Modifications to MWiF Caucasus Map portion

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: BallyJ

I thought that right or wrong the map was DONE.
We seem to keep going off at tangents.
Again I say "focus on finishing the game"
Then do the refinments.

Yes.[:)]

However, I do not want to be a wet blanket on forum discussions. Oftentimes something immediately useful arises that might otherwise have never been noticed. I keep remembering that we moved the course of the Yellow River hundreds of kilometers - something that was missed by in CWIF and by ADG.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: Skanvak
Your map is not a mercator projection. Beside, it confirms a 3 hexes differences. The top of the Caspian should be north of the latitude of the sea of Azov not far south, same goes for the Aral sea, that is not correct, but less important.

The point, I feel strongly, if that this 3 hexes distortion around Baku results in a great distortion for a strategic objectif of the war. Baku is 50% farther from Tiflis than it should. And it looks awfully wrong, as we are waiting for this game,don't let this sort of thing spoil the quality of the product.

My opinion is that whatever, it is not a big deal.
I share Steve's opinion, that it is OK to discuss, but 95% decided that we won't change it.
Changing Scandinavia in the same level of magnitude that you propose to change the Caspian was a huge work, and I don't think that we want to dive into that again.
The map have reached some sort of equilibrium, and we must be careful in changing things that much, as there will be people who will prove you were wrong in changing that, pointing at an area you changed as a consequence of the main change.

Froonp, peux tu me confirmer (ou pas) que les lignes d'hex à Wif correspondent aux latitudes?

The hexrows can be seen as latitude lines, but not all over the MWiF map. there are lots of places where there are shifs of some hexes north or south, Scandinavia being one of the main places.

What is important is that the tactical layout of the map is correct, and that the strategical layout is about correct. Even if we have that distortion around the Caspian, it is globaly correct.

Ah, that's 99.99% from where I sit.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: brian brian
this gets confusing. the map is 'done' but crossing arrows can be tweaked. I've been fooling around with a print-out of the Caspian area, that could still use work. an entire hex-row or two could be eliminated between Grozny and Baku, easily. Baku and Tiflis are so far apart, either side can be said to suffer from the distortion depending on who you are playing at the time. Reinforcements from Baku take forever to reach the Tiflis front; likewise after the Axis take Tiflis they have a long march to Baku still in front of them. it appears we have plenty of time till release and this could be a good area to work on still. I know you put a lot of time in to it already. one way to approach it might be to do some basic measurements of distances; I know there are several border/geographical features you wished to illustrate, however if including them introduces so much distortion, perhaps some of them should be edited out. I wouldn't worry about the effects on Turkmenistan, but the west side of the Caspian and the entire north/south alignment of it is just wrong. subtracting a row from the Kalmyk Steppes above it wouldn't hurt anything....except of course for the entire structure of the map data files. but I get a little confused as to why small things can still be worked on but bigger things can't.?

Yes, the map is "done", but little corrections can hopefuly still be done.
Adding a strait hexside arrow is adding or modifying 1 line in 1 of the 12 data files that make the map.
Adding a name, is adding 1 line in 1 of the 12 data files that make the map.
They are trivial things to modify.
Changing a railway path can also be relatively easily done.
Changing the position of icons within hexes is also relatively easily done.
Changing a river path or a coastline is an order of magnitude above that.

Shifting a portion of the map 10-20 hexes abroad and 20 hexes tall require changing the data for 200-400 hexes.
Those data are on the top of my head : Terrain, weather zone, to which sea area it is coastal, text, icons (city, ports...), hexsides (rail, alpine...), country (to which country it belongs).
There is no software that can delete 1 hexrow on the map in the data files, and put the hexes below that hexrow 1 hexrow higher as there is in Excel.
You have to recreate the whole data for the 100-200 hexes, in the 12 files, with the risk of confusing old and new data for EACH hex.
That's a pretty daunting task, that I would be willing to do because I can always spare the time needed, and I am not that much working on the map these late months, if there were not the real threat thereafter :

