Miracle at Dunkirk
Creator: Fascelli || First Published: 03/06/2015 || Players: 6 || Size: 40x40
Categories: None
Rating: 0 in 0 ratings
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Comments:
Fascelli (03/06/2015 12:33am):
Miracle at Dunkirk
Allies vs Germans
Red Fire- English
Grey Sky- French
Pink Cosmos- Belgians
Orange Star- Polish
Purple Lightning- Dutch
Green Earth- Germans
This game is to be played for 20 Days, If the Allies survive the German Advance they win!
yaldah (03/06/2015 04:11am):
btw grey sky soldiers are more fitting to pass as germans
Varker (03/07/2015 11:01pm):
Green has no way to win and will lose in 10 days
first day Red fire loads the black boats, by day 5 a mech has already landed on the top left corner 6 spaces away
from the HQ, 3 days to move those spaces, 2 days to capture
Fascelli (03/08/2015 10:37am):
Ok updated to give Green Earth a fighting chance
DASRTwelve (03/08/2015 09:08pm):
Germany did have some bombers to harrass the British ships, you should give GE some bombers
Darth Hawke (03/09/2015 08:50pm):
1 Anti-Air vs. at least 2 Mechs.
3 Submarines vs. 20 Cruisers.

"fighting chance" is used too loosely.
Fascelli (03/09/2015 11:25pm):
ok done
DASRTwelve (03/10/2015 06:22am):
You should also move those rockets up. They won't see any action if theyre this far back
Xmo5 (03/10/2015 03:10pm | Edited: 03/10/2015 03:14pm):
The fact that there are about 100-200 predeployed units is causing fundamental problems
with how it will play out. With that many units, you're guaranteed that things will be way
too congested when the fighting begins because there's no build-up. Additionally, if you
give each side the same units, it becomes a matter of FTA and if you give them different
units, usually one side has a distinct advantage.

With the current setup, GE will wipe out everything on the southern land mass without too
much concern. Sure, they'll suffer a lot of losses, but they have about the same number of
mechs as their opponent(s), plus tanks, bombers, and rockets instead of a few extra
infantry. Meatshields and fighters will make enemy fighters mostly useless too and there's
no other way to deal with the bombers. Meanwhile, there's virtually no purpose to the sea
battle as the cruisers will have no problem mowing down the subs, especially considering
you have more than 2 cruisers for every sub and only a single battleship to defend them.
Lets not even discuss the problems with cities, production facilities, HQ
placement/victory potential, and terrain.

Ultimately, it's hard to make large clashes of units that are fun, harder to make them
strategic, and nearly impossible to make them balanced. Also, a ridiculously large
predeployed army is not the equivalent of historically accuracy and even if it were, that
aspect would nearly certainly have to be neglected or, at a minimum, limited and
considered with painstaking care when designing maps like this. In other words, the
solution to the problems people are mentioning is not to add bombers and AAs etc.; the
solution is to remove 90% of the units and pre-owned cities (or more) and give the
opportunities for armies to build naturally and equally. As far as I'm concerned, when
designing a map for historical accuracy, your priorities should be in the following order:

1) Make it playable
2) Make it fair/balanced
3) Make it fun
4) Make it accurate to the event as best as possible

Sometimes you can sacrifice a bit on 1-3, but 4 is meaningless if you don't at least meet
a minimum on those criteria. Here you meet 1, but 2 is completely out the window and 3
(IMO) is as well, though there are a few who would argue otherwise. I'm not saying you
can't think out of the box and do what you want, but I'm saying that there are loads of
"epic clash" maps out there, just like this one, and I have yet to see a single one that's
widely regarded as a decent map (or better) for the reasons I mentioned above.

