What about to make a bit improved design of DH map with some fixed mistakes?

[Nick3210]

we could lauch an investigation to kill unnecessary provinces ?

"an investigation to kill unnecessary provinces" - it sounds really cool, I like it, ahaha!

By the way, there are two French small islands near Madagascar, and I've always wondered why these are two provinces instead of one.

Are there any arguments not to kill one of these islands?

@tioperete​

Since you seem to have managed to convince me to keep the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, maybe you also know something about the inhabitants of these two islands?
Are people of these two islands at war with each other? Or they can be united and they won't kill each other there?

 

[Rodolphe123]

"an investigation to kill unnecessary provinces" - it sounds really cool, I like it, ahaha!

By the way, there are two French small islands near Madagascar, and I've always wondered why these are two provinces instead of one.

Are there any arguments not to kill one of these islands?

@tioperete​

Since you seem to have managed to convince me to keep the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, maybe you also know something about the inhabitants of these two islands?
Are people of these two islands at war with each other? Or they can be united and they won't kill each other there?

I think that those islanders will have to learn to live together.

 

[Altruist]

And to the trust level: The irony of being a german: ask another german and he/she would cut german provinces different.

Surely true but Germany is complicated, regional, even tribal (and Germans Germans only when abroad). Ask a German where she or he is from and the answere could be refering to a city, a region, a tribal area easily going back 1 or 2k years or to one of the, nowadays, 16 states.

But the main problem is that in most strat games (including DH) maps of Germany are so weird that really not a single German would ever even get the idea to draw it in such way... which, in a bizarre way, is probably the reason why you seldomly find a German complaining about it: those maps are so alien you wouldn't know where to start. The DH map is a bit better that at least one can imagine with a bit of fantasy what the regions are meant to represent.

The positive: With the suggested changes the number of regions and names which are somehow accurate has been raised from 2 to 3: Berlin, Hamburg and newest: Ruhrgebiet.
Heureka!

 

[Vilochka]

I asked this question to the Vilochka too, let's see what he answers. It's just that maybe I'm being overly cautious and maybe exceeding the vanilla number of provinces is not dangerous. I don't know anything about this issue, so I would like to get information from knowledgeable people - whether it is possible to exceed without any bad effects or not.

The DH developers have removed the restriction unlike HOI2. In DH you can increase the number of provinces. I created the north pole for my map and no problems. Or E3 map as sample.

 

[Rodolphe123]

I carry on with my mad suggestions.

For Australia :

- I suggests to encircle it with coastal provinces and to diminish the emply interiors provinces. The number of provinces would remain the same with my suggested changes.

- Actual Australia is like that :

I suggest something like that :

It could be improved again, but what do you think of it ?

 

[Lord Rommel]

Surely true but Germany is complicated, regional, even tribal (and Germans Germans only when abroad). Ask a German where she or he is from and the answere could be refering to a city, a region, a tribal area easily going back 1 or 2k years or to one of the, nowadays, 16 states.

But the main problem is that in most strat games (including DH) maps of Germany are so weird that really not a single German would ever even get the idea to draw it in such way... which, in a bizarre way, is probably the reason why you seldomly find a German complaining about it: those maps are so alien you wouldn't know where to start. The DH map is a bit better that at least one can imagine with a bit of fantasy what the regions are meant to represent.

The positive: With the suggested changes the number of regions and names which are somehow accurate has been raised from 2 to 3: Berlin, Hamburg and newest: Ruhrgebiet.
Heureka!

Well. I have chosen the "Ruhrgebiet" Name for the fact that there are so many towns in that area u chould Pick to name the province. I thought it wouldnt be fair to take a single one so with a Layout based on the entire Ruhr area why not Name it "Ruhrgebiet".

 

[tioperete]

View attachment 1272638
Based on @Rodolphe123 's concept and my own suggestion (and knowledge of my country ) I have tried a merge of both concepts and I got the result u can see above.

