Large Europe

[thenoahw]

Personally, im not a fan of including trains on the map because it isn't realistic that you could skip over entire nations and regions to go to the next station. maybe in a map that included barren landscape like siberia but it don'f feel like it makes sense in Europe. I hadn't thought about the airports like that so I agree, they would be senseless in modern Europe.

 

[OneEyed]

Personally, im not a fan of including trains on the map because it isn't realistic that you could skip over entire nations and regions to go to the next station. maybe in a map that included barren landscape like siberia but it don'f feel like it makes sense in Europe. I hadn't thought about the airports like that so I agree, they would be senseless in modern Europe.

if there will be capitals, the airports as next feature are not needed. capitals could attack each other.

OneEyed

 

[thenoahw]

if there will be capitals, the airports as next feature are not needed. capitals could attack each other.

OneEyed

I like this idea. Of the top 10 busiest airports in Europe, more than half are in the capitals anyway. I think this would be interesting and force the players to defend the capitals of the nations which may not mean much for the game's sake but would perhaps enhance the feel of the game

 

[Shepherd]

So, London can attack Istanbul, which is 1900 miles away, but it can't attack Wales which is 160 miles away?

At its core, the game of Risk (and by extension MajorCommand) simulates a land war. Sea crossings represent, in my mind, the ability to shuttle forces between nearby coasts. But simply saying that troops in one city can travel halfway around the world and instantly occupy another city makes little sense. WWII would have been so much shorter if the US cold just have started by taking over Tokyo on day one and not messing around with the whole Pacific Ocean thing.

Now, if you want to give some cities nukes and let them bombard the hell out of cities around the globe, then you've got my attention.

My problem with railways allowing transport between cities through enemy territory is that it ignores the simple fact that if the troops occupying the land in the middle also control the rails. I can't take a train from Texas to Guatemala without the government of Mexico having something to say about it.

 

[thenoahw]

So, London can attack Istanbul, which is 1900 miles away, but it can't attack Wales which is 160 miles away?
My problem with railways allowing transport between cities through enemy territory is that it ignores the simple fact that if the troops occupying the land in the middle also control the rails. I can't take a train from Texas to Guatemala without the government of Mexico having something to say about it.

I see what you mean about the capitals and I completely understand about the trains. I have no desire to have trains on the map anyway.

 

[thenoahw]

Now, if you want to give some cities nukes and let them bombard the hell out of cities around the globe, then you've got my attention.

Now that, that is an interesting idea

 

[jasmine1978]

i just found an interesting picture of europe lol that will give everyone a headache if we used it on MAJCOM take a close look sheperd & get to work???

 

[OneEyed]

So, London can attack Istanbul, which is 1900 miles away, but it can't attack Wales which is 160 miles away?

At its core, the game of Risk (and by extension MajorCommand) simulates a land war. Sea crossings represent, in my mind, the ability to shuttle forces between nearby coasts. But simply saying that troops in one city can travel halfway around the world and instantly occupy another city makes little sense. WWII would have been so much shorter if the US cold just have started by taking over Tokyo on day one and not messing around with the whole Pacific Ocean thing.

Now, if you want to give some cities nukes and let them bombard the hell out of cities around the globe, then you've got my attention.

My problem with railways allowing transport between cities through enemy territory is that it ignores the simple fact that if the troops occupying the land in the middle also control the rails. I can't take a train from Texas to Guatemala without the government of Mexico having something to say about it.

we spoke about capitals as airports.
I can not see anything wrong that London can attack Istanbul when there are airports.
and because in Wales is no airport its normal that London can not attacks it directly.

OneEyed

 

[thenoahw]

ThE blank version of that map is actually what I used for this massive Europe map, and all my other maps of Europe.

 

[Shepherd]

we spoke about capitals as airports.
I can not see anything wrong that London can attack Istanbul when there are airports.
and because in Wales is no airport its normal that London can not attacks it directly.

OK, just don't have the armies fly on RyanAir; with all the ammo the luggage will exceed the weight limit. EasyJet is much better for starting an international armed conflict.

 

[thenoahw]

I should have my first shot at impassibles and sea routes up tomorrow

 

[OneEyed]

OK, just don't have the armies fly on RyanAir; with all the ammo the luggage will exceed the weight limit. EasyJet is much better for starting an international armed conflict.

LOL. some nuclear luggage

but then, to be "close-minded" also sea routes without ships are out of reality. and there are many maps with sea regions without ships.

OneEyed

 

[smi]

LOL. some nuclear luggage

but then, to be "close-minded" also sea routes without ships are out of reality. and there are many maps with sea regions without ships.

OneEyed

Its all about the context of the map, for example on a space map you can have teleport, or on 12 domains you can bombard from the castle.

On the Japan map ships make perfect sense in the historical era and had been used to transfer whole armies... but on the world map there cant be a sea route to transfer whole armies across the pacific!

So in my opinion if it fits the historic context of the map and is intuitive you can have these "special" routes.

Also , even if some inaccuracies have happened in previous maps imho we shouldn't let them set a bad precident for future maps.

