Map of Europe (edition) 20kms/hex

[Elessar2]

Did Corsica this morning, plus added the Maginot forts and tidied a few things up.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Keep on mapping

[Elessar2]

[deleted link]

[Elessar2]

While I can follow the paths of modern highways, and have found some rail maps which have helped, I am often making inferences (along with keeping gameplay in mind) for both road and rail paths as they existed back then, as well as which roads were paved and which were dirt. Again any help/data/web links to such appreciated.

Germany is now up at bat, tho this will just be the pre-Anschluss borders-for the testbed scenario that will do for income purposes. [As in I'll be doing Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Poland later] Hoping I don't have to worry about gross distortions-because Germany is at the center of the map as I did all of the coastlines of the other countries around it, I may have to make some compromises.

[Elessar2]

There are some quirky inaccuracies in central Germany, where all my attempts to fix one group of town alignments just hoses another set-after many attempts to remedy while tearing my hair out, just said the heck with it. 99% of the time a city should be within 1 hex of where it should be. After testing some more distances with a map tool I found, determined that the de-facto scale is actually about 19 km, which turns out to be 12 miles, which provides a bit more room for units. As such, decided to go full divisional scale, even if doing so may require some reduction in force pool limits and such for playability purposes. [Note that the Grigsby games have 10 mile hexes] If SC allowed stacking, or at least force combinations and splittings, I'd mix in corps, but here it would prove to be inelegant aesthetically speaking.

The big bugaboo for map distances is how they are distorted in certain compass directions vs. others:



The maximum distortions happens 30 degrees +60 (so also at 90, 150, etc.). The error can exceed 10% at those angles, meaning extra hexes between two points beyond what the actual map distances indicate. At 0/60/120 by contrast there should be FEWER hexes. But what I've found is that all the errors are almost all on the extra side-for example Athens to Vienna should be 66, but is actually 77 (since they lie on the 150-330 line), an 18% error. But Istanbul to Vienna should be 65, but is actually 67 even tho they lie on the "shortcut" 120-300 line. Which for this Yank is fine by me, miles all the way, sorry SIPRES...

Change of plans: decided that the testbed scenario will be the Battle of Poland, which will be simpler in scope and something I can build on for the full scenario-tho once Russia is finished the first full map release will be Barbarossa because the Russian front needs to be nailed down tight first and foremost (so that it isn't a 2 year wait to test). As you can see a fair amount of work has already been done on Austria/Czechoslovakia/Poland, which I hope to get finished soon after the first of the year.

[Elessar2]

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[BiteNibbleChomp]

Impressive!

- BNC

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Very nice. What a lot of work but man the results are fantastic!

[Elessar2]

Yes, I am aware of the little "tail" which Hungary gobbled up after the Munich Agreement. I may actually make a 1936 scenario modeled on WiF's Days of Decision-my only worry is players would get bored hitting end turn before the actual war starts so I'd need to add a lot of DEs in that time span. I don't think the Spanish Civil War can be made a shooting one, maybe--I'll have to experiment. [Dislike phantom events like the Finnish War where nothing actually happens on the map]

As you might notice I scaled the label font sizes in accord with the city sizes. I needed 6 levels, and I got them (12-19 skipping 13 & 15). This should cut down on visual clutter. Size 11 vanishes in zoomed out mode, and 20 actually shrinks.

Minor edit in Ireland-several towns were originally cities, scaled back accordingly. Other minor edits as I added and deleted some continental towns.

Off to Poland which given its pretty flat topography should be a quickie (mountains and hills are more time-consuming). THEN I'll finally be able to switch for a spell to building the main scenario data so as to craft the testbed Polish campaign.

[Elessar2]

The actual [Polish] terrain was pretty straightforward-it was the rivers which ate up a lot of my time. There are c. 4 major river systems going through or near Poland, with tons of tributaries. No major city distance distortions, yay.

Yes, unlike vanilla (but like the Grigsby games) I put rails and roads into the Pripet Marshes. Turns out that Hitler sent Guderian in there to mop up some resistance. I can make doing so dicey by giving mud a 50% chance even in summer, thus turning all of the dirt roads into mush.

So, standards which help dictate decisions as to what kind of terrain to use...

For rivers my cutoffs are 50-500 feet for minor rivers, 500+ for major ones. They will prove to be more than the minorly annoying speedbumps they are in vanilla, with movement penalties of -1/-2 plus increased defense bonuses (30%/50%; vanilla is 20%/35%, movement 0/-1).

Cities I use modern population figures + some subjective calls here and there based on my knowledge of history: major cities around 1 million population+, regular cities 1 million - 300,000, towns 300,000-75,000, settlements 75,000 on down.

Terrain is more subjective. Just because I see little bumps and occ. ridges in Google Maps doesn't mean it will get a hill sprite, or there would be hills all over the place (as it is there may be a few too many). Otherwise what I see is what I get.


So, on to the testbed scenario, tho I will be tinkering with the next region (Spain/Portugal) along the way. Stay tuned...