Changes:
- Ruhrgebiet - the province of all the Ruhr area towns like Duisburg, Essen, Gelsenkirchen, Bockum, Dortmund - and all the missing others.
- Düsseldorf has lost some parts. Its now "focused" to Düsseldorf-Wuppertal-Leverkusen area.
- Neuwied is new/reborn. In connection with Cologne there is no the famous "Remage passage" (and the southern Rhine river crossings). The design allows for the historical southern passing of the Ruhr pocket area and it should fit to the old Reichsautobahn Köln-Frankfurt that was a main army route for the Wehrmacht.
- Rosenheim is added to get a "german" Alp fortress province and to get the historical passage of the southern alps crossing from Rosenheim to Salzburg or the northern route from Landshut to Linz plus its fitting to the geograohical situation with the "Passau gap".
- Chemnitz was added to get the Erzgebirge into the map without changing the boarder between east and west germany.
- Zossen was added for the southern passing of Berlin and to get in the forrest area the Wehrmacht used to hide units during the last days of the war. The area was used by germans to "trickle" into the west.
- Rostock-Frankfurt an der Order area reworked:
> Stettin was added for the historical boarder with an adjustment to the River Oder.
> Neubrandenburg was added.
> Schwerin was added.
>> Adding both provinces is allowing more movement in the north for a more flexible troop movement when needed. With the Stettin province and its forrest u have a more "defensive province" in the line allowing the defender to retreat to the west when needed.
- Stargard added to split Kolberg and Stargard.
> Kolberg can be turned into a pocket now. Stargard is now a sort of "crossroad" to keep the second attacking path into Frankfurt an der Oder AND to allow a coutnerattack from 2 provinces by western units INTO Stargard. Kolberg is now the "coastal province". Stolpe had lost some territories in exchange.
- Braunschweig was added to get in the industrial area that saw a sort of height before ww2 when Wolfsburg was founded as a new industrial area. Later the area turned into a military production area with Volkswagen and other companies building weapons here.

My 2 cents.

I feel it perfect except I would prioritize Kleve over Goch, and that to make consistency with the naming policy, I'd use Essen instead Ruhrgebiet

 

[tioperete]

"an investigation to kill unnecessary provinces" - it sounds really cool, I like it, ahaha!

By the way, there are two French small islands near Madagascar, and I've always wondered why these are two provinces instead of one.

Are there any arguments not to kill one of these islands?

@tioperete​

Since you seem to have managed to convince me to keep the Armenian-Azerbaijan conflict, maybe you also know something about the inhabitants of these two islands?
Are people of these two islands at war with each other? Or they can be united and they won't kill each other there?

I can't open the game now, but think you Speaking about Comoros (Muruni) and Mayotte (Mamoudzpu).

Different archipelagos, one an independent nation and the other a department of France, but populated by the same people. You can merge them, too close and didnt go different ways until 1970s

 

[Nick3210]

Maybe some northern Russia provinces could be reunited ? Indonesia too ?

Yes, I was also hoping to find no needed provinces in the north of Russia. I checked everything and couldn't find anything that could be combined. They turned out to be already big enough and quite reasonable. (of course, there is some mess with the shapes of the provinces that require corrections, but we will not deal with this, because there is never any fighting) The only thing I would combine is Yakutsk and what's to the north, but river flows between them and I don't want delete key rivers - rivers allow better to navigate in the DH mapping.

 

[Altruist]

Well. I have chosen the "Ruhrgebiet" Name for the fact that there are so many towns in that area u chould Pick to name the province. I thought it wouldnt be fair to take a single one so with a Layout based on the entire Ruhr area why not Name it "Ruhrgebiet".

I wasn't ironic, goood choice.
I really like the introduction of the region Ruhrgebiet. It used to be THE heavy industry region of Germany, if not of all Europe. Should be a mandatory region on each strat game map.

 

[Nick3210]

I really like the introduction of the region Ruhrgebiet. It used to be THE heavy industry region of Germany,

Ruhrgebiet translated into Russian as Stalino

 

[tioperete]

As I pointed before, what I saw when worked with E3FN is that the problem is not the number of provinces per se, so you dont really need to remove them, but insanely incrementing the number, you can include some in certain points keeping the balance, but always avoiding a significative increase or the ai will leave massive gaps that lead to constant annihilations.

Of course its magnificent for a player vs player scenario with all the new chances, but ai sadly cannot handle.

 

[Nick3210]

Well, as far as I understand, adding a few dozen provinces in excess of the vanilla amount should not lead to any negative effects. (of course, the new provinces should be carefully entered in all possible files where required... and every time I think about how much work it is, I really want not to add any new province )))

Therefore, I suggest following this strategy. At the beginning, we will use donor IDs from deleted provinces. We will delete provinces without fanaticism, only if they really don't make any sense either for geography or gameplay.

