New map by Jason Lutes

[J. Lutes]

Originally posted by Yossar:
Are 99 and 109 supposed to be connected? Don't seem to be now.

Yes, they're supposed to be connected. Thanks for that, it'll be fixed in the next Version.

I agree about the lack of realism regarding the river borders, but ultimately I like the limitations it puts on the map. The whole reason I designed "Cradle" that way was because I generally find Dom2 maps to be too open, with fewer strategically important provinces than I would like. The cities, farmland, ports, magic sites, and bottlenecks are all in there to provide focal points for strategic decisionmaking.

The main problem may simply be that I used river graphics, which breaks the suspension of disbelief. In terms of basic design, they might as well be mountains or magical barriers. I agree that the ideal solution would be to allow for the setting of borders as "water," "mountain," or "impassable" in the map editor. Maybe in Dominions 3...?

But I am definitely taking all of these opinions into account as I think about my next map. I really appreciate everyone's comments!

[Yossar]

I don't think rivers should be crossable. The high number of chokepoints already puts fliers at a large advantage over land armies since they can easily fly over chokepoints. If you let them fly over rivers too, there's almost no point at all in building a land army.

[Cainehill]

Hmm - I thought the map was set up to only allow provinces with 4 or more connecting neighbors as starting provinces?

I just started a new game with my capitol as province #111, only 3 neighbors and one is a water province.

Side question: Is there a way to tell the game to display the province numbers? I know the general logic to how provinces numbers work, but still took about 4 minutes of clicking to find one of the ones people had mentioned as being incorrect.

[J. Lutes]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Hmm - I thought the map was set up to only allow provinces with 4 or more connecting neighbors as starting provinces?

I just started a new game with my capitol as province #111, only 3 neighbors and one is a water province.

Side question: Is there a way to tell the game to display the province numbers? I know the general logic to how provinces numbers work, but still took about 4 minutes of clicking to find one of the ones people had mentioned as being incorrect.

Thanks, Cainehill -- I've removed #111 as a possible starting place.

As far as I can tell, there's currently no way to get a display of province numbers.

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Near as I can tell, the "Extra Magic" flag simply means there's 30% more likelihood that magit sites are in the province. Unfortunately, that overrides the bonus from mountains (10%), forests and wastes (20%?), and whatnot.

+30% is pretty good though, as doesn't this add to the chance for each site? E.g. w/ the default 40% site frequency you have a 70% chance to get a site, and if you do then a 70% chance to get another, and so on up to 4 sites. Or do I misunderstand the site distribution mechanics?

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Jasper:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cainehill:
Near as I can tell, the "Extra Magic" flag simply means there's 30% more likelihood that magit sites are in the province. Unfortunately, that overrides the bonus from mountains (10%), forests and wastes (20%?), and whatnot.

+30% is pretty good though, as doesn't this add to the chance for each site? E.g. w/ the default 40% site frequency you have a 70% chance to get a site, and if you do then a 70% chance to get another, and so on up to 4 sites. Or do I misunderstand the site distribution mechanics?

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Yes you do. It's 70% for each of the 4 possible magic sites in your example.

[tinkthank]

Excuse me for mentioning this, but the other map (parganos) is also very nice. Doesn't have the bridges or the easily recognizable "farm land" fields, but it seems very nice so far. Thanks Jason!