Antilarium
 

Here's my first complete map project. Description and screenshot follows. The most recent version is available at http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...?Number=617462 , but hunt through the forums for an alternate version with the original graphics if you are interested.


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#dom2title Antilarium, the Wells of Power
#imagefile Antilarium.tga
#domversion 175
#defaultmapzoom 1.00
#description "217 provinces, including 32 water. Starting locations are established for 12 nations, 3 of which are underwater. Nearly all water provinces are contiguous, and can reach all parts of the map. Landmasses are separated, mountainous, with many interconnections. Magic is plentiful. Game victory is acheived by controlling 8 of the 16 special victory sites. Two of the 16 sites are underwater, and count double toward victory. Each victory site is marked on the map by an embedded sword.

Sixteen provinces contain the fabled Wells of Power. Guarded by heroes and armies of legendary might, it is said that the first Pretender which can control 8 of these Wells can recreate the world unto their own desires. While these Wells all are surrounded by an unusual wealth of magic sites, their defenders will not be defeated without tremendous force of arms and magic.

This map was generated randomly by, and subsequently touched up using Photoshop CS2. It is based loosely upon some old AD&D campaigns.

Author: Psientist
Version: 1.01
Revised - 6/1/2008

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Screenshot:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...Antilarium.gif

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

I like the watercolor look!

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Shame it isn't wrappable as is.

The water provinces are perhaps a wee bit too big to me, but apart from that it looks great.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Wow, nice look! So you did that all within Photoshop? That's amazing.

The only negative thing I could say about it would be that the mountains look a bit odd being transparent.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Great water-colour effect dude. Sounds like a great map.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Cool map! Thanks. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I look forward to playing on it.

My three cents: I agree that the ghost mountains are a bit funky to the eye. Also, I wish that it was higher resolution so that it still was so pretty when one zoomed in.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Pros and Cons. High resolution means longer downloads, and longer load times within the game. Sometimes even crashes on scrolling.

Not that it affects me personally but Ive had complaints when Ive made maps that work for myself but were too much for other peoples machines.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

That's a good point, but you can get pretty darn close up on Glory of the Gods. Is that map too big for many people's machines?

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

I've started two games on this map, Late Age, with 11 random AIs on impossible. It's been fun, but there are some oddities:

Both times four or five nations went dominion-kill on the first turn. I'm not sure if this is a problem, or if I started with too many opponents.

I continued playing the second game I started. It's a lively game and no one else has vanished, but some of the special indy provinces have serious starvation problems. For example, the Ulm-based one on the north of the map disintegrated over the course of several turns.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Thanks for the compliments!

I don't know about the dominion-kill, I haven't seen that on any of my playtests. I just uncovered the starvation thing myself; I unthinkingly made some of the Victory provinces just too overloaded with defense troops, so they all disease and die off. I'm going to have to scale back accordingly, find a way to mod those provinces' supply rating (I don't think that's an option, but please correct me if I'm wrong!), or start doling out cauldrons to the defenders. Either way, I'll post an update later this month after I've done more testing.

I could have generated a slightly higher resolution, but I thought the current size was a good compromise based upon some of the other maps out there. I even worked with Photoshop's ability to reduce size through color indexing.

The ocean size isn't as big as it appears, in gameplay. However, I have witnessed the Thetis Blessing be *quite* significant on this map.

I might be able to tweak the tranparencies of the mountains and trees on the update. I didn't want them to be too obtrusive, however, and muss up the watercolor effect too much.

Thanks for the feedback!

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

I also ran into the dominion kill on the first turn. With 16 nations, 7 were dom-killed right away.

I would have to agree on the transparent mountains. I think you can keep the watercolor look without them being transparent... just keep the colors very light and pastel.

Great looking map though, and sounds very fun to play once the bugs are ironed out.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Liked the map, started (and haven't finished) 2 games on it. Also had the dominion kill problem, primarily in the upper right corner.

Did anyone else get the problem with provinces 13 and 14 (bottom center/rightish) being overlapping? I can't seem to invade it.

I really like the map, narrow passages and such but just a few preferential comments:

Whoever gets stuck in the middle gets kind of screwed with tons of wastelands around. I started there in one, and vs. the AI it was fine as a self handicapp, but most AI nations will suffer.