Real threat number 1 : That the new drawing will be worse than what it tried to correct.
Worse, because taking 10-20 x 20 hexes (the caspian) 1 hexrow to the north means that you have to adapt all the land around the caspian so that it has either 1 less hexrow, or that it is redrawn adding an unknown number of hexes data to change, AND you have to adapt all of what is south from the Caspian so that it is 1 hexrown larger north to south, or redraw it too, thus involving other hundred of hexes data to change.
Who knows if there will not be someone in 12 months from now saying : Damned !!!! India is completely out of sync with the rest of the Middle, East, you NEED to take India 1-2 hexes to the north. Well, what will I do at that moment ?

Real threat number 2 : That we waste Steve's precious time, and risk having the game non functionnal for unknown lapses of time because of the map. After all those changes will be done, and probably many times during the time they are done to evaluate the result (when we edited Scandinavia, we experienced all that), Steve will have to generate new coastal bitmap files as well as new river and lake bitmap files, which is a task that takes him and his computer some amount of hours, with the risk that an error in the data from the files delays everything and that he have wasted the time trying to rebuild impossible files. If I could do that task myself, which I don't because Steve did not took the time to build tools that would be used by someone else than him for that final map making task, we could have a private lab and make the changes and try them without wasting Steve's time, and only providing him the final files, but this is not the case because Steve lacks the time to develop an easy to use map making tool.


To be able to fulfill the task of editing the 12 data files, we would first need to have a map with 2 layers : how it is now (old data) and how it must become (new data) so that by alternating the vision of the 2 maps I can know what data to change. This only is a great task.

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Froonp

ORIGINAL: brian brian
this gets confusing. the map is 'done' but crossing arrows can be tweaked. I've been fooling around with a print-out of the Caspian area, that could still use work. an entire hex-row or two could be eliminated between Grozny and Baku, easily. Baku and Tiflis are so far apart, either side can be said to suffer from the distortion depending on who you are playing at the time. Reinforcements from Baku take forever to reach the Tiflis front; likewise after the Axis take Tiflis they have a long march to Baku still in front of them. it appears we have plenty of time till release and this could be a good area to work on still. I know you put a lot of time in to it already. one way to approach it might be to do some basic measurements of distances; I know there are several border/geographical features you wished to illustrate, however if including them introduces so much distortion, perhaps some of them should be edited out. I wouldn't worry about the effects on Turkmenistan, but the west side of the Caspian and the entire north/south alignment of it is just wrong. subtracting a row from the Kalmyk Steppes above it wouldn't hurt anything....except of course for the entire structure of the map data files. but I get a little confused as to why small things can still be worked on but bigger things can't.?

Yes, the map is "done", but little corrections can hopefuly still be done.
Adding a strait hexside arrow is adding or modifying 1 line in 1 of the 12 data files that make the map.
Adding a name, is adding 1 line in 1 of the 12 data files that make the map.
They are trivial things to modify.
Changing a railway path can also be relatively easily done.
Changing the position of icons within hexes is also relatively easily done.
Changing a river path or a coastline is an order of magnitude above that.

Shifting a portion of the map 10-20 hexes abroad and 20 hexes tall require changing the data for 200-400 hexes.
Those data are on the top of my head : Terrain, weather zone, to which sea area it is coastal, text, icons (city, ports...), hexsides (rail, alpine...), country (to which country it belongs).
There is no software that can delete 1 hexrow on the map in the data files, and put the hexes below that hexrow 1 hexrow higher as there is in Excel.
You have to recreate the whole data for the 100-200 hexes, in the 12 files, with the risk of confusing old and new data for EACH hex.
That's a pretty daunting task, that I would be willing to do because I can always spare the time needed, and I am not that much working on the map these late months, if there were not the real threat thereafter :

Real threat number 1 : That the new drawing will be worse than what it tried to correct.
Worse, because taking 10-20 x 20 hexes (the caspian) 1 hexrow to the north means that you have to adapt all the land around the caspian so that it has either 1 less hexrow, or that it is redrawn adding an unknown number of hexes data to change, AND you have to adapt all of what is south from the Caspian so that it is 1 hexrown larger north to south, or redraw it too, thus involving other hundred of hexes data to change.
Who knows if there will not be someone in 12 months from now saying : Damned !!!! India is completely out of sync with the rest of the Middle, East, you NEED to take India 1-2 hexes to the north. Well, what will I do at that moment ?

