Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: BallyJ

I thought that right or wrong the map was DONE.
We seem to keep going off at tangents.
Again I say "focus on finishing the game"
Then do the refinments.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Skanvak
Your map is not a mercator projection. Beside, it confirms a 3 hexes differences. The top of the Caspian should be north of the latitude of the sea of Azov not far south, same goes for the Aral sea, that is not correct, but less important.

The point, I feel strongly, if that this 3 hexes distortion around Baku results in a great distortion for a strategic objectif of the war. Baku is 50% farther from Tiflis than it should. And it looks awfully wrong, as we are waiting for this game,don't let this sort of thing spoil the quality of the product.

My opinion is that whatever, it is not a big deal.
I share Steve's opinion, that it is OK to discuss, but 95% decided that we won't change it.
Changing Scandinavia in the same level of magnitude that you propose to change the Caspian was a huge work, and I don't think that we want to dive into that again.
The map have reached some sort of equilibrium, and we must be careful in changing things that much, as there will be people who will prove you were wrong in changing that, pointing at an area you changed as a consequence of the main change.

quote:

Froonp, peux tu me confirmer (ou pas) que les lignes d'hex à Wif correspondent aux latitudes?

The hexrows can be seen as latitude lines, but not all over the MWiF map. there are lots of places where there are shifs of some hexes north or south, Scandinavia being one of the main places.

What is important is that the tactical layout of the map is correct, and that the strategical layout is about correct. Even if we have that distortion around the Caspian, it is globaly correct.

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian
this gets confusing. the map is 'done' but crossing arrows can be tweaked. I've been fooling around with a print-out of the Caspian area, that could still use work. an entire hex-row or two could be eliminated between Grozny and Baku, easily. Baku and Tiflis are so far apart, either side can be said to suffer from the distortion depending on who you are playing at the time. Reinforcements from Baku take forever to reach the Tiflis front; likewise after the Axis take Tiflis they have a long march to Baku still in front of them. it appears we have plenty of time till release and this could be a good area to work on still. I know you put a lot of time in to it already. one way to approach it might be to do some basic measurements of distances; I know there are several border/geographical features you wished to illustrate, however if including them introduces so much distortion, perhaps some of them should be edited out. I wouldn't worry about the effects on Turkmenistan, but the west side of the Caspian and the entire north/south alignment of it is just wrong. subtracting a row from the Kalmyk Steppes above it wouldn't hurt anything....except of course for the entire structure of the map data files. but I get a little confused as to why small things can still be worked on but bigger things can't.?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian
this gets confusing. the map is 'done' but crossing arrows can be tweaked. I've been fooling around with a print-out of the Caspian area, that could still use work. an entire hex-row or two could be eliminated between Grozny and Baku, easily. Baku and Tiflis are so far apart, either side can be said to suffer from the distortion depending on who you are playing at the time. Reinforcements from Baku take forever to reach the Tiflis front; likewise after the Axis take Tiflis they have a long march to Baku still in front of them. it appears we have plenty of time till release and this could be a good area to work on still. I know you put a lot of time in to it already. one way to approach it might be to do some basic measurements of distances; I know there are several border/geographical features you wished to illustrate, however if including them introduces so much distortion, perhaps some of them should be edited out. I wouldn't worry about the effects on Turkmenistan, but the west side of the Caspian and the entire north/south alignment of it is just wrong. subtracting a row from the Kalmyk Steppes above it wouldn't hurt anything....except of course for the entire structure of the map data files. but I get a little confused as to why small things can still be worked on but bigger things can't.?

Yes, the map is "done", but little corrections can hopefuly still be done.
Adding a strait hexside arrow is adding or modifying 1 line in 1 of the 12 data files that make the map.
Adding a name, is adding 1 line in 1 of the 12 data files that make the map.
They are trivial things to modify.
Changing a railway path can also be relatively easily done.
Changing the position of icons within hexes is also relatively easily done.
Changing a river path or a coastline is an order of magnitude above that.

