AAR New map in progress! Want some opinion...

[Defiance]

So like alot of people here, who like to make their own big A&A maps for their playgroup, yes now even I have taken this adventure. Right now I am fully in progress in making an advanced map which is more historically accurate and also more fun 2 play. For starters I want to use this map with a new unit placement setup and with new (Enhanced) rules.

Although I now have made Italy a seperate nation, as it will be for Advanced Axis and Allies stated by Larry Harris, I will change it back to german territory for the time being....

So here's the first sketch.... I would say shoot it down and give some constructive help on what could be better, or what I should continue on (there's still alot of work to do, like even selecting victory cities...). There are many of you down here at the boards whom have vast knowledge of this game and WWII.

http://www.d66-voorschoten.nl/images/voorbeeld.jpg

Couple of comments:
- Starting month will be december 1941
- have 2 put in territory names in there. Got them but not in this post yet (sorry)
- I will redo some areas around the Moscow area, not finished there yet.
- India will be split into 5 regions, still have to do that.
- Not so sure about the number of chinese territories, I might merge 2 US and 1 *** territory.
- The board will contain fixed IC's and use 3 different type of IC's: infantry only, medium IC's and full IC's. The commonwealth countries Canada, Australia and India will get medium IC, same goes for Urals.
- Infantry only IC's will be placed in Balkans, Siam or Shanghai area, Szechuan area in China, Leningrad area and possibly South Africa(?)
- oh and... the white coastal border lines are temporarely, they'll be removed eventually

So give your critizism!! I love it... :eek:

[Atlantikwall]

I like the idea of making the map a little bit more geographical and historical accurate, but it`s a boardgame and not an atlas! For playabiltity it is absolutely necessary to "enlargen" the important areas of the world (in WW2), i.e. Europe and China. Those many territories in Siberia are way to much! And these chinese territories are just to tiny to play with. And all these african countries are way to much, too!

Clausewitz proposed a map that is good to start with. I would devide China into japanese controlled Machuria (may be seperate Korea as well), Hopei (Bejjing), Shantung (Shanghai) and may be Hongkong. American should be Central China (also called Szechwan with Tschungking as capital) and Southern China (or Kwangtung). Russian should be communist-held North China (or called something like Xian) and Sinkiang.

[Vollick1979]

Well I guess it depends on how big your "big" map is going to be. I like the idea of giving Commonwealth countries IC's.

[Atlantikwall]

I will redo some areas around the Moscow area, not finished there yet.Not necessary west of Russia. Seperate baltic countries (including East-Prussia) is great. And that it`s still three countries between Berlin and Moscow is fine (EEU, Belorussia and West-Russia). Two countries south (Volga and Caucasus) of it is fine, too. But reduce territories east of it and go with the geographical "proportions" of Revised, i.e. an enlarged Europe and a "smaller" America, Africa and Central Asia.

[Lt M Cotten]

Sweet Map!!!
:d

[Defiance]

Thanks for your comments folks....

To AtlantikWall:
Thanks for your comments. The map size is somewhere near 24 x 46 inches, so almost all spaces are big enough to place all the regular units in there like in Revised. I checked this specifically. Except for a few regions, Malaya and Gibraltar... the med sea is a bit tight but ok, as well as china regions (but I think I'm gonna merge a few together).

The 3 distance between moscow and germany will remain the same. I'll only want 2 add one territory between Russia and Ural, while also having a territory between the Stalingrad area and Moscow: Volga area.

The European continent has already been enlarged in this map, but I might do it a bit more. I dislike a map like Revised which has been "edited" too much in my eyes. They (avalon hill) should packa bigger gameboard like Cvilization from Eagle Games. Now that's a game board!

The Siberian continent has been setup like this to disencourage the Japenese from going into there. This way no rules are nessecary like a non-agression pact. Besides, I like to have some area where dice can be thrown on the board, and where I can place the battle board on game. So these can be siberia and southern america.

I might take out two African territories as I find them a bit too much as well. But the nothern and eastern side of Africa will remain the same (seperate maroc, algeria, libya, cyrania, egypt, sudan, italian east africa and british east africa), as it should represent the fightings that were there accordingly.

Thanks again. I will follow up some of your advice.

[Clausewitz]

In general I think these territories are very well done. Moscow in it's proper place - hurray! I would place the soviet ICs in Moscow and Chelyabinsk (Urals), where much of the Russian arms industry had been evacuated to by this time.
I would certainly recommend an impassable pripet marsh territory, and I wonder if Ukraine and Caucasus should have a common border?
Note also that Norway and Finland should not be adjacent. I join the borders at the north coast to prevent movement and also deny finland a northern coast.

[Defiance]

Hi Clausewitz,

Thanks for your comments:

Moscow and Ural area will have IC's, 2 extra territories to the east of Moscow between Moscow/Stalingrad/Urals have been added.

Causasus now in connection with new Donetsk area, which also borders Stalingrad area / moscow / west russia and ukraine, it lies south of Moscow area.

Pripet area has been placed between Bello and Ukraine to spice up eastern front.

[Atlantikwall]

Causasus now in connection with new Donetsk area, which also borders Stalingrad area / moscow / west russia and ukraine, it lies south of Moscow area.

Pripet area has been placed between Bello and Ukraine to spice up eastern front.
You should not border CAU to (East-) UKR if you have Volga. So you can block a irrealistical march south of the german army from UKR to CAU and persia, India, etc...

Volga with its border to Moscow should block the south-eastern german army!

Btw: I don`t like Pripet either. Just dry it out :) (i.e the march)!

