Four maps, made for VCMI, the open-source Heroes III engine. Real coastlines, mountains and rivers are first projected onto the grid by latitude and longitude; then roads, towns and mines go on top. The Yellow River runs where it runs in an atlas.
You need VCMI to play. Drop the downloaded .vmap into VCMI’s Maps folder.
Dust and Distance
Twenty thousand against two hundred thousand — and you can pick either side.
Northern Shaanxi after March 1947. Over two hundred thousand Nationalist troops hold Yan’an; the Northwest Field Army, about twenty thousand, has pulled back into the gullies. Red and Blue are both playable.
Each turn asks little of you: read the map, count the distance, choose a ravine. The hard part is that nothing goes in a straight line. Eighteen passes sit wedged between the hills, and holding one pinches off a lifeline.
The two sides’ problems are nothing alike. Red has few troops and few towns, but the gullies hide paths only you can use, and the underground is yours. You can’t afford a pitched battle; you pick the thinnest stretch of the enemy’s supply line, hit it, and leave. Blue has the numbers, the towns and the main roads, and starts out pressing the other side — but the supply lines keep stretching, and the enemy is never on the battlefield you chose. Resources are deliberately scarcer than on a standard duel map. That is design, not a balancing oversight.
Every place name is real, every coordinate projected from latitude and longitude: Wangjiawan, Xiaohe, Yan’an, Yulin, Shajiadian, Qinghuabian, Yangmahe, Panlong. The signposts carry the words of the time. Nanniwan reads “land reclaimed and farmed by the troops, 1941.” Shenquanbao records 10 October 1947 — the first time eight particular characters appeared together.
Rails and Tunnels
One side’s lifeline runs straight through the other side’s territory.
North China, autumn 1948. The fighting in the Northeast has just ended, and a million-strong army is massed beyond Shanhaiguan. The Nationalist towns of North China stand in a line, strung on the railways — and both railways cut through the middle of Red ground.
Blue has more towns and heavier troops and can move fast along the rails, but every stretch of track passes through a section in enemy hands. Red is light, draws recruits in the hills and militia on the plain — and Red has the tunnels. The entrances of the central-Hebei tunnel network are at Ranzhuang and Renqiu, between Baoding and Shijiazhuang. Go down there, bypass the whole road net, and come up behind Beiping and Tianjin.
There is sea and there are mountains. With jump spells enabled, the Bohai and the Taihang would be drawn for nothing.
Twenty-one towns, twelve signposts, seven named commanders. Xibaipo reads “headquarters.” Shanhaiguan reads both ways — out through the pass, and back in.
Beiping is the most expensive objective on the map: a castle-grade wall and nearly thirty thousand defenders. That was the price at which Fu Zuoyi finally chose a peaceful handover.
Islands Apart
One side holds a whole continent and not a single ship; the other’s every foothold is on water.
East Asia, 1950. Beijing has the mainland; Taipei holds the island chain. Pyongyang and Seoul face each other across the peninsula. Lüshun is a naval base; Kunming, Qamdo and Lanzhou each have plans of their own.
A wall runs across the middle of the peninsula. Three crystal dragons guard the 38th parallel, and they belong to no one.
Napoleon’s Eagles
Europe, 1813. Lisbon to Moscow, North Africa to Scandinavia. France, Britain, Russia, Prussia, Austria, Sweden, Spain, Naples.
The Rhine, the Elbe, the Danube, the Vistula and the Dnieper slice the continent into strips; the Alps and the Carpathians pen it into blocks. In the German middle, thirty-odd towns are held firmly by no one, with Leipzig at the center.
Britain sits across the Channel, Spain is tucked at the far end of its peninsula, Sweden holds the north, Naples crouches on the toe of the boot. Every player opens with a different question: deal with the neighbors first, or the sea.
The armies have to walk.
Napoleon’s eagles marched this ground in 1813. This map begins there.