Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
As for other changes that involve changing the coastal and'or river/lake bitmaps, I'll accept revisions once a month - let's say on the 15th of each month. It is a pain to do these.

I'll keep them in a list then, that I'll give you once per month.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

It would not be good for the game to merge all of them in a single Japanese Mandate, so maybe it is better to ignore the Mandates, and just keep the countries we have ?

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ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

It would not be good for the game to merge all of them in a single Japanese Mandate, so maybe it is better to ignore the Mandates, and just keep the countries we have ?

All the Pacific games I have ever known treat each island group as its own entity (separating the Western and Eastern Carolines, for example). It would make no sense treating them as one huge territory. I believe there were separate mandates for each, anyway, as each could be expected to mature towards independence at different speeds.

Surely the critical thing is to define territories by their administrative boundaries? That, after all, is what conquest represents.

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
What is important here is how the rules interact with the definition of 'territory'. In particular, how the conquest rules apply. The goal is to have conquest of a territory correspond to military control of the territory's hexes. If a territory is defined too broadly, then conquest becomes unrealistically difficult. The crucial fact here is that 'conquering' a territoy (in game terms) has a direct effect on who controls its hexes.

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ORIGINAL: Norman42

Perhaps have New Guinea be one territory and New Britain/New Ireland/Admiralty Isles be another (Call it Bismarck Archipelago perhaps)

That way there is some differentiation of these mandates without the requirement of excessive Japanese forces to capture them.

Japan would need to occupy Rabaul to 'conquest' the NB/NI/AI territory(the crucial conquest for Japan), and Wewak and Lae to 'conquest' the New Guinea Territory. Conquest of the Papua Territory would therefore require the overland attack on Port Moresby, giving Japan the incentive that they had historically to attack southwards across the mountains(the Kokoda Trail failure), or to control the Coral Sea for a naval attack (which they also historically failed in the Battle of the Coral Sea).

This all would allow the realism of the mandates to be felt, while not excessively punishing the Japanese capabilities to take these places.

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ORIGINAL: Norman42

Perhaps have New Guinea be one territory and New Britain/New Ireland/Admiralty Isles be another (Call it Bismarck Archipelago perhaps)

That way there is some differentiation of these mandates without the requirement of excessive Japanese forces to capture them.

Japan would need to occupy Rabaul to 'conquest' the NB/NI/AI territory(the crucial conquest for Japan), and Wewak and Lae to 'conquest' the New Guinea Territory. Conquest of the Papua Territory would therefore require the overland attack on Port Moresby, giving Japan the incentive that they had historically to attack southwards across the mountains(the Kokoda Trail failure), or to control the Coral Sea for a naval attack (which they also historically failed in the Battle of the Coral Sea).

This all would allow the realism of the mandates to be felt, while not excessively punishing the Japanese capabilities to take these places.

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I could support this compromise if Bougainville were added to the Bismarck Archipelago. Even today, Bougainville is a part of Papua New Guinea not the Solomons.

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I could support this compromise if Bougainville were added to the Bismarck Archipelago.

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ORIGINAL: Norman42
Agreed, Bougainville south hex should be Jungle. There were mountains on the island, but the important parts militarily (the airfields) were on the lowland coastal areas that were covered in jungle. Splitting the isle into 1mtn and 1jng hex would show this nicely I think.

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I appreciate that Bougainville had jungle, but the island was clearly very suitable for airbases. So the reason I proposed that southern Bougainville be clear was to make it an attractive site for airbases, so that players will unconsciously mirror reality.

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ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

Wow!  A consensus!  What a satisfying conclusion to an interesting debate.

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

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ORIGINAL: marcuswatney

Wow!  A consensus!  What a satisfying conclusion to an interesting debate.

Only if Steve agrees to the proposal.

The proposal (from Norman42) is :

Create the "Territory of New Guinea" Territory and New Britain / New Ireland / Admiralty Islands & Bougainville become a new Territory called "Bismarck Archipelago". "Papua" Territory stays the same (less the hexes that become Territory of New Guinea.

Result :
- 3 Territories where originaly there were 4.
- More historical conquest of the Bismarck Archipelago. Rabaul stays the same, gives more land.
- More historical incencitive for Japan to conquer Lae & Wewak to have Territory of New Guinea.

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ORIGINAL: brian brian

my head is spinning trying to figure out which territory would fall from taking which port. maybe I play it wrong with a ghost of WiF past, but if you take every port in a sea zone, you get all the hexes, except the border hexes, unless you take all the ports in both zones. Territories don't have capitals and this is the only way to conquer them. ???

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ORIGINAL: brian brian
my head is spinning trying to figure out which territory would fall from taking which port. maybe I play it wrong with a ghost of WiF past, but if you take every port in a sea zone, you get all the hexes, except the border hexes, unless you take all the ports in both zones. Territories don't have capitals and this is the only way to conquer them. ???

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ORIGINAL: brian brian

I still think you are looking at the islands a bit wrong, recall this sentence:

"You also conquer a territory if you control every port and coastal city in every sea area the territory has a coastal hex in."

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So to conquer the small islands inside the Solomons Sea Zone, frex, you need Ponape, Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santu, and one or two more CW minor ports I can't recall right now.

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Then you get every hex inside the sea zone. Each of those hexes is a separate territory already. Maybe for programming purposes it would be better to assign them to territories in groups, but that is not how WiF FE works for us. Harry's answer doesn't quite clarify this (imagine that).

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For example, the only way to take the Admiralty Islands territory (a new one) is to walk over each and every one of them, as the territory doesn't even have a port. Same for the new territory of New Ireland. Unless the mechanic of taking all the ports in a sea zone is still in the game and I'm not aware of that?

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

Control, in the abstract, is more difficult.

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ORIGINAL: brian brian

I still think you are looking at the islands a bit wrong, recall this sentence:

"You also conquer a territory if you control every port and coastal city in every sea area the territory has a coastal hex in."

So to conquer the small islands inside the Solomons Sea Zone, frex, you need Ponape, Guadalcanal, Espiritu Santu, and one or two more CW minor ports I can't recall right now. Then you get every hex inside the sea zone. Each of those hexes is a separate territory already. Maybe for programming purposes it would be better to assign them to territories in groups, but that is not how WiF FE works for us. Harry's answer doesn't quite clarify this (imagine that). I can't see a paper map right now, but I recall just the word "Carolines", NOT "Carolines (Jp)", which is entirely different from say "British Somaliland (CW)". Perhaps there is a (Jp) there that I don't recall, but there are definitely hexes that Marines can't walk to another port on the WiF FE map, and many many more on the new map...this makes them not part of any other home country or territory, unless you set up _a lot_ of territory boundaries. The island hex control is denoted by a (JP) or (CW) or (NEI) or (US) after the sea zone. So we've always gone by the initial control on the map, changing if you get all the ports in that sea zone. That is fairly similar to conquering a capital-less territory, but not exactly the same. I'm not saying grouping all the islands in official territories is a bad way to go about it, but not using the ports/sea area mechanic is a change. I think you may have this problem in other areas of the map perhaps too, especially when some bits of barely broken surf are now complete land hexes.

For example, the only way to take the Admiralty Islands territory (a new one) is to walk over each and every one of them, as the territory doesn't even have a port. Same for the new territory of New Ireland. Unless the mechanic of taking all the ports in a sea zone is still in the game and I'm not aware of that?