 

[OneEyed]

Its all about the context of the map, for example on a space map you can have teleport, or on 12 domains you can bombard from the castle.

On the Japan map ships make perfect sense in the historical era and had been used to transfer whole armies... but on the world map there cant be a sea route to transfer whole armies across the pacific!

So in my opinion if it fits the historic context of the map and is intuitive you can have these "special" routes.

Also , even if some inaccuracies have happened in previous maps imho we shouldn't let them set a bad precident for future maps.

its modern Europe map, airports are not outside of history. its not far of Conflict Africa map where airplanes can attack drop zones.
about 12 Domains, from historic view which castle could bombards region 100 km far away?

so airports (as capitals) could help for better mobility. maybe there could be condition to hold entire state and capital to use air attacks possibility.
and maybe there will be enough connections, so airports could be forgotten...

OneEyed

 

[Shepherd]

Its all about the context of the map

I agree, but it's also about whether or not the feature makes the map better. Would the classic map be better if you could attack Australia from Europe? I think not. There should be a natural flow to the way you move across a map, and being able to whack somebody from the other side of the map disrupts that, in my opinion.

That said, it's entirely possible to make a good map that employs attacks across the map. You just have to do it very thoughtfully. You don't want it to be a gimmick. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should.

 

[thenoahw]

I propose that capitals with an autodeploy on top of a nation and, potentially, a region bonus, gives them enough power.

I also plan on dividing up the largest ports in Europe into North (France, Sweden, Estonia, and Denmark) and South (Spain, Ukraine, Italy, and Greece) and making them their own command. Similar to that of the shipping lines and the map of the Balkans. I do not plan and making the ports their own territories (unless public opinion thinks it better) but rather have the terts that hold Stockholm and Gibraltar etc. be the "port regions." These will be connected by sea routes to the others in the area.

Thoughts on this?

 

[thenoahw]

I have attached my new map with impassibles and sea routes.

The black and white lines across the white rivers are the proposed bridges. Sea routes I want scrutinized.

I have attached a spreadsheet of the tert count and command values since everything is not on the command map.

 

[Shepherd]

Can I get a bit of clarification about the spreadsheet? Let's look at Iberia for example:

• Bonus: Spain is +3 and Portugal is +1; the spreadsheet says +5, so is that because of the capital giving a +1 auto-deploy, or is there an additional +1 for holding all of Iberia?

• Region count: Portugal has 2 and Spain has 6, yet there are a total of 9 according to the spreadsheet. Which region are you not counting, and is that region not required for the +3 Spain bonus?

Then I look at, say, Western Europe and the numbers add up differently in other ways.

Personally, I would vote to dump the ports bonuses. For starters, the ports you chose are not the busiest ports in Europe (Hamburg? Rotterdam? Dover if you're doing passenger ports?), so it seems arbitrary. Second, the ports already give an inherent bonus just by the fact that they allow ranged attacks; while I don't like this for airports (which also seem arbitrary) I think this is fine for the ports you've shown because there aren't any attacks that are so long-ranged as to drastically force a player to mentally rearrange the geography of Europe so that Moscow borders Madrid. Again, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should - don't try to be gimmicky.

Impassables: While this may not be easy to achieve, the best impassable barriers are those that create barriers between commands. The rivers that run through a command only make it more difficult for somebody to keep and hold a bonus, which is just frustrating.

Overall, I think the rivers need more crossings that you've shown here. For instance, I can think of several wars over the past few hundred years in which armies have moved between France and Germany, yet they look to be divided here.

edit: As I look at this map more closely, I have a suggestion that may eliminate some of the need for impassables barriers: redraw the borders to create fewer connections. For example, in this area of Scandinavia, there are two places in which a sliver of one region touches another, creating connections. Redraw those borders along different county (?) lines, or nudge a line over a few pixels, and you've just eliminated some connections.

Bottlenecks aren't always bad things: they allow a player to defend their territory and grow stronger.

 

[thenoahw]

The discrepancies in the region sums I tried to explain at the bottom of the spreadsheet. The way I arranged the map there are small nations (such as Denmark, Switzerland, Crete) which are too small to provide their own bonuses but did not fit to be grouped with another larger, neighboring nation. These regions can be identified on the nation command map that I added in post #37. The territories in pink (Iberia and Eastern Euro), pale blue (Western Euro) and lime (Northern and Southern Euro) are not included in any command other than the region command. There is at least one in every command and a total of 13 on the entire map

edit There are actually 14. They are Denmark, Switzerland, Austria, Corsica, Balearic Islands, Sardinia, Albania, Crete, Bulgaria (two terts), Hungary, Slovakia, Czech, and Prussia.

 

[thenoahw]

Also, a lot of the slivers, such as the one in Spain and the one in Poland, they are both accurate and it is a matter of A and B touching or C and D. I see the two in Norway and one in southern Finland (which I have fixed and will repost soon) but a lot of the other half-dozen or so I do not see the point in changing because the slivers just make one territory have have 5 borders whereas it used to be the neighboring territory. I don't see the advantage or need there.
(I have changed the one in the centre of Turkey though, it was just ugly and I thought I changed it before now)