Balkans - or - The Balkan Peninsula

[Shepherd]

I'd like to see some kind of Draig-tower or some other new setting with this map. If you could find a way to make it a medium to large map that is. I think it'd work well.

I would always advise against a new gimmick just for the sake of having a new gimmick. We should work on developing the map and see what we want it to do, then try to marry that with the existing game engine.

But before we can talk whistles and bells we need regions!

 

[patsfan44]

Yeah shep I will get the regions down for the Balkans map. Glad to see renewed interest for the map.

 

[patsfan44]

Well this is about as far as I could go with the regions. What does everybody think about the number of regions according to game play. (Like will the map be balanced.) IS one side lopsided. Even if it is does it matter.

Of course I understand that the impassables will affect (or effect?) that of course.

How I split up the regions was mostly administrative divisions. Had to do some stuff for Serbia (dropped one administrative region), Macedonia (combined some), Albania (split by geographic areas), and Montenegro(I think split culturally).

Also I just put Kosovo with Serbia cause Wikipedia included it, and I didn't want to read. So I accepted the dotted lines on google maps that Kosovo was indeed part of Serbia. We can call the command Serbia and Kosovo anyways.

There are only 58 regions, but there are ways of splitting Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Serbia.
Also just 11 commands.

 

[Sebrim]

Great job, Patsfan!

I thought we had agreed to leave Hungary and Moldova out and add the whole of Greece in, but nevermind. I'll see if I can come up with something.

PS. I am afraid I cannot do anything until I am back at home - on 1st July. Until then, I don't have access to a real mouse, and graphics work with a touchpad is no fun

 

[Shepherd]

Nice work so far, Patsfan. I'll try to address each of the points you raised...

For starters, you askedif the map looks "lopsided." I always like to ask: is there one place on the map that will provide an advantageous start to a player? Looking at the map as you have it, I'd say yes. Montenegro, with only two regions, will be the easiest place to pick up a quick bonus, but there are five regions around it that can take shots at it, so by itself I'd say it's fine. The trouble is that the three smallest commands on the map - Mont, Bos/Herz, and Albania, are all next to each other. Most games will begin and end right there - if you are lucky with your drop or with the dice and you control that corner of the map early, everybody else is in trouble. There are no other 2 or 3 region commands anywhere else on the map.

Moldova looks like a nice, safe place to start, but once you hold it where the hell do you go? You start slogging through giant Romania. So I'd leave it the way it is.

Yes, where we drop the impassables will ultimately determine how this map plays.

Splitting up regions/commands: overall it looks pretty solid. I'd maybe say combine a couple of regions in Solvenia, because compared to the regions elsewhere on the map they are really small. It's a bit confusing from a casual glance to figure out what borders what. If the country was knocked down to just four regions, it would create an attractive start for somebody on the western side of the map equal to Moldova on the eastern side.

Bosnia & Herzegovina is a bit confusing in the way that the command is split up. It looks like four regions, but it only three. And again, I'm nervous about having all three of the smallest commands clumped together; this would be an easy place to add a region.

I dig all of the regions that are completely surrounded by other regions... it's a unique feature of this map.

Kosovo and Serbia present an odd problem that I think we can solve creatively. Depending on who you ask, Kosovo is either an independent state or a part of Serbia. Two other maps I've worked on have had a similar problem: Taiwan on the Far East Asia map, and Cyprus on the Middle East map. In both instances we made the islands stand-alone regions that were not a part of a command. We could do the same here with Kosovo, OR we could say that you get a +2 bonus for holding Serbia, and a +3 bonus for holding Serbia AND Kosovo. The second solution both recognizes Kosovo's independence and Serbia's claim.

58 regions... I'd hoped for a really big map in this one, and I think we can add more regions, but I can see how further splitting some of the larger countries will just focus all of the action in the smaller countries. Adding another region or two to Romania wouldn't be awful, since it's so huge, but we're already going to see players scrambling for the smaller starts early in the game so let's not make Hungary or Bulgaria any larger than they already are.

