[AA50] Map Overlays - Splitting Australia, the Balkans, and Sea Zones; adding Cairo, Malaya, Singapore, Rio, Cape Town, Recruitment Centers and tons more!

@vodot One thing to keep in mind while considering which French territories to add is what kind of role you envision for France in your game.

Is the narrative focused on Free France and its small but cumulatively important efforts to build up from a colonial remnant and turn into a force that can potentially liberate part or all of metropolitan France? If so then you need some kind of reasonably secure rear area (e.g. French Equatorial Africa) that’s not too far aways from some relatively soft Axis targets (Vichy Algeria, Italian East Africa, etc.).

Or, is the point of France to create a neutral or pro-Axis “buffer zone” that deemphasiszes the western Med in the middlegame by nudging most of the territories and sea zones in the region toward neutrality? If so then you might want to carve out a neutral territory in southern France, but you probably don’t care much about French possessions in Africa.

You can have both in the same game if you insist, but I’m skeptical that France is interesting enough to justify both sets of changes in a mediumweight map. Better to save some ammo for other ideas, imo.

@vodot Sir, this is brilliant! I always though the Dutch East Indies looked ugly on that map. So with these overlays, not only does it look so much better, there’s more territories for more strategies! Also, this fixes my biggest problem with 50th: Italy. Italy originally only had three territories, and was overall irrelevant to the game as a whole. But here, There’s more territories for them, and a new pair of frontlines with IEA. Australia is improved too, which is a welcome quality-of-life addition.

Hey @vodot , first of all: amazing work you have done there!! I am a big fan of having many of your changes in Anniversary.

I took the liberty to change some of these things so that it still feels pretty much like the base game but hopefully better. In my opinion, giving Italy 7 more IPCs is a bit too much and almost doubles their IPC count.

I will upload my map for everyone that is interested, but these are the changes I implemented:

• The Sea Zone surrounding Japan is split (to avoid easy attacks from Carriers near the US West Coast and Japan, similiar to the change in 1942 2nd Ed.)

• Australia is split BUT it only yields 2 IPCs in total (as was the case in the OOB edition)

• Malaya is a new territory now BUT only yields 1 IPC

• The Money Islands have been split so that there are 4 of them and they all have their own Sea Zone BUT they are all worth only 2 IPCs except from Borneo, which is worth 3 IPCs (since it provided more benefit for Japan resource-wise in WW2 than the other islands). Other yields would have given Japan way too much income IMO.

• Italian East Africa is now Italian

• The line between Sea Zone 65 and 56 has been redrawn. Before that, you could shuffle fighters from the sea Zone bordering Morocco Algeria to the US West Coast which was almost half the map. That was a bit too much so I changed this.

I have also made new National Objectives and some setup changes regarding China. You can find these in House Rules and I will probably also do some more to cater for the changes on this map. Overall, it should be pretty balanced. Yes, the Axis get a slight IPC advantage now (by conquering Malaya, having Italian East Africa and the Money Islands yielding 9 IPCs), but Japan also has to send more transports to the Money Islands now and they are harder to defend since there is more space now.

I hope you enjoy!

Here is a link where you can download my map… since it is 390 MB, it is too big to upload it here:

EDIT: Please check my newer post for a new link that contains a better adjustment of the map.

@cloud7707 I’m glad to see ongoing interest in this mod and that you are creating your own content, but I disagree with several of your changes; I think they make the game both less fun and less historical.

• The Doolittle Raid scared the heck out of Japan very early in the war and prompted them to keep significant naval forces near the home islands for years to come. As long as you keep 3-4 units in SZ 62, it’s safe enough; fighters alone are not a great attacking unit and it will rarely pay for the US to launch a serious attack directly from SZ 56 (or vice versa). The game is already a little artificial in terms of sending everything to the front lines with zero garrisons, because there is no fog of war and no paratroopers – I would not want to move things even further in that direction by killing off the reason for US & Japan to garrison their home sea zones.

• Australia was a major contributor to the war effort, both in terms of high-quality infantry that fought in the middle east and india, and in terms of providing subs, destroyers, and cruisers that fought in the south Pacific. By making both Australian territories worth only 1 IPC, you destroy the possibility of an Australian factory – or really any south Pacific factory until the game is basically over and you are just building factories in, e.g., Borneo or the Philippines in order to ‘win more’ after Japan has already been decisively pushed back. This makes the already-weak “Kill Japan First” strategy basically impossible.

• Since each game turn represents at least four months, I see no reason why the US shouldn’t be able to transfer fighters directly between the west coast and the coast of Morocco. There are very rarely any sea battles in SZ 56 or SZ 12 once the US has carriers in play that could enable those transfers, so we’re really talking about a non-combat redeployment of forces, and four months is plenty of time to get those planes across the world even if you have to ship them in crates and reassemble them at the end.

Hey guys, thank you so much for your input.

And yes, you are correct when it comes to Australia being worth 2 IPCs in one territory to allow for an IC there. That makes perfectly sense.

I am still a bit undecided on this possible shuffle from Africa to US West Coast in one turn. True, one turn represents 4 months, but I think it is the nature of the game to not being able to move units right to the frontlines or immediately from A to B. But I will think about this.

I also still think that splitting the money islands and giving them a lower yield will not benefit Japan. Yes, it will take a bit longer for the US to liberate them, but it will also slow down Japan in the first two or three rounds because they have to split their transports even more. There are just so many possible targets now (money islands/ philippines, Australia, mainland China, India, Hawaii,…).

Yes, making it so that these islands yield more IPCs would make Britain’s economy stronger - but only in the first or second turn. Although these are crucial turns, in the long run, these increases in yield will only benefit Japan. It is so much easier for them to capture and defend them than for the British Player.

I might do some test games on my current board and see how they go!

EDIT: This is the link for the same map as before but without the altered Sea Zone on The US West Coast and East Australia being worth 2 IPCs. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4aog2fx8fse0n8k442i3k/MODDED-2-AA_Anniversary_OOB_gimp.png?rlkey=5k4lcgbthv8tekdmg8pct5jb6&st=cj2f2aat&dl=0

Seeing this topic started up again I decided to post some pictures from my 3’ x 6’ printed map based on version 5. I haven’t made any adjustments to the map (love it as is). You’ll notice all the units are placed based on the OOB anniversary 1941 version with small additions here and there for balancing. I also made my own NO’s for further balancing (you can see them on the 3rd picture bottom left on the whiteboard). Unfortunately my flash drive with all the saved files stopped working so I lost all the files (set up charts, NO chart, victory cities chart etc.). The good news is I have hard copies of the files so I can make them again sometime. Play tested this about 10 times and it’s very interesting and fun. Seems balanced but much more playtesting needs to happen.

Hey guys, some days ago, I posted some changes I’d like to implement (mainly splitting islands in the pacific, giving Italian East Africa to Italy)… And what shall I say? I edited the Triple A WW2v3 map so that you can play the game as i proposed some days ago! I combined this with my New Objectives Scenario (which provides more balanced NOs and incited the US to actually engage in the Pacific, same goes for Japan; you can find it under House Rules). You can download it via my Dropbox link.

I am not that great at editing Triple A. I still have to create semi-transparent names for the new countries and also some Relief Tiles… But I hope it will suffice for now if you are keen on trying this one out!

Beware that the 1942 Scenario is still work in progress. For now, only the 1941 Scenario is completely finished.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ztlp6iv8igdmqz143em85/AMCitWQXI5OvqLU6Q7kuGyI?rlkey=jf9kcip7gczp923tyhki89t83&st=9p47df97&dl=0

@cloud7707

Hey sweet ! I like the colors you used for the Objectives :)