I noticed a thing a while before, it somehow bugged me, and I finally checked the map editor today.
I hate to say it, but, it seems like all the city hexes you have put on the map - judging by their visuals - are city hexes actually used to represent Asian cities in the WaW map. The ones with orange-rooftops are used for low latitude Indian and South East Asian cities, while those with grey-rooftops are for mid-high latitude Chinese and Japanese cities.
US cities in both WaW and WWI maps share the same visual as the European cities. They look more three-dimensional than the Asian cities, and their big cities have more large, square-looking buildings (probably indicating rowhouses).
Overall the US-European city hexes are all stone-and-brick-looking, more stand out; and the Asian cities are more wood-and-terracotta-looking, more flat.
Is this a suggestion...I don't know. I can image that replace every city hex will be sincerely painful.
This is by choice - I wanted US and CSA cities to be visibly different. I think changing them in the end should not be too difficult if it people want it - simply swap the images in the relevant bitmaps. Long term plan is to replace the Asian/African visuals with custom-made ones (e.g., clap-board houses/churches for CSA, red brick for USA).
ORIGINAL: Taxman66
Did you skip Maryland?
Here you go:
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E.g., here's what The Carolinas look like if I swap the red-roof town graphic for the yellow-roofed Mediterranean one in the relevant bitmap file - very simple to implement.
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....and here's what New York looks like if I just swap the Asian city graphics for the European ones in the resources bitmap. This took less than 10 minutes to do. However, I am going to continue using the African/Asian city graphics whilst building the map as place-holders for CSA/USA graphics. Probably for the Alpha map I will just use Mediterranean/European graphics but I want the option of using something different. Canada will have European graphics, whilst Mexico will use the Arabian graphics as they look like adobe houses (though if people object to this it is easy to swap them for Mediterranean graphics).
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Maryland -
1) I think you could justify some sort of improved defense for Baltimore due to multiple rivers (Patapsco; Curtis Creek/Curtis Bay; Severn; Magothy; and couple others) along with Fort McHenrey. Perhaps a single hex river line directly south at the very least.
2) Not sure how important it was during the Civil War but there was a Gun Powder Mill in the hex south of Baltimore/north-east of Washington D.C.
3) The hex south of Washington should be a swamp/marsh hex.
4) Annapolis? Probably where that Forest hex is. Also note the Severn river north of Annapolis and the South River south of Annapolis.
"Part of the $10 million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women. The rest I spent foolishly." - George Raft
ORIGINAL: FOARP
This is by choice - I wanted US and CSA cities to be visibly different. I think changing them in the end should not be too difficult if it people want it - simply swap the images in the relevant bitmaps. Long term plan is to replace the Asian/African visuals with custom-made ones (e.g., clap-board houses/churches for CSA, red brick for USA).
That's very thoughtful, even ambitious, I would say. My imagination is simply limited to the original in-game asserts, as I tend to go conservative when modding, always work within the given resources and established limitations. Anyway, glad to hear that changing them is comparative easy.
ORIGINAL: Taxman66
Maryland -
IMHO these are all good suggestions. Maryland needs more "texture" on the map, e.g. the Antietam battlefield can be marked on the map, next to Harpers Ferry, at least that is where "all things goes wrong" in the very beginning. (Maybe Harpers Ferry itself can also be a town? It's a very important crossing on the Potomac and Shenandoah anyway.)
We have also discussed about the defense of Baltimore / fortifications outside Washington in the TL-191 novels. USA should have some defenses (units, lines) before the main line at the Susquehanna River.
I also noticed several things on the picture of Maryland, Virginia, parts of Delaware and NJ:
1) The CSA units on the Delmarva Peninsula. In the novels, according to Kimball, USA controlled (or re-controlled) the entire peninsula and reached to the Virginia Capes as late as in Spring 1916. So I think USA may have more forces present on the peninsula, or CSA may stay in the defensive there. CSA can also clear the peninsula later if they successfully reach the Susquehanna.