Real threat number 2 : That we waste Steve's precious time, and risk having the game non functionnal for unknown lapses of time because of the map. After all those changes will be done, and probably many times during the time they are done to evaluate the result (when we edited Scandinavia, we experienced all that), Steve will have to generate new coastal bitmap files as well as new river and lake bitmap files, which is a task that takes him and his computer some amount of hours, with the risk that an error in the data from the files delays everything and that he have wasted the time trying to rebuild impossible files. If I could do that task myself, which I don't because Steve did not took the time to build tools that would be used by someone else than him for that final map making task, we could have a private lab and make the changes and try them without wasting Steve's time, and only providing him the final files, but this is not the case because Steve lacks the time to develop an easy to use map making tool.


To be able to fulfill the task of editing the 12 data files, we would first need to have a map with 2 layers : how it is now (old data) and how it must become (new data) so that by alternating the vision of the 2 maps I can know what data to change. This only is a great task.

In my list of things I consider done and do not want to even think about (much less change) any more are:
the map,
the units (especially unit types)
scenario setups,
optional rules (included/excluded),
add-ons (included/excluded).

[brian brian]

yes, I understand all that, thanks. it's too bad it is so difficult to change at this point. I do like the fact that the sacred European map was tweaked in that area (Kirkuk), probably as a result of better research. that's good.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: brian brian

yes, I understand all that, thanks. it's too bad it is so difficult to change at this point. I do like the fact that the sacred European map was tweaked in that area (Kirkuk), probably as a result of better research. that's good.

Why not make a Photoshop file, with 2 layers, one is the present map, and the second is the new map.

Or better, A first drawing with the present map, and multiple extra layers showing the new coasts, railways, cities, resources, terrain hexes, etc... so that we can have an idea of what that project would need in workload.

This is a start. We may not modify the map for MWiF1, but we may have more time and better tools for MWiF2, so why not start a PSD file with layers where the actual work of showing the changes we want are drawn ?

This, in the first place, will make us answer the difficult question : How much distance in hexe do we want to change ? Only Caspian ? Caspian plus Middle-East ? How far in the Middle-East ? Do Arabia also have to change ? Persian Gulf ? Afghanistan ? India ? China ?

[brian brian]

"layers" oh dear, don't start giving me flashbacks to ESRI software. I had a rough few days this week collecting GPS data with ESRI products. because I didn't check a box in advance of collecting the data, I was not allowed to look at the area measurement of the feature in question, at least with the 'cheap' version of their software. because I didn't check that box I lost one entire day of work (measuring food plots for a hunt-club....walking through the waist-high vegtation is like wading in water all day long. my thighs are still screaming at me and I have to go back tomorrow and do it all over again).

anyway for future reference on a post-release wish-list I don't think a lot has to be fixed. maybe it's beyond difficult, maybe not. it doesn't really matter what happens east of the Caspian, no one is concerned with geographical correlations in the deserts of the -stan countries. the changes there would just change the number of desert and swamp hexes where no one would ever put a unit. to move Baku north creates ripple effects to it's south in Persia though and once those start....

looking at it as-is I thought a portion (a short piece of hex-row) of the Kalmyk between Stalingrad and Astrakhan could be eliminated to get the top of the Caspian to the right place.

