How to fix the Balkans/Eastern Europe on the Conquest Map
Apr 11, 2024 22:36:45 GMT
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Post by Victory799 on Apr 11, 2024 22:36:45 GMT
It's no secret that the WC4 Conquest Map is littered with inaccuracies and glaring mistakes. Some of these are difficult to fix and easy to ignore, but none of them are as horribly modelled as the Balkans/Eastern Europe in the WC4 Conquest Map. Here I will show you my improved/fixed proposal for how this region should look instead.
Austria is too far north, Hungary is the complete wrong shape, is too small and way too far to the north-east, Romania is again the complete wrong shape, is too big, extends too far to the west and too far to the north-east into Ukraine, Yugoslavia extends too far to the north-west into Austria, and doesn't even border Greece, Bulgaria is the wrong shape and borders the Adriatic Sea! Even Greece and Turkey could do with an improvement, not to mention all of the cities that are in the complete wrong locations (Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, the Romanian city that is in the middle of Ukraine which I assume is supposed to be Iasi, Kiev, and Kharkiv).
Why it is important to make the map more accurate and the consequences of the map being inaccurate, sizes of countries being wrong, and cities being inconsistently balanced/represented:
Sometimes, these map mistakes and inaccuracies actually have gameplay consequences - I mean just look at Hungary in any conquest, then compare it to Liberia... and ask yourself why the hell Liberia is given a much larger, more powerful and technologically advanced army than Hungary!? To put that into perspective, that's like giving Cuba a larger, more powerful, and more advanced army than Germany! The conquest map also unfairly empowers territorially large but underdeveloped and weak countries rather than smaller, but much more developed ones with far stronger militaries. To illustrate this, look at Canada or Australia, and compare them to Hungary or Romania. All four of these countries were relatively equal in terms of role and impact on WW2 (in fact, the latter two were probably more important than the former two) as well as the power of their militaries, yet in WC4 Canada and Australia are quite powerful due to their much larger economies (as they are given far more cities) and are also given far more troops, while Hungary is given the bare minimum of one singular city and unit. So in WC4, Canada is about 100x more powerful and impactful than Hungary, whereas in reality they were the same (or maybe Hungary was a bit more impactful). Then you get weaker and far less important to WW2 countries like Liberia, Mexico, Brazil, Mongolia, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Thailand which are given either much more, a bit more, or the same amount of economy/military as Hungary, and these countries end up having much more impact on the war in WC4 than Hungary does, which is ridiculous. Just for perspective, Hungary took more (yes, more) casualties throughout WW2 than even Italy did, showing just the extent to which Hungary got involved in the war was at least equal to that of Italy!
When it comes to the balance of countries, Glory of Generals 3 does a much better job and WC4 should take some notes from GoG3.
And this is even worse when you realise that Easytech didn't even model the sizes of countries properly! Take Portugal and Hungary as an example. They are almost the same size (Hungary is a tiny bit larger than Portugal), and during WW2 Hungary was nearly twice the size of Portugal... yet that didn't stop Easytech from somehow making Portugal exactly twice the size of Hungary (during WW2) instead! That's like making the UK twice the size of France rather than correctly modelling France as roughly twice the size of the UK.
And the inconsistency is seen when it comes to cities too. The Mongolian "city" of Uliastai (it's a small town) had around a population of only 10,000 people or less (and probably no military industry whatsoever), yet it is still modelled in WC4 and can produce medium tanks and howitzers! On the other hand, far larger 100,000+ inhabited cities with far more impressive military industries are not represented in WC4. Also, Uliastai is given a level 2 factory, which is the same level of factory that Budapest (capital and only city that Hungary gets in WC4, population of well over a million during WW2) gets. Now I really struggle to believe that the small Mongolian town of Uliastai even produced a single armoured military vehicle during WW2, yet alone building any medium tanks or heavy howitzers! On the other hand, Budapest pioneered, designed, tested, and produced tons of military technology during the war. I'm talking thousands of tanks (light, medium, and heavy), artillery (including light, medium and heavy), and combat aircraft (fighters, interceptors, ground attackers, even some bombers) built by Budapest, as well as many different designs for these originating from there too. Budapest even built some warships (larger at first, but small ones after WW1 of course). To give Uliastai the same level of military factory as Budapest is as insane as giving the Maldives the same level of military industry as France. It seems to me like Easytech barely gave any thought to which city gets what capabilities of production. And considering how far you have to conquer before you can produce the right type of unit for your generals (e.g. heavy tanks for your tank generals), this is a pretty big deal when it comes to balancing, and needs to be taken more seriously.
