Please vote: Groningen as a rail hub city?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

If you look at the GS v2.0 map you see that between Hague and Wilhelmshaven there are no cities to rail reinforcements to. That makes it very easy to find a weakness there for the Allies when they scan the Atlantic wall coast line for a place to invade. No invasions took place here in the real war so I therefore suggest that we could add the Dutch city of Groningen (without a port and production) in the coastal hex like this. Groningen will function as a rail hub and the Germans can more quickly rail units directly to the coast line in case the Allies bypass the defenses in France or Belgium. Groningen won't have any Dutch units in 1940 so it won't delay case Yellow.

In the real war there was a battle for Groningen late in the war:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Groningen

Here is how it looks like:


You can easily see that by having a city in this area it's much easier for the Axis to fill this weak spot with units railed from the reserve.

[Blathergut]

yes

[Schnurri]

I haven't done any extensive research on this but since this part of the coastline is composed of shifting barrier islands and mobile coastal sands it may, in combination with the distance for air cover, have made it a very poor choice for an invasion. Would it be easier to make the hexes non-landing hexes? If not, I'd recommend moving Groningen 1 hex further east to make it easier to cover the beaches with railed troops - also I think it is a more accurate placement.

[zechi]

Yes, adding a city in this region seems good to give the Axis better chances to stop an invasion in this area.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Schurri suggested to move Groningen 1xNE. That is fine with me, but it means we have to alter the border between Germany and Holland so the former German hex becomes Dutch. Is that ok?

This is how Holland looks like in Google maps:

[pk867]

I agree to moving the border and adding the city.

[gerones]

I vote yes to both changes.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I will also make another minor change in Germany and move the Wilhelmshaven city 1 hex south and call it Bremen instead. Then the current Wilhelmshaven hex can become a port and be named Wilhelmshaven. I will also move the transport loop adjacent to the port. This will make it rather tricky to invade in this area in force. In addition we get the big city of Bremen on the map. Wilhelmshaven was a small city and now it will just be called a port as it should be.

[gerones]

Talking of map changes I have found that East Pomerania was (and actually is) a dense forest area which is not reflected in GS map. It seems that the soviets, in their january 1945 offensive in Poland, found heavy german resistance in this region. What do you think about adding forest hexes like it is showed below:

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[Peter Stauffenberg]

This is how Holland and western Germany looks like now

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I think adding Polish / German forest hexes is a good idea. I support the ones you suggested, but your map also indicates that these hexes should be forests.

2x SE of Breslau
1x N + 1x NE of Krakow
1x SW + 1x S of Kaunas
1x NW of Lvov

It also seems the hexes closest to Brest Litovsk are forests and not swamps.

I also remember there are some swamp / forest terrain in east Prussia too near Tannenberg. By looking at the map it's pretty obvious there are too few forest hexes in the area in Poland and western Ukraine. I wonder of Breslau and the hexes adjacent to it are rough and not forest hexes.

I propose that you look a little more into maps of the area and suggest a complete map change to make this area more accurate. I guess we've forgotten to look here when we updated the map elsewhere (Balkans, France etc.).

I don't want long chains of forest terrain, but more like patches here and there so you can defend in the forest. This will make it slightly harder to storm the area with tanks.

Post the map how you think it should be and then Paul can alter the map files and I can alter the scenarios.

I look at the map of the area in World In Flames and it has a lot of forest hexes in this area.

[PionUrpo]

Excelent ideas IMO.

Yes to all map ideas so far.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Since we're now opening the box called map changes I wonder if any of you have noticed map inaccuracies that you felt should have been fixed. If so then NOW is the change to suggest the improvements just like Leridano did.

I'm sure the GS v2.0 map is not perfect and with such a big beta group I'm sure that we have people with local knowledge about specific map areas.

When you suggest map changes then please think of the game balance consequences. We would like to not affect it too much unless we made a huge mistake. E. g. in central or eastern Poland we could have small patches of forest instead of a belt that would prevent the German blitzkrieg towards Warsaw in 1939 or the blitz towards Minsk in 1941. With patches the armor can bypass the forests and infantry can grab the forest hexes.

A good thing about adding some forests in Poland / Eastern Germany is that the Russian advance towards Berlin will be less devastating. Then the Germans can defend in forest hexes and use ZOC to slow the Russian armor down a bit in certain areas. At the moment you don't have much terrain to defend in once you lose the Dnepr defense line. Only the rivers will help you, but other wargames show some varied terrain between Minsk / Lvov and Berlin.

[PionUrpo]

Well some for Eastern Front: (No pics sorry)

Voronezh should be on the eastbank of Don.

Vitebsk and Smolensk should be on the other sides of their respective rivers so that they would both be between the so called 'landbridge'.

A rough hex NE of Sevastopol.

