Chandrea V4.3 (94prov) _AND_ Drea V4.3 (49 prov)

[Chazar]

Saber Cherry said:
For example, it's not at all obvious (unless you have adjacency arrows turned on) that provinces 31, 40, and 41 are separate... from the pink lines, they could all be the same province. Same with 41, 48, and 50.

Thanks for your input, but I have trouble understanding you:

I assume you refer to V1.01 rather than V1.03, right? I see your problem: I think of rivers and coastlines as natural borders, however this concept is clearly broken at some places, like "Drüh Rogg" (38 or 39 depending on version), "Stepping Stones" (37 in V1.03), or "Shallow Waters" (85)...

Admittingly, I never tried my own map with the province adjacency arrows turned off. However I fail to see the benefit of explicit province center markers, like the little cabins you proposed: How would they function differently from the province flags placed by dom2, which already mark province centers? Or are you refering to the city provinces, which are marked at the city instead of the province's center?

So there is still the problem with those provinces cited above where the natural borders are different from the actual province borders...

[Saber Cherry]

Chazar said:
I assume you refer to V1.01 rather than V1.03, right?

Hmmm... I downloaded it today from Illwinter's site. The version is not listed in the map file, but it says #domversion 175. I assumed it was 1.03.

I see your problem: I think of rivers and coastlines as natural borders, however this concept is clearly broken at some places, like "Drüh Rogg" (38 or 39 depending on version), "Stepping Stones" (37 in V1.03), or "Shallow Waters" (85)...

Admittingly, I never tried my own map with the province adjacency arrows turned off. However I fail to see the benefit of explicit province center markers, like the little cabins you proposed: How would they function differently from the province flags placed by dom2, which already mark province centers? Or are you refering to the city provinces, which are marked at the city instead of the province's center?

The main difference is that you only see flags in provinces adjacent to your empire, and for distant areas, it is really hard to tell what a province is or isn't.

Rivers make nice borders, but they are not used as borders in most Dominions II maps, and the roads look like borders too, and somtimes coastlines are borders and sometimes not, and the shipping lines sort of look like borders as well, and...

Places with victory points and cities are obvious, but otherwise, a "province center" designation in non-obvious provinces (bigger than 1 pixel) would be helpful to me, if not to other people.

[Chazar]

[*]Actually it should read "(V1.03)" within the title. V1.03 should have 103 provinces, while the old version has only 102. Furthermore all filenames contain a 2, i.e. chandrea2.tga. I thought that #domversion is not about the map itself, but about the minimal version of dom2 required to play, isnt it?

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[*]Oh, I see, I forgot about that problem that flags cannot be seen from afar. I agree, there ought to be a more clear designation for the provinces -- added to my ToDo's now!

[Saber Cherry]

Oh, it was called Chandrea.map, no 2. #domversion is the Dominions 2 version, but... there is no version 175, which is why I mentioned it

[Cainehill]

Since I just found out about this map and rather like it (makes a very nice replacement for Aran, with right around 100 provinces) I thought I'd give it a bump.

Thanks Chazar!

[Cainehill]

Woot! Just realized it's a wrap around map, so very awesome replacement for Aran sized MP games.

[Chazar]

Thanks very much!!! Actually I thought that there was not much interest in my map, as it seemed unpopular in the multiplayer forum (havent checked lately though)...

Some complain that the map is broken because of those +resource sites at the starting positions, which might erase national sites for those nations having 4 starting sites, but I think that it is straigthforward to erase them from the mapfile anyway...

However, there are still some issues (see my updated to do list in this thread), but I am pretty busy in my life right now, but if my current shepherd game is finished, I think I will do it and ask around here for players to play with me on my map eventually...

[Chazar]

There is a new version of my map: V3.3 Check the title of the map that you are using the most recent version.

The changes between 1.03 and 3.2 are:

• All Bridges properly removed now (nobody loved those bridges except me )
• No more predefined sites in possible starting locations (for they might have hidden national sites).
• All cities have a population of 33333 and are large forest provinces. The forest tag shall increase resources somewhat.
• .map file reorganized: cities/start locations choosen by "#start" instead of "#nostart/#terrain 512" and now neatly grouped, so it should be very easy to alter the file to suit personal needs.
• Minor changes to terrain.
• Known Bugs from previous version removed.
• A proper version number instead of this silly dot-zero-something thingy.
• Cities with only one neighbor have a preset defense force in that neighbor (provinces 40 and 80). This is done at the very end of the file, and the force should be on par or a bit better than independent strength 6 (10 Knights, 10 Shortbows, 20 Heavy Infantry Men)
• Cities have predefined defenders, to make it more difficult to capture them. These troops become also owned by players starting at a city. This is feature. The troops consist of 2 Wizards, a mounted Priest, 12 Heavy Cavs, 12 Crossbows and 34 Heavy Infantry. Water Nations obtain Shark Knights, Ichtyd Warriors and Tritons instead.

(Please note: The last two points might cause problems if starting at predefined locations is disabled. I therefor advise to change all #start command into #nostarts as well as deleting the preset defenders at #40 and #80 if completely random start outside cities is what you want.)

The changes between 3.2 and 3.3 are:

• City Population decreased to 27275
• City Population changed to Crossbow/Hvy Cav
• Added neighbors 29/38, 74/80
• Removed neighbors 51/75

[Cainehill]

Cool! I've been wanting to get games going on this map, and it sounds even better now. Thanks!

[Arryn]

The latest (3.3) archive (.rar) is now available on my site for downloading.