2) It seems like part of the Delaware Bay hexes are land hexes of South NJ rather than sea hexes (and thus blocked the Philadelphia port)?
Since your picture shows the works you have done in the New England, I would also like to offer feedback about them:
1) The river goes from Pittsfield to New Haven, which I assume is the Housatonic River, should more closed to Bridgeport. There is also a big swamp at the mouth of the Housatonic River (been there before, it's a cold and moist, very English-looking river mouth - no wonder the place is called New England.)
2) The river goes from Springfield-Hartford, which I assume is the Connecticut River, should goes into Long Island Sound between New Haven and New London. The mouth of the Connecticut River is also a big wetland.
3) Cape Cod Canal can be put on the map - it is finished right before IRL WWI, and had seen military usages doing both World Wars.
4) Quincy, Massachusetts, a bit south from Boston, is the location of the Fore River Shipyard, one of the biggest shipbuilders in New England (they built USS Lexington). Maybe add one more major port there.
5) New England in general is very hilly; not as mountainous as Pennsylvania, but almost every major city in there (besides the part of MA south of Boston and east of Providence) as surrounded by hills. Between Pittsfield and Poughkeepsie are also major mountain ranges.
ORIGINAL: FOARP
This is by choice - I wanted US and CSA cities to be visibly different. I think changing them in the end should not be too difficult if it people want it - simply swap the images in the relevant bitmaps. Long term plan is to replace the Asian/African visuals with custom-made ones (e.g., clap-board houses/churches for CSA, red brick for USA).
That's very thoughtful, even ambitious, I would say. My imagination is simply limited to the original in-game asserts, as I tend to go conservative when modding, always work within the given resources and established limitations. Anyway, glad to hear that changing them is comparative easy.
ORIGINAL: Taxman66
Maryland -
IMHO these are all good suggestions. Maryland needs more "texture" on the map, e.g. the Antietam battlefield can be marked on the map, next to Harpers Ferry, at least that is where "all things goes wrong" in the very beginning. (Maybe Harpers Ferry itself can also be a town? It's a very important crossing on the Potomac and Shenandoah anyway.)
We have also discussed about the defense of Baltimore / fortifications outside Washington in the TL-191 novels. USA should have some defenses (units, lines) before the main line at the Susquehanna River.
I also noticed several things on the picture of Maryland, Virginia, parts of Delaware and NJ:
1) The CSA units on the Delmarva Peninsula. In the novels, according to Kimball, USA controlled (or re-controlled) the entire peninsula and reached to the Virginia Capes as late as in Spring 1916. So I think USA may have more forces present on the peninsula, or CSA may stay in the defensive there. CSA can also clear the peninsula later if they successfully reach the Susquehanna.
2) It seems like part of the Delaware Bay hexes are land hexes of South NJ rather than sea hexes (and thus blocked the Philadelphia port)?
IMHO these are all good suggestions. Maryland needs more "texture" on the map, e.g. the Antietam battlefield can be marked on the map, next to Harpers Ferry, at least that is where "all things goes wrong" in the very beginning. (Maybe Harpers Ferry itself can also be a town? It's a very important crossing on the Potomac and Shenandoah anyway.) We have also discussed about the defense of Baltimore / fortifications outside Washington in the TL-191 novels. USA should have some defenses (units, lines) before the main line at the Susquehanna River. I also noticed several things on the picture of Maryland, Virginia, parts of Delaware and NJ: 1) The CSA units on the Delmarva Peninsula. In the novels, according to Kimball, USA controlled (or re-controlled) the entire peninsula and reached to the Virginia Capes as late as in Spring 1916. So I think USA may have more forces present on the peninsula, or CSA may stay in the defensive there. CSA can also clear the peninsula later if they successfully reach the Susquehanna. 2) It seems like part of the Delaware Bay hexes are land hexes of South NJ rather than sea hexes (and thus blocked the Philadelphia port)?