EDIT: I should add that the 20 day survival time limit helps in this case, but there's
still a lot that needs to be fixed and this comment is directed towards other maps of
yours as well.
Fascelli (03/10/2015 11:54pm):
Dear Xmo5, I appreciate your opinion & honesty. I think I'm pretty good at accepting criticism. However, when
you make remarks like "there's still a lot that needs to be fixed and this comment is directed towards other
maps of yours as well" then I have to tell you what I think about you.
I think you are a pre-deployed map hater.
I think you that you believe everything & everyone is created equal. ( Your # 2 )
Look at how many countries it took to take down the Romans, French w/Napoleon, British, & the Germans
w/Hitler?!! Life is not fair & civilizations & armies are not created equal.
Fun can be winning by dominating power & also as outsmarting your more powerful opponent.
& regarding accuracy, in all the paragraphs that you wrote you never made a single statement or fact, NOT 1
about any historical detail of this event, so what do u know? Why don't you go look on Wikipedia before you
judge anything. After all this criticism from you I'm still trying to bring these real life events to our gaming
community. I don't see you doing the same thing, which makes me believe that you can hate but you can't do
any better than me! So until you make some historical battles maps accurately just shut up!
Dreadnought (03/11/2015 12:33am):
Just a comment on your boasts of accuracy Britain hardly looks like a flat coastline and the German HQ should
be by their army, but anyway the point Xmo5 (well one of them) is trying to make is that in a relatively simple
strategy game as this, as opposed to something as innumerably complex as a real war, an unbalanced map will
very likely cause the advantaged side to win and for this reason no one wants to play a game where it is a
guaranteed loss because it really isn't fun. Thus even though you can make historical maps and like you said
many small army's may have to team up to beat a large army, you should try to make it relatively balanced so
that it is actually fun to play otherwise people will ignore the map in favor of more balanced ones.
Xmo5 (03/11/2015 06:45am):
Dreadnought is correct about what I'm saying. I also agree that I don't very much enjoy
predeployed maps** but I do have legitimate reasons for feeling that way. This isn't some opinion
I just decided to have because I take offense to units sitting on a map- I've been here for over 6
years and I started from the ground floor, just like everyone else. One thing I've seen time and
time again is that maps like this are always horribly imbalanced, though I recognize from a
theoretical perspective it's possible to make a balanced version. (This doesn't achieve that by the
way.)

I understand that real life armies are not equal and that you can't replicate something with 100%
historical accuracy by creating a perfectly balanced map, but it's a bit of a moot point. This is a
game and if a map causes the game aspect to lose much of it's functionality, then it isn't a very
good map regardless of what you say. This is why I hardly addressed the historical accuracy of
the map itself- that's not the primary issue and I leave that debate up to those who are more
familiar with the event. That said, neither my unfamiliarity with the event nor my lack of
historically accurate maps constitute grounds for dismissing my ability to critique a map. Quite the
contrary, the fact that I haven't made any historically accurate maps demonstrates that I
recognize how difficult it is to make a map sufficiently accurate while simultaneously fun and
balanced and abandoned the effort. (Not to say it can't be done well, because I'm sure it has in
some cases.) I'll also add that I'm not commenting on how small RF is compared to GE etc.
because I have no problem with that. When I'm talking about balance I'm talking about the
combined allied forces in comparison to the combined GE forces and I'm evaluating how the
battle will play out in various portions of the map. These aren't just words I'm throwing up on a
screen because I enjoy going around hating on maps; I actually thought about the map quite a bit
before I said anything and made my comments based on objective (and some subjective) criteria
about how the map plays out as-is.

**By that I mean maps like this where there's no apparent rhyme or reason to what units are
deployed etc. Predeployed maps are just fine if you balance it properly and make it playable, but
that's not always easy.
Xmo5 (03/11/2015 08:29am):
It occurs to me that I actually do have a map that falls into that category and,
admittedly, I don't think it turned out too well because I'm concerned it isn't balanced:

http://awbw.amarriner.com/prevmaps.php?maps_id=65695

You probably didn't find it because it's on my alt account and it's only historically
accurate if you count the history of Middle Earth, but the concept is the same.The point
is that you can see how I attempted to accomplish a similar goal and how it didn't turn
out as well as I had hoped, though I feel as if proper play-testing and some more analysis
on my part could help me balance my 2-4 criteria a lot better. You can also see how,
despite having predeployed units, I kept them at a minimum to serve a specific purpose and
then compensated for army size/location by providing the corresponding means of building
an army of the appropriate size in those locations. This solves so many problems while
still maintaining a similar degree of historical accuracy.

Anyway, you can take a look at that map and read my comments to see some of the
considerations I took into account (or should have, if you read my second comment) when
trying to make this map fun, balanced, and accurate. I also include predeployed units in
some of my other maps for various reasons, so as proof that I think it can work in some
cases, see these maps:

Trapdoor Harbor - Ninja_Weasel
Stealth Run (and Stealth Ran) - both on Ninja_Weasel
Sensei's Sandbox - Ninja_Weasel
Invasion Confirmed - Xmo5
Sounds of Impalement - Xmo5 (note how much trouble I had balancing... and it's still not
balanced)
Surto6 (02/21/2021 07:05pm | Edited: 02/21/2021 07:06pm):
Actually, I would put "fun" on the top priority order. We play to have fun, and balance is only meant as a way to achieve fun. If
a map is fun for all parties involved even if it isn't balanced, then it has achieved its purpose. But if a map is so unbalanced
that a side is essentially guaranteed to win 80% of all encounters, then it is typically frustrating and unfun for the other
players, and therefore such a scenario must be avoided.

I would redefine point 3 balance as the following: In an unbalanced setup, the weaker side must be given a chance to triumph
over their opponent.



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