Map of Europe 20kms/hex .....Pre release download.....

[El_Condoro]

Note: imgbb is currently giving me an error when I try to zoom the image.

Works correctly for me as far as I can tell. I'm not signed in.

Great work on this, as always.

[Jazon]

Hi,
This! This project is awesome!
It would be dream play The Great Scenario on this map using unfortunate Son's counters and use some variation of Lothos' TRP MOD (divisional-brigade scale)!
BTW is Poland done?
Cheers
Jazon

[The Land]

All those mountains...next 3 should be finished easy peasy by comparison (farms are no brainers for the most part). The Russian Bear looms ever larger...

The mountains will be a beautiful haven for partisans....

If I may offer some slight feedback on Yugo, I would suggest
- Trieste could do with another Port resource (it was a big enough naval base that it should fit 2 ships really)
- roughly south of Niksic in Montengegro, add a port called Tivat (and possibly a town called Kotor) - Tivat was an Austro -Hungarian and then Yugoslav naval base
- the road Bar-Dubrovnik should arguably run along the sea (I think the coast road was a bigger deal historically, though it doesn't look like it at the moment - Serbia has pointedly built a motorway which stops just short of Dubrovnik...)

[Elessar2]

Again, all suggestions are welcome.

Trieste is doable if I flip the SW hex to a sea space. Other changes easy peasy-and they let me see that I had left Podgorica with no road going through it.

The only countries left are Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and...Russia. And Canada/US which right now are pretty bare bones no rivers no terrain.

You may have noticed that older pics have been deleted, a decision I did not take lightly (which is why Poland is no longer visible). But at this point I didn't want to risk someone reverse-engineering all my hard work for some other project. But in this day and age you never know.

[Elessar2]

العراق انتهى!



I managed to fix the western and southern borders to my satisfaction.

argilas's guidebooks couldn't have been more timely. Thanks to extensive dams and dikes and more recently drought, Iraq looks radically different in Mesopotamia than it did during the war. But the Iraq guidebook had extensive maps of that region-turns out quite a few lakes have evaporated and/or been filled in and used for agriculture.

Saudi Arabia should be the easiest country in the entire project, pretty much nothing to add but a smattering of settlements and some roads-there's apparently a broad arc of sand running through it too. Not sure if I'll be able to finish Persia before I move tho, esp. given all of its extensive broken terrain.

[SIPRES]

What you did acheive with the original map as a starting point is insane
Mille Bravo

[Elessar2]

1 month later, better late than never...

السعودية اكتملت



Due to space limitations and some distance distortions (this region is where all of my errors have come home to roost I'd say), I am not anywhere close to 100% satisfied with the outcome here. I had to fudge some town locations in the far SW, mainly because of my decision to include Medina, which should actually be 3-5 hexes below the bottom edge of the map. However, with the capital corrected to the historical one in Riyadh, it is highly unlikely that anyone will bother to slog all the way there from the west (and to the oil wells in the east) when they can simply move south from Kuwait. Again I may have put in a few too many Settlements, but overall this is likely the least important country on the entire map, so we can probably live with it.

Next up is Persia, which hopefully I can get finished in 3 weeks, despite what will be a fairly full slate in my personal life in August.

[EDIT: Expanded the size of the sand sea.]

[Elessar2]

پرشیا تکمیل شد!



This is much more accurate and detailed than Saudi Arabia is. No distortions or pain-in-the-rear regions other than the far east (where those towns are typically 2-3 hexes too far west so they could fit and connect another long road). Those who are used to the restrictive and heavily mountainous terrain found in vanilla will note that in general you'll get a LOT more freedom of movement and more favorable terrain for offensives, except in the south, west, and far north.

I put two oils in, based on the relevant guidebook which stated that the only two main functioning wells at the time were in the far west and southwest (I could find no proof that any were in the south on the eastern shore of the Gulf).

I also as you can see added quite a few sand hexes to Iraq.

So...on to Russia at long last--except that this upcoming month is likely going to be hard going. I am currently cleaning out my parents' house, and then I'll be packing for my 2nd move. I thus won't be able to get fully cracking on the dreaded Bear until Sept. most likely, tho in the meantime my preliminary task will be ensuring accurate city placement (a lot of the ones which were part of the historical frontage are already in there and more or less in solid spots, leaving only the eastern and northern ones).