Haven't read the novels so can't say anything about regards to them.
Harpers Ferry is a rather small present day, don't think it is worthy of a town representation. Although iirc it is rather difficult terrain (minor cliffs/steep roads etc). Maybe the hex should be hills?
D.C. -
You could easily put a river (Anacostia) on the south and southeast hexsides of Washington D.C.
The Hex north of Washington DC contains lots of decent sized towns: Bethesda/Rockville/Gaithersburg/Germantown/Silver Spring/Wheaton maybe that could be a town hex?
(though you'd have to check their population/development circa the timeline.
Interesting Note about Maryland regarding the Civil War (IRL):
Did you know that originally Maryland voted to succeed from the Union?
The Army of the Potomac then marched on (toward?) Annapolis. (Not sure of the exact timing) but Maryland took a re-count (re-vote?) and low and behold stayed loyal to the union.
If your picture represents starting units there would've been a much larger and experienced force in D.C. (at least IRL) than what you have depicted.
"Part of the $10 million I spent on gambling, part on booze and part on women. The rest I spent foolishly." - George Raft
ORIGINAL: Taxman66
Harpers Ferry is a rather small present day, don't think it is worthy of a town representation. Although iirc it is rather difficult terrain (minor cliffs/steep roads etc). Maybe the hex should be hills?
Yes, it is rather small. Consider the strategic position, maybe a fortress.
ORIGINAL: Taxman66
Interesting Note about Maryland regarding the Civil War (IRL): Did you know that originally Maryland voted to succeed from the Union?
Maryland was at a very awkward position in 1861. However, the current modded game is at 1914, as based on the novels, and it is at another timeline, different from ours.
IIRC the Maryland legislature voted 53-13 against convening a secessionist convention if the people of Virginia seceded. Anyway, that's not the focus of this thread though.
1) Right now units are just for show so I wouldn't read anything into where they are placed or how many of them there are.
2) Rivers work in a really cludgy way in this system so it is very difficult to add in tributaries of larger rivers and I'm not going to do it for minor ones. I've added the Patapsco and the Choptank - and the second one only because it has an awesome name!
3) Maryland is supposed to mostly fall early so I'm going to make sure this happens - the AI CSA should be able to storm Washington and then advance north, a human USA player should not be able to simply stop them in Maryland. This is key otherwise this mod will not be challenging to play as the USA against the AI, because they can just operate units in and hold the line.
4) Antietam added.
5) I'll wait until I'm doing my next play though to see how the port near Philly works. I'm generally loath to alter the coastline because it's a pain in the neck to do, but we'll see what needs doing.
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Creating the Map part 16 - Meet the New England... not quite the same as the Old England
Hello again. This time I am focusing on the states making up New England. Since the US Navy has lost its bases on the Gulf of Mexico, and since Chesapeake Bay is now a Confederate lake, New England is a major base for naval units. Particularly Boston but also New London and elsewhere.
Mining in the area was not huge, but apparently the barite and copper mines in Cheshire, Connecticut were at one stage the largest mining complex in New England so for the moment these are the ones I'm putting.
(as an aside, I considered the Cape Cod canal but adding it in would totally mess up the coastline given the limitations of the coastline implementation in this system, however all suggestions are welcome).
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Congratulations on the works done in New England and the beginning of Maritime Provinces. Anyway, incoming thoughts and feedback:
0) (This isn't a suggestion, just thoughts) The Chesapeake Bay isn't a Confederate lake in the novels (since Baltimore and Delmarva Peninsula never fell) but a Confederate lake now, the result of USA's lacking of naval bases in the south will be interesting. Looking forward to see how this will play out in-game.
1) Right at the border between NH and ME, there is the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, the northernmost naval shipyard in the US east coast, a major submarine builder during both World Wars. (Although named after Portsmouth, NH, the shipyard is actually located at Kittery, ME, an island at the opposite of Portsmouth.)
