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[ANN] New East Front and West Front Expansions for WWII Global Conflict


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In case anyone has missed the big announcement yesterday we've got two new expansions in the works that cover the Eastern and Western Fronts of WWII Global Conflict including several hypothetical "what if?" campaigns and much more.

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The action packed Eastern Front or German invasion of the Soviet Union will be released first in the next 6-8 weeks and we've already got an excellent Walkthrough/AAR against the AI in the brand new Assault on Communism forum found here:

http://www.battlefront.com/community/forumdisplay.php?f=141

Both packages will include a host of new features and additions including 10 new unit types, including Rocket Artillery, Light Tanks, Medium Bombers, as well as a much improved AI... the initial German attacks, thrusts and encirclements on the Soviet front lines will be downright scary and especially so for anyone new to the series.

The follow up Assault on Democracy expansion release includes a global map of grand proportions at 484x200 tiles and over 5X (!!!) the number of playing tiles in comparison to our previous global map releases.

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Click here to jump directly to the Assault on Communism webpage for more details and beta screenshots!

Click here to jump directly to the Assault on Democracy webpage for more details and beta screenshots!

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Hi Hubert,

Can you provide some detailed 1:1 screenshots of the map of Assault on Democracy please? More specifically Western Europe (I know the scale best in this area, wonder why ;) ).

How many people can the expansion accommodate in PBEM, we have some plans, some friends and I !

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Hi Pocus,

Great to hear and below is a screenshot of the Global map in Western Europe and hopefully this gives you a pretty good idea of what you might be looking at in terms of scale:

AoDWestFront.png

For PBEM games it is still only 2 players, i.e. Axis and Allies, and happy gaming :)

Hubert

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Hi Hubert and Pocus :) ,

- About the number of players in PBEM multiplayer, isn't it possible to play german-italian units, save the ongoing turn from ingame menu, quit, send .sav by mail to a second person playing japanese units then end turn before repeating with several players for Allies ?

- As long as players on the same side (axis / allies) have the password set at start it should work though the more players, the more delay to complete turns.

*

- Also thanks for Western Europe pic, Hubert but I find some things disturbing in France: Vichy is where Lyon actually is and those two mountain tiles south of Paris seem very close to the capital. Vichy should be to the west between Clermont and Moulins (see map below).

- Haut Folin reaches around 900 meters in Morvan but most of the area is around 400-500m, so hills maybe but mountains ? Especially if you consider you made it flat around the Vosges/southern Maginot where Ballon de Guebwiller goes up to 1400 meters.

- There is probably some gameplay thing behind this, it's just for a Frenchman like me it looks a bit weird ;) .

France.jpg

France_map2.jpg

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Thanks Hubert and hi everybody,

I concur with my fellow Frenchman, at the very least, the square where Vichy is should be Lyon (2nd city in size in France, if you count suburbs, third if you don't count them), and Vichy should be further West.

For Western Europe at least, where a lot of players are from, I believe the map should be rather accurate and it should not be too difficult to find the biggest discrepancies.

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Thanks gentlemen, based on the feedback I've made a few adjustments and it looks like the Swiss/Italian border was actually the problem as it came too far west giving the impression that the Vichy location should be Lyon. After adjusting that and moving Paris one tile West it looks a lot better.

See images below where I've used a Google satellite image stretched to the same setup of the AoD Global map:

AoDFrance.png

AoDFranceGoogle.png

AoDFranceMerged.png

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- In the name of all Frenchmen (including my fellow Pocus), thanks Hubert :P .

The map feels more natural south of Paris that way.

- We are still missing Lyon but it's true there wasn't any battle or major military target there during WWII.

- However that way Vichy keeps being a major crossroads on the Rhône which should be... Lyon :D .

- Maybe renaming that town "Vichy-Lyon" could do ? There is around 70 miles between them, given the scale of the map, we can pretend Vichy is in the tile west corner while Lyon would be somewhere at the south-east edge (a bit of a stretch there but well...).

Anyway, thanks again for your concern !

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Have you 'fixed' (I mean altered ;) ) the Russian help script where they got 200 productions points per turn during 8 turns? This was just insane... Or only give that to the AI and for the player half of that.

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The WaW in AoD is based on how players play and feel the previous WaW, just bigger. More DEs, better A.I, more units. I believes its the biggest and best and 1st game of this field with this scope that's actually playable.

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hello hubert,

more tiles = higher maximum weapons range?

what size have a tile now? in gc about 100 km, in tgw about 30 km

can i change the map into a smaller size, like the "old" gc size?

and why a aoc, why not in one game both games or only aod? then the aod release would be earlier :-)

mathias

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So Al, how is that Pacific vs Eurpoean scale difference going to affect aircraft ranges, I mean what if the Japs go for Madagascar, or the entry way into the Persian Gulf. The Nazis make it to India?

Is this going to be a full World map or just like BF with the normal areas of combat highlighted?

