Hello Gents,

My name is Veta and I'm interested in transferring over one of the greatest Brood War diplos to StarCraft II. If you're familiar with the game in question it needs no explanation but if not I'd be happy to elaborate here or even show you on StarCraft 1 (I have CD keys if you need). Blood & Iron: Europe 1870 was a strategy diplo, a special sort of diplo.

The gist of the map is that the game takes place roughly right before the Franco-Prussian War, during the Age of Rifles, as a consequence Germany is unified and is one of 7 playable nations (Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Ottoman Empire, Russia). Although I'm sure Spain could be added for an even 8. During this time period the nations of Europe have already standardized and phased out their many different types of regiments. As a consequence the game follows a very simple dynamic of unit variety:
-Riflemen (Ghosts) are your bread and butter
-Cavalry are shock troop Zealots (this was achieved through the use of shields on StarCraft 1)
-Artillery are Siege Tanks
-Some custom/new unit could be allocated to be a Machine Gun (instead of the Marine)

Essentially you have a bit of a triangle balance wherein Riflemen>Cavalry>Artillery>Riflemen. Machine Guns would be a sort of fortification or support troop but should by no means be a necessary or massable unit. Bunkers are the fortification used on StarCraft but frankly a better system could probably be devised on StarCraft 2 to represent trenches or garrisons.

Lastly Naval Units and battles were very simplified. At this time Iron Clads were becoming prevalent and there was a serious standardization of navies. In StarCraft 1 this was represented by a single battleship unit and dropships. In StarCraft 2 I'm sure this could be represented with a Battleship unit and a Destroyer unit, as well as transports, the naval sieging of cities should be very limited however (unlike that WW2 diplo).

Some mechanics that made this map great:
-Cities spawn partisan infantry (basically static infantry defense) whenever they are undersiege. Cities are not assimilated until these rebel infantry are quelled. As the game progresses so does the strength of these partisans.
-Different Cities have different values (this is done by either making them worth more strategically or by placing a resource near them)
-Resources are capturable special buildings that represent either a Coal Mine, Iron Mine or Oil Rig. This could easily be simplified by ascribing different values to Cities.
-You can industrialize each city you own by building a factory, which represents industry. (Industry is limited by your number of cities and is expensive enough that it is an investment)
-The years progress as the game progresses, allowing year based diplomacy.
-You can strike up alliances, defense pacts, secret alliances or what have you with other nations.
-War is announced when it is declared via triggers, if you begin losing a war you can surrender and pay reparations which subtract income and give it to the winner. You can also negotiate a cease fire wherein certain terms are met (surrender of cities or otherwise)
-As empires expand the minimap is updated to show how these empires grow
-The Naval aspect of the game is built around Overseas trade. There are 7 overseas trades on the map (1 for each player). Navies battle over these trades during war or they can leverage them for what have you. Navies are expensive enough that they can detract from your army strength should you invest too heavily in them.
-You can buy Rights of Passage to pass through the neutral nations
-A detailed scoreboard system depicting the year, income, industry, city count, kills and deaths (and perhaps military might in SC2)
-As the game progresses and so too does your technology (through upgrades) the neutral nation's strength also progresses accordingly.
-Lastly each nation generally had the same units at its disposal. No spawns or wars were triggered. Certain nations did have hero versions or special versions of units. For example, the Germans had elite riflemen that spawned with 800 hp vs the 750 for regular riflemen. I can get into more detail with this but essentially some nations received slightly better (5-10%) versions of different troops, but not enough to detract from the strategic value of their other types of troops.

The one thing to emphasize about this map that made it truly great however is that units were high HP and low damage relatively. This meant that microing and troop management had less importance than say the general maneuvering of your troops, troop makeup, and actual strategy (where you allocate troops & resources). The game didn't have a huge learning curve and, like I said I'd be happy to elaborate, play a game, or show the map to anyone interested in this project.

Updated terrain:

Sounds like a fun map, I suggest you check out the wiki for information and tutorials to get you started with mapping

Here's an update with the terrain:

Nice could I possibly have a copy of that terrain file? I'm working on an EU-type map. In return I'll help you with any data editor problems you have in the future. I'm pretty pro with the data editor side of things, I just havn't been able to realistically recreate Europe in terrain-format. I won't use the actual terrain you are using, since for my needs I'll have to chop it up. What'd'ya say?

