and south, the Dneiper is pretty much impassable. I'd rate the 2 hexsides N and 2 hexsides S (and a few others to the S, check google maps for example or an atlas, the geography hasn't changed much since 1945) as lake hexsides. This is what makes the defense of Kiev so important, as it's the only way across the Dneiper in that area. Without that, Kiev loses a lot of its historical importance, the gameplay loses its historical accuracy (you should't just be able to run a narrow encirclement of Kiev, you have to come from quite wide, perhaps around Smolensk and through Dnepropetrovsk, to get in behind it), and damages the gameplay.

The Dneiper river hexes south of Dnepropetrovsk should also be marked as lake hexsides.

In general, I am loathe to change the WIF FE European map for MWIF.

We made a few adjustments when we expanded it to include all of Scandinavia. That's because the Scandinavian mini-map is optional in WIF FE, so the portion of Scandinavia shown on the WIF FE European map takes some liberties with reality. The changes you are suggesting here, are internal to the European map and are outside what I consider "up for review".

I also wonder if you are taking into consideration the scale of the MWIF map. Each hex represents roughly 90 km (NS and EW) so having Leningrad and Kronstadt in the same hex is quite possible if they are only 50 km apart. In that same vein, the rivers have given us trouble in about a dozen places around the globe, since they often are a mixture of river, lake, and swamp, (with occasionally an ocean estuary thrown in for good measure) all within the expanse of a 90 km 'square'. This came up in Singapore, New York City, and Portland (Oregon) just to name the first 3 that come to mind.

[delatbabel]

Good answer Steve, and I didn't really expect any changes for MWiF, I just wanted to raise these issues so that people knew about them.

It'd be nice to see a scenario / map editor at some stage to allow people to correct these problems if they so choose. When a friend and I play (not that often, he lives in NZ) then we usually play with some corrections to various rules and maps to make up for these.

And yes, I did consider map scale. If you look at satellite or aerial photos and line it up with the map geography, Kronshtadt really belongs one hex W of Leningrad. Also the width of the rivers that I mentioned in particular -- especially the Dnepr N and S of Kiev, well it's almost a hex wide. Wider than most of the waterways in Finland that show up as lake hexsides, and yet in WiF it doesn't even rate a movement barrier.

I remember making a comment on the thread about the review of the Australian map. Some of the things marked as rivers on the Australian map are no wider than the average mud puddle in N Europe. e.g. when we say "river" it means that for most of the year it has a bit of water in it. It's a pity that WiF never developed a major/minor river differential like some games (e.g. Europa) has done. When some rivers are really smallish creeks and some are navigable by ocean liners then they deserve better treatment than all the same.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: delatbabel

Good answer Steve, and I didn't really expect any changes for MWiF, I just wanted to raise these issues so that people knew about them.

It'd be nice to see a scenario / map editor at some stage to allow people to correct these problems if they so choose. When a friend and I play (not that often, he lives in NZ) then we usually play with some corrections to various rules and maps to make up for these.

And yes, I did consider map scale. If you look at satellite or aerial photos and line it up with the map geography, Kronshtadt really belongs one hex W of Leningrad. Also the width of the rivers that I mentioned in particular -- especially the Dnepr N and S of Kiev, well it's almost a hex wide. Wider than most of the waterways in Finland that show up as lake hexsides, and yet in WiF it doesn't even rate a movement barrier.

I remember making a comment on the thread about the review of the Australian map. Some of the things marked as rivers on the Australian map are no wider than the average mud puddle in N Europe. e.g. when we say "river" it means that for most of the year it has a bit of water in it. It's a pity that WiF never developed a major/minor river differential like some games (e.g. Europa) has done. When some rivers are really smallish creeks and some are navigable by ocean liners then they deserve better treatment than all the same.

There are also escarpments. Patrice would like the Grand Canyon to warrant a new terrain type, comparable, but different from the Qattara Depression.