[slaytanic]

Just going through Rostov scenario in WaW and it's really fun so division scale warfare is going to be great as long the map is large enough. I'm just wandering how you'll deal with some obvious differences from the main game:
- turns will stay biweekly hopefully? There's gonna be a lot of clicking
- with no division stacking, how are major cities gonna be handled, will you allow building a few corps units to defend them or give a big bonus to city defenses?
- air units will also be reduced in scale? It makes sense...
- what about naval? It's gonna be huge even without the whole naval aspect....a few hundred units battling in SU....
- any other changes planned in comparison to the base game?

Great work, thanx man

[Elessar2]

Quite a few. The core dilemma is whether to stick with the division-only setup, or put in corps. I dislike that latter option aesthetically for a couple of reasons: you cannot stack or at least combine and split units in SC while in the game, and it basically turns into a contest of corps (esp. armor ones) and targets, which isn't really a contest at all of course. Going divisions-only makes things more egalitarian and allows different division types for different tasks, vs. a few giants stomping on all the midgets scurrying around.

The other issue there is the scale isn't quite appropriate for divisions-if I had room in the editor I'd have gladly have gone with 10 mile hexes or even 8 or so (as indicated upthread it is effectively 12), but I am squeezed as it is (I recently slid the map down 4 hexes figuring room at the top for arctic convoy battles and raiders shooting the Denmark Straits was more crucial than a few extra ones in the southern deserts), so if I go for a historical division count things may get too crowded. No matter what I am going to have to compromise on something, alas. Yeah tons of clicking no matter what, part and parcel of the package.

Cities and capitals should work ok-if you check the screenies, most all of the capitals, majors at least, have suburbs that you will have to take first. Giving infantry significant city defense bonuses will also help (while allowing mere settlements to provide fairly minimal ones).

I am also going to significantly favor manuever warfare, with mobile units getting 8-10 movement allowances, and units which were shattered in good supply coming back @ 40% cost in 30% of the time (vanilla is 60%/50%), rewarding encirclements. Base infantry defense stats will be relatively low, but that is because there is a lot more defensive terrain than in vanilla where 80-90% of the hexes are clear. So I cannot have the unit density be too high or we're back to the vanilla slogging slugfest, which I want to avoid.

Turn structure has to be balanced against tech limitations (you can only use integers for chit %'s of course)-my current schema is alternating, 4+4 days in the summer, 5+5 fall/spring, 6+6 winter, leading to about 37 turns per year. I can then have the major techs max out at 2%, meaning 12-16 months between advances (note I plan to have a 2/3 chit system, providing more flexibility). Chit cost vs. the MPP % spent on units is still being worked out. I anticipate a larger % being spent on units than in vanilla, so chits can't be too cheap-I will have a relatively low cap note, forcing tough decisions, and thus avoiding the syndrome of everyone being at the same levels. [Catchup and sharing bonuses are more crucial than in vanilla]

Air unit scales still am pondering. May have ~33% more of them, all with double strikes, but I have nerfed direct damage while increasing morale losses, so the days of nuking a 100% healthy ground unit behind its lines should be history.

Naval cruise will likely have to be 250% of normal, since that is capped at 25 hexes. 1:1 ratios for capital ships/carriers, 2:1 for cruisers, about 8:1 for destroyers and subs: higher repair %'s for the smaller ships since if the counter takes a lot of damage it would already have lost several vessels. More units but also more places to hide now. I wanted to force unit convoys to spend at least one turn on the water (in the Med), allowing for intercepts, but playability may trump that.

Note I'll have 3 Mobilization techs (for land/air/sea natch) to dynamically increase build limits, so you cannot say buy out all of the German tanks at the start, have to plan ahead. Found out tho that the max in the editor is +10 units so may have to use the morale techs to give some more (for ground units).

Got quite a bit of work done on the testbed-it is awaiting my new machine which I may order today (so I can edit the unit sprites to my satisfaction). After getting annoyed one too many times with how Italy looked decided to fix her coastlines once and for all (Adriatic too) and should get all of her terrain and rivers put in this week.

[slaytanic]

All ideas sound great, you obviously gave it a lot of thought already. This mod might end up as a funner little brother of WITE. Please consider making a test version even before you complete the map, so we can all start testing it out

[Elessar2]

I have spent the most time on Italy's coastlines than on any other country's-last month was the fourth time I have redrawn her coasts. A ton of hair-pulling and muttering was involved as I didn't fully grasp at first just how much the hex grid distorts distances, and kept trying to get everything lined up with the surrounding land masses, cities lined up with each other, with lots of false starts and retrenchments. There are still some minor issues: Sicily and Sardinia don't quite line up with Tunisia correctly; because of how the editor sprites work, I couldn't tilt Corsica and Sardinia the required 5 degrees or so clockwise (which would have lined them up with Tunisia correctly) because then trying to get the sprites to match the coasts would have proven impossible, and they both would have looked all mutated/melted. the Alps are now about 1 hex too short N-S--this was a consequence of the original map, where SIPRES didn't make the Ligurian Sea deep enough (I have had poor Genoa on like around a dozen different hexes by now), so had to push other cities north of Genoa farther north. The SE Austrian cities don't line up correctly with the NE Italian ones, but that will just require moving the former west 1 hex each, which is something I will do later. I did fix the Adriatic, which was too wide, and reshaped all of those long islands into skinnier shapes.

