New Map: Loemendor
 

Hello everyone. I recently got back to playing Dom2 and decided to pick up on a project I started some 10 months ago, namely this map. It started as an exercise to learn GIMP, and developed into a "fully grown" map.

The map is of my own homebrew roleplaying world. There are a number of special provinces with special defenders and perhaps sites, but a no-specials version of the map is also included. Also, due to the map design being thematic rather than utilitarian, I make no promises as to the MP balance of the map.

Now, the important details: The map has 157 provinces (142/15), and the land mass is rather fragmented, generally with two or three provinces acting as "bridges" between fragments.

Hope you enjoy. While it was a lot of work, I had fun making the map.


K.

Re: New Map: Loemendor
 

Wow, what a nice map! I like how you made the land bridges and how clean and clearly marked they are. Thanks so much! I can see how players may try to race to grab the northern waste areas for magic sites.

Re: New Map: Loemendor
 

Beautiful map! Looks fun to play on.

What software did you use to pain the map?

Pasha

Re: New Map: Loemendor
 

He used GIMP. Put all the different stuff in different layers so editing any particular detail never affected anything else, and then merged them. 55 different layers and a file size over 100 MB before turning it into a targa, as I recall...

Now that's a map that has been crafted with love, and having seen quite a few of the beta versions, I can honestly say that the end result is polished and polished again. Pretty fun to play on as well, there are some really strategid chokepoints, but generally you won't be immediately boxed in.

The northern waste region also has a couple of startable provinces, so getting one of them can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on what nation you play and so forth.

Edi

Re: New Map: Loemendor
 

Thanks, Edi.

It's a great map. I am trying it out in a practice game right now!

Re: New Map: Loemendor
 

Thanks for the compliments. I'm really glad you like it.

As Edi said, I made it with GIMP, and also as he said, the final picture had a bazillion layers, 56 to be exact. Five of those are not seen, being used for sketching stuff and storing icons and whatnot. Now, I went wild with the layers, having one for basically each forest, mountain, swamp, desert, ect., which made the picture a huge memory hog. I recommend using restraint with adding new layers.

There is one thing I'm a bit iffy about. All of the possible starting provinces have four land neighbors (two for seas), which means there are only a couple in the north-western corner. In the tests I ran, 5-8 players could start a comfortable distance from each other, but occasionally the above mentioned corner would be empty. So... I don't know how this affects the balance of the map. If it is deemed necessary, I can change some of the three-neighbor provinces in the north-western corner to be allowed as starting provinces.

K.

New Map Files
 

Hello everyone. I've made a few corrections and I'm posting new map files for the Loemendor map.

First, I ran a couple of more tests and decided to add a few more startable provinces in the northwestern part of the map. Most of the time even with eight players the starting positions would be okay, but once in a while (like about 1/7 games) the whole map west of the Landbridge (#127) and north of Sirenir Mouth (#66) would be without starting positions. Now both Moorway (#79) and Silent Hills (#107) are startable provinces. Both have only three land neighbors, but if you start there, chances are good that you'll have plenty of time a space to expand.

But, that wasn't really why I decided to do the update. The real problem I noticed was the Doom Horror guardian of Heavenfire Crater. Now, a single Doom Horror would have been fine and thematic, that's why I put it there to start with. The problem was that after a while the province guardians would number in the hundreds, with barbarians, militias, knights and scorpion beast commanders (what event is that?) all happily fighting along the supposedly lone Doom Horror. So, I changed the special guardians.


K.

Re: New Map Files
 

. http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...ndor_small.png

Re: New Map Files
 

yeah, and to be honest, after akashic recording the crater (took quite a fight to take that army down) there really wasn't anything there but stuff to incease unrest. I'd expect to find something really neat under there. very dissapointing

Re: New Map Files
 

If a Crater needs something neat, it should have the crater-site from which one can recruit illithids. But that would unbalance it, unless the defenders were *very* tough.

Re: New Map Files
 

The Crater province is going to get a slight rework in the future. That's because the Doom Horror causes one bad event per turn to happen, and any barbarian etc invasions simply get added to the garrison. After a while it gets quite big. That's why it's broken now.

The province does have very thematic scripted sites, and those are not going to be changed, but it is also a "Many Sites" province and a waste to boot, so...

Don't know when Kaljamaha will fix it, though.

Edi

Heavenfire Crater
 

Well, as Edi mentioned, I never intended for the crater province to be defended by a horde. It was supposed to have single horror, be the center of desolation so to speak. However, the idiotic Doom Horror caused a multitude of bad events which added to the garrison. For some reason, if barbarians show up in one of your provinces, they attack it, but if they show up in a neutral one, they join the party? Go figure. This is fixed in the new map files I posted in this thread, just above the post containing the picture.