In the last issue, National Geographic showed a picture in the western US where a mountain cliff runs for 50 miles, uninterrupted. Hard to picture how the tanks get across that.

[Froonp]

And yes, I did consider map scale. If you look at satellite or aerial photos and line it up with the map geography, Kronshtadt really belongs one hex W of Leningrad. Also the width of the rivers that I mentioned in particular -- especially the Dnepr N and S of Kiev, well it's almost a hex wide. Wider than most of the waterways in Finland that show up as lake hexsides, and yet in WiF it doesn't even rate a movement barrier.

Be careful with satellite view and river width.
The modern era saw a lot of dam works on lots of rivers, that can make them appear wider now than they were at the time.
I'm not saying that you're wrong for the Dniepr, because as the European Map was not to be changed, so I did not review this place closely.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

The European map segment was the first one done. That was quite a while ago, and there have been many revisions, so a fresh, complete presentation seems justified. Thanks for asking.

United Kingdom - note corrected rail lines.

i I noticed the rail line from Liverpool to Holyhead goes graphically across water. Is it possible to alter this rail line so it goes to the center of the Holyhead hex before it turns north to the port? Then it wouldn't cross the sea to get to Holyhead.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Borger Borgersen

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The European map segment was the first one done. That was quite a while ago, and there have been many revisions, so a fresh, complete presentation seems justified. Thanks for asking.

United Kingdom - note corrected rail lines.

i I noticed the rail line from Liverpool to Holyhead goes graphically across water. Is it possible to alter this rail line so it goes to the center of the Holyhead hex before it turns north to the port? Then it wouldn't cross the sea to get to Holyhead.

The program logic for drawing in the rail lines is to always go to the city icon if one exists. When there is no city icon, then it goes to the port icon. When there are no icons in the hex, then there are 25 locations (center + 12 o'clock positions * 2) within a hex that the rail lines can be directed to.

So, this could be handled by placing the Holyhead port icon in the center of its hex. The Liverpool text would have to be moved down a tad, and therefore the Liverpool factory would have to be repositioned at 6 o'clock instead of 7 o'clock.

[Froonp]

I've sent an email yesterday to Harry Rowland (WiF FE designer and ADG Director), with a list of places that I advised him to change the name (copied below) for future printings of the WiF FE maps. I thought that it was good to make WiF FE benefit from the research I and the forum members did about the MWiF map, to correct mispelled or wrong names.

He answered in thanking me, and telling me that it "sounded great", and adding that the future printing of the map would need to have Cernauti inside Bessarabia too.

*********************************
Thanks for that Patrice, sounds great. We also need to put Cernauti inside Bessarabia.

Regards
Harry

*********************************

I looked at the Collier 1940 & 1944 atlasses and saw that he was right. The Cernauti area, up to the Hungarian border, was inside Russia's border in 1944. Rumania do not have a border with Poland anymore when Bessarabia is Russian.

So I think that we should make this change too on the MWiF map.

The future printing of the WiF FE map can be years from now, the last one was in 2004 and I've got at least 200 of them in stock here, but as this change is recommended by Harry, and that it is really how reality was, I think we should do it.

Opinions ?



