View Single Post
  #2  
Old November 10th, 2004, 06:40 AM
Arralen's Avatar

Arralen Arralen is offline
Major General
 
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: 500km from Ulm
Posts: 2,279
Thanks: 9
Thanked 18 Times in 12 Posts
Arralen is on a distinguished road
Default Re: Map Making Questions

"farm" means (IIRC) 1,5x pop, 0,5x ressources. "Plains" is just that - plain - it's the base for everything else, you can't have "Plains & Farmland".

All terrain modifiers add up, though. (Or mayb they even multiply. I'll have to do all the number checking some day, unless the devs tell us). That means, creating a province that is both farm land and mountain does not make any sense, as the boni cancel each other out (mostly. In fact, I found this combo to suck most - no pop, but no ressources either.)

So I recommend for mapmakers is to use special terrain and "small" provinces sparingly. Going overboard with these will result in a map that lets everyone move only 1 prov/turn everywhere - with 'armies' not bigger than 50 Inf because there isn't either sufficient money nor supplies for more units.

Do not draw provinces first, and then check what terrain they have ("ok - it's mountains to the left, tick it, grass in the north, tick it, it's small, ok, oh, and here's a swamp, just another tick in the editor .."). Draw your map, then place the borders at the edges of terrain features (as it's done with the original Illwinter maps).
__________________
As for AI the most effective work around to this problem so far is to simply use an American instead, they tend to put up a bit more of a fight than your average Artificial Idiot.
... James McGuigan on rec.games.computer.stars somewhen back in 1998 ...
Reply With Quote