Second, the crater is a waste province, and also tagged as many sites, which should give it +50% site frequency, or at least +30%, in case the multiple terrain types don't stack (haven't tested this). Even if you're playing with 20% sites and non-stacking, you should find on an average two sites there, and with 40% sites and stacking probabilities the average rises to 3.6 sites. So if you only found one site there, you got extremely unlucky.

Lastly, Heavenfire Crater is a cursed place. It is not supposed to be a nice, or even average place. It is place of despair, of horror and madness. That said, I'm not dead set against adding something worthwhile there, just try out the fixed map file first.


K.

Re: New Map: Loemendor
 

Kaljamaha,
You can put pretty anything horrible in your crater province, *except* a Doom Horror .. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
What about some Harvester of Sorrows ? Pretty thematic, and AFAIK it wouldn't magnet hordes of monsters .. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Heavenfire Crater
 

MAGIC SITE FREQUENCY
Kristoffer O posted 03 April, 2004 10:46
Not sure of the exact numbers.
(I'm not sure of the specifics. Waste might be 30, swamp and mountain 20. 'just a guess.)
I guess it works like this:
Magic: (site freq) + 30
Waste: (site freq) + 20
Swamp: (site freq) + 20
Mountain: (site freq) + 10
Forest: (site freq) + 10
Farm: (site freq) - 20
Only the most beneficial counts.
If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.
Many nature sites are common but restricted to forests etc.
Unique sites are also rare or common. Inkpot end is unique and common. Crown of Darkness is rare.
No blood under water IIRC. Not sure about unholy.

As you can see, a "many sites" province is only marginally better than waste, if at all.
If you want to make it a really special prov, add a pre-placed site.
With random sites, you could -and would most likely- something totally unfitting anyway.

Re: Heavenfire Crater
 

The map is really nice and I enjoy playing on it.

Some suggestions for improvement though:

1) Could you tag all preplaced sites with #knownfeature instead of #feature?(apart from the forgotten fortress of course) This way people who know how to read .map files don´t get rewarded compared to people who can´t be bothered to do that.

2) Some preplaced sites wield really lousy rewards for the strength of their guardians. Prime example is Arandor(72)
Killing 20 knights of avalon and two very effective mages(along with dozens of elite bodyguards) for a site that only lets you scry is a really bad deal.
The heavenfire crater is obviously another bad province.

Re: Heavenfire Crater
 

I'm not sure, but I quess all provinces with special defenders are tagged as having more magical sites than common provinces (+30% bonus, the most beneficial one)

Re: Heavenfire Crater
 

I'm not sure, but I quess all provinces with special defenders are tagged as having more magical sites than common provinces (+30% bonus, the most beneficial one). That is better than waste, and those provinces should be quite rich, too...

Special Provinces
 

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

On the issue of the special provinces: I created them based how things are in my own homebrew fantasy world. So, thematics totally trumped balance when I designed the special provinces. Also, I play SP almost exclusively, with strong independents, very hard research and few (usually 25%) sites, so that obviously gives me a different perspective. And I'm mostly a sandbox type player.

That said, I fully understand that in this game, you expect to get a reward if you defeat some tough defenders.

Whether or not the pre-placed sites should be pre-discovered or not, I really don't have that big of an opinion. I originally set them as #features because I thought it would be neat for players to first fight the special defenders, and then "discover" the site they were guarding, in the same manner sites are usually discovered, instead of it just being "congratulations, you beat the guardians, now here's your prize". But as I said, I don't have any strong opinions either way (though I would have hoped for people playing, at least for the first time, to not have peeked in the .map file).

As to whether the guardians in each special province are of appropriate strength, I fully admit they were done on a... I don't know what the word in English is ("mutu tuntuma" for you Finnish types)... on intuition, if you will. The types of guardians of each place are, as mentioned above, thematically appropriate (though the Harvester of Sorrows idea for Heavenfire Crater is good). The numbers can very well be changed. When I designed them, I didn't want the special provinces to be so good that players would immediately rush to capture them. That's why I mostly stayed away from sites that let you recruit mages. My vision was for them to be more like somewhat beefier defenders for a guaranteed site, or other goodies. Thus the suggestion for 7+ indie strength. I did test the defenders of each site before I released the map, against a "standard army", which resulted in lowering the strength in some provinces. So you can imagine they were quite tough to begin with.

