The Eight Gates
 

Note: This post has been redone (12/7/7) to combine all important information in this top post.

<font color="red"> UPDATE:</font><font color="blue"> This post has a .RAR attached. The third post in this thread has the same thing as a .ZIP. You can download whichever you prefer, the .RAR is smaller, the .ZIP is more accessible for many. </font>

"The Eight Gates"

STORY
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While the Pantokrator ruled, there was relative peace in the world. Skirmishes would break out from time to time, but not major wars. The people were united under one god. Since his sudden dissappearance, the world has turned to Chaos. The various peoples of the world have each rallied under their local deities and are fighting for primacy. Even the world itself is being torn apart - rifts have opened up in the fabric of the world, swallowing land and lake alike into voids of nothingness. In the wake of this chaos, eight flavors of magical gates, previously only accessible to the Pantokrator and his highest servants, have opened up across the land. Any common man can travel the gates, crossing huge areas of land in a short time - but sometimes there is a horrible price for travelling the Gates.

With the people warring and the world itself in destruction, one supreme god must rise to power, to calm the world and to rule the heavens. Will it be you?


DETAILS
----------------------------------------------------------
Roughly 230 provinces, 10 water, rest land. Not wrap-around, but efforts have been made to reduce/eliminate the advantages of edges and corners. Start locations are not set, but are restricted to a set of provinces all of which are roughly balanced. A water player is allowed, but would likely be at a serious disadvantage.

The map has a lot of chokepoints, and a fairly low number of average neighbors. This is countered by The Eight Gates - a means of teleporting across the world. This means that despite the low average connectivity, there is no/little chance of getting boxed in because of myriad options for expansion/attack.

4 VERSIONS
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The download contains four versions of this map (four for the price of one!)
1. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, but nodes are not special. Nodes are weakly guarded.

2. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, and nodes harm those who stay in them for long. Nodes are weakly guarded.

3. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, nodes harm those who stay in them for long, and each flavor of node allows recruitment of spellcasters with that magic path. Nodes are weakly guarded.

4. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, nodes harm those who stay in them for long, and each flavor of node allows recruitment of spellcasters with that magic path. Nodes have stronger thematic guards than versions 1-3.

This map should hoepfully be fun for SP, but is meant for MP. I'd love to see a MP game start on any of these versions. 2 and 4 makes the most sense to me.

SCREENSHOTS
--------------
Here's a preview of the nodes for four of the eight flavors of gates (clockwise from top left, water,fire,air,earth).

Each of the 8 nodes can be reached by 5 gates scattered across the world. I'll show a clip of the overland map and the gates next.
http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/368...previewlk7.jpg

Here's a preview of the overland map (without province borders). It's a swampy area with 4 flavors of gates visible. Clockwise from top left: water, life, blood (the pool of blood at the bottom), astral. The blood gates look different from the other 7 flavors of gate because blood magic is different from the 7 other types of magic in dom3.

(The thing in the middle is just decoration.)

Gameplay-wise, there are five gates of each of the 8 flavors scattered across the overland map. If you step into any of the five pools of blood on the overland map, you are brought to the blood node (which looks like the four nodes in the post above, except blood themed). In the blood node, you can exit through any blood pool. If you stay in the blood node (or any node) too long, you will have bad things happen to you. Depending on which of the .map files you play with you might also be able to recruit blood mages (other mages for other nodes) in the blood node. The other seven flavors of gates all function the same way.
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4...landpreoc8.jpg

Whole Map (For Scale, note the zoom-in is a small section in the southeast of this map)
http://img135.imageshack.us/img135/268/8gatessr3.jpg




<font color="red"> Please give feedback at the new map repository
http://dom3maps.wikidot.com</font>

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

I bet this map will be more pleasant to me than the previous one, as I only play SP (one day, I'll have a connection on my PC, and I'll be able to go and get crushed...).to increase connectivity you could also put some ports, as there is water on your map. Hard to be more precise without a preview.(I,too, want a poney)

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

<font color="blue"> EDIT - THIS POST HAS THE FILE AS A .ZIP INSTEAD OF A .RAR!</font>


Yes. The AI should do much better on this map. It'll use the gates better than it uses the desert.

Yeah, I thought some about the ports idea, or having a a river map where the river provinces are long and thin.. because (maybe?) you can travel quickly on water in real life compared to land (well.. if you go the right way.. but ignore this).so river provinces would be important.