Some swamp hexes to dot the neverending forests at Lake Ilmen/Novgorod area although the exact places beat me. Similar could be applied to Karelia as well I suppose. Basicly they just look too plain with all-forest layout.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I looked at the satellite photos of Voronezh and the city is east of the Don, but west of river Voronezh, which looks bigger in the area. So maybe that's why it was put on the west bank. I agree that having Voronezh 1x SE of the current location is not bad, but we don't make a big mistake keeping it where it is.


Smolensk is also on both sides with most on the south side. That means it's not wrong to have it where it is.


Vitebsk is on both banks too with most on the south bank. But if you look at the photo you see that it's in a big bend where it's covered by a river from many sides. So having the city on the north bank means it's protected the most from attacks.


I agree that the hex 1xNE of Sevastopol should be rough. The Sevastopol hex itself could be drawn with rough texture as well. I will flag the city as rough even though the fortress will determine movement and defense bonuses. This map proves this well. Good catch.


http://travel.kyiv.org/crimea/map/crimea_map.htm

When it comes to Karelia and the lake Ilmen area it's hard to alter the map to add swamps without any map to look at.

[gerones]

I agree about Breslau being a rough hex was a wrong thing. Also, it was really not accurate not to include any forest areas in Poland, East Prussia, Silesia and East Pomerania so it was clear all the way from USSR borders to Berlin. So keeping in mind this I have edited all the possible map changes in Poland:

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F is for Forest hex
C is for Clear hex

I have checked that all german hexes close to Oder river should not be rough hexes but forests hexes or, in case of Breslau city, a clear hex. So Breslau will be in a clear hex. All Borger´s points in the post above about possible new forest hexes and excessive swamp hexes around Brest-Litovsk were correct. To these ones I have added some other based on the actual map. To mention that East Prussia has a significant forest area in the south, shared with Poland and the most important, NOT ALL Pripet marshes region should be considered as a never ending swamp zone since there are many forest areas between and, on the other hand, many hexes should be considered as clear hexes.

Finally, two changes regarding cities: Lvov should be situated 1 hex NW (also checked) and the possibility of including the strategical city of Kolberg in East Pomerania with a sea port.

[gerones]

Also, I will be searching for possible inaccuracies in Spain map. I will let you know about it. We also have forest areas here!

[pk867]

Hi

You also have to remember how the terrain was in the 39' to 45' time line. Looking at maps now have about 60 or so of changes.

Which can be because of changes to terrain due to man changing water locations run-off and such.

We also have to determine as was stated earlier being accurate how does that effect game play?

What determines the terrain in the hex? What percentage do you decide what to say a hex is?

I will take all suggestions into consideration but we are trying to get game balance and all of this can / could change balance and timing

which requires more testing.

Also the release of the patch which the originally was going to be a month or 2 after release in July.

[Blathergut]

Why not leave such significant map discussions/changes for after the release?

[Peter Stauffenberg]

Some of the changes we're doing are for game balance purposes. E. g. the change about Groningen and Bremen / Wilhelmshaven. That was done to help making it as hard to invade the German coast line as it was in the real war.

The suggested map changes in Poland was done to simulate the struggles the real Russians had getting through forest etc. in 1944 before they could get to the Oder. Those are suggested for the game balance because it takes a short time for Russian to get from Poland to Berlin while it took quite awhile in the real war.

Changes like adding rough in / adjacent to Sevastopol won't affect game play.

Having a lot of forest hexes in Poland will alter Barbarossa so we have to be careful there. The panzers moved fast north of the Pripet in June 1941 so we should ensure there aren't that many forest hexes in that area.

E. g. we added the Desna river with some patches of forest / swamp some time ago and it didn't seem to affect the game balance in a negative way.

So I think we should know think quite a bit before we decide what to do. Moving cities is something we have to think twice about because that can affect the game balance a bit.

What I do want to make sure is that we DON'T have to alter the map after the patch we release before Christmas. So changes we don't do now will NOT be done later.

That's why we need to make sure we make things right now and not overdo things.

Changing terrain in Germany is less problematic than changing terrain in Poland because changes there will only affect the end game. Changes in Poland will affect Barbarossa.

I see less of a problem with changing a rough hex to forest or a swamp to forest than a clear hex to forest. The main reason is that the German panzers would mainly travel through clear hexes in 1941. So a non-clear hex would be a hex left to the infantry to clear. So if we reduce the number of clear hexes then the panzers might struggle with the advance.

Isolated forest patches here and there doesn't matter because the panzers can move around. Just look at the forests we added near Kiev etc. Those didn't cause any problems for Barbarossa. So if we can do something similar in Poland we might consider it.

I think Leridano's suggestion is a good base for discussion even though I think it's maybe a bit too much forest there. We have to ensure that the Russians can't put units in the forest hexes and have a contiguous ZOC line. That would force the panzers to attack those forests to get through. That wasn't necessary in the real war.