Another consideration towards the reward part is that some places with special defenders are also of great strategic value, Arandor being the prime example. If you want to travel from the Old Road to King's Road, unless you go through Arandor, you'll be in for a long trek.

And finally, apparently the "many sites" tag doesn't stack with underlying terrain. Well... crap. I remember reading sometime ago on this forum that multiple terrain types stack with regards to population and resources, so I thought it would be the same for site frequency. This might prompt some change, I'll have to think about it.

*reads through own post*

It seems I have some trouble communicating my thoughts today. Summa summarum, I am very much interested in hearing how people view the special defenders, if they are too tough or too wimpy for the province they guard, considering both sites and strategic importance.


K.

Re: Special Provinces
 

"mutu tuntunma" might be translated into "quesstimation".

Have you given any provinces special #poptype instead of special prescripted defenders? The troglodytes could work as most monstrous creatures, amazons might work in some cases, etc. I think you could add extra defenders in addition to the normal defenders by using the #land or #setland that DIDN'T overwrite the original settings.

Re: Special Provinces
 

Judging from my tests of mapmaking, the #poptype command only affects the type of recruitable units available at a province, but not its initial independent defenders... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Thus it is difficult to strengthen the defense of independent provinces independently from the independent setting, especially not in a random way, i.e. I wish that there would be a map-command to say that the random independent force is to be set at global independent strength +/- something.

EDIT-PS: Of course, while setting the poptype one can set defenders manually as well, but randomness would help to allow oneself to enjoy one's own maps.

Re: Special Provinces
 

Pity. The one thing I most miss in mapmaking (or modding) is the ability to change poptypes, to add new poptypes, etc. They could add much flavour to, as an example, the Faerun map, and could (easily?) transform the random-map generator to a whole new level.

Re: Special Provinces
 

Doing things from a "mutu" basis can be best translated as doing things ad hoc. That's about as close as it gets.

Indeed. The way it works is that first Dom2 creates the map from the neighbor and terrain info, randomly assigns poptypes appropriate to terrain, places indie defebders according to that poptype, assigns magic sites and only then starts reading the special commands from the mapfile. IF the special commands overwrite the previous poptype, then you're just [censored] out of luck when the jade amazons turned into basic slingers or whatever else happened, even if you did fight them for control of the province.

Similarly, scripted magic sites overwrite previously assigned ones if there are no empty slots available.

That'd help, but assigning some lightly armored crossbows (#47 or #48) and some of the ID #40 HI will usually beef up any indie quite a bit. Put about 15 and 20 of them respectively and it'll do the trick. And they work with almost anything.

The procedure above, assigning some common as dirt indies in small quantities will do the trick, and the random variation from native defenders does the rest.

Edi

Re: Special Provinces
 

So, is there a new version of this map?
It looks really nice. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

New Versions
 

Well, there's the one and only update I made for the map, posted in this thread (just above the post with the picture of the map). The map on Arryn's site also has the new map files. I didn't put any version numbers on the map files, in hindsight that may have been a mistake.

I am probably going to do one (hopefully last) update for this map. It will change the special provinces, in order to balance the strength of the defenders with the rewards. But before I do that, I am waiting for people to report on how they feel said balance is for each of the special provinces.

Other than the possible imbalance with special defenders, there seems to not be any problems with the map. So, if you like playing without specials, go ahead and use the map. The no-specials map file is not going to see any updates (unless some problem appears).


K.

Re: New Versions
 

So uhh I d-load this map et-al and un-rar it etc and I get some swede telling me things are broken when I create a game with it..

I am D-loading it into the maps folder and un-raring it there as well. Not sure what else I am missing! (Of course, if I was sure, that would be the problem.. Kind of like how one finds the car keys in the last place you look. Well duh it's the last place as thats the place you finally found them in..)

I have D-loaded and made other maps work with no difficulty so..?

Rathar

Re: New Versions
 

Make sure you have both the .tga file (the image of the map) and the .map file (map specs) in the maps folder of your game. The first post in this thread contains a zip with the image and the older map file, and my post a little ways down from it, just above the the one that showns the image, contains the updated map file. A package with both can also be obtained from Arryn's site.

If you do have both, I am at a loss to explain what is wrong. The "något gick fell" error message is rather annoying, because it doesn't actually specify what the problem is.


K.

Re: New Versions
 

Not as annoying as one that used to be very common on Sun's Solaris/Unix operating systems : "Fatal Error: Fatal". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: New Versions
 

Hmm got it working. Seems the .tga file got stuffed somewhere wierd. Dunno why but thanks!