So to summarise, how accurately countries are modelled in terms of size, location, shape, cities, and troops, has an enormous effect on how powerful and influential that country will/can become. Considering this game clearly tries to be historically accurate and representative of the reality of WW2, it would make sense for Easytech to try their absolute hardest when it comes to modelling an entire (relatively important) part of the primary focus continent (Europe), both in terms of aesthetically making it look right, but also trying to get the balance of power of these countries right too. But unfortunately, they did a pretty terrible job of it. So I tried to improve the conquest map of the Balkans/Eastern Europe, and realised that even without making the whole map bigger and drastically changing the actual size of the Balkans and the territory we can work with, I could easily make the countries, their borders and their cities far better and more accurate, with no changes to the actual size of the map. All I did was change which tile belongs to which country, where the cities are located, as well as changing the coastline a little (making a few water tiles land instead and vice versa). My changes are incredibly simple and easy to implement while improving the map (and the Conquest mode by extension) tremendously, so what are you waiting for Easytech? Go ahead and implement it in an update!
My improved 1939 conquest map of the Balkans/Eastern Europe:
I couldn't make this using WC4, so it's in this simplified form instead, but it uses and lines up perfectly with each tile in the game's current map version of the region (but of course the borders are different). Dark grey = Germany, white = Poland, orange = Hungary, pink/purple = Italy, brown = Yugoslavia, yellow = Romania, green = Bulgaria, light blue = Greece, grey = Turkey, red = USSR, dark blue = the sea. The country's flag and the name of the city are in each tile where there is a city. Some tiles have a small mountain icon to indicate that they would be mountainous terrain. This is my 1939 Conquest map, I might make a 1943 version and a 1950 version later, but the cities would remain in the same places as on this one and most borders would be quite similar.
To sum up the differences with the 1943 and 1950 versions in short,
1943: Germany owns Poland, part of the Soviet area of this map, and splits Yugoslavia and Greece with Italy. Hungary gains a tile from Yugoslavia and 1-2 tiles from Romania representing the territories Hungary got back in the Vienna Awards and the Invasion of Yugoslavia after losing these as a punishment for WW1. Romania's north-eastern border with the USSR will likely have changed; at first the USSR got some of Romania's land, but by 1943 with the Invasion of the USSR, Romania had gotten back this land plus some more Soviet land, so Romania would have 1-2 tiles from the USSR. Bulgaria would get a few tiles from Yugoslavia and Greece.
1950: Germany, Italy, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Greece are back to their 1939 territorial forms. Poland and Romania are in their modern-day forms, meaning Poland has significantly changed and shifted to the west, and Romania loses 2 tiles to the USSR (which later became parts of Moldova and Ukraine). The USSR gains more land/tiles than they had in their 1939 form.
Here is what the original/current WC4 1939 conquest map looks like for comparison, both in the same simplified form as my improved map, as well as shown in WC4:
There are no flags or city names here, but the countries correspond with the same colours used and their current borders in-game, as do the locations of the cities.As you can see, the borders, locations of the cities and countries are quite different. This is all without expanding the map, so the Balkan peninsula and the whole area is still the same size and made up of the same amount of tiles. I think that my improved version of the map is much better and more realistic than the original version, yet it is easy to implement due to the map remaining the same size. So a much better version of the map that requires no further complications and can easily be implemented - why not improve the map like this in an upcoming update? What are your thoughts on my improved map, is it better than the current version? Do you have any further improvements to suggest?