PS : List of the places I advised Harry to change the name on future printings of the WiF FE maps :
Almiera Almería
Para Belém (Not sure, maybe the current name is the normal 40s English
Exonym)
Kanton Canton Island
Chang-Sha Changsha
Cheng-Tu Chengtu
Cincinatti Cincinnati
Ciuabá Cuiabá
Cocanda Cocanada
Columbo Colombo
Korkyra Corfu
Jibuti Djibouti
Dualas Douala
Ezurum Erzurum
Francstown Francistown
Rigolet Goose Bay
Hang-Chow Hangchow
Hango Hankø
Hannover Hanover
Iraklion Heraklion
Hiva Qa. Hiva Oa
Iquiqne Iquique
Kiung-Chow Kiungchow
Kwei-Yang Kweiyang
Lan-Chow Lanchow
Lyon Lyons
Mellila Melilla
N'Dola Ndola
Nova Lisbon Nova Lisboa
Novo Sibirsk Novosibirsk
Nukualofa Nuku'alofa
Panama Panama City
Pnom-penh Phnom Penh
Port Franiqui Port Franqui
Puerto Barriez Puerto Barrios
Magallanes Punta Arenas
Fusan Pusan (Not sure, maybe the current name is the normal 40s English Exonym)
Rejkavik Reykjavik
Gallegos Rio Gallegos
Bahia Salvador de Bahia (Not sure, maybe the current name is the normal 40s English Exonym)
Saskaton Saskatoon
Si-An Sian
Konstantinovsk Sovietskaya Gavan
Kuznetsk Stalinsk
Tai-Yuan Taiyuan
Talinn Tallinn
Tampa Bay Tampa
Teherãn Teheran
Tien-Tsin Tientsin
Tricomalee Trincomalee
Tsi-Nan Tsinan
Tsing-Tao Tsingtao
Vien-Tiane Vientiane
Winninpeg Winnipeg
Wensan Wonsan
Younde Yaoundé

[Peter Stauffenberg]

ORIGINAL: Froonp
Hannover Hanover

Hannover is the German spelling of the city. Hanover is the English spelling. Is it intended to use
English spelling of city names whenever possible?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Northern Scandinavia

If you want to add reference names then you could add the town of Namsos in the hex where the railroad
ends north of Trondheim (2xNE+E). Namsos and Åndalsnes were the towns where the British and French
troops landed to try to encircle the Germans who had just occupied Trondheim in April 1940.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Borger Borgersen

ORIGINAL: Froonp
Hannover Hanover

Hannover is the German spelling of the city. Hanover is the English spelling. Is it intended to use
English spelling of city names whenever possible?

Yes, I think that this is a general line, otherwise we would have names such as "Chosen" instead of Korea, "København" instead of Copenhagen, "Keijo" instead of Seoul, "Heijo" instead of Pyongyang and lots other names.

There are exceptions surely, such as maybe Viipuri that stays Vyborg as on the WiF FE maps, and others because I do not know the proper English Exonyms for those places.

Edit : Look here for a list of British Exonyms : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_exonyms

[Froonp]

If you want to add reference names then you could add the town of Namsos in the hex where the railroad
ends north of Trondheim (2xNE+E). Namsos and Åndalsnes were the towns where the British and French
troops landed to try to encircle the Germans who had just occupied Trondheim in April 1940.

Great, I wanted to name that nameless end of railway !
Thanks

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Borger Borgersen

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Northern Scandinavia

If you want to add reference names then you could add the town of Namsos in the hex where the railroad
ends north of Trondheim (2xNE+E). Namsos and Åndalsnes were the towns where the British and French
troops landed to try to encircle the Germans who had just occupied Trondheim in April 1940.

Hmm, that gave me a thought. It wouldn't be difficult to create a CSV file to hold text associated with map labels/names. I would simply structure them the same way I do the text files for unit descriptions. When a player right clicked on an empty hex that contained the first letter of a label, the program would would bring up a text box with the description. This would only take about 50 lines of code total, and most of it would be cloned from existing routines.

Is this worth doing?

I wouldn't be writing any of the text descriptions, mind you. These would be something like 'cookies' in that very few labels would have text descriptions associated with them.

[Froonp]

Hmm, that gave me a thought. It wouldn't be difficult to create a CSV file to hold text associated with map labels/names. I would simply structure them the same way I do the text files for unit descriptions. When a player right clicked on an empty hex that contained the first letter of a label, the program would would bring up a text box with the description. This would only take about 50 lines of code total, and most of it would be cloned from existing routines.

Is this worth doing?

I wouldn't be writing any of the text descriptions, mind you. These would be something like 'cookies' in that very few labels would have text descriptions associated with them.

I think that this is a GREAT idea.
Also what can be done is to simply put the link to the relevant page in Wikipedia.

