[Hellboy]

General Comments:

As I mentioned in my initial posts it is my intention to start w/ Hadrian's map and make some edits from there. That said, there are a couple of variations and issues that are worth discussing. Starting from Edi's original and most excellent work on the Faerun map, as contained in the file "Faerun_large_v2.rar" (for which I need to repair the link in the initial post, and will do so shortly), I think there are 2 critical changes which I will certainly include:

Removal of fixed start positions (as Hadrian did)
Removal of all indy fortresses

Less critically, but hopefully useful, I will closely examine the neighbor listing, and see if I can't fix any mismatches between the visual map borders and the neighbor list.


Starting Positions:

One thing I am quite certain of is that whether we have 16 players or 18 players, some player (or possibly more than one) will get screwed in their starting position. This is not a reason for restart, and this applies to everyone (including myself). If you happen to be that player, it would be much appreciated if you soldier on, and make life as inconvenient as possible for your better endowed neighbors. Also remember that in a diplomacy based game such as Dom3, coming from behind in even the worst starting positions is always possible.

All that said, I am more than happy to make some changes that will reduce the chances of players getting screwed and/or increasing the number of players (and perhaps adjusting the edit strategy to accommodate this).

For example, I know that one of the more likely ways to get screwed is to have your starting position come up in certain locations in the western islands (e.g. The Moonshae Islands). I could go through all of those, and make them all nostart, but I think that would be unwise as it would greatly increase the odds of starting close to another player (since so many land provinces would be eliminated as starting candidates) and it would also favor starting positions in the area of the Sword Coast (since they would have this big indy back yard area).

The better solution would be closely examine all those islands and make any one of them w/ 2 or less land neighbors a nostart. I can attempt this, but I would not want to be held accountable for missing one, and if someone still got screwed by landing in an island w/ just 2 neighbors, that would not be reason for restart.

All the above said, I still welcome input on this kind of edit, and the number of players we start with (especially from anyone w/ experience on or knowledge of the Faerun map).


Other Faerun Edits:

The main other point for discussion is the VP provinces that Hadrian set up. Personally, I like the idea that there are a number of very tough provinces out there, and that they would remain indy until the time in the game when the Uniques are beginning to be summoned. At least so long as the rewards for those provinces are correspondingly high.

From playing on Hadrian's map, I have the impression that his VP provinces are just as I have described above. However, I don't have a ton of experience on his map, and so I'd like to open up the discussion on that point. Also, if someone wants to make the point that Edi's "Faerun_large_v2.rar" file, w/ the map file "Faerun_large.map" has better special locations than Hadrian's version, then I'd be willing to consider that, as well.

However the editing procedes, the one goal that I intend to stick to, however, is that there are a number of special provinces that are impractical to take w/ just your national troops.