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Chandrea V4.3 (94prov) _AND_ Drea V4.3 (49 prov)
1 Attachment(s)
<font color="red">Attachment is only a small jpg overview. See next post for download link of the actual high-resolution .tga and .map files (5MB)!</font>
Most recent is <font color="red">V4.3</font> (verify the number displayed in the map's title), which is described at Post#395567 . [b]DREA V4.3 (version with only 49 provinces) is also described in the aforementioned post. Version history:
Welcome to the rugged Land of Chandrea, also known as the dunken donut: It is a medium-sized wrap-around map (102 provinces), based upon maps from "Wizards Kings", a fantasy strategy hex-based board game by Columbia Games. I got their permission to distribute this map for private purposes. I do not now that board game yet, but someone here on the Dom2-Forum pointed out awhile ago that the Wizard Kings maps might make nice wrap-around maps for Dom2 too. Well, we'll see... See the map's more detailed description in the next post. I tried my best guess to make it into a balanced dom2-map, but I am lacking the time to play on it intensively now, for I just have to finish my ongoging Dom2 games first. However, I did not want to delay publishing of this map anymore either, so I am here asking for your help to play-test my map so that I can balance it out for fair multiplayer games! Because of the pervading oceans, my first guess would be that it is sensible to either play Vanheim, Marignon:Conquerors of the Sea, Oceania, R'yleh, Caelum, Ermor or a water-cult (or to otherwise insist that nobody else plays one of these nations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). Please observe my recommendation to ban fortress-building on all bridges and using a magic-site frequency of 40 or below because of the many-site provinces. Please post any mistakes and proposed changes to the map file here! I would hate it if there were various corrected vesions, since I took the trouble to give each province a new unique name. The names are silly enough to be recalled in another game, so all versions of Chandrea should be similar enough that these unique names are of use. (Do you know where e.g. the "Rift of Zyx" lies on Karan? Yes? See!) Note furthermore that the map can be cut in half horizontally to yield two further, smaller wrap-around maps, but I do not recommend doing it until this one has been balanced out and corrected. Have fun playing and thanks for reading through. Post#395567 |
Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
Due to upload-space limitations, the zipfile could not be attached to this post. It might become available for downloand within a couple of hours/days Arryn's and/or Arralen site. Thanks!
The file contains the .tga, a changes.txt and two .map files. Here is the detailed description text included in the .map file for V3.2: Welcome to the rugged lands of Chandrea: 94 provinces, of which are 18 water, 16 cities, 4 wastelands, and 3 swamps. Legend: * All cities, symbolized by orange circles, are densly populated large woodland provinces (i.e. high population, high resources). * Each city is occupied/defended by two Wizard-Kings, a fellow Priest and their friends. If you do not like them, deleting them from the mapfile should be easy. * All land starting locations are cities. (Can be turned off at each game creation.) * Blue lines represent common shipping lines usable by unskilled sailors. * Brown roads ensure province connection, but are meaningless otherwise. * Many-site provinces can be recognized by unusual graphical features (6). * Cities yield 2 victory points, Many-site provinces yield 1 victory point, Total VP: 38. * All provinces names are non-random to ease memorization and role-play. * Play with neighbors-mapfilter enabled until you know the map (press 8). My personal recommendations for play: 6-10 players, independent strength 6, victory points (22) or dominion (666). The map is based upon maps from 'Wizards Kings', a fantasy strategy hex-based board game by Columbia Games (www.columbiagames.com). Permission to use this map for private purposes is kindly granted by Columbia Games. The map was reworked and de-hexed by Chazar de Waahn, who is not connected to Columbia Games in any way. As long as this paragraph is included, you are free to distribute (and maybe alter) this map for non-profit purposes. Chazar can be contacted through Shrapnel's Dominions2 Forum. Always remember to have fun! |
Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
Post became obsolete due to extensive editing of previous posts.
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Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
30,000,000 gives 30 MB (a bit less than that, but more than 29 MB), but the limit might be expressed in bits rather than in bytes (where a byte is equal to eight bits). If it is so, the actual limit is below 4 MB, around 3.6 MB or so. The limit does say it is bytes, but that could be a typo, or there is something else altogether going on here.
You might wish to try to compress your map in the RAR format, which usually leads to some gains in compression over Zip. That could be enough to drop the size below those 3.5/3.6 MB, assuming it is actually the limit. As for the description, I think the trick to keep formatting requires to use an Unix formatting (using linefeeds at the end of each line). You would then add two newlines in a row to create a new paragraph. Cutting and pasting the description from another map with the proper formatting may be another solution: the linefeeds signs should appear then, and you would only have to paste them where they are needed. |
Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
Hello! I also cannot download your file, sorry. WIll try again later.
Question: Are you also interesting in making sure that the map should also be playable for nations which are not Van, CotS, Caelum, etc.? Will also try to test for that. Question2: These "bridges" provinces, which I can currently not see -- do they also have population? Then it seems that it may be odd to have them as distinct provinces. But of course I will wait for the map. |
Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map needed
Quote:
Too bad I am not able to download the map, unless it is the .jpg file attached to the first post (that has a picture of the map, looks good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif ). |
Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
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Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
You can download the map *deleted - the server is no longer available*
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Re: Playtesters for new small wrap-around map need
Had a quick look at it. It's great.
Only some minor issues: It's too big: The Cradle Map (220 prov) is 1600x1600 pixels, yet Chandrea is 1500x2188. This makes the icons appear very small if in standard size. Solution would be to re-do the map in ~1300x1300 pixels, or, alternativly, use #defaultmapzoom x.y command, with x.y= 0.8 - 1.2 as it suits your taste. Nevertheless, you could't get a complete overview even at minimum zoom. City shouldn't be grassland: Grassland has about -50% ressources vs. Plains, and even those don't have much. But ressources in DOM aren't ore, but production capacity, which may come from ore, wood, trade or whatever. By making cities grassland, they won't be able to produce anything unless you plant a high admin castle there. And even than output will be small, as in inherent ress would be doubled, but only a %tage drawn from the neigbouring prov. So a wood/mountain province with a watchtower could have a higher production capacity than a city with a castle ... Furthermore it's slightly irritating that province flags show up in the cities, but those might not be centered in the province at all. So my suggestions: Make all city icons provinces on their own, maybe even with pre-build forts or pre-placed site (Archaic or Firbolg Fortress etc., which the AI tends to find reliably. Pre-Known Sites do not work, as castles are generated on finding it) Pre-placed castles is better for AI players, which tend to go for every castle they see. Players on the other hand could 'cheat' by taking over the province, but never attacking the province troops which defend the castle, not the province. Making the city province "plain, large", it will have lots of inhabitants, but also some usuable ressources. Province border may have to be adjusted, so that the cities do not border only the province they're in atm. A city with multiple neighbours could one or more of them turned into grassland, so there're still some high-income provinces around. More after I did some test games ... |
Design decisions behind Chandrea...
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