Economic blocks: Maps

[flyingdisc]

We've discussed this in the ages past, but seeing how the new Geoscape is being previewed, perhaps now is a good time to raise it again. I imagine that Goldhawk are not far away now from returning to the country block question.

Previously we discussed 1970s cold war country blocks. Most of the discussion in that previous thread focused on whether it was advisable or not to have blocks made up of countries in different locations. There was a strong steer from Chris that geographically dispersed countries would not play well as unified blocks.

I do not want to re-open that discussion. Instead I want to illustrate that maps can work with both (a) geographically located countries and (b) maintain consistency with 1970 era political boundaries. I have included an example map below:

This contains contains 11 blocks (could easily be reduced to fewer by combining say Warsaw Pack with USSR, South Asia with Pacific Rim, etc). These blocks maintain both (a) and (b) above. The only tensions that exist at all are some small stretching to geographical blocks for Nato (wraps around Warsaw Pact) and how to handle Africa.

1. Nato: European Nato countries. Includes Turkey, Greece (very prominent Nato countries). Also includes many "neutral"/non-Nato European countries (e.g. Swiss, Sweden, etc) that would otherwise have been isolated islands of neutral states
   
2. Warsaw Pact: Historic Warsaw Pact countries plus Yugoslavia (which was really one of the founding 4 of the non-Aligned movement). This maintains political leanings at least.
   
3. USSR: This one is easy. Nice contiguous block.
   
4. North America: USA+Canada
   
5. Socialist East Asia: China, N. Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia. Nice geo-located block. Could be combined with another (USSR?) if fewer blocks were desired.
   
6. South American Dictatorships: Most of S. America was (or would shortly fall under) rule by military dictators. The exceptions are the 2 Guyanas and Surinam (which are grouped in the above map with Central American non-aligned countries, but could be included here if simpler blocks were prioritised)
   
7. Central American Non-Aligned countries: While Cuba and, say, Mexico might have had very different political outlooks - most countries in this region had some connection with the non-align movement. I think we can therefore group them together (to satisfy criteria (a) without doing too much damage to criteria (b)).
   
8. Pacific Rim: Free market orientated. S. Korea, Japan, Philippines, Australia, New Zealand and Australian leaning Papa New Guinea: Spread out but still maintaining geographical connection.
   
9. South Asian Non-Aligned movement. Contains prominent countries in the non-aligned movement (e.g. India). Works both as a political grouping and as a geographical one.
   
10. Non-Aligned Africa: North and West. Different politics and sympathies. Most countries in this block had (tenuous) connections to the Non-Aligned movement (most of them attended). Not too contentious as a block.
    
11. Southern/Eastern Africa+Middle East: This is the only block where any significant compromise needs to happen. Most of these countries (S. Africa , Rhodesia, Uganda, Kenya, Saudia Arabia) were either Western leaning or prominent in the fighting soviet influence in the African Cold War Proxy conflict. The problems are places like Angola (east-west sponsored civil war), Mozambique and Madagascar (both Soviet leaning and supporting Zimbabwean and S. African rebels). Given Chris has already indicated that we need to maintain geographical cohesive blocks (criteria (b)) I guess these can all be grouped into a single block. The people who would most object to this are people from this block, but I imagine that they are likely to make up very little of the xenonauts playing public. This is not done in the above map, but you can see how this is could be done.
    

What I wanted to highlight, is I think country groupings can be come up with which both (b) create geographically connected blocks and (a) maintain groups consistent with 1970s outlook that xenonauts is set in.

What do you think?

How would your groupings differ from the above?

[flyingdisc]

BTW how do I make the attached map bigger?

[radister]

Hmm, instead of what is historicly correct, i would rather the developers create enough regions to balance the game correctly. as they are a main game play mechanic and not just for aesthetics. so as long there is enough regions that can give use enough rush to being trying to protect more nations and pushing myself to protect other just to keep up my income balance is good. however if we have to many and protecting them is a pain, and if some of them are too small and get attacked so im in negitive balance and then no aliens ever attack them again i'll just get annoyed. and then if one location on the world has more regions near each other then they would make better starting points. i just think alot of balance issues is more important then having it all mapped out perfectly.

[flyingdisc]

i would rather the developers create enough regions to balance the game correctly. as they are a main game play mechanic and not just for aesthetics.

I agree with you. I had taken that as given. The point I was trying to make is that balancing these regions can be done without breaking immersion. Have a look at the map in the first post - not knowing other factors like income etc, does this break any of the criteria you raise? Does the number/size/distance in that particular map look very different from UFO:EU, ET, etc?

Personally speaking, immersion is an important factor for me. I don't need many details to imagine a 1970s alien invasion, but just a few aspects that jar can break this immersion. Xenonauts has worked very hard (soviet architecture, regionally specific NPCs, etc) to build this setting. Choices like amalgmating western and warsaw pact countries into one block, as is done in the alpha build, mean that you need an elaborate backstory to maintain the players (my) sense of the period. This kind of backstory is not needed when map blocks are less inconsistent with the period. The point I hope to get across is that I think this is possible, making only a small number of compromises.

[Gauddlike]

The problem that I see as needing the most work put into it is some areas being naturally better starting points.

For example Africa is generally shown as a large area with low cash value while a base in Europe allows you to cover multiple high value areas.