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Wow very nice map Elessar. FYI that green belt sandwiched between the Elburz Mountains and the Caspian Sea is Mazanderan, an ancient place with a very interesting history and many legends. It's very striking on this map of yours. Beautiful.

[Elessar2]

Just something to tide everyone over...



As you can see, I deliberately made the Moscow area rather dense with towns, but I'd say that is historical.

I made a slight change to the fonts, that of towns made bigger (before they were too close in size to settlements). Had to rebuild the Caspian's western shore, was too close to the Black Sea. [3rd time I've done that note...they'll be fitting me for a straitjacket next week not to worry]

[Lothos]

Maps are cool but not sure a map like that is playable on a large scale.

Unless your intention is to make specific battles like Battle of the Buldge etc....

[Elessar2]

We shall see. I estimate that the land unit count will be roughly double that of vanilla; air likely 1.5 times as big; navy likely close to double (a lot more cruiser counters and a fair bit more destroyers, where in vanilla most are subsumed into the capital ship counters. Subs maybe double.). The Grigsby games seem to get away with such numbers, with no lack of players willing to delve into the details.

[Beriand]

I think scale could be acceptable, but only when there is no slow start. September 1939 general campaign on this map, no no no, there are cleaner ways to commit suicide. Say, starting in immortal early 1941/summer 1942/spring of 1943, any should be fun. I would totally do not focus on the fleets, as really being one-sided in this theater, and naval fights totally suck in SC anyway + uboats are boring, but that is probably just my personal view.

Even if not, map should be great for regional campaigns, as Lothos mentioned (though probably not so small in scale as Ardennes).

[Elessar2]

Yeah, after the Polish mini-campaign (used as a testbed), I'll likely do Barbarossa next, since making sure Russia works will be the key to the entire thang.

Dnieper and all tributaries completed:

[Laki]

Map is looking amazing! Any plans for making big rivers act as waterways? Like it's done in SC American civil war.

[Elessar2]

Can't really be done here since Euro & W@W both lack said tiles; while they do have navigable estuaries (which are used in the Suez Canal, Hamburg/Kiel Canal area, and some others), they lack flexibility to allow many different tile combinations and angles.

[Laki]

Can't really be done here since Euro & W@W both lack said tiles; while they do have navigable estuaries (which are used in the Suez Canal, Hamburg/Kiel Canal area, and some others), they lack flexibility to allow many different tile combinations and angles.

That's a shame. I really hope the devs can figure out something that allows modders to use all the features on all games as long as players own all the games with said features.

So owning WW1 would make it possible to enable mines and trenches in all titles and owning American civil war would allow the use of all map tiles.

[OldCrowBalthazor]

Can't really be done here since Euro & W@W both lack said tiles; while they do have navigable estuaries (which are used in the Suez Canal, Hamburg/Kiel Canal area, and some others), they lack flexibility to allow many different tile combinations and angles.

That's a shame. I really hope the devs can figure out something that allows modders to use all the features on all games as long as players own all the games with said features.

So owning WW1 would make it possible to enable mines and trenches in all titles and owning American civil war would allow the use of all map tiles.

That's the way it seems. My friend Jazon designed the 1920 Polish-Soviet War mod for SC-WW1 a few years back.
He wanted to make the Dnieper and Pripyat rivers navigable (for gun boats, etc. There were a lot of small scale river actions there historically), but couldn't unless he used a 'Canal' tile. Well that looked goofy and not at all like a squiggly river.

After ACW came out, when I was testing it in Beta, I immediately noticed the great feature with navigatable rivers and thought how useful that would of been for Jazon's mod.

Would be cool if all the same features were in all the game editors.

[Elessar2]

Got the Don and tributaries finished in a mad flurry tonight. Decided to go with a bare bones view for a change:

[The Land]

Maps are cool but not sure a map like that is playable on a large scale.

Unless your intention is to make specific battles like Battle of the Buldge etc....

It's perfect for World War III!

(I've seen much bigger scenarios for other games...)