New Map: Faerun - The Forgotten Realms

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Daynarr:
How about simply stating that map should be played with 1 starting province?

What Daynarr has mentioned is the balanced way to play the map right now for a multiplayer game. The first game I started my brother was playing C'Tis and got that fortress and bonus gems as a starting province. His gold and gems from that one province was more then all three of my starting provinces.

In my opinion it would be okay for a computer opponent to get this extra advantage. However human players should start near the same starting level... unless one of them is a newbie player.

[Edi]

Well, the basic map should be played with just one starting province.

However, there is now also a multi-province quickstart Version that gives everyone except Abysia 4 start provinces (home +3 extra). Abysia gets just two extra ones, but it also gets an extra non-national commander and a couple of holy units that should be tough enough to compensate and nicely beef up its starting forces but not give an unfair advantage. As soon as Gandalf gets around to reading his email and uploading the map file to his server, you should have that available too.

Edi

[Crandaeolon]

Unfortunately, C'Tis (and others) can still get a hefty chunk of essentially free gold income by besieging the fortified indie provinces with, for example, a single scout. The besieger gets province income AND can set the tax rate, while the owner of the castle gets only administrative income - something that I learned the hard way in my first map project.

Let's hope that in the future there will be a command to set indie troops on patrol...

[Edi]

Ah, well, that changes things somewhat. I'm going to need to modify the map file to just eliminate the fortifications then. At least for some places, like the province next to C'tis's starting location. Have to wait for another day though, I'm too tired to do that right now.

Edi

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Crandaeolon:

Let's hope that in the future there will be a command to set indie troops on patrol...

Yes... there should be a way of setting a battle for the province and a seperate battle for the castle.

[Crandaeolon]

In the meantime, I'd prolly be content with indies set to be always on patrol mode... and if/when they'd lose to a superior force, the survivors would retreat to the castle and defend it normally.

Perpetual patrolling would have the added bonus of making it harder to defeat indies by assassinating the commanders.

The downside, as someone pointed out, would be some lost population if something generates unrest in the province. IMHO it wouldn't be a big issue though, merely a drop in the sea of all these pop-destroying events.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Crandaeolon:
In the meantime, I'd prolly be content with indies set to be always on patrol mode... and if/when they'd lose to a superior force, the survivors would retreat to the castle and defend it normally.

That definitely sounds like a great solution as well.