then a short piece of row on the east shore around the area currently displaying the sea-boxes could be erased. the two hex prong of Russian territory extending south could become one hex. this moves the Caspian south shore north at least two more hexes however. the question is would there be enough north-south distance in Persia from the head of the Gulf to Teheran to add a bit of space there? that is the main question...to get Baku farther north, what would one do south of it? perhaps Saudi Arabia could grow a tiny bit. other things could change as needed. Lake Sevan could simply appear inside of a hex rather than being on a hex-side.

the secondary question is where do you call a halt to some north-south changes, off to the east? the deserts of eastern Persia/southern Turkmenistan could be fudged so you don't have to continue the process all the way to China. for example delicately locating the hex-dots for Ashqabad and Meshed could cover some of this as the mountains between them become one hex row rather than two. making two north-south swamp hexes in western Turkmenistan into a single swamp hex could do the same thing. changing the rail distance from Tashkent to the Chkalov reference junction hex south of the Urals would matter not at all. somewhere, there are some north-south point A-point B distances that just don't come out right presently. the question is where? the distance from the Kuwait border to the base of the Arab Emirates peninsula? somewhere in such distances and the difficult nature of mapping hex-side boundaries there is room for change. making a map on hex-by-hex basis is surely difficult, however for every bit of difficulty in deciding how many hexes of, say, mountains to place where, there is a corresponding freedom to solve questions by simply changing the terrain type.

it is quite a puzzle. marrying those two map edges from the paper maps could not have been easy and everyone who sees them remarks on what a tremendous accomplishment the MWiF map really is. the only way to get this question perfect would be to get a decent graphic of the whole area onto a computer screen at the European-WiF scale and then lay an appropriate hex-grid over it. it would take a good knowledge of Photoshop or some other graphic lay-out software to scale an imported graphic up or down by % points until the scales matched. then pick a reference such as a city on the fixed European map portion that would lay to the center of a hex and I think a lot would be revealed.

[Froonp]

Please, send me back this picture with the limits of the zone that would have to have changes (if too big to post here, send it at froonp at gmail dot com).

[Skanvak]

As Brian Brian support my idea, I promise I will help. I am back from vacation so let me until the end of the week to give and elements of the region to modify.

Froonp, I think the region to move include a bit more of the northern part, to the south we won't go below the persian Gulf.

And to the west I am sure we won't modify the original European map as it is the geographical repference for the earth shifting. We need a fixed point.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Skanvak
Froonp, I think the region to move include a bit more of the northern part, to the south we won't go below the persian Gulf.

And to the west I am sure we won't modify the original European map as it is the geographical repference for the earth shifting. We need a fixed point.

Is this better ?

[Incy]

If you start fixing this part, IMHO the most impurtant thing to fix is the distance between Tiblisi and Baku, which is to long, and has no russian supply. Baku also needs to be much further north.

I think this matters because if Tiflis is lost the caucasus can become a russian death trap, for lack of supply. I think this matters in some games, It often happens that Russia falls back and defends the caucasus, and if Tiflis falls it's reasonable that russia should have a good shot at falling back to a Baku defence.

I think Yerevan should be made a city to give USSR better supply/reinforcement in the region. To move Baku we can delete the hex 3 hexes SE of Tiflis and another 2 hexes due east. Everything SE of this line would be shifted 1 hex northwest, down to around the iranian border, where 3 hexes would be inserted to stop the area shifted.

[Incy]

Another thing, the big bay on the Caspian east shore, is this navigable by major ships?
On google earth it seems completely closed off from the caspian, except for a thin winding canal, which has a road and a gas pipeline bridging it.

Was the sea level higher during WW2 or should this bay be made a lake?

[Orm]

ORIGINAL: Incy

Another thing, the big bay on the Caspian east shore, is this navigable by major ships?
On google earth it seems completely closed off from the caspian, except for a thin winding canal, which has a road and a gas pipeline bridging it.

Was the sea level higher during WW2 or should this bay be made a lake?

The sea level has not changed that much since WWII.