--------

I'm interested in how different connectivity maps play out. Like, two maps could have an average of 4 neighbors per province, right. But if one has all provinces with 4 neighbors exactly, it would play very differently from one that had half 2 neighbors, and half with 6. You think think about how many nearest neighor,s 2nd nearest neighbors, etc. each province has.

One thing I realized, is in most maps, if you have a province W, with neighbors X, Y, and Z, X, Y and Z are usually close. For example, if W,X,Y,Z each had 3 neighbors, you could have something like

NOTE - Somehow my "ASCII" is all messed up... putting periods as placeholders helps? ignore them please

..........X......
........./.|.\....
A--Z--W--Y--B

So, from W, in two moves or less, you can get to any of 5 provinces.

But if you have some provinces that connect provinces that do not connect to eachother and have 3 neighbors.


.....A--X--B....
...........|.......
C--Z--W--Y--D.
......|.........|....
......E.......F....

In this scenario, with all provinces having 3 neighbors, just as before, in two moves or less, you can now get to
9 provinces (almost twice as many).

---------------
I think when I return to map making I'll use an easier/simpler system for making the graphical parts of maps, and play around more with this aspect perhaps. These maps take too long, and I'm not even sure if I like their look. They seem not grand enough a scope (like, seeing individual mountains instead of a huge mountain range.)

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

http://img72.imageshack.us/img72/368...previewlk7.jpg

Here's a preview of the nodes for four of the eight flavors of gates (clockwise from top left, water,fire,air,earth).

Each of the 8 nodes can be reached by 5 gates scattered across the world. I'll show a clip of the overland map and the gates next.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/4...landpreoc8.jpg


Here's a preview of the overland map (without province borders). It's a swampy area with 4 flavors of gates visible. Clockwise from top left: water, life, blood (the pool of blood at the bottom), astral. The blood gates look different from the other 7 flavors of gate because blood magic is different from the 7 other types of magic in dom3.

(The thing in the middle is just decoration.)

Gameplay-wise, there are five gates of each of the 8 flavors scattered across the overland map. If you step into any of the five pools of blood on the overland map, you are brought to the blood node (which looks like the four nodes in the post above, except blood themed). In the blood node, you can exit through any blood pool. If you stay in the blood node (or any node) too long, you will have bad things happen to you. Depending on which of the .map files you play with (I'll provide 3?) you might also be able to recruit blood mages (other mages for other nodes) in the blood node. The other seven flavors of gates all function the same way.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Sounds very, very cool.

I'm looking forward to it.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Awesome stuff Zylithan! Something about your artwork reminds me of the old Lords of Magic. What are you drawing with, by the way?

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Was that made using age of wonders tools?

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Ahh! *Wants to play*

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Yes. AoW2 or AoW:SM by the looks of it.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Thanks for the curiousity.

Edi is correct. I'm using Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic to make the maps... actually, I'm using a community mod that adds a lot more graphics to the map editor (I think its called Unofficial Patch 1.4). AoW:SM is a great TBS 4x game I think, and I found about about dom3 on forums for that game.

Afer I build the map, I stitch it together in powerpoint, then import to gimp and make layers for the provinces, and edit some of the graphics a little (blood pools are actually water pools originally, and I think I'll try to make air, water, astral nodes look more different, as they are too hard to tell apart in my opinion.)

I'm not sure if I will continue to use AoW:SM for maps after this one. It is rather time intensive, and while the graphics are pretty, I'm not sure if I like the feel/scale. I think my maps show individual mountains and trees more, whereas most dom3 map (and hence, my impression of what they should look like) show forests and mountain ranges. I do think this package would be great for a Single Player map, as there are SO MANY cool graphics that could be used for special sites. But I'm not using those really (aside from the gates).

If you have opinions about the look of this map, let me know. I'll hiatus after finishing this guy, but after that I'll decide whether to switch platforms before my next map I think.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

I was recognizing that also. I kept meaning to mess with that mapgen. Great mapgen altho I would probably have to generate a whole bunch of them and paste them together.

I also kept meaning to go to the forums for it and see if the devs there have provided any pages of the tiles for some of the special things they use in the maps. It would be great to offer it here.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Hey, some of us like single player maps with crazy sites and stuff. It'd be nice to see a few more scenario type maps, where people actually start with things - less of the random map that looks nice feel.

What you've got here looks pretty interesting as is though, the gates are a neat touch. Will they just be odd neighbor connections? Or something else?

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Frostmourne - yeah, I've been thinking I might work on SP with lots of sites some time. Or a coop vs. computer, or some other type of map that isn't supposed to be perfectly fair, like MP maps.