When all the really unnecessary provinces are deleted, we will start adding new province IDs and thus increase their total number. In any case, we are not going to create an insane number of new provinces like in E3, so the game should forgive us for just slightly exceeding the vanilla number of provinces.

 

[Lord Rommel]

[Maps deleted]

With boarders (and this is showing why East Prussia is difficult to adjust;

[Maps deleted]

Map legend:
Cyan N: NEW Province (12 for Germany and 2 for the Netherlands for technical reasons)
Cyan C: Changes layout for old provinces
Blue Plus: Changes terrain type

Adjustments made:
> East Prussia split added based on Rodolphe's suggestion by respecting a possible cold war soviet Kaliningrad boarder.
> Vechta added to get a smaller less vulnuarble "Wilhelmshaven" province. New Vechta wont have a connection to Lüneburg by making a more geopraghical fitting adjustment with Hannover province layout. I still dont like Vechta's layout that much but with the "boarders" between Niedersachen (US control zone) and Nordrheinwestfalen (British Zone) in mind its difficult to get a more fitting cut without adding more provinces.
> The Vechta change forced a dutch change by splitting Arnhem and cut parts of Groning to prevent an overstron Arnhem position and to keep the province connections to the "golden rules".
> Lüneburg and Kiel are now seperated. Hamburg was made bigger and moved a bid to the west "annexing" the area of York and Stade (The "Alte Land" as it is called in Hamburg) to force a north transit via Hamburg. There are arguents for a "river" connection between Lüneburg and Kiel but till today because of the Port of Hamburg and its significanc for german trade no bridge was ever build north west of Hamburg to cross the Elbe.

 

[Rodolphe123]

View attachment 1272979

With boarders (and this is showing why East Prussia is difficult to adjust;
View attachment 1272981

Map legend:
Cyan N: NEW Province (12 for Germany and 2 for the Netherlands for technical reasons)
Cyan C: Changes layout for old provinces
Blue Plus: Changes terrain type

Adjustments made:
> East Prussia split added based on Rodolphe's suggestion by respecting a possible cold war soviet Kaliningrad boarder.
> Vechta added to get a smaller less vulnuarble "Wilhelmshaven" province. New Vechta wont have a connection to Lüneburg by making a more geopraghical fitting adjustment with Hannover province layout. I still dont like Vechta's layout that much but with the "boarders" between Niedersachen (US control zone) and Nordrheinwestfalen (British Zone) in mind its difficult to get a more fitting cut without adding more provinces.
> The Vechta change forced a dutch change by splitting Arnhem and cut parts of Groning to prevent an overstron Arnhem position and to keep the province connections to the "golden rules".
> Lüneburg and Kiel are now seperated. Hamburg was made bigger and moved a bid to the west "annexing" the area of York and Stade (The "Alte Land" as it is called in Hamburg) to force a north transit via Hamburg. There are arguents for a "river" connection between Lüneburg and Kiel but till today because of the Port of Hamburg and its significanc for german trade no bridge was ever build north west of Hamburg to cross the Elbe.

Wow, I want to play this Germany ! Great job Mr Lord Rommel. You are on par with the illustrious Feldmarschall Rommel.

Could you also gives your opinion about the modifications proposed in : France, UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, Iran Australia ?

 

[Lord Rommel]

Wow, I want to play this Germany ! Great job Mr Lord Rommel. You are on par with the illustrious Feldmarschall Rommel.

Could you also gives your opinion about the modifications proposed in : France, UK, Italy, Poland, Spain, Iran Australia ?

Well. Unlike to germany I'm not that familiar with the other countries. I visit them in my holidays but thats it. So I guess my "results" would lean more into the gameplay and game focus direction and less into the concept of total historical design (when this is possible with province layout).
I still try to find the concepts we made for TRP for a gameplay based belgium-french boarder rework to get in a sort of counter to the favourable french geocoordinates allowing french units to reach any province before a german unit can reach it.
I will have a look.

 

[Nick3210]

I still try to find the concepts we made for TRP for a gameplay based belgium-french boarder rework to get in a sort of counter to the favourable french geocoordinates allowing french units to reach any province before a german unit can reach it.

Isn't France in May 1940 a pretty easy ride in your multyplayer? Or are you using the player to develop France since 1936? Or are you invade Belgium/France right away in 1939?

 

[Lord Rommel]

Isn't France in May 1940 a pretty easy ride in your multyplayer? Or are you using the player to develop France since 1936? Or are you invade Belgium/France right away in 1939?