According to wikipedia the sea level varies in short cycles. "The last short-term sea-level cycle started with a sea-level fall of 3 m (9.84 ft) from 1929 to 1977, followed by a rise of 3 m (9.84 ft) from 1977 until 1995. Since then smaller oscillations have taken place."

And the big bay should be closed from shipping. But I am sure it is not important enough for a change of coastal hexes to be undertaken. Changing any coastal hexes takes alot of effort and should not be done at this time.

English wikipedia names the bay "Garabogazköl Aylagy" or "Kara-Bogaz-Gol" and a google search on 'krambogas bay' gave me only one hit. And that hit reminds me of something.... if I could only place it. [:D]

Froonp, do you know where the name Krambogas Bay came from? Maybe the bay should have its name changed in MWIF?

For more on the big bay see - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garabogazk%C3%B6l

This is the only hit I got on google for krambogas bay - http://www.google.se/url?sa=t&source=we ... ZhILvZj_fg


Kara-Bogaz Gol from space, September 1995 (Credit: NASA)

[Shannon V. OKeets]

ORIGINAL: Incy

If you start fixing this part, IMHO the most impurtant thing to fix is the distance between Tiblisi and Baku, which is to long, and has no russian supply. Baku also needs to be much further north.

I think this matters because if Tiflis is lost the caucasus can become a russian death trap, for lack of supply. I think this matters in some games, It often happens that Russia falls back and defends the caucasus, and if Tiflis falls it's reasonable that russia should have a good shot at falling back to a Baku defence.

I think Yerevan should be made a city to give USSR better supply/reinforcement in the region. To move Baku we can delete the hex 3 hexes SE of Tiflis and another 2 hexes due east. Everything SE of this line would be shifted 1 hex northwest, down to around the iranian border, where 3 hexes would be inserted to stop the area shifted.

For supply to Baku, the USSR could put a convoy in the Caspian Sea. I think that is better than adding a new city to the map. If the USSR can't/won't put a convoy there, then why do they deserve supply after losing Tiflis?

[brian brian]

the area that needs to be fixed is just the Caspian and out a distance of 2-3 hexes from the shoreline of it. the entire eastern shore is irrelevant. as long as Krasnovodsk and it's rail connection remain, the rest doesn't really matter. I read a National Geographic article on the Caspian recently and it's level does fluctuate a lot but shouldn't affect this.

and the main thing is the north-south distance between Tbilisi and Baku. six hexes is 600km and that is too great I believe.....some extra land crept in there somehow. measure each city's distance from the 40th Parallel and enforce that in terms of how many hex-rows that really should be and go from there. I do not support just putting Yerevan on the map at all. Non-Russian cities would be extremely unlikely to make effective military bases and recruitment centers for the Soviets in a part of the world greeting the Germans with flowers in 1942.

but to fix it means moving Persia north and then you have all sorts of questions about how the original Asian map joins the original European map on the new combination. but clearly the Caspian didn't come out right on that. whether that is a question for anywhere else, I don't know, but the farther east you get the less anyone will ever notice or care. this close to the equator there shouldn't be such problems as compared to two-dimensional mapping of more polar regions. drag Persia and the Arabian pensinsula north a little bit and use the deserts of Saudi Arabia, eastern Persia, and western Turkmenistan to fudge what you need to fudge to get the Caspian a little more dialed in without shifting all of Asia somehow.

[Incy]

Won't help the units that were covering the flanks of Tifilis prior to it's fall much, except some that might be able to hug the coast on the way south. a HQ will help, though.

I believe russians defending in this region would suffer few supply problems in reality, it's heavily populated and with good infrastructure. Plus it would allow a unit or two placed in armenia to put up a stubborn fight vs a german-aligned turkey (which is quite realistic)

But anyways, it's a minor play balance issue and not important.