Gates will play with connectivity, but depending on which .map file you use, will have different other properties also.

Re: Gandalf - If we can distribute their graphics that could be a worthwhile project if people like the map style.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Just an update and apology for the delay. Setting special sites took some learning, and playtesting took longer than I thought because rl has been busy. I will upload the map whenever my roommates stop hogging all the bandwidth - soon.

4 versions:
1. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, but nodes are not special. Nodes are weakly guarded.

2. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, and nodes harm those who stay in them for long. Nodes are weakly guarded.

3. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, nodes harm those who stay in them for long, and each flavor of node allows recruitment of spellcasters with that magic path. Nodes are weakly guarded.

4. Gates provide connections between faraway lands, nodes harm those who stay in them for long, and each flavor of node allows recruitment of spellcasters with that magic path. Nodes have stronger thematic guards than versions 1-3.

This map should hoepfully be fun for SP, but is meant for MP. I'd love to see a MP game start on any of these versions. 2 and 4 makes the most sense to me, but then again, I've never played MP http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Still a noob http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Sounds fun! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

This looks awesome. I'm very tempted to run a game on this map soon. I like how you've included multiple versions. How do the gates harm people in them? Do they cause disease or something?

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Just a reminder the file you updated is a .rar and some people ahve problems with .rar files. better to make them .zip

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Juzza - thanks, I'll do a zip as well. For some reason I have tons of trouble uploading any file (even like 1kb) to this forum. But I was somewhat worried.

Llama - The nodes have 0 population in all cases - no-one lives in these very weird and frightening places... and this makes them produce little gold, supplies and resources. The nodes hurt people with two sites... I think they are something like 1-5% horror mark and 1-5% disease per turn. (one is infinite vale or horror, the other is.. mayabe inkpot end). I wanted to throw a cursing one in also, but those all have other consequences I didn't want, like a city you can explore, etc.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Just took a closer look at this map, zoomed in all the way and had a good look around. It really is lovely, I'm quite excited to play on it. Thanks Zylithan.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Thanks for the zip! Now I can play on the map as well http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

thanks for the .zip suggestion folks. It's up now as a zip(in third post).

Cheers!

Edit. KO! gotta say, very cool to have a dev try my map. Then again, not so much if he hates it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Way excellent! You seem to have taken all of the best suggestions scattered all over this forum and put them to work on a beautiful map.

The only thing that bothered me is it being in a subdirectory which might confuse some people as to how to "install" it.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Thanks Gandalf - I tried to gather advice. I think I could really do a lot more with your comment about multiple .map files (such as making interesting provinces outside of the nodes, etc...) but I am just way too busy in rl to do a more complete job on this map, and I'm still very much learning. But I've got maybe 3-5ish ideas for a "next map" whenever that happens, and whatever it is, my goal is to have it be better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I think it could be cool to make a BIG version of a portals map - here the portals are shortcuts. But one can imagine distances being prohibitively long if you dont use portals. Or the void (inspired by the nothing from the neverending story) could make some places totally unreachable except by portals or teleportation, etc.

agreed about the subdirectory.. that was an unintended thing.


And Llamabeast - let me know if you run a game/s on this map. I'd be curious to see how it works, and I'd love to get in on it, especially if it was for noobs or teams.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Starting my first game on it now, one thought if you want to spend the time on it:

Would it be worth making all adjacent provinces to a node a no-start? I'm restarting my game creation as my castle has a node as an initial neighbor. Some folks might like it though, but I like a buffer from the get go. 10 players on this one for a bit of expansion.

edit: Never mind, probably not feasible - not too many provinces don't border one or the other. This should be interesting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Yeah. Many start spots have a neighbor node.

Start spots all have the same number of (non-water) neighbors, and are prevented from having a gate in the start spot, and prevented from having bad terrain or bad neighbor terrains, or multiple neighbor gates. Also edges are avoided. I can imagine that especially version 3, where nodes let you recruit and aren't guarded that well, that starting next to a node you don't have magic access to could be a big advantage... but that's why there are versions 2 and 4! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I like to think of this map as being "mostly balanced" whatever that means. I guess it means its not symmetric. But a perfectly symmetric map can only be played by a very specific number of people.. this map could go for 2 or 16...

Thanks for the feedback, and let me know if you have more observations as you go along.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

One observation - its already fun and I've only just started. I'm only playing with 10 nations and I'm already "bordering" 6 of them.

