Movement Points

[Panama]

Movement points and combat modifiers need to be made cumulative.

If I have a hex with hills and forest it will be much more difficult to move through that terrain than if it was just hills or just forest.

I would also like to see combat modifiers cumulative. Using the above example, not only would it be more difficult to advance on a defender but it would also be more difficult to spot him with both terrain types present. Throw in field works and it's even more difficult to throw a defender out of a location.

I'm not really clear as to why terrain effects are not cumulative. If a scenario designer doesn't want a certain hex to be hightly defensable or difficult to move through he can merely leave out one or more terrain types.

What's even more hard to understand is why marsh and woods/forest can't be combined.

In any event, I'm sure the Opart legal tender (bang for the buck) is high enough that this would be a good modification.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Panama

Movement points and combat modifiers need to be made cumulative.

If I have a hex with hills and forest it will be much more difficult to move through that terrain than if it was just hills or just forest.

I would also like to see combat modifiers cumulative. Using the above example, not only would it be more difficult to advance on a defender but it would also be more difficult to spot him with both terrain types present. Throw in field works and it's even more difficult to throw a defender out of a location.

I'm not really clear as to why terrain effects are not cumulative. If a scenario designer doesn't want a certain hex to be hightly defensable or difficult to move through he can merely leave out one or more terrain types.

What's even more hard to understand is why marsh and woods/forest can't be combined.

In any event, I'm sure the Opart legal tender (bang for the buck) is high enough that this would be a good modification.

You can combine marsh and hills (although not marsh and woods). Just put in the marsh first, then the hills.

Voila. This applies to a number of combinations.

Otherwise, I have mixed feelings about your suggestion. First off, the notion that any kind of precision is possible is a misconception in the first place -- 'hills' can be all kinds of things, with all kinds of effects. Perfectly possible to have rugged if treeless hills that would offer far more formidable obstacles than gentler, better-roaded hills with lots of trees on them.

On the other hand, I like being able to detail the terrain without fear of making matters worse still. So while your argument is valid enough as far as it goes, I'd just as soon not see it implemented. If something along these lines was going to be done, one would want the designer to be able to independently scale the effects on movement, combat, spotting, and possibly supply for each hex -- whatever terrain was in it.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

ORIGINAL: Panama

Movement points and combat modifiers need to be made cumulative.

If I have a hex with hills and forest it will be much more difficult to move through that terrain than if it was just hills or just forest.

I would also like to see combat modifiers cumulative. Using the above example, not only would it be more difficult to advance on a defender but it would also be more difficult to spot him with both terrain types present. Throw in field works and it's even more difficult to throw a defender out of a location.

I'm not really clear as to why terrain effects are not cumulative. If a scenario designer doesn't want a certain hex to be hightly defensable or difficult to move through he can merely leave out one or more terrain types.

What's even more hard to understand is why marsh and woods/forest can't be combined.

In any event, I'm sure the Opart legal tender (bang for the buck) is high enough that this would be a good modification.

You can combine marsh and hills (although not marsh and woods). Just put in the marsh first, then the hills.

Voila. This applies to a number of combinations.

Otherwise, I have mixed feelings about your suggestion. First off, the notion that any kind of precision is possible is a misconception in the first place -- 'hills' can be all kinds of things, with all kinds of effects. Perfectly possible to have rugged if treeless hills that would offer far more formidable obstacles than gentler, better-roaded hills with lots of trees on them.

On the other hand, I like being able to detail the terrain without fear of making matters worse still. So while your argument is valid enough as far as it goes, I'd just as soon not see it implemented. If something along these lines was going to be done, one would want the designer to be able to independently scale the effects on movement, combat, spotting, and possibly supply for each hex -- whatever terrain was in it.

So you are telling me it's just as easy to drive a tank up a hill without trees as it is to drive a tank up a hill with trees? That a forest covering hills is the same as those hills minus the forest? It's all the same and because it might 'make matters worse' (whatever that is) it should be all the same even though, in the real world, it's not? On the planet I live on, if you have a lot of trees in the way, it tends to make a HUGE difference in how fast you can drive up or down a hill. All those trees sticking up also tends to make it difficult to see very far if your x-ray vision isn't working properly. [:D]

I could never understand games where multiple terrain types in a hex was reduced down to 'whatever is greatest' and screw the rest. Multiple terrain types ALWAYS posses multiple problems. If I'm in an area where the ground is perfectly flat I can move faster than if I have to dodge trees. And know what? The game accommodates that. So, using only a bit of logic, how is a hill any different? Or a marsh for that matter? Using just a modicum of logic, because it's not a hard conclusion, isn't a tree the same on the flat as it is on an angle?

This is not an eye candy type of graphic. It has real implications in the real world. It's not something made up or whimsical. The Ardennes was difficult not only because of the terrain but because of all the trees that tended to get in the way. You couldn't sit in your Tiger a kilometer away and take shots at Shermans. You actually had to get to where all those trees weren't blocking your line of sight. Even if you were on top of a hill. If I'm driving my Tiger through an enemy infested area I'm sure as hell going to wish there were no trees for someone to use as cover until I'm in a good spot for them to kill my tank from the flank or behind.

So, once again we throw logic and reality out the window. That seems to be the on going story of TOAW.

And while a hill can be a slope of many different angles in many different situations isn't it up to the guy making the map to decide what to portray as a hill and what not to?