You would of course get full credits under terrain

Really awesome

I'm not sure how you would implement the minimap stuff.

Naval units can be very difficult because SC2 doesn't support naval units directly.

Anyway, this just reminds me of Empire Earth somehow.

I wish you luck. There is a criminal lack of good diplomacy/strategy maps for SCII; Risk gets boring after a while. Personally, I'd prefer something a bit more civilization-like, wherein there's greater customizability of armies (counter triangles are boring) and economy (maybe even a very slow year count that allows heavy investment in research to pay off with things like tanks in the very long games); however, I'd enthusiastically support this as well. More dimensions than risk.

We're hoping to collaborate with a few other map makers out there to get everything crisp and polished like we want it (naval units, dialog boxes, etc). As it is right now though it's just me and a friend who are working on the map. We're pretty amateur when it comes to the galaxy editor but we're devoted to getting the map playable. Like I said any help is appreciated.


Cardinal: I'll have to talk to my coauthor but if you're savvy with the data editor and willing to help us in return I think we'll be able to work something out. Shoot me a reminder PM and I'll get back to you.

Let me just give you a heads up now... Naval units are probably not going to work. And they will be no easy task of creating them.

They can, if he limits the number of them and can do continuous checking of what terrain they're on (I wouldn't expect anything up to maybe 300 ships checked once a second to be a problem, for example) Still, though, since they'd move like air units, it won't be great.

Yeah, they will 'work'. But, simply at the cost of the maps performance. It is theoretically possible to create 'water' zones by using the No Fly Zone doodad to denote 'shorelines' where the land starts (and where the water begins), and then simply to make it so that all flying units are created in the area where air units are 'allowed' to be.

But - how would you then allow transport by boats? Since, the boat cannot reach 'land', you would have to make it unload units at range - which is a bit lame. Alternatively, a port-structure could be used (with bunker/nydus mechanics), and Boats which move there will automatically unload units (via triggers).

Judging by the terrain already created, he would need easily 5000+ no fly zone doodads for this system to work. And that eats heavily into your doodad usage for say, trees n other cool shit, since you are limited to a maximum of 10,000 per map - regardless of size. Finally, the pathing algorithm created for the no fly zone doodads is messy - and that's putting it nicely.

Edit: Regarding the terrain... It's Agria right? Yellow Grass is being used for the desert areas right now? Edit the tileset and use Mar Sara Dunes (or sand, i forget it's name) and a bit of Height Noise. Will look much better :3

We were thinking about doing what that WW2 Diplo map is doing. It's transports are boats in the water and become vehicles on land. As far as how ships stay in the water I'll have to check but I don't think that map used the no fly pathing doodad.

This is the maker of WW2 Diplo.

I can tell you that whatever your thinking is simply too complicated.

There is a way around what you are after, and yes a WC3 Style amphibious system can also be faked and faked cleanly, I just didn't do it for WW2 Diplo.

I am more than willing to help Veta but Veta actually needs to get in touch with me before I can help him. I've just been browsing google for any references to "WW2 Diplo" and ran across this.

Hey.. If you were to theoretically create ground units in the water that can't walk up cliffs they would be naval units right? I've seen maps where ground units can walk in (shallow) water. They are stuck in the water and don't fly. units will need to look like they float though... raise them up a bit like the vulture. not on the ground but not too far off it.

a money-shot of the Terrain...

progress is looking good - big thanks to Ahli for having my back when I dropped off the radar .

Focke - hit up Veta with a pm we're keen to hear your thoughts on this!

So after talking to Focke it looks like there's a few ways to go with naval units. The most seamless would be to make them land units that are validated by cliff level (since you keep pathing this way) but that requires you to then create teleports where you want land units to travel across, or bridges of some sort. In this case Gibralter, and around the Sea of Marmara and up in Denmark near Sweden.

Since I don't want Land to interact with naval units and vice versa I'd have to address that as well - either through the use of a different system or some clever data stuff.

I've showed Veta another method based off the cliff validator one.

I've also offered to help with the map provided I don't have to do too much grunt work. I can show ya nearly everything you need to know to do the map but grunt work I don't want to do for this map - I've got my own maps where I'm doing all of it >.<

Really nice map of europe... maybe you can make a map of the world after you complete this project.