Shifting a portion of the map 10-20 hexes abroad and 20 hexes tall require changing the data for 200-400 hexes.
Those data are on the top of my head : Terrain, weather zone, to which sea area it is coastal, text, icons (city, ports...), hexsides (rail, alpine...), country (to which country it belongs).
There is no software that can delete 1 hexrow on the map in the data files, and put the hexes below that hexrow 1 hexrow higher as there is in Excel.
You have to recreate the whole data for the 100-200 hexes, in the 12 files, with the risk of confusing old and new data for EACH hex.
That's a pretty daunting task, that I would be willing to do because I can always spare the time needed, and I am not that much working on the map these late months, if there were not the real threat thereafter :

Real threat number 1 : That the new drawing will be worse than what it tried to correct.
Worse, because taking 10-20 x 20 hexes (the caspian) 1 hexrow to the north means that you have to adapt all the land around the caspian so that it has either 1 less hexrow, or that it is redrawn adding an unknown number of hexes data to change, AND you have to adapt all of what is south from the Caspian so that it is 1 hexrown larger north to south, or redraw it too, thus involving other hundred of hexes data to change.
Who knows if there will not be someone in 12 months from now saying : Damned !!!! India is completely out of sync with the rest of the Middle, East, you NEED to take India 1-2 hexes to the north. Well, what will I do at that moment ?

Real threat number 2 : That we waste Steve's precious time, and risk having the game non functionnal for unknown lapses of time because of the map. After all those changes will be done, and probably many times during the time they are done to evaluate the result (when we edited Scandinavia, we experienced all that), Steve will have to generate new coastal bitmap files as well as new river and lake bitmap files, which is a task that takes him and his computer some amount of hours, with the risk that an error in the data from the files delays everything and that he have wasted the time trying to rebuild impossible files. If I could do that task myself, which I don't because Steve did not took the time to build tools that would be used by someone else than him for that final map making task, we could have a private lab and make the changes and try them without wasting Steve's time, and only providing him the final files, but this is not the case because Steve lacks the time to develop an easy to use map making tool.


To be able to fulfill the task of editing the 12 data files, we would first need to have a map with 2 layers : how it is now (old data) and how it must become (new data) so that by alternating the vision of the 2 maps I can know what data to change. This only is a great task.

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

yes, I understand all that, thanks. it's too bad it is so difficult to change at this point. I do like the fact that the sacred European map was tweaked in that area (Kirkuk), probably as a result of better research. that's good.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Skanvak
Froonp, I think the region to move include a bit more of the northern part, to the south we won't go below the persian Gulf.

And to the west I am sure we won't modify the original European map as it is the geographical repference for the earth shifting. We need a fixed point.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Incy

Another thing, the big bay on the Caspian east shore, is this navigable by major ships?
On google earth it seems completely closed off from the caspian, except for a thin winding canal, which has a road and a gas pipeline bridging it.

Was the sea level higher during WW2 or should this bay be made a lake?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Incy

If you start fixing this part, IMHO the most impurtant thing to fix is the distance between Tiblisi and Baku, which is to long, and has no russian supply. Baku also needs to be much further north.

I think this matters because if Tiflis is lost the caucasus can become a russian death trap, for lack of supply. I think this matters in some games, It often happens that Russia falls back and defends the caucasus, and if Tiflis falls it's reasonable that russia should have a good shot at falling back to a Baku defence.

I think Yerevan should be made a city to give USSR better supply/reinforcement in the region. To move Baku we can delete the hex 3 hexes SE of Tiflis and another 2 hexes due east. Everything SE of this line would be shifted 1 hex northwest, down to around the iranian border, where 3 hexes would be inserted to stop the area shifted.

quote:

I do not support just putting Yerevan on the map at all. Non-Russian cities would be extremely unlikely to make effective military bases and recruitment centers for the Soviets in a part of the world greeting the Germans with flowers in 1942.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Incy

quote:

I do not support just putting Yerevan on the map at all. Non-Russian cities would be extremely unlikely to make effective military bases and recruitment centers for the Soviets in a part of the world greeting the Germans with flowers in 1942.