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Panama

So you are telling me it's just as easy to drive a tank up a hill without trees as it is to drive a tank up a hill with trees?

I'm telling you that there's no such thing as a generic 'hill' in the first place. Yes indeedee -- there are what can reasonably be called 'hills with trees' that could be far easier to drive a tank up than what could also be called 'hills' -- even if the latter don't have trees.

I'm telling you that yes, there are trees you can drive right over in a tank, others that you can drive between, and still others where you can't do either. That in some parts of the world, there'll be a road of some kind in every five-ten km block of hills, while in others there won't be.

We are adding together what are complete -- and vague, and undefined -- generalizations. When I map, I wind up making some blocks of terrain 'hills' and others 'hills with trees.' The 'hills' without trees can be far more formidable animals than the 'hills with trees.' I certainly wouldn't want to have to omit trees from what is in fact forested land because else I would be making what was merely non-flat ground worse than something that wasn't really mountains, but...

Right now we have a system that at least permits a vaguely visually correct representation of the terrain. If we do want greater accuracy, then the thing to do is permit designer-modified values for each hex -- not to start concocting formulae that makes the hills between London and Portsmouth more formidable than the hills of Eastern Anatolia on the grounds that the former have more trees.

[ColinWright]

If you actually study terrain with an eye to how best to represent it in a TOAW scenario, you will rapidly realize that there are a virtual infinity of possible variations and combinations with all kinds of military implications.

Take much of Northern Nevada. Steep, often forested ranges of mountains, interspersed with dead-flat valleys offering no cover. That would be horrible terrain to fight through: a battery of field artillery could decimate a division, given enough ammunition.

On the other hand, you could drive across it at about 30 ten-km hexes per day -- even leaving aside the roads, of which there are plenty. As long as you've got something better than the family sedan, no problem moving down most of those valleys.

So ample defensive value -- nil obstacles to movement.

I could go on, but it's a hopelessly target-rich environment. The TOAW 'hills,' 'mountains,' etc are the most vague approximations. There's no more reason to think combining them should necessarily produce a more severe effect than it would follow that if one combines 'pet' with 'carnivore' one automatically gets something that will tear your children limb from limb.

The categories are too general. 'Hills' coupled with 'trees' can easily be far less imposing than 'hills' that don't have trees. Depends on the hill. Depends on the tree.

[BillLottJr]

You could use jungles to stand in for wooded marshes, it's more restrictive than marshes. (In ACOW I think it was the other way around. for even more hellish terrain, add badlands.

PS: I like the Europa counters.

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: ColinWright

ORIGINAL: Panama

So you are telling me it's just as easy to drive a tank up a hill without trees as it is to drive a tank up a hill with trees?

I'm telling you that there's no such thing as a generic 'hill' in the first place. Yes indeedee -- there are what can reasonably be called 'hills with trees' that could be far easier to drive a tank up than what could also be called 'hills' -- even if the latter don't have trees.

I'm telling you that yes, there are trees you can drive right over in a tank, others that you can drive between, and still others where you can't do either. That in some parts of the world, there'll be a road of some kind in every five-ten km block of hills, while in others there won't be.

We are adding together what are complete -- and vague, and undefined -- generalizations. When I map, I wind up making some blocks of terrain 'hills' and others 'hills with trees.' The 'hills' without trees can be far more formidable animals than the 'hills with trees.' I certainly wouldn't want to have to omit trees from what is in fact forested land because else I would be making what was merely non-flat ground worse than something that wasn't really mountains, but...

Right now we have a system that at least permits a vaguely visually correct representation of the terrain. If we do want greater accuracy, then the thing to do is permit designer-modified values for each hex -- not to start concocting formulae that makes the hills between London and Portsmouth more formidable than the hills of Eastern Anatolia on the grounds that the former have more trees.

Sure. Let's ignore the whole thing and we'll call it a Matrix.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Bill II

You could use jungles to stand in for wooded marshes, it's more restrictive than marshes. (In ACOW I think it was the other way around. for even more hellish terrain, add badlands.

That's a good idea. Redo the tile, and you've got the riverine forest I run into sometimes.

[ColinWright]

ORIGINAL: Panama

...And while a hill can be a slope of many different angles in many different situations isn't it up to the guy making the map to decide what to portray as a hill and what not to?

This is true enough -- but one winds up with a huge range of terrain falling into the category of 'hill.'

Like I'm mapping much of the Middle East at the moment. On the one hand, I've more or less defined 'mountain' as a hex with a lot of steep slopes that offers 700 meters or more elevation over most lines of approach.

At the other end is what I choose to label plain or arid or cropland only: generally, few or no features more than fifty meters or so in height and rising at a slope of 10% or more.

Something like that. Point is, there's an enormous range of terrain in between -- all of which gets called 'hills.' Even with trees, the terrain at the lower end of this range is much less impressive militarily than some of the stuff that might not have much in the way of plants, but...

[Panama]

ORIGINAL: Bill II

You could use jungles to stand in for wooded marshes, it's more restrictive than marshes. (In ACOW I think it was the other way around. for even more hellish terrain, add badlands.

PS: I like the Europa counters.

Sounds like a plan.

Thanks. Those are from the France 1940 game. The guys who are doing war in the east seem to be going the exact same route as GDW in how they're going to release different parts of their version of war in europe. So I thought I'd throw up some nostalgia. [;)]