From: dxb105@huxley.anu.edu.au (David Bofinger)
Newsgroups: rec.games.board
Subject: Re: WiF: Question about Sweden ressouces
Date: 28 Dec 92 00:04:38 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
NNTP-Posting-Host: 150.203.2.12

d88-cbr@alv.nada.kth.se (Christian Beijner) writes:
>Its really quite simple, those resources really exist a lot further north.
>There exists a railroad - designed for this purpose - that can carry lots
>of iron ore from the north of Sweden to Narvik (Malmbanan). If you want to
>you can call Narvik the port of Kiruna. During non-winter turns you could
>possibly get the ore to one of the swedish ports in the north of the baltic.
>However during winter, they are frozen, and Narvik is not.
>The standard trains going south in Sweden couldnt handle this amount of
>additional freight.

But you can get Petsamo nickel out. I guess that makes sense because the
quantities involved are smaller. What does the Norwegian resource point
represent?

>The allied control rules is merely a way of allowing the german a chance of
>getting the ore out by Narvik, hugging the coast with his ships, which would
>be impossible if the allies control parts of the coast.
>If this rule seems "special" to you, think what would happen if you forced
>the german to use a conwoy in the North Sea to get them home.

There are, however, plenty of similar situations around the board. The best
known is Stalingrad, which the Germans wanted to take because doing so would
cut the Volga and hence the Caucasus oil supplies.

If you want to do this properly you need to have a concept of the degree of
development in a hex. Separate hexes into three classes:

  1. Thoroughly developed. Includes all cities, resource points, hexes
     adjacent to major navigable rivers (e.g. Rhine, Volga, Elbe, Seine, Po),
     lots of other hexes in western Europe, etc.. i.e., Major arterial routes.
     No special rules for these. Because it includes anything with a symbol
     that obscures the hexdot you can use hexdots to denote which class a hex
     is in.
  2. Moderately developed. Basically, hexes where there were railway lines.
     In civilised countries this will be every hex. You can pass one resource
     point per turn through these hexes, and strat one unit per impulse (turn?
     I feel it should be something in between).
  3. Undeveloped. The great Russian tundra, Siberia off the railway, the
     deserts of the Middle East, etc. No strategic movement, no resource
     transport.

This may not be worth doing, of course.

>Since I am on the question on Sweden, let me flame that WIF map and the 
>CWJ expansion board a bit:
[Two complaints deleted, neither of which mentions that Malaren Lake is
 apparently salt water :-).]

>Expansion board:
>4) They havent added a single city, except those already on the wif map.
>   Thats ignorant.

Which ones should they have added? A local variant here includes G\"oteborg,
but I think we just made it a port, no city. My reference has Stockholm 500K,
G\"oteborg 245K, Malm\"o 127K (1933). I'd say Stockholm deserves to be a city,
G\"oteborg is marginal, probably yes.

>It will disallow swedish/finnish train transport north.

You mean they can't strat there? The Finns, at least, have Petsamo to strat to.
Incidentally, another local variant allows you to strat to resource points.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bofinger                                          dxb105@phys.anu.edu.au

Newsgroups: rec.games.board