Matrix Games Forums

România este finalizată!



The Bear looms very large in my rear view mirror, with only Bulgaria in her little brown subcompact lying between me and my 18 wheeled doom...

The Carpathians will look a little weird-that's because the eastern side of the map is tilted about 5 degrees counterclockwise, and I am not using Google Maps' Mercator projection.

Pretty fantastic and the Carpathians look fine.
Your too picky haha.
Ah yes, Bessarabia. Looks like a big sausage that a bear would like to have din din on.

15 minutes after I posted here, I went out to treat myself to some ice cream from a local shoppe.

I ended up behind a pickup with an Alaskan license plate-with a big looming Kodiak bear on it.

If I don't come out of the Russian den gibbering like a total lunatic, it will be a minor miracle. If I come out at all...

Elessar2 wrote: Mon Apr 17, 2023 1:51 pm 15 minutes after I posted here, I went out to treat myself to some ice cream from a local shoppe.

I ended up behind a pickup with an Alaskan license plate-with a big looming Kodiak bear on it.

If I don't come out of the Russian den gibbering like a total lunatic, it will be a minor miracle. If I come out at all...

Don't go looking for bears, metaphorical or real ones, especially in their dens.

A long time ago, numerous cache of Spetsnaz gear and C-Stores (Including water-proofed cigarettes!) was found on Kodiak Island and other islands further out in the Aleutians.
Turns out, there were two types of bears there. I and a few others were tasked to find sign of any more new caches. Did run into bears though..big ones. We ended up having to retreat down a mountain we had just climbed as they were very aggressive.

The 11' models were everywhere. Nothing like seeing a huge head pop-up over 10' high dwarf willow and turn to look at you lol.

Anyways...my supervisor did give us a warning the morning of the day this photograph was taken: "Remember boys, there's things out there that can eat you......"
Such found memories.

българия е завършена!



Alas, 2 issues in my personal life (one long-expected, one I was hoping wouldn't kick in at this moment in time), means the final version will be delayed. I intended to work on Russia next, then Turkey, but it is likely all I can get done in the next month+ is the latter (when normally a country as big as She with all the mountains would take maybe 7-10 days tops). Not to worry I am determined to finish this bloody thing being this close to the end.

Did have time to wrap up the two remaining Baltic States:



Still deciding to do Turkey next, tho I'll also be revisiting the Russian city placements (which for the western half where most of the action will take place already has most of them in place).

That is a lot of rough terrain for what is basically mass clear hexes on the vanilla map.

Not a complaint, just an observation.

Taxman66 wrote: Fri May 05, 2023 11:20 pm That is a lot of rough terrain for what is basically mass clear hexes on the vanilla map.

Not a complaint, just an observation.

Looks pretty close to accurate according to google maps...the forests in particular.
Courland looks right...and a good enough place as any to fall back into like parts of AGN did in the late summer of 44 when they were cut-off during Bagration.
I think its pretty close to the map used in GG War in the East 1 and 2 too. Perhaps I can pull a screen shot of these different areas of the Baltics and to compare.
I seem to remember rolling hilly country in SE Estonia and eastern Latvia too. There was an anti-Soviet guerrilla movement after WW2 into the 1950s and possibly even the 60's called the Forest Brothers who operated there.
Anyways looks great!

I am actually using the WitE maps as references, and they will certainly prove invaluable in Russia. Yes, vanilla has far too many clear hexes one way or another. Here I'll have to give units base defense ratings proportionately lower than in vanilla because of all the extra terrain I have added (and rivers), which will make defending in the open a pretty dicey proposition. [and extra movement points across the board] But that was indeed the case in the actual war...

Elessar2 wrote: Sat May 06, 2023 10:10 pm I am actually using the WitE maps as references, and they will certainly prove invaluable in Russia. Yes, vanilla has far too many clear hexes one way or another. Here I'll have to give units base defense ratings proportionately lower than in vanilla because of all the extra terrain I have added (and rivers), which will make defending in the open a pretty dicey proposition. [and extra movement points across the board] But that was indeed the case in the actual war...

Well that all sounds great. Now maybe river defensive lines will be more meaningful. They certainly are in WitE.
Also...hills and rough having better defensive value as opposed to clear is always good. Trying to defend the Nogai Steppe which is empty and mostly flat should be be tough, whether it's Soviets or hapless Rumanians trying to do it.

I'm really excited to play this. Looks stunning!

Got a lot on my meatspace plate right now , so doing what I can, got all Turkish cities in place, doing the rivers now.

TÜRKİYE TAMAMLANDI!!



[Note: Due to its size, to see it in its full resolution you will likely have to copy and paste it into a paint program.]

Man, took almost a month, but given its size and intricate terrain that should not be a surprise.

I stuck with my default rule of thumb for city/town distances, which has been 2-4 hexes. It could be argued that it should be longer for more wild and forbidding regions and terrain types, but the issue there is that due to terrain movement & supply penalties you basically will only be able to attack along roads as it is, which is historical. Playtesting should help reveal the optimal balance.

NEXT:

Alas I won't be able to commence work on Russia until July because I will be moving in 2 weeks. I likely will have enough time to get the Eastern Med countries done next, if not Iran and Iraq.

Kudos to you, Elessar. Writing as someone who has used the editor for maps, this is a work of art. A month to create something like this seems to be very fast. Well done.

Two notes:

-Some cities in Spain have names from today that were not used during World War II.

-I suggest you use the Naval Intelligence Handbooks.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Int ... _Handbooks

They are available as downloadable pdf at archive.org and library genesis

https://archive.org/search?query=creato ... ivision%22

https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=naval+ ... column=def

Bless you argilas-I've been looking for a resource like that for awhile. Thanks. The maps showing the roads and railroads is especially helpful, tho I have to read between the lines to infer which roads were paved (it shows 2 types of roads, "motorable" and "other", but the latter may not allow motor transport at all).

WOW!!!
Elessar2 your maps especially Turkey are just out of this world.

Looking forward to see the final map in all its glory!!!

Me too.

Right now I am trying to line up all of the Middle East countries. Syria and Iraq are not quite willing to play nice with each other, but it's a rather slight distortion that I can likely live with. Look for the Med coast countries this weekend, Iran and Iraq before I move in 2 weeks.

great you are still working on this! Think of the possibilities

Syria, Palestine, and Transjordan:



The main issue as I alluded to is the Syrian/Iraq border, which should have an angle of about 120 degrees, but is actually 140. I suspect it has to do with the way the polar projection works. Some minor surgery on the Euphrates where it hits the border might be in order.

Iraq next. That resource that argilas gave me will prove invaluable for this country given the massive changes in the land around the Tigris and Euphrates in the last 80 years. Many of the lakes didn't exist or had different shapes, or did exist but were turned into farmland-same with the once-numerous marshes.

One quick note about city names. I've actually checked historical changes for at least many of the bigger ones. Quite often tho what you'll see in these old resources are the British versions, and not the native ones that were likely used back then. There's also translations from non-Roman alphabets too with their inherent inaccuracies. I did use one of the guidebooks to check all the major cities in Spain (they had an awesome map with the city dots scaled to the population), and could find no discrepancies.

Note: imgbb is currently giving me an error when I try to zoom the image.