Too much water! Or possibly too many water neighbors. Played one game down to 3 players, essentially myself on one half, AI sauro on the other and a strong oceania owning most of the water. Unfortunately the AI aren't at war so its actually not a pushover. The sheer annoyance of being able to be attacked at seemingly 80% of my land is a bit much.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

I like the map, I played about 40 turns as Mictlan.

Some remarks :
- Those nice special provinces have sites that allow recruitment of national untis (Celestial Masters and Sohai were the one I found). Except of course that those just don't work (unless perhaps you're already the right nation ?).
- Playing as Mictlan and starting in the upper right corner (I know control around 20 provinces there), I did not find one single province with more than 5000 pop. I don't know if it is something you did (or did not do), but it certainly doesn't encourage blood hunting...
- There was one special province with gladiators independants (and some infantry and crosbowmen). The gladiators just disappeared one turn, I believe an AI attacked the province and failed. The point it, gladiators just don't work as province defenders since they disappear after the firt fight.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Fantastic feedback. I see I have some work to do.

Province 14 appears in the map code .. and there must be a white pixel denoting it on my bitmap... but I never drew borders for it properly. Will fix.

I'll also see about un-transparency-ing the terrain (fortunately, it's all stored as photoshop layers so it is possible). The resolution is as high as it's going to go.

Also the gladiators, maybe look closer about my "high population" settings for a few provs.

There's a lot of water... and the water nations have a huge advantage on accessibility... but there's relatively few actual water provinces. I've played three games on the map now, and water only became a problem when the "Thetis blessing" got cast.

The "in the middle" starting location - I presume we are talking about Ambersand/94? Is very strategic. I'd rather keep things as they are, but compensate with other advantages... population, magic sites, etc. for that area. Any ideas or suggestions?

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Whatever happened to this map? I was looking forward to playing it when it was fixed.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

It seems there is some dominion problem with Abysia.
We will launch a twelve multiplayer game and I have look at the map file concerning this Abysian's problems.
It seems there is some conflict in the starting province, I had tried to solve it.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Quick update, Abysian problem solved by EvilO

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Update : 13 players version et some debug on forgotten sea province.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

I like this map too.

I just started a SP game with 11 AI nations (EA, I'm playing Arco for the first time).

I found a bug (at least in the first 12 players version) : the pixel for the middle province in the little 3 provinces triangle continent at the bottom of the map is doubled !! So, there is 2 overlapping provinces at this emplacement (the same as in AomOrc 3.0, for those who know).

Edit: Oups! Sorry jutetrea, you've allready pointed this ...

Some aesthetic notes : it is too pale http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif and the blocking moutains aren't enough visibles.

But I tell you : this is a very nice drawing work, really.

For the game concept, I will tell you after my victory (yep, I will win ... no doubt about it ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Many thanks to Psientist for this very nice map!

I have fixed the problem with provinces 13, 14 being adjacent white pixels. The change is based on the latest version of the .map by efelle.

Edit: Also changed the province names text to black to make it a bit more readable.

Edit: After playing a bit, I realized that water start province 110 is only one province away from land start province 77. Moved 110 start to 131.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

OK - hey, thanks for the kudos folks, and sorry it's been so long since I checked out comments. I've been offline.

I've got an update to the map, which I've playtested a number of times and I think I've got everything fixed, and a few balance enhancements. Cross my fingers!

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

Here's the revised map graphic, not that you can tell at this size, but it required way too many months of converting the old original art to vector graphics. In the end, I'm not convinced the overall effect is better, but it's certainly good enough to not get in the way of playing.


http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...617465-map.jpg

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

i love this map !
I love especially those huge indy armies guarding the special provinces. I have more fun testing out how to beat those guardian armies than beating the AI nations :-)

Please make more maps like this !

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

I just started an SP game on this map (I don't know how I missed it the first time around). It's very nice. I hope to use the huge indy armies as training for MP games.

One problem I had, though...the start position at 94 has a site modded onto it. This will knock out a national site if a nation has 4 sites (eg, Sauromatia).

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

hmm. Good point about region 94. I wasn't aware it would have that effect. I'll note that for any future updates.

Re: New Map: Antilarium
 

OK, I'm working on version 3 of this map. Playing around with implementing a custom mod to implement with the map, so now it can contain custom armies and guardians for the Wells, not to mention custom magic sites. It will take a while, so be patient, but I think it will be a big improvement.