I've just been concentrating on taking territories, not rushing a neighbor. I'll be curious to see how mighty AI with its big armies move them around the nodes.

I'm playing 4? guarded/recruit, so I'm trying not to take advantage of the sites right away for recruiting, letting the AI take what they will and just PD'ing the jump spots on my territory.

Did you specifically put a good amount of the gem priestesses around? onyx, jade, etc? I've got like 20 territories and already have 5 of those pop types. Bit odd.

So far so good.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Glad you're enjoying. Outside of the nodes I did not place any special sites, so you're just getting lucky.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Once the new patch comes you might want to check out if any new sites offer cursing without unwanted special abilities.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

good call endoperez... i dont know if undead, etc are affected by curse, but because they dont care about diseases (right?) I was worried that undead could camp in the nodes.

Also, that reminds me, major props to Edi and his database, without which I couldnt have made this map.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

There are sites which cause damage to undead/demons. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

Another good call! This is why I need to either play a MP game or two or collaborate wtih someone who isn't an idiot like I in order to make better maps.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

I haven't played much MP, actually. I've just been around for a long time. You learn about these things by listening and, when necessary, researching. Once I have an idea, I go through Edi's lists and look for anything fitting. Modding is a good way to learn about modding. Balancing is what you need MP experience for.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

59 downloads if I add up the zip and rar, woot!

My first MP game just started, so that should help. I wasn't sure about the balance of the node guards in version 4.. based it off of the cost to summon, and also fighting against them a little. But I'm sure it's not totally balanced.

As far as modding, I would love to do a mod. But I think a lot of other people are doing great mods now.. I need to learn how to play the game first.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

on any of the guarded versions I think the guards should be much more powerful (large), as they'll be starving/diseased and die off. Possibly have some devil producers on the fire and blood nodes so it gets bigger the longer you wait (plus they'll be dying off slowly over time as well). Anything else produce units without a dom effect for the AI? I like the idea of guards growing larger the longer you leave them.

Possibly add a couple thematic items as well, fire items for fire node, ice items for ice node, etc

Ball's random is great for creating provinces with specific units/items quickly.

So far, I've only played mostly on the far right side and top of the map. Seems there are "dead" zones where there aren't a lot of node pathways...might make good start locations although I haven't quite identified how many there are.

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

I'd love to do a version with special sites, etc...

The AoW:SM editor has so many beautiful toys I am not using right now. I guess part of my hesitation is that special sites could make the map unbalanced or harder to balance.

But especially if balance isn't required, I think there's a lot of really fun things to be done. (SP maps, or etc.)

Re: Map Preview: The Eight Gates
 

84 combined downloads, yay.

Maybe I'll check out Edi's ne w3.10 DB when it comes out for cursing sites as per Endoperez's suggestions. I'll let you know if I make a 5th version or 6 version with special sites, etc...

Sisyphus Reborn :P
 

Still testing out this map in SP - very pretty.

I'll post my compiled log when (if?) I'm done.

Hopefully, the more experienced players here will get you feedback sooner - at the rate i'm going, the Heat Death of The Universe is likely to occur first http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Damn Space/Time Continuum...what idiot made Time LINEAR!!!

Re: Sisyphus Reborn :P
 

Shamless self-promotional bump. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Sisyphus Reborn :P
 

more shameless bumping. I'll probably try to get a MP game going on this map soon ~ within a couple weeks.

Any reports from anyone who has played it?
It has zip and rar versions in this thread if anyone who hasn't tried wants to give it a go...

Any feedback on the art style? - this is the easiest for me to make, but if people don't like it (It's different than most maps) than I can try to use something else in the future.

Re: Sisyphus Reborn :P
 

I liked your map quite a bit. I like the fact that it's terrain allows for defensible points and I also like the way it creates the situation where you are essentially in contact with all the other races. The look of the map works for me, albeit being a bit dark. I prefer the look over many of the other maps out there.

Re: Sisyphus Reborn :P
 

I am considering to start a new MP game through llamaserver and was checking various maps, yours seems to be awesome and i'd like to pick it if it is ok with u (version 4)

I eagerly await your reply or MP http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif)

Also a figure of how many players is very welcome! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re:: Eight Gates
 

totally welcome to use the map for any multiplayer games or whatever.

Re:: Eight Gates
 

Thanks! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Atm i'm starting a game with a mroe conventional map (that u are welcome to join ! it's called suricate)

When this game starts we may start another one with your map too ^^