Philippe

The World at War Historical Flags version 1.3a mod has appeared in the appropriate section of the Repository and can be downloaded. Take a close look at the screenshots in the previous post to get an idea of what it does. I've been playing around with an experimental version of the mod which will be 1.4 if it ever sees the light of day. It uses flags or details of flags exclusively for the activation symbols. I'm very pleased with how it makes the strategic maps look, but I'm not so sure about what happens on the two zoomed in maps where you move the units. I wish there were a way to separate the two (miniature flags for units on the strategic map, symbols for activation status on the operational maps).

Hi Bill, Many thanks for getting back on this before the files from Historical Flags and Symbols mod version 1.03 landed at the Repository. I'll restore the Union flag and activation icons to the Egyptian slots in version 1.03 (as well as the hitherto undisclosed and almost completed version 1.04). A fundamental principle behind the mods that I make is that they are graphics-only. That's important because it allows someone who uses one of my mods to play someone who doesn't without any difference in their game files, so no one will be accused of cheating if there's ever any kind of checksum, file, or line comparison. I learned this lesson the hard way from modding games with active clubs and competitive ladder play. I've managed to stick to this principle with pretty much all of the mods I've made for many different game series, and I'm reluctant to deviate from it unless I encounter a really compelling reason. I hope that in any future work that you do on games in this series you manage to keep the display of the nationality of each unit distinct at all times, and make the display of the pre-surrender French, Vichy French, and Free French a little more legally correct (Vichy France was France until it was overtaken by the Free French).

[i'm trying out a new image host since I refuse to start paying for imageshack. Don't quite have the hang of how the linking works yet, but these images are sneak previews of version 1.03 of my AOD historical flags and symbols mod that will probably show up at the repository next week]. 01 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/iYFfRn0IHGkDr.jpg 02 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/iOS05yIzw8nKL.jpg 03 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/idOVguw3nf25W.jpg 04 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/ibsq1JDEygRvuV.jpg 05 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/ijtaP7iKYdQLv.jpg 06 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/ikk2CDKHzUkzl.jpg 07 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/imSN1O4Z9Cfxm.jpg 08 (Click on link for larger version) http://i.minus.com/ibf6CAGOHuobIv.jpg

I've asked this question before for the Storm over Europe scenario in the WW I Great War/Breakthrough engine and I know what happens in that case. But I've just revisited my AoD flag mod and there are a few more Commonwealth flags that I would like to change, and this is one of them. As it stands now Egypt is flying the Union flag, but it should actually be using the green flag that it uses in the un-modded version of WW I Breakthrough. In the Breakthrough Storm over Europe scenario using a green flag for Egypt causes problems when reinforcements from the rest of the Commonwealth start showing up. Will the same thing happen in AoD ? I don't want to put a green flag into Egypt and then discover that Indian Army or ANZAC reinforcements are using a green flag for their headquarters units.

I've decided, at least temporarily, that I'd prefer to see India flying a flag that is different from the Union flag. So India is now using a red ensign with the star of India centered in the fly. It wasn't really the official flag, but most people back then thought it was. It was also the flag that was used at sporting events, the League of Nations, the founding of the U.N., and several propaganda posters. The Historical flag mod is now up to version 1.2 and can be found in the Assault on Democracy section of the Repository.

Graphics-only mods have zero impact on what is going on in a game unless they use up huge amounts of system resources. These particular mods should be fairly close to identical in terms of system use as the original game. Short answer: the mods shouldn't affect the stability of anything. Because they're graphics only, one person can use them and another not in the same pbem game, and it will have no impact on anything (apart from the user's aesthetic experience).

While AOD is certainly very interesting and has potential, I think Strategic Command WW I is a very good and very polished game and is a better purchase if you had to choose between the two. You have to buy Strategic Command The Great War as well as Strategic Command Breakthrough, though there's a bundle which makes them more affordable. The configuration of the games as two separate entities is a bit unusual, and it took a while for me to wrap my head around the concept that Breakthrough is an expansion, but it really is. As I found out when I tried to mod Breakthrough, the Breakthrough engine pulls material out of the The Great War installation, and you can't simply take scenarios that you like from The Great War and plop them down inside Breakthrough (they sort of work, but really need to be adapted first). Breakthrough will give you a really good and possibly the best officially released WW II scenario (the same scenario appears in The Great War release, but it's much better with the Breakthrough engine). It's the same scale as the main scenario for WW I (Call to Arms), and part of the fun is seeing how different WW II is from WW I when played on the same map. But the real joy of Breakthrough is the extra scenarios -- a Balkan War, the Franco - Prussian War, the Russian Civil War, and three very good scenarios from 1918 (I wish someone would come along and make a mod for the Chaco War between Bolivia and Paraguay). There are a couple of interesting scenarios in The Great War as well, but my favorite by far is the 1917 Fate of Nations scenario which unfortunately has not been adapted to Breakthrough (same scale as Call to Arms, but covers the later part of the war -- the Russian Revolution, Nivelle's offensive, Caporetto, the revolt in the desert, the Kaiserschlacht, the introduction of Americans into the Western Front -- all in strategic context and in one scenario). A visual drawback to the Strategic Command WW I games is the use of the German Naval Jack as the German flag (the Naval Jack was a red, white, and black horizontal tricolor with a large iron cross in the middle). While that flag was actually used during that period, because it was a jack and not an ensign it only appeared on the prows of ships, and would only be appropriate in a detailed naval game. This lead me to make a series of three mods which make the WW I flags more accurate, which I call the Marsden Hartley mod after an American painter from the period who was the Jasper Johns of his day, building abstract portrait paintings out of German military symbols.