[elbowsanchez]

if i were giving advise on this map, it would end up looking like mine, which is not what i think you want...

i would suggest loosing the tint...too distracting and it takes away for having a topo...but thats just me...

elbow

[Caractacus]

Given the size of the spaces, I think you could add some much-needed flexibility to Europe by having the UK, France and (most importantly) Germany as two spaces. Experience the joy of the Western Allies occupying W.Germany as the Russians move into the East!

[pagan]

I like the tint.

[Defiance]

Allright, here's a second update of my design....

For more discussion about the map & some explaination, also see Larry Harris website (http://www.harrisgamedesign.com), at the 2nd stage of advanced A&A section.

http://photopile.com/photos/hyperion/auctions/166296.jpg

[DXfoxman]

I love it, Defiance. How much better a map can it get without making the map 3D?
All the new territories, and the Oil and Production symbols, although i don't know what they mean lol, look great.

The only negative point is the colors. I really cant tell alot of the ownership of territories. I guess making the colors alittle deeper would help. I'm not sure.

But still, it's awsome.

[Lt M Cotten]

Defiance, that is too sweet. I gotta ask. What did you use for the background image? I gotta try that.

I love that Texas has gained some new territory! :D Independence anyone? :D

[series]

Defiance, how the HELL did you get an image that large and colorful uploaded onto this site?????????

[Clausewitz]

Now this map is really looking the business.
Some more suggestions:
Being colour blind I don't know what all this "tint" business is about. Are any of the territories impassable, if so which?
I would consider Amazonia, Belgian Congo (Jungle), while Bechuanaland and Namibia could become the Kalahari desert.
Use the Fasces symbol for Italy, so much more distinct than the tricolour.
Can you invade UK from Ireland? I make NI a separate territory. It can even have an IC - they built a lot of warships and aircraft in Belfast.
Not sure about the IC in India - infantry only? What do the different number of stacks represent? Archangel is just Ice.
Oil in Germany? Perhaps this represents synthetic oil plants? I don't think there was much oil production in Egypt at this time - otherwise a pretty accurate distribution of oil wells, but see my comments on oil on the LarryHarris sight.
Finally, I would consider adding more islands, particulary considering the wider oceans. The USAAF used islands such as St.Helena as staging stops on the trans-Atlantic route.

If you haven't seen it, this is my AAE map:

http://www.bggfiles.com/viewfile.php3?fileid=8105

[Defiance]

Thanks for your comments guys,

To DXfoxman: I am still working on the colors to make them look better. The problem is that the background has it's own color which gets mixed up, so some territories are hard to recognice (Dutch East Indies, Australia, Sweden & some other neutrals). Still not done with it yet...

To Lt M Cotten: The background is a photograph I took from an Dutch atlas from an earth satellite picture & enlarged it with a special program.

Series: Well that's pretty simple: post it on some sort of imagehost on the web, and just how you placed pictures in this forum, exactly the same way... :eek: :D

To Clausewitz: The impassable territories have their territory names written in Black to distinquise themselves from the neutral areas.

What's the fasces symbol for Italy? I dunno. But like Larry Harris said, this game needs no symbols which brings up the holocaust or fascism period. So I dont know if that's such a good idea. But I wasn't all too fond of using the tricolore for Italy, I still don't know which military sign I should use for italy?? help?

India = a medium factory which produces everything hence battleships, bombers and aircraft carriers.

Archangel = a specific factory only for Subs and Transports (otherwise the russians can't produce no ships) But I still have doubts about this one.

Nothern Ireland is something to think about... Thanks for showing that out as a weak spot if neutrals are involved

Oil drill in Germany represents the synthetic coal to oil plants yes. More islands are considered in following version....

[pagan]

You have the correct flag for WW2. Italy 1848-1946



It wasn't until after the war and the fall of fascism that the flag was changed. the flag had nothing to do with fascism, but it was changed nonetheless.

The fascist had a symbolic band that was not a real flag I think. It was defiantely not the flag of Italy but more of a party flag.

I do, however prefer the Nazi HakenKreuz (broken cross) flag for germany. Its just way to authentic not to use. But I am not one affected by these little sensibilties of death camps and the nazi symbol.

on a side note: Germany had a different flag for naval vessels

[Defiance]

Thanks Pagan for your help. I'll keep the flag then... At least people recognise it as representing Italy.

[Beast1313131]

Great map Defiance! The texture is awesome! I have noticed that Norway is connected with Russia. Realistic, but playable? We will see. You can also change Western Canada into British Columbia. And i agree with Pagan that the HakenKreuz should be the flag, but since all the other flags are the same, perhaps it should stay.

[Defiance]

Hi Beast 1313131,

Norway will be changed, I saw the flaw from the beginning as well. The European theathre (but not the russian front) will be changed in next version to look more historic, as well as have a better setup for gameplay. Norway will probably be split into 2 sections (northern and southern Norway).

British Columbia I left out specifically for 2 reasons:

- I wanted to have the name "Canada" on the board for sure, and not name all Canadian territories to all its provinces. So i had to pick an area which contained the IC (eastern canada) and name itwith "canada". But I don't want to have an eastern part without a western part of that country, so.....

- The name of British Columbia is a bit "weird" as it containes the word "British". For a board game I rather leave such things out to make it more clear.

[steben]

This is the way I could go for it:
-Definitely fasces symbol if Italy (but rather game without italy though :D ...)
-Some hitlerjugend (as here) or battleflag type german marker.
-Definitely Union Jack! This is the most important thing I did even in 1984 game. It makes it so much more fun to play with the UK!
http://www.freewebs.com/vladem/euoutl2.JPG

OTHER SUGGESTIONS:
-OIL in Norway?
-Prussia? -> that was surely german until 1945, not polish! It gives the germans a connection to the baltic states too!