Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

Thanks for your replies, everyone. If anything else occurs to you, let me know. While I won't be getting in to any heavy modding, I will likely try to make maps that have some theme or flavor elements and specific magic sites in certain places. Looks like a couple of 2-4 player maps and a 6-10 player map will be first on my docket.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

What's the status of this project, Gandalf? It sounds like a great idea, but it seems like a tall order too.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

Here is the writeup on it.
http://www.dom2minions.com/SemiRandom.shtml

It wouldnt be too tall an order. I pictured it as a way to get people slightly into mapping and modding by getting them to provide single provinces which were theme-designed. If everyone turned in their designs then some would be simple, some involved, some bad, some great. As long as we ended up with enough of them then the randoms would balance things out (well enough for non-competitive play anyway). Nothing ever happened with it.

To me, a starting point was to go thru all of the monsters and make some judgement calls as to commander, unit, pretender, (allowing for multiples of those), and terrain type, now maybe era also. And things like avian, lizard, flying, cat, bear, wolf. Then I could create something like an avian forest populated with flocks of bird types. Or a special wasteland where a special wolf led a pack of regular wolves.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

Lots and lots and lots of ideas.

I wanted to do a project that did something similar. It never got far enough, but I might have some of the idea papers left. Any way, all nations (probably of all ages) make good special provinces, lesser summons make good special provinces, better summons make good special provinces, sites with interesting names make good special provinces, rare indep types make good special provinces, etc. After all that, we could start going through the interesting unit types.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

Thanks for making such nice maps! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

I'd love to see more maps based on real geography, but with obvious fantastic and magical distortions. Such a map based on eastern, central, and southern asia would be awesome.

Someone turned a huge map of the Forgotten Realms into a Dom 2 map and set it up with some powerhouse indies in all the right places. That should be done again.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

We had one that was a satelite image turned into a map. That was kindof interesting.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

I like maps that have lots of fun geographical stuff like impassible barriers (mountains, rivers), port cities that can take you many provinces away, lots of choke points, etc. I'm excited to see the thematic maps currently in production. The Faerun (forgotten realms) map for Dom2 was really cool, but it was so big after many turns I got a bit lost in it. Definitely a victory point map http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The Europa map is also excellent. I am currently in a game as LA Man, and have having a heck of a time against the giants in scandinavia and Ermor in Italy.

Some ideas for maps, and might just only require good scanning skills: Westeros, a la George R.R. Martin. Shannara a la Terry Brooks. These wouldn't work thematically, but neither did Faerun, and it was still awesome. Someone who has the skills could port a lot of the Dom2 maps into Dom3 (I heard they sorta work, but some things were out of whack). A map of California would be fun.

Cradle of Dominion style maps rule all the rest though. Absolute excellently designed map.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

I'd like to see a truly gigantic map (atleast 540 provinces, and more would be welcome) with 90% oceans, just a scattering of islands here and there, maybe a very few minor land-masses, and lots and lots of special sites to keep things interesting. It would be early age only and have only 5 nations-Aboleths, Vanheim, Pale Ones, Basalt Kings, and Triton Kings. I think it would be a challenge for a good map-maker to keep a map that's almost all water interesting, and to create an ocean that has several different environments (deep rifts, shallow seas, impassible coral reefs instead of mountains, arctic waters, hot volcanic vents, sargasso seas, the list goes on, and then all the interesting things that could be done with the islands, like pirates, and cannibals, and giant fetishes, and giant fetishes ruling over cannibalistic pirates.). A lot could be done, mod-wise, with a really good ocean map.

Re: What sorts of maps do we need?
 

540 provinces and 5 nations would leave 100 provinces for everyone. There could well be 10 provinces between all players. MP games on such a map won't work (the turns will slow down to once per 48 hours or so BEFORE players meet each other). A 54 or 108 province map made mostly of water could work.