On the other hand, Dover, NH isn't a port town, while Portsmouth, NH, at the downstream of Dover, is.
Maybe change Dover, NH to Portsmouth, NH.
2) A side note for Bangor, ME: Since the Bangor is very inland on the Penobscot River, the port of Bangor will freeze (river freezes, not the ocean) during the winter.
3) Maybe change the plain hexes around Lake Champlain into hills or mountains. IRL only northern end of Lake Champlain are flat lands, the lake is in general surrounded by high mountains.
4) The railroad goes from Bangor-Machias to Canada, was a railway branch line known as the Calais Branch of Maine Central Railroad Co.. IRL It was never the main connection between Maine and Canada, and the service was discontinued since 1950s. The main rail connection between Maine and Canada IRL is a part of Maine Central Railroad later purchased by Canadian Pacific Railway, which goes from Bangor to inland, and entering Canada at Vanceboro, ME.
This part of the railway was originally built by European and North American Railway and finished in 1871, long before US-Canada confrontation in the novels (which began at the Second Mexican War, 1882). Therefore the railway probably still existed in TL-191's 1914.
Interestingly, IRL during WWI, a German spy tried to bomb the international rail bridge at Vanceboro in 1915, in order to disrupt the war material transportation on Canadian Pacific Railway. (However, since US was still neutral in 1915, Canadian war material were routed to other railways.)
Maybe route the railway between Bangor and Canada to more inland?
5) The British claims over Maine before the Aroostook War, was not only the Aroostook County, but also included the northern parts of Somerset, Piscataquis, and Penobscot countries as well. Basically, the entire watershed of Aroostook River and Saint John River. This would result a border at roughly the same latitude as Woodstock, NB.
Maybe move the USA-Canada border at Maine (west of Houlton) further south.
Hello. Creation of the map for this Southern Victory/USA v. CSA mod has now taken us out of the USA again and into the USA's neighbour to the north. Whilst historically US-Canadian relations have been more or less friendly for the past 150 years, this is not the case in Timeline-191. Instead, the part played by the UK in the break-up of the USA, and the annexation of northern Maine to New Brunswick after the Second Mexican War of 1881, has left relations between the British Empire (including the Dominion of Canada) and the rump United States distinctly frosty.
For Canada's Maritime provinces (New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia) the outbreak of war with the USA is not welcome news. All three have small populations, weak defences, and (for the most part) little in the way of choke-points to be held against an invader if the Yanks come in force.
New Brunswick is likely to get hit hardest - it's two main towns are either too close to the US (Saint John) or have too many avenues of approach (Moncton). Prince Edward Island is mostly rural and basically defenceless against an invader that reaches the Abegweit Passage. Only Nova Scotia has the advantage of a narrow isthmus that must be crossed before the province can be invaded in earnest, and with reinforcement from the mother country via the major port of Halifax might be defended for some time. Nova Scotia is also home to the only mining complex in the region, at Sydney.
(As an aside I recently watched the Michael Portillo/BBC rail travel documentary about travelling through Canada that was great to watch and from which I have taken a lot of inspiration for this mod. PEI looks a bit big perhaps, but it's a choice between making it too big and too small really, and "too big" won)
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The Maritime Provinces are really well done, notably the Grand Trunk Railway and the Intercolonial Railway.
Other things worth considering:
1) There is a railway line connecting Houlton-Woodstock-Fredericton, built by New Brunswick Land and Railway Company in the early 1880s.
2) Moncton is on the banks of the Petitcodiac River, which is considerably wide and muddy, worth putting on the map and used as a defensive measure.
3) I don't think there exist a major river north and west of Halifax; on the other hand, Halifax does have a large body of ocean north (Bedford Basin) and east (Halifax Harbor) of it.
4) Thoughts on the defense of Maritime Provinces.
The Canadian Maritimes are basically rural and sparsely populated, although some defensive positions did exist. UK built several forts for protecting the eastern Canadian seaboard when the USA-UK relationship wasn't that great in the early 18th century. These early fortifications are in and around Amherst (as you already put on the map), Saint John, and Halifax.
