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Terrain descriptions for website
June 13, 2010 - 11:23pm — Ben Seib
I'm not really sure where this should go on the forum so I figured here as it's the current official area that is being read by the GA's.
I was trawling the website last night for information on High hills and realized that while we offer a legend showing how each piece of terrain looks and how we discuss in depth fords and passes and crossing through them etc. There was little discussion or comment on the various types of terrain hexes such as high hills/low hills/ forests / cities etc.
I think this should be included in the general GITM rules as it is kind of important (if my Rule Searching was poor please let me know). To date I realize you need to look at 2-3 different sections to really understand how terrain works, and I'm not sure how many people visit the GITM Combat modifiers page (best review page on the website in my opinion) which actually explains the modifiers attached to terrain.
I'm willing to write a draft of this if the GA's give me approval but thought it may be worth looking at.
- Ben
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Terrain
There does seem to be some need for this idea of Ben.
For Example, In describing the 6 Battle areas for the Summer games, one site is located in Russia. It then amplifies as this scenario will have players become accustomed to battles in swamp areas. My battle experience in Russia is somewhat limited and have not had many battles that encompassed Swamps.
Thus, I tried to find out how Swamps will affect battles. There is no information available. What is said is that the designator of a strategic square defines the primary terrain of that square. With Swamps, one goes to the Terrain Chart and there are no Swamps in Tactical Maps. Thus, one believes that of what is available as Tactical Map terrain, that the primary square of Swamps is lakes.
One goes to the movement chart and there is no mention as to how Swamps affect movement. Mountains add one and then all other squares are listed as having the same entry cost of 1.
One then looks at Strategic Movement and the only terrain reference is rivers and mountain ranges.
Thus Swamps seem to do nothing to Tactical Battles except that it may be inferred that the number (percentage) of lakes is higher. This, however, does not seem to be specified anywhere.
Information of this type of condensed and listed in some type of chart would speed up drastically searches for this information.
Robert
Yea I realized the lack of
Yea I realized the lack of description when I was trying to find out how High Hills worked and would affect movement and combat results.
Never post drunk...unless that is your norm.
reply to Ben & Robert
Robert,
I think Ben's idea is a good one as well, although Steve Schmidt is probably the one who's opinion really matters on this.
Specifically on to Robert's point about the Summer Games marshland map in the Ukraine. I don't think there are more "wetlands" in areas around impassible marshland, but I will check. But take a look at the map in question in the Ukraine, or at least the area between the two cities. I do not believe there are per se swamps but rather marshes, which are deemed impassible terrain in NWOL. They are shown on the strategic maps as purple shaded impassible terrain, but in that part of the Ukraine I think it is inferred that it is marshland/swampland or whatever you want to call it.
So I do not believe there will be any special terrain representing swamps or anything like that in NWOL or on that game map, but rather that the impassible terrain in the game map will either (1) bottleneck a whole lot of troops from both sides in one area or (2) force teams to move around marshlands and engage in a serious guessing game as to where their opponents are or will be. Just a small variant to some of the other maps you will play, which is all we were looking to achieve.
Marshlands, Swamps
Matt,
This highlights part of what I was trying to mention. I had tried to keep vocabulary strictly limited to the Map legend chart. Especially with Tactical Maps, there is no listed Terrain:
Strategic Map Terrain
Terrain codes:
Hills
Forest
River
Mountains
Ocean
Swamp
High mountains
City
Tactical Map Terrain
Terrain codes:
Low hills
High hills
River
Ford
Mountain
Pass
Water
Forest
City/village
The Map Legend does not show any purple Key. There is brown for swamp in Strategic Terrain code. Tactical Terrain code has nothing comparable. The closest is Lakes. I know there is purple terrain. I have seen it; but it is not listed on the terrain guide.
Robert