Map: Antilarium

[PashaDawg]

That's a good point, but you can get pretty darn close up on Glory of the Gods. Is that map too big for many people's machines?

[Tichy]

I've started two games on this map, Late Age, with 11 random AIs on impossible. It's been fun, but there are some oddities:

Both times four or five nations went dominion-kill on the first turn. I'm not sure if this is a problem, or if I started with too many opponents.

I continued playing the second game I started. It's a lively game and no one else has vanished, but some of the special indy provinces have serious starvation problems. For example, the Ulm-based one on the north of the map disintegrated over the course of several turns.

[Psientist]

Thanks for the compliments!

I don't know about the dominion-kill, I haven't seen that on any of my playtests. I just uncovered the starvation thing myself; I unthinkingly made some of the Victory provinces just too overloaded with defense troops, so they all disease and die off. I'm going to have to scale back accordingly, find a way to mod those provinces' supply rating (I don't think that's an option, but please correct me if I'm wrong!), or start doling out cauldrons to the defenders. Either way, I'll post an update later this month after I've done more testing.

I could have generated a slightly higher resolution, but I thought the current size was a good compromise based upon some of the other maps out there. I even worked with Photoshop's ability to reduce size through color indexing.

The ocean size isn't as big as it appears, in gameplay. However, I have witnessed the Thetis Blessing be *quite* significant on this map.

I might be able to tweak the tranparencies of the mountains and trees on the update. I didn't want them to be too obtrusive, however, and muss up the watercolor effect too much.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Lingchih]

I also ran into the dominion kill on the first turn. With 16 nations, 7 were dom-killed right away.

I would have to agree on the transparent mountains. I think you can keep the watercolor look without them being transparent... just keep the colors very light and pastel.

Great looking map though, and sounds very fun to play once the bugs are ironed out.

[jutetrea]

Liked the map, started (and haven't finished) 2 games on it. Also had the dominion kill problem, primarily in the upper right corner.

Did anyone else get the problem with provinces 13 and 14 (bottom center/rightish) being overlapping? I can't seem to invade it.

I really like the map, narrow passages and such but just a few preferential comments:

Whoever gets stuck in the middle gets kind of screwed with tons of wastelands around. I started there in one, and vs. the AI it was fine as a self handicapp, but most AI nations will suffer.

Too much water! Or possibly too many water neighbors. Played one game down to 3 players, essentially myself on one half, AI sauro on the other and a strong oceania owning most of the water. Unfortunately the AI aren't at war so its actually not a pushover. The sheer annoyance of being able to be attacked at seemingly 80% of my land is a bit much.

[Halancar]

I like the map, I played about 40 turns as Mictlan.

Some remarks :
- Those nice special provinces have sites that allow recruitment of national untis (Celestial Masters and Sohai were the one I found). Except of course that those just don't work (unless perhaps you're already the right nation ?).
- Playing as Mictlan and starting in the upper right corner (I know control around 20 provinces there), I did not find one single province with more than 5000 pop. I don't know if it is something you did (or did not do), but it certainly doesn't encourage blood hunting...
- There was one special province with gladiators independants (and some infantry and crosbowmen). The gladiators just disappeared one turn, I believe an AI attacked the province and failed. The point it, gladiators just don't work as province defenders since they disappear after the firt fight.

[Psientist]

Fantastic feedback. I see I have some work to do.

Province 14 appears in the map code .. and there must be a white pixel denoting it on my bitmap... but I never drew borders for it properly. Will fix.

I'll also see about un-transparency-ing the terrain (fortunately, it's all stored as photoshop layers so it is possible). The resolution is as high as it's going to go.

Also the gladiators, maybe look closer about my "high population" settings for a few provs.

There's a lot of water... and the water nations have a huge advantage on accessibility... but there's relatively few actual water provinces. I've played three games on the map now, and water only became a problem when the "Thetis blessing" got cast.

The "in the middle" starting location - I presume we are talking about Ambersand/94? Is very strategic. I'd rather keep things as they are, but compensate with other advantages... population, magic sites, etc. for that area. Any ideas or suggestions?