Sebrim mentioned adding Greece, and I agree. This map is already larger than the countries that call themselves "Balkan States" - this is the whole of the Balkan Peninsula, or South East Europe. Greece is part of both, and would add five or six regions to the map... I wouldn't bother with any islands, since they aren't part of the Peninsula. You could extend the scope of the map a bit further south to include the Pelopennese, or it may be better to just stay with the image you have and split up Greece since I think it's a nice shape.

And if you're going to add Greece, you should add European Turkey as a three region, +1 command, with two border regions and one protected region (Istanbul). Adding a smaller command to that corner of the map would further balance the play by creating another attractive early bonus, and by putting that part of the map in play early. Otherwise the early scramble will be for Albania and Montenegro.

Let's see, by dropping two regions in Slovenia, adding one in Romania, adding one in Bos/Herz, adding six in Greece, and adding three in Turkey, this map would be up to... 67, with 13 commands. In a 12-player game, everybody would start with 5 regions. If we can get the total up to 72 we'd have a map that would even make for decent 24-player games.

Let's see, five more regions... how about water regions? Adriatic, Aegean, and Black Seas. You could also have a Ukraine region west of Moldova in that dead bit of land that is NOT part of a bonus. After that, you could add a 4th region to Albania, or split Kosovo in half.

edit: oh, and if nobody minds I'm going to tweak the name of this thread... right now it buries the lead.

 

[Sebrim]

Good ideas, Shep!

What about adding a 'dead' region or two in Italy? They'd conect to Montenegro, Croatia, Albania and/or Greece.

We could also add some such regions in Austria as well as the Ukraine ones you mentioned. Having a Sea connection from Ukraine to Bulgaria and/or European Turkey would alleviate the Moldova starter problem.

 

[Shepherd]

What about adding a 'dead' region or two in Italy? They'd conect to Montenegro, Croatia, Albania and/or Greece.

At least with the countries we currently have we can make an argument that they're on the Balkan Peninsula - Italy is a stretch. And I think we'd want one region of Ukraine max just to do something about that awkward dead space up in the corner.

 

[patsfan44]

Shep you had some great points.

Will make the changes.

 

[ndrm31]

I guess that with the impasibles, it could be posible to set at least another region, easy to start with and build up with

 

[patsfan44]

So I think I got all the changes complete. Also I got 69 regions.(At least that is what I counted up. To get the map to 72 would be fairly easy by adding in sea commands. We could use the Black Sea, Adriatic Sea, Ionian Sea, and Aegean Sea.

Go over the changes and see if they are acceptable.

Also I like Kosovo being an additional +1 for Serbia. I had meant to color it differently.

 

[Shepherd]

nice work (and fast!).

There are a few places with four-way borders, i.e. four regions come together and the borders intersect and one point. It's confusing because it can be unclear who attacks whom. Those will need to be changed.

Other than that, region names (so we can have a discussion about what's going on) and mountains are probably up next.

 

[patsfan44]

Check to make sure I fixed the four way borders.

Also just added an image overlay of the names as well so we could move on to impassable discussion.

 

[leagaepr]

Shouldn't Transnistria be a region at least? Anyway I think you can't use Tiraspol, Transnistria's capital, as a name for central Moldovia. And then there's also an obvious typo (don't for for most other names): Istanbul instead of Instanbul

 

[Shepherd]

Your borders look good, Pats. If and when it comes to creating a final, we'll take some liberties with geography to beef up the smaller regions and make the narrow borders between some regions longer.

Shouldn't Transnistria be a region at least? Anyway I think you can't use Tiraspol, Transnistria's capital, as a name for central Moldovia. And then there's also an obvious typo (don't for for most other names): Istanbul instead of Instanbul

Wow, there's a little piece of geo-politics that I was completely unaware of. Recognized by no one (other than South Ossetia and Abkhazia, which are equally disputed), this little strip of quasi-independent land even has its own (unrecognized) currency. Fascinating. But since it lies to the east of Moldova, and would only serve to further complicate play in that part of the map, I'd say lose it.

As for mountains, this will be a tough one, since some maps make the entire region look like one giant mess of mountains! The best image out there seems to be the one you've started this thread with, so it's a good conversation starter.