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Hi Pocus,

Great to hear and below is a screenshot of the Global map in Western Europe and hopefully this gives you a pretty good idea of what you might be looking at in terms of scale:

AoDWestFront.png

For PBEM games it is still only 2 players, i.e. Axis and Allies, and happy gaming :)

Hubert

454px-Gro%C3%9Fst%C3%A4dte_historisch.png

I just saw your map with a city called Brandenburg south from Berlin. I wanna tell you some facts. The small city Brandenburg is west from Berlin and had 80.000 in 1939. The big German cities in the beginning of the great war were shown in the pic. Why did you take Kassel and not Hannover? Kassel would be at the wrong place too. Please check Leipzig too, it is in the southernwest of Berlin and not situated at a big river. You may catch Dresden as Leipzig. The 20 biggest cities in 1939 are listed below.

1. Berlin 4.338.756 Preußen

2. Wien 1.929.976 Ostmark

3. Hamburg 1.711.877 Hamburg

4. München 829.318 Bayern

5. Köln 772.221 Preußen

6. Leipzig 707.365 Sachsen

7. Essen 666.743 Preußen

8. Dresden 630.216 Sachsen

9. Breslau 629.565 Preußen

10. Frankfurt am Main 553.464 Preußen

11. Dortmund 542.261 Preußen

12. Düsseldorf 541.410 Preußen

13. Hannover 470.950 Preußen

14. Stuttgart 458.429 Württemberg

15. Duisburg 434.646 Preußen

16. Nürnberg 423.383 Bayern

17. Wuppertal 401.672 Preußen

18. Königsberg 372.164 Preußen

19. Bremen 354.109 Bremen

20. Chemnitz 337.645 Sachsen

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hello hubert,

more tiles = higher maximum weapons range?

what size have a tile now? in gc about 100 km, in tgw about 30 km

can i change the map into a smaller size, like the "old" gc size?

and why a aoc, why not in one game both games or only aod? then the aod release would be earlier :-)

mathias

I think you got your scales wrong. WW1 was about 20 miles per hex. AoC global map is about 40-50 miles per hex which goes with most of the better WW2 board grand strategy wargames. Its a big enough map to make it fun without being tedious.

The decision to make 2 games is because the original was too big and too complex.

One of my specialties is designing within a fixed system and exploiting its features for increased usability and functionality. I also do the same with A.I. routines. I love writing A.I. So the design of the A.I. in AoC is fairly complex based on the correct strategies to employ to win the game. The strategies in AoC are very dynamic and adjusting. It will literally take you at least 20 games to get a feel for how it plays vs another person. Hubert and I worked a lot on improving the A.I. from developing a new defensive scripting to intrinsic modifications to make the A.I. more intelligent. It actually makes my work easier.

The Eastern Front was a massive campaign that has taken me a year to get right. Its a game within itself. I would have to say it was harder to design and balance than Brute Force 1939 was... and I wrote my scripts pretty much from scratch there too.

AoD focuses on Global and the alternate history scenarios I generated based on real data and real possibilities with changes within the war. Equally so the A.I. there is very complex. I constantly test the A.I. routines consulting with some very skilled wargamers I know on exactly how to approach some of the alternate history scenarios.

AoC and AoD took equal time for me pretty much 30-40 hours a week for a year.

So Al, how is that Pacific vs Eurpoean scale difference going to affect aircraft ranges, I mean what if the Japs go for Madagascar, or the entry way into the Persian Gulf. The Nazis make it to India?

Is this going to be a full World map or just like BF with the normal areas of combat highlighted?

Brute Force 1939 is completely separate from this. This global is 40-50m per hex throughout the whole map. So basically the WHOLE map is on the Brute Force Europe map scale, perhaps slightly tighter. So you will see a lot more action on the Pacific with a larger Pacific. (about 4x larger than BF. The game is 5x larger than the previous WaW39 campaign.

Hubert and I worked a lot on this one to get it real good.

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Have you 'fixed' (I mean altered ;) ) the Russian help script where they got 200 productions points per turn during 8 turns? This was just insane... Or only give that to the AI and for the player half of that.

Hi Pocus,

This might have been from the Brute Force campaign in GOLD, as Al mentioned the new map for AoD is being built up from the previous 1939 World At War campaign so the above concern won't be applicable ;)

Hubert

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Hi SeaMonkey,

I think Al was comparing the new map to his previous Brute Force campaigns that were available in GOLD.

Think of the new map for AoD in terms of the older GOLD version of 1939 World At War but this time around with just a much bigger map (5X larger), improved AI, new unit types and more events :)

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hi big al,

20 miles are about 30 km, i was not wrong with the size of tgw :) the 100 km hex/tile size in gc was a figure of bill/david, but the size is 5x greater? aod global map tile size is about 70 km, then is gc tile size 200 or 250 km? i mean the "old" size of gc gold and gc.

and the max. fire range of 10 is the same?

the ai is please much better in aod, for a good human player is the ai too bad.

i prefer global maps, therefore i have a few interest in smaller maps.

mathias

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