And rather than take my word for it, there is a demo available for each game: download and play both of them, and see which you like better. Tastes differ, and you might prefer something that I dislike.

Assault on Democracy allows you to play WW II starting in September 1939 in all theaters at once. The good part is that it gives you a feel for the strategic implications of the naval war, even in the Atlantic. The bad part is that even though the scale is not as abbreviated as its predecessors, there are still so few hexes on the French-Belgian border that an AI-controlled Germany may suffer from a logjam when it tries to throw its army at France in the spring of 1940. Most of the scenarios provided cover rather far-fetched what if's, though the assault on Malta could and/or should have actually happened. What is missing (and there don't seem to be any mods covering it because it would be a huge undertaking) are scenarios covering the start of the war in Asia, i.e. the Japanese annexation of Manchuria and the invasion of China. I've only played the demo, but the main scenario of Assault on Communism feels like the Eastern Front from the Storm over Europe Scenario that comes with WW I Breakthrough. I haven't done a careful analysis, but the scale looks to be about the same as Storm over Europe, two or four (not sure which) times larger than Assault on Democracy. It doesn't seem to cover the naval war directly (unless it does something with the Black Sea, but I haven't actually played it). To sum up, Assault on Democracy is global and somewhere between Strategy and Grand Strategy. Assault on Communism is about the Eastern Front and is somewhere between Strategy and Operational. It would have been a lot of fun to see the war in China (and the rest of Asia) done on the same scale as Assault on Communism or Storm over Europe.

As already mention in the Assault on Democracy part of the forum, version 1.1 of the World at War Historical Flags mod has been posted to the Repository. This mod adjusts the flags in Assault on Democracy's World at War scenario to more historical versions, and makes a few graphic improvements that are mentioned in the program notes. There will probably be a couple of more iterations of the mod to adjust my Storm over Europe historical flag mod's Nato 2D sprites to Assault on Democracy, but the current version is pretty much it for the time being. Don't unpack the mod directly into game folder and be sure to read the installation instructions included on a separate text file. And always back up your originals in case (for example) you decide that you hate it and want to go back to what you had in the first place.

Version 1.1 of the World at War Historical Flags mod has now been posted to the repository. To find it go to the Strategic Command WW II Global section and click on the Assault on Democracy subsection. You'll see it at the bottom of the list. I'm in the process of coming up with an AOD-specific version of my 2D-Nato sprites. I think I've got a way of distinguishing divisions from corps from armies that is consistent with the color progression I used in my Storm over Europe mod. I'm currently trying to decide what the appropriate WW II-era Nato symbol is for armored trains, V-2's, and nebelwerfers (aka Katyusha's). I also need to double check all of the flags against another source to make sure I didn't miss something (don't think I did, but the devil is in the details).

I was surprised and amused to discover that the Red River in Vietnam is written in German (Roter Fluss) complete with the German letter for double-s (aka es-zed). I wonder if there is anything else like that buried away in South America?

Version 1.0 has already been posted, and version 1.1 has been submitted for review (it will probably be up sometime tomorrow). This mod draws heavily on my flag mod for Storm over Europe. There are still a few minor issues that need to get ironed out with the activation icons, and I haven't really addressed the Nato 2D icons yet (but I will, eventually). Testing the mod made me realize what a good scenario Storm over Europe is, and also made me realize that the game I really wanted was Storm over Europe expanded to the entire world without reducing its scale. The invasion of France just doesn't feel right when there's so little room to maneuver.

After much shoe-horning I finally managed to get all of the as-yet untreated WW I scenarios for the Marsden Hartley Historical flag mod into one place. Looking at the new file downloads this morning I found it a tad confusing, and if it confuses me, it is probably worse for everyone else. It doesn't help that I haven't figured out how to edit the displayed text on the repository page without re-submitting the mod, because I noticed one bit of text was written before I figured out how to combine the uncovered scenarios into one place. So to clear things up, here is how it works. There are three Marsden Hartley flag mods, two for Breakthrough and one for the Great War. They only adjust WW I scenario gaphics, and only for scenarios that came with the game. (In other words I'm not modding other people's mods -- I've done it for Tsingtao, but if you want to see it you'll have to contact me separately: my email address is in the program notes that come with my mods). The main event has always been the Call to Arms scenario, and that's why it got it's own separate release. Ostaufmarsch is a variation on Call to Arms, so it made sense to package them together. When you play Breakthrough there are a lot of graphics from The Great War that the engine pulls out of the Great War folder. It's not an issue with the Call to Arms/Ostaufmarsch part of Marsden Hartley, because the graphics changes for the two scenarios weren't bumping up against the upload limit when I added in the Great War material separately. But it is an issue with all of the other WW I Breakthrough scenarios, because to get them to fit into one place I had to rely on a separate mod. Fortunately I had already modded all of the WW I Great War scenarios. But what it means is that if you want to see Marsden Hartley at work for the rest of Breakthrough, you'll need to download and install the Great War part of Marsden Hartley first. (The reason I made the Great War part of Marsden Hartley in the first place was because 1917 Fate of Nations is a contender for being my favorite scenario, and I don't think it's going to get adapted to Breakthrough any time soon).

I should start by saying that I probably don't know what I'm talking about, so take everything I say cum grano salis. My understanding is that the MPP per country graph shows the total of all income from all sources. There's another graph which shows convoy income and convoy revenue lost. I beleive the convoy income number gets included in the total MPP per country. If the convoy revenue lost number gets high enough, the convoy income number will go to zero. Somebody will probably come along in a minute and tell you what the real answer is.