'Garabogazköl Aylagy' could be fixed without graphic changes by:
-making the sea hexes lake hexes
-changing what hexes are coastal to the caspian
-we probably want a straits hexside added? (or it could be a river)

[Incy]

I do not support just putting Yerevan on the map at all. Non-Russian cities would be extremely unlikely to make effective military bases and recruitment centers for the Soviets in a part of the world greeting the Germans with flowers in 1942.

I'd make an exception for armenia (of which Yerevan is the capital). Armenia is christian and sees russia as it's only real ally in a hostile region. Also back in the 40's. They HATE turkey (1+ million armenians were killed in turkish ethnic cleansings during WW1), and if this area comes into play, Turkey will be german aligned. The armenians would have fought Turkey to the last man (and woman and child).

If germany would have broken through into the central caucasus valley, I'm pretty sure that armenia would have been the final retreat that soviet remnants in the area would have fled to, because of the friendly population and the good defensive terrain.

[Froonp]

ORIGINAL: Incy

I do not support just putting Yerevan on the map at all. Non-Russian cities would be extremely unlikely to make effective military bases and recruitment centers for the Soviets in a part of the world greeting the Germans with flowers in 1942.

I'd make an exception for armenia (of which Yerevan is the capital). Armenia is christian and sees russia as it's only real ally in a hostile region. Also back in the 40's. They HATE turkey (1+ million armenians were killed in turkish ethnic cleansings during WW1), and if this area comes into play, Turkey will be german aligned. The armenians would have fought Turkey to the last man (and woman and child).

If germany would have broken through into the central caucasus valley, I'm pretty sure that armenia would have been the final retreat that soviet remnants in the area would have fled to, because of the friendly population and the good defensive terrain.

Moreover, Yerevan had 200k inhabitants in 1944.
But there are 20 other Russian cities that have 100k+ inhabitants and should be a WiF city, so the population number is not self sufficient.
I think that there are goods arguments to make Yerevan a city.

[brian brian]

excellent perspective Incy, thanks. I would disagree on the level of infrastructure a little bit perhaps, but your political analysis is spot-on. but a city is an extremely powerful construct in the game of World in Flames. It doesn't just allow a desperate Armenian Militia to appear as it probably would have in real life. It also allows anything in the Soviet arsenal, up to and including complete tank formations produced in Tank-o-Grad (Chelyabinsk I believe, in the far-off Urals) or brand new British-built Spitfire squadrons, to suddenly appear there. the Factories in Flames rules fix that up nicely on the paper game. if you have a rail connection to your industrial base, heavy weapons and aircraft can arrive easily. if you don't, the surrounded citadel will have to get by with locally equipped infantry formations only (GARR and MIL).

I think it was Skanvak who originally pointed out that if you have experience with other games that never had a map-break through the middle of the Caucasus, the placement of Baku becomes a bit startling when you see the new map. WiF players have probably never thought about it before.

aside from who is in supply where, I would just like to see the physical geography improved some more than anything. as the Russians I dedicate an HQ to hopefully conduct a fighting withdrawal all the way to Baku if necessary, so that isn't as much of an issue. new formations marching up from Baku to the front lines around Tiflis face an extra time delay problem however.

I don't have the graphics programs to fool with this idea much, but the one-terrain-type-per-hex system of mapping should give the editorial capabilities to touch this up I hope? leave the main valley in and reduce the sizes of some of the adjacent mountain ranges. add or subtract desert hexes south and/or west of the Caspian and it could be good to go.

and if it goes on the punch-list for the future, that is OK too. it is just something I really noticed when I put some carboard to some paper thanks to the MWiF team's generosity in sharing this stuff.

[Orm]

Although many Armenias contributed to the Soviet war effort there was also many who prefered independence form USSR. Soviet terror before and during the war was felt in Armenia as well. Executions on intellectuals were legio. Deportations to Siberia, or other places, counted tens of thousands. If not hundreds of thousands. I find it hard to predict how Armenians would have reacted if German armies actually would have reached Armenia. Anyone here read anything about it, or know any Armenians who would know firsthand how the feelings were during the war?