Glory SP map province name gaffes

[Globu]

Hello all,

I'm new to the forums and began playing fairly recently, so please forgive me if this has been addressed, but, after getting fairly heavy into a very enjoyable game on the single-player Glory map (v3.17), I found to my OC-Purist dismay that there are some serious gaffes in the province names, and was wondering if it is just me with some sort of version mismatch or other problem, and if not, if someone has ever made a .map file with a full slate of hand-placed province names.

The problem is most pronounced, as I'm sure is already well-known (again, unless I'm working with some sort of .map file mismatch or something), in the SW corner, where you have land provinces with sea province names and vice-versa, as well as less egregious but equally immersion-breaking name mismatches.

I have checked the original file as well as the v3.17 corrected version, but they both have the same name problems for the SP map.

So, that said, and assuming that's the state the map has been left in without correction, has anyone made a nice, hand-named version? And, if not, would it be of interest if I went ahead and made a version without all that name messiness? (I am thinking of more thematic mythological and historical names, rather than the usual Dragon Forest type tolkeinesque names and so forth.)

Or is it all pretty much irrelevant because, once people have been playing a while, they all just go with random names or use Semirandom?

Any thoughts (and particularly links to hand-named Glory maps) would be appreciated!

Thanks all.

Globu

[Gandalf Parker]

Some have. Im not sure which ones.

Ive taken a stab at it a number of times. Had the map generator set names, then generated a list to show me the dupes. Thats whats irritated me the most. Especially on the max sized maps having so many provinces with the same name.

Way back in Dom1 I even created some programs to generate random names specific to the terrain types, and one just to generate randomly created (but pronouncable) words that could be used as names. It was fairly simple. It used a thesaurus list for the terrain and matched it with a random word from another list. Like for forest program choosing one off this list:
data "Dark", "Greening", "Darkening", "Forbidden", "Gracious"
data "Elven", "Elder", "Mythical", "Growth", "Feeding", "Blue"
data "Carpenters", "Neutral", "Deep", "Nesting", "Golden"
data "Pixie", "Ogre", "Land of", "Nether", "Null", "Wide"
data "Twisted", "Wild", "Dreaming", "Lost", "Dew", "Redding"

and linking it with one from this list:
data "Forest", "Woods", "Copse", "Grove", "Woodlands", "Timber"
data "Timberland", "Woodlot", "Wildwood", "Thicket", "Growth"
data "Trees", "Canopy", "Maze", "Woodland", "Wood", "Forestry"
data "Wilderness", "Willows", "Oaks", "Saplings", "Orchard"

To generate a list like this...
http://www.dom3minions.com/~dominion...orestNames.txt

I used to generate a new list every day for each terrain but its been a long time since any interest was shown. Feel fre to use any of that. If you want something else feel free to ask.

Also I believe my concept was worked into one of Ballbarians SemiRandom programs which do a great job of further-working a map including a ton of features into one program besides naming. Spotting new terrains such as lakes, volcanoes, islands, valleys, caves. Setting reasonable start and nostart positions. Scattering logically created special provinces. Setting more intelligent AI scales and gods. Accessing some of the map generation features that are difficult to access especially for windows users.

Gandalf Parker
--
Running Dominions support sites since the beginning.

[Globu]

Ah, okay. Thanks for the advice -- yep, I've been drawing on the name generator in SemiRandom for inspiration, though I'm not satisfied with pure random name placement because I really like regional naming (i.e. Achauron, East Achauron, Southwest... and so forth), which is really helpful in knowing my way around a big map. So, that's what I'm focusing on making. But I do quite like the GAN file content additions adding life to it -- really nice.

For the naming scheme I'm going with, accurate historical/mythological naming don't seem to be as appropriate for a fully random map (e.g., Niefelheim starting in Scythia, Mictlan in Attica, and so forth), so I'll probably stick to names taken from various other RPG sources -- Earthdawn, some of the older D&D modules, Talislanta, Harn, and so forth, as long as they fit into the scheme of the game fairly well and have a realistic feel to them. If there's any interest in it, I'll make it available to others when I'm done.

In the meantime, if anyone reading this has made a hand-named MAP file for Glory_v317, I'd love to get a hold of it! I wouldn't mind having another name scheme even if I do finish this one -- variation is always nice.

Cheers,
Globu

[Globu]

Wow... what a project. It's draining to overhaul 500-something provinces and come up with names, that's for sure, but it's a lot better than seeing three provinces named "Werk Enum." About half way through.