If the USA-UK relationship became much worse in the late 18th century (as in the novel), UK would have built more fortifications, since Halifax and its rail connections to Canadian Hinterland are crucial for Canada's survival.
I suggest we can use War Plan Red as the reference. In the Plan, Moncton and Halifax were main US war objectives in the east; an amphibious landing would outflank Halifax at St. Margarets Bay. It would be natural for UK to have some defensive installments on the largest harbor and the most important railway junction on the Canadian east coast.
- For instance, some defensive lines can be put in the west of Moncton. Halifax can have defensive lines around it in case of an amphibious landing, so as Saint John. Edmundston can also have a small defensive line, as the road from Houlton to Edmundston has many towns on it, the supply situation on the road will be adequate for an invasion.
Anyway, I agree that these additional defenses shouldn't be too strong, as the Nova Scotia had largely fallen in 1915 in the novels. Poor Canada can only use Quebec City as the main port to receive British supply from the east after that.
4) We'll see how the balance looks in play testing. I'm hesitant to put forts in New Brunswick without troops to man them, and there are unlikely to be many troops in New Brunswick given that it's going to take ~40 units to even just do point-defence along the US-Canadian border. Even with British support, it's not believable that Canada could have had much more than a combined total of 40 brigade/division/corps sized units, so I'm not going to be putting fortifications (and by extension additional units) into places that the books say fell quickly.
There's a few things that with a bit more time I'd like to fix - Cape Breton island should be separated from the mainland (the coastlines system makes this difficult), for example, but for now it looks OK.
Here's what the Maritimes look like now:
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....OK, so I just couldn't leave that bit undone and had a go at it. I think this actually looks a bit better. I understand that the Strait of Canso wasn't actually bridged until the 1950s (using a causeway) but since a proposal for bridging it was in the works from the late 19th century onwards let's just assume it was bridged earlier. Alternatively the railway/road hex includes ferries.
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We're now moving into some rather more sparsely populated parts of the map which I do not intend to spend a great amount of time on, so the detail in these parts may be a bit less. Here we have the British-ruled island of New Foundland. For the purposes of the game I am making the UK capital St. John - it was a choice between Newfoundland, another British colony (e.g., Jamaica) or putting a random hex at the western edge of the map and making that London. None of these solutions is ideal but for the moment I am going with this one - but I may change this later. I have done the same with France, it's capital (and only on-map territory) being in the French colony of St. Pierre & Miquelon.
(Gotta be honest: I’m thinking Newfoundland by itself would be a great place to fight an amphibious campaign, landing in the west and fighting overland to get to the capital in St. John with all the natural barriers and choke-points in the way and reinforcements coming in from both sides. BTW - even applying relatively little detail, even just creating Newfoundland was the work of more than an hour (2-3 at a guess) especially if the time spent on the coastlines - which still aren’t perfect - is included)
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Newfoundland looks really detailed, I can image it being a back-up base for Royal Navy in the game.
Speaking of amphibious assault, how many sea hexes are between Sydney and Port aux Basques? If it is relatively short then an amphibious assault would be very worth considering.
An interesting side note: I noticed there are "Pillbox" units in the editor. The are considered as a static defensive infantry unit (they cannot move, thus fully defensive and cannot be use elsewhere), with a default maximum strength of 5, and a cheap prince of 100 MPPs.
I would suggest this unit can be useful for a small scale point-defense for Canada/USA borders or CSA/Mexican western borders, since they all have very sparse population along it. Or it can be used for some second-level defensive line, placed one hex apart in a line. Or USA can build it in newly occupied land. Either way, some play testings are needed.
(An example of using pillbox for point-defense IRL is in Japanese-occupied part of the China during WWII. Japanese forces behind the Chinese frontlines was troubled by the vast countryside, so they build many pillboxes for counter-insurgency, usually one town each.)