But, a lot of the labels I add are not "linked" to the hexes in the same way that city / ports names are linked. I mean that, a city name will appear on the map, but also in the status bar when the mouse is over the HEX where the city is (which is not necessarily the hex where the label is).

So, will your 'cookies' system be able to "detect" that a given hex is linked to a label ? for example, for the "Vemork" label (the heavy water works in Norway), how will your 'cookies' system know that the hex where I right clicked has the "Vermork" label ?

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

Hmm, that gave me a thought. It wouldn't be difficult to create a CSV file to hold text associated with map labels/names. I would simply structure them the same way I do the text files for unit descriptions. When a player right clicked on an empty hex that contained the first letter of a label, the program would would bring up a text box with the description. This would only take about 50 lines of code total, and most of it would be cloned from existing routines.

Is this worth doing?

I wouldn't be writing any of the text descriptions, mind you. These would be something like 'cookies' in that very few labels would have text descriptions associated with them.

I think that this is a GREAT idea.
Also what can be done is to simply put the link to the relevant page in Wikipedia.

But, a lot of the labels I add are not "linked" to the hexes in the same way that city / ports names are linked. I mean that, a city name will appear on the map, but also in the status bar when the mouse is over the HEX where the city is (which is not necessarily the hex where the label is).

So, will your 'cookies' system be able to "detect" that a given hex is linked to a label ? for example, for the "Vemork" label (the heavy water works in Norway), how will your 'cookies' system know that the hex where I right clicked has the "Vermork" label ?

These are technical details, but you asked.

The program can matche the label to each city/port icon on the map because the each hex has a unique map label # in the TER.CSV file (most of these numbers are vacuous - there are not 70,200 named locations!). That same # has to appear in the NAM.CSV file which holds the labels for displaying the label on the map. What I am proposnig is that a NAM.TXT file be created that uses the same ID# for each text entry. A similar scheme is used to match units from the unit CSV files (AIR, LND, NAV) with their bitmap images (JPG) and their text descriptions (AIR.TXT).

Earlier I had indicated using the first letter of the name (which would also work), but let's go with having the player click on the hex that the name is associated with, rather the whichever hex the name is positioned in - since we sometimes reposition names/labels for cosmetic reasons.

[iamspamus]

Hey guys,

Holyhead is a port on a second tiny island (Holy Island) E not N of Angelsey. BTW: There is NOTHING there, including fish and chips or Druid/Celt remains...grrrr. It also looks to be a bit S of Liverpool if drawing a line across from E to W.

Jason

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

ORIGINAL: Borger Borgersen

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
The European map segment was the first one done. That was quite a while ago, and there have been many revisions, so a fresh, complete presentation seems justified. Thanks for asking.

United Kingdom - note corrected rail lines.

i I noticed the rail line from Liverpool to Holyhead goes graphically across water. Is it possible to alter this rail line so it goes to the center of the Holyhead hex before it turns north to the port? Then it wouldn't cross the sea to get to Holyhead.

The program logic for drawing in the rail lines is to always go to the city icon if one exists. When there is no city icon, then it goes to the port icon. When there are no icons in the hex, then there are 25 locations (center + 12 o'clock positions * 2) within a hex that the rail lines can be directed to.

So, this could be handled by placing the Holyhead port icon in the center of its hex. The Liverpool text would have to be moved down a tad, and therefore the Liverpool factory would have to be repositioned at 6 o'clock instead of 7 o'clock.

[iamspamus]

WARNING: Totally useless fact -

I think that the space N of Kiruna and E of Narvik is where the Ice Hotel is built every year. www.icehotel.com. At least, somewhere around there. Don't know if that qualifies for a name on the map though!

Jason

ORIGINAL: Borger Borgersen

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Northern Scandinavia

If you want to add reference names then you could add the town of Namsos in the hex where the railroad
ends north of Trondheim (2xNE+E). Namsos and Åndalsnes were the towns where the British and French
troops landed to try to encircle the Germans who had just occupied Trondheim in April 1940.