The trouble, as we've seen in other map attempts, is that the mountains don't often fall conveniently on borders between commands. The biggest range - the Balkan Mountains - runs right through Bugaria, cutting it in half. I see a range between Split and Sarajevo, but that doesn't help any. Mountains would make sense between all of Albania and Macedonia, and you could run mountains along the east of Macedonia as well, creating a Macedonian corridor through the center of the map.

If we want to use an impassable river, the Danube runs along most of the Romania-Bulgaria border. The Maritsa runs between Greece and Turkey, but I'm not sure that helps the map any since both are already border regions - and Greece and Turkey are historically prone to conflict.

 

[Cardinalsrule]

I'd like to see a slight border change so that Comrat borders the black sea and you can put in a sea route there, maybe to Kirklarelli or to Athens?

 

[masterjskye]

I really like the look of this map! On the final version I would suggest putting command info in a box above Italy, if it is to be unused.

 

[Shepherd]

I'd like to see a slight border change so that Comrat borders the black sea and you can put in a sea route there, maybe to Kirklarelli or to Athens?

Moldova is a landlocked country that misses the sea by 20 or so miles. Since Patsfan added Artsys (Ukraine) to the map as a region, the sea route could go there. Since Artsys won't have any bonus value, its access to the sea route would give it exceptional strategic value - especially if there was no connection to the Black Sea other than Istanbul.

Hmm, if that region were renamed Odessa, it would represent a major sea port along the Black Sea. Looks as if Odessa and Istanbul are the only cities along the Black Sea with populations over one million.

 

[Cardinalsrule]

ok, having Artsys there as a neutral with a sea route does the same thing. However, if you connect it to Istanbul, you have to maybe think about making European Turkey a plus-2, since all 3 terts will have a border. Connect it out to Greece somewhere, maybe? Thessalonika? Also, what do you think about putting in a few more sea routes - perhaps continue up the Adriatic sea from Thessalonika to somewhere up there?

 

[Cardinalsrule]

putting in Shep's "Macedonian corridor" and the Danube would maybe be enough impassables, but you could also put in stretches of the Balkan Mts, with "passes" in them so that you don't cut Bulgaria in half. A few 'bridges' over the Danube, well placed, maybe a sea route as suggested above, and I think you have a nice map. I'm impressed.

 

[smi]

Hello all, this is my first post on maps! Happy to meet you all .

As someone living in the balkans i love the map concept and would like to note some more things .

Some big factors in all war conflicts that happened in balkans , for ancient to modern history , and that in my opinion could be depicted in the balkan map (without needing new coding gimmiks) are the following :

• the pretty big mountains of Dinaric Alpes and Pindus in the west side of the balkans (see 2nd world war )
• the balkan and rhodopes mountains crossing bulgaria/greece (see the balkan wars of 1912 )
• the open fields in the north east of balkans and the big cities found there ( which are hard to capture - stalingrad like - see Kosovo war )

taking into note the above and also the map that you already drew , i'd like to suggest the following , which would bring an intresting dynamic in this map:


-make the west and north parts of the maps (croatia,bosnia ,albania ,greece) kinda seperated from the open fields but with small bonuses
-give all the capitols (bucharest, sofia ,belgrade) in east and north an extra bonus (+1 or maybe +2 or +3) but make the commands they belong in large and hard to hold , with many borders .

I attach a ( badly ) edited version of your map to see what i mean .
map

So there would be the following dynamic : either go for the easy to hold but hard to expand commands on west or go for the cities in east .

For a balanced start i suggest all cities to start at 1 or 2 neutral .

Now for seas , in my opinion , a sea route (auto resseting to 1 or 2) connecting greece , albania , montenegro and croatia would be a nice touch , providing also some counterplay to turtling in the west .

One more thing that could be good but im not 100% sure about :Make the mountains not actually impassable but with 15 troops and autoresetting , simulating the defenders advantage . An example in history would be the succesfull greek defence on the italian assault at 2nd world war and then the unsuccesfull defence against the much more in numbers german troops .

(excuse me for any bad english )