Added tags for mountains and other landmarks, as well as sea areas.

With the new machine I should be able to edit the NATO counters at least. If someone wants to help with the 3D ones my door is open-it will mainly be a minor edit, just swapping some of the sprites around, with only 4 units (and those only for the Germans and Russians) requiring any major surgery.

So the actual mapmaking will now be put on hold as I work some more on the testbed.

The biggest challenge will be to get the supply working correctly given the different distance ratios from the 2 vanilla maps (unit movement vs. supply distances). I wanted to crank Scorched Earth all the way down to zero in Russia at least (Germans too when they go on the defensive), to reflect the necessity of converting the rail network, but after some preliminary testing found out that that will mean waits which are too long and/or too frequent (as units will be forced to pause for the supply network to catch up).

Tl;dr version is that on the first turn the spearheads will be able to move 8-10 spaces out from the rear boosting HQ-the mobile HQ (boosted from 4 to 8 via the Mechanization tech) will go out 7 spaces, with its units arrayed around it.

2nd turn they should still be at max supply, can then go another 8-10 spaces (have decided that the mobile combat units at least will have a base move of 11+1 for the tech, regular infantry 5 nonmobile HQs also 5).

At this point tho their mobile HQ will have lost the max boost, and will be down from 8 to 6-5. That should be sufficient for her units to still be an adequate offensive force, and they can then go out another 6-10 hexes, at which point they will have to pause and wait for the rear HQ to find a city ( which is healing) within 7 hexes from the lead HQ and plop down on it. It may be that each main axis of advance will need 2 support HQs which will leapfrog each other as cities reach 5 (I may lower the operational limit from 5 to 4 but will do so with some trepidation). Scorched Earth settings of 0 or 1 I have already ruled out, but going too far in the other direction to 4 and 5 (as vanilla does) is also undesirable because they won't necessarily have to pause much if at all. So it is now a decision between 2 and 3-since the editor allows for a SE range, I can set it to 25-38% which will give either value.

The Logistics tech may also prove to be overpowered in the late game as a consequence, so may limit the levels there to 3, giving 2 new HQ builds per level.

Stay tuned...

[Elessar2]

The testbed scenario is awaiting counters which have been outsourced to more than capable hands.

This was the hardest region other than Finland-so many elevation changes and little hills here and there, constantly having to make value judgements as to whether a hex was mountains/hills/clear. It has two climate zones as you can see from the two tone map colors. [Yes alt capitals/industrial & supply centers being added post-haste]

On to North Africa which despite its size should go very quickly given all of the empty unreachable areas. Then Greece and the Balkans which will be even more of a mad adventure. Been at it for four months, and consider this to be the approximate halfway point.

[steevodeevo]

This is amazing,

Noob question, how do I use it?

Do I replace the map in the standard European campaign/scenarios and it will work ok with existing unit placements and AI or are Campaigns on this new map planned and also essential for the unit placement and AI to work properly?

cheers
s

[Elessar2]

I'll be doing an editor tutorial when I do Greece in a few weeks.

Oh, you mean play it. It's just the map right now, so not even a DL yet (there may be one from a year or so ago which is very obsolete). A planned move this spring will cause me to put it on hold for about a month-at my current pace the whole map will likely be finished by July, with the actual scenario following hopefully in the fall. The testbed (Polish Campaign only) may be ready before June, however. I've been slowly modding the game engine as I add detail to the map note-you can see a British battleship in Gibraltar, for example.

User scenarios do NOT go in the default install folder, but rather your User/Documents/My Games/SC Euro.

[Lothos]

The map is beautiful, the problem is map editor size and you will have to rework all the scripts and AI scripts. My thinking is you will need to remove CORP type units and go down to the division/brigade level as CORP units will be to large.

Allot of work here

[Elessar2]

Yeah Divisions all the way as my recent comments upthread have indicated. Scripts aren't a big issue, just a lot of tedious work copying over the new hex locations and raising the distance parameters. Did that for WitP didn't take forever.

[Elessar2]

almaghrib muktamil!

There were some compromises made to the shape of West Africa and the locations of the island groups.

Recall this is a converging polar projection, but preliminary sketches of the coast had it sticking too far out into the Atlantic as it got towards the S end of the map. In actuality the longitude lines will become parallel as they approach the equator. So at Agadir I tilted everything north -20 degrees to match Spain, but kept it at zero south of there. Came out pretty well all told.

For the Azores I couldn't move them the full distance out into the Atlantic because they would be within 30 or so hexes of Labrador island. I simply eyeballed the proportional distances on the actual map and placed them accordingly (actually moved both them and the Canaries 3 times as I tried to position them to my satisfaction.

I decided to delete state and region tags because the map is highly detailed as it is. Sorry SIPRES...

On to Algeria and Tunisia...