I'd make an exception for armenia (of which Yerevan is the capital). Armenia is christian and sees russia as it's only real ally in a hostile region. Also back in the 40's. They HATE turkey (1+ million armenians were killed in turkish ethnic cleansings during WW1), and if this area comes into play, Turkey will be german aligned. The armenians would have fought Turkey to the last man (and woman and child).

If germany would have broken through into the central caucasus valley, I'm pretty sure that armenia would have been the final retreat that soviet remnants in the area would have fled to, because of the friendly population and the good defensive terrain.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: Skanvak
Froonp, I think the region to move include a bit more of the northern part, to the south we won't go below the persian Gulf.

And to the west I am sure we won't modify the original European map as it is the geographical repference for the earth shifting. We need a fixed point.

Is this better ?

quote:

ORIGINAL: ullern
Some numbers:




Persian Gulf <-> Black Sea; 1431 km; 19 hexes; 75 km/hex
Persian Gulf <-> Caspian Sea; 764 km; 8 hexes; 96 km/hex

Worldwide average for MWIF: 1 hex is 80 km north south direction.
So Persian Gulf <-> Caspian Sea could easily be 10 hexes instead of 8.

From lattitude comparisons we find that Theran should be placed one hex further north, and Bandur Shapur could easily have been put one further south.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: Incy

If you start fixing this part, IMHO the most impurtant thing to fix is the distance between Tiblisi and Baku, which is to long, and has no russian supply. Baku also needs to be much further north.

I think this matters because if Tiflis is lost the caucasus can become a russian death trap, for lack of supply. I think this matters in some games, It often happens that Russia falls back and defends the caucasus, and if Tiflis falls it's reasonable that russia should have a good shot at falling back to a Baku defence.

I think Yerevan should be made a city to give USSR better supply/reinforcement in the region. To move Baku we can delete the hex 3 hexes SE of Tiflis and another 2 hexes due east. Everything SE of this line would be shifted 1 hex northwest, down to around the iranian border, where 3 hexes would be inserted to stop the area shifted.

For supply to Baku, the USSR could put a convoy in the Caspian Sea. I think that is better than adding a new city to the map. If the USSR can't/won't put a convoy there, then why do they deserve supply after losing Tiflis?

quote:

ORIGINAL: brian brian

Now I am more confused. The first page of my WiF rule book says a hex is 100km?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

quote:

ORIGINAL: ullern
Some numbers:




Persian Gulf <-> Black Sea; 1431 km; 19 hexes; 75 km/hex
Persian Gulf <-> Caspian Sea; 764 km; 8 hexes; 96 km/hex

Worldwide average for MWIF: 1 hex is 80 km north south direction.
So Persian Gulf <-> Caspian Sea could easily be 10 hexes instead of 8.

From lattitude comparisons we find that Theran should be placed one hex further north, and Bandur Shapur could easily have been put one further south.

I dont have the same numbers.
Counting all land hexes existing between both bodies of water :

Persian Gulf <-> Black Sea; 18 land hexes; 1,431 km (I did not check this measurement, it is from where to where ?); 79.5 km/hex.
Persian Gulf <-> Caspian Sea; 9 land hexes; 764 km (I did not check this measurement, it is from where to where ?); 84.9 km/hex.

The average distance per hex I measured on the WiF FE European map is : 76 km / hex.
The average distance per hex I measured on the MWiF map (outside European part of the map) is : 89 km / hex.

So the scale in this area of the world should be closer to 89 km / hex.

At a 89 km / hex, the distances should be :
Persian Gulf <-> Black Sea; 1,431 km ==> 16 land hexes instead of 18 land hexes.
Persian Gulf <-> Caspian Sea; 764 km ==> 8.6 that is 9 land hexes instead of 9 land hexes.

My conclusion is that movig the Caspian 2 hexes to the north would need to have the top of the Persian Gulf moved 2 hexes to the north too.