Depends.
Vs AI its no topic to talk about.
Against a human with a perfect optimised build up utilising the fact that all coords are in his favour: Well... It can be a graveyard. The problem is that the strongest provinces like Lille, Hirson and Sedan are in french favour. To get into Sedan your first push will attack above a river from Arlon into Sedan. To get a better position u need Mons but here u can already meet french stacks because they can march in from Lille. To get into Mons u have to cross another river.
The alternative route is via Hasselt - Namur and/or Bruxelles to get into Mons and Lille. The route will take longer because of more provinces and an urban province ideal to delay. The situation is getting worse when u think that the attack will reorg slower on foreign territory. We tried to get in a better trust for the german forces by adding the offensive boost effect by the invasion decision Fall Gelb and by forcing belgium surrender faster to move provinces to germany to allow reorg boost.
In an ideal scenario france had to build up a rotating defense around the line Dunkirk-Lille-Hirson-Sedan.
So from my point of view the front could need an additional attacking province against Lille and/or an additional province at all by splitting Mons into northern Mons and southern Charleroi allowing to move the Chareloi coordinate in favour of an attack from the east.

The entire french topic is a big problem in MP games at all.
U can salvage France to boost UK - or u build up a french army knowing that germany will send tanks causing heavy casulties resulting in mp losses german dont want to invest (e.g. a reason for the trp manpower rework to get a more dynamic system with less dependance to fixed manpower events and numbers to a certain point in time).
In the current MP game we made a sort of split: France was controlled by the UK player until 01.09.1939. From here the AI was doing the rest. The result: some benefits for the allies - and a more easy play for germany without the headeach of always perfect moving french units.

 

[Rodolphe123]

Depends.
Vs AI its no topic to talk about.
Against a human with a perfect optimised build up utilising the fact that all coords are in his favour: Well... It can be a graveyard. The problem is that the strongest provinces like Lille, Hirson and Sedan are in french favour. To get into Sedan your first push will attack above a river from Arlon into Sedan. To get a better position u need Mons but here u can already meet french stacks because they can march in from Lille. To get into Mons u have to cross another river.
The alternative route is via Hasselt - Namur and/or Bruxelles to get into Mons and Lille. The route will take longer because of more provinces and an urban province ideal to delay. The situation is getting worse when u think that the attack will reorg slower on foreign territory. We tried to get in a better trust for the german forces by adding the offensive boost effect by the invasion decision Fall Gelb and by forcing belgium surrender faster to move provinces to germany to allow reorg boost.
In an ideal scenario france had to build up a rotating defense around the line Dunkirk-Lille-Hirson-Sedan.
So from my point of view the front could need an additional attacking province against Lille and/or an additional province at all by splitting Mons into northern Mons and southern Charleroi allowing to move the Chareloi coordinate in favour of an attack from the east.

To add some realism, I suggest that you create an event name ¨Collapse of the French army moral¨. I created it, and it causes a drop of moral and organization for French infantry divisions, during 10-15 days. It is triggered by the invasion of some french northern provinces. The fact is, that many french ordinary divisions had a collapse when the german took Sedan.

The French army moral rose afterward, when Paris is evacuated and the french army start to fight efficiently on new defensive positions.

We must not forget, that France is also a battlefield when the allied invade Europe. In 1945, the allied had maybe 100 (US, UK, Canadian, French) divisions in France (& Belgium & Netherlands) against the german army at the german border. These division were maybe 3 x time more important then soviet divisions. So having some additionnals strategics provinces rises the game interest.

 

[Nick3210]

Vs AI its no topic to talk about.
Against a human with a perfect optimised build up utilising the fact that all coords are in his favour: Well... It can be a graveyard.

I mean, France is developing under AI control, but of course the Allies players control the French troops.
OK, as I understand from your answer, you use the human player in France since 1936.
Then yes. Then it really could be a disaster for the Axis. In this case, Germany really forced to invest in the earlier building of divisions, instead of building IC.
Then I understand why your USSR seemed to me very, very weak. I didn't understand how such a weak USSR could stand against Germany at all.

But now I understand, if your France is under player control, then Germany is needed to build much fewer IC and much more divisions than if France would developed under AI control. This undoubtedly greatly weakens the potential of Germany in 1941, and therefore you need a weak USSR so that Germany, which was forced to build divisions instead of IC to defeat France, could fight the USSR.