Map Making Questions

[Arralen]

site frequency

Kristoffer O posted 03 April, 2004 10:46

Not sure of the exact numbers. (I'm not sure of the specifics. Waste might be 30, swamp and mountain 20. 'just a guess.)
Magic: (site freq) + 30
Waste: (site freq) + 20
Swamp: (site freq) + 20
Mountain: (site freq) + 10
Forest: (site freq) + 10
Farm: (site freq) - 20

Only the most beneficial counts.

I guess it works like this:
If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.

Many nature sites are common but restricted to forests etc.

Unique sites are also rare or common. Inkpot end is unique and common. Crown of Darkness is rare.

No blood under water IIRC. Not sure about unholy.


terrain modifiers
movement
Forest, Mountain, Swamp, Waste have movement penalties. A unit that has the correspondant survival ability isn't affected. If province has two special terrains, only one ability is sufficient to allow full movement.

population, ressources, gold, supply
I'm doing the statistics for province sizes atm, but I'm too lazy to finish it.

Maybe the devs could give us the numbers?

[Edi]

Thanks for the additional info, everyone, this is going toi make the Magic Site DB project a lot easier to finish for me and Kaljamaha (who also has his hands full with his mapmaking project, and I fully expect his map to be excellent)

Edi

[Gandalf Parker]

Arralen said:
I guess it works like this:
If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.

This looks like it answers something I have wondered. If a province has a chance for 4 sites, and you are especially eager to find a castle or a blood summoning site, then you increase your chances if you do an earth site-search spell, then next round a blood site-search spell, and THEN let your rainbow mage check it. Checking with an air/water/nature mage first might "use up" your chances for a site there.

[Endoperez]

I thought sites are created at the beginning of the game... How else could Well of Pestilence provinces have Death scale even if you have Growth?

[Kristoffer O]

correct

[Gandalf Parker]

Ahhh so it runs thru that routine when it creates the game? Good.

[Kaljamaha]

Thanks for the responses everybody. However, I still am not clear on the pop thing. So, lets say a that a province has x population if it is plains, 1.5x if it is farm lands. How much does it have if it is both? 1, 1,5 or something in between?


K.

[Arralen]

"farm" means (IIRC) 1,5x pop, 0,5x ressources. "Plains" is just that - plain - it's the base for everything else, you can't have "Plains & Farmland".

All terrain modifiers add up, though. (Or mayb they even multiply. I'll have to do all the number checking some day, unless the devs tell us). That means, creating a province that is both farm land and mountain does not make any sense, as the boni cancel each other out (mostly. In fact, I found this combo to suck most - no pop, but no ressources either.)

So I recommend for mapmakers is to use special terrain and "small" provinces sparingly. Going overboard with these will result in a map that lets everyone move only 1 prov/turn everywhere - with 'armies' not bigger than 50 Inf because there isn't either sufficient money nor supplies for more units.

Do not draw provinces first, and then check what terrain they have ("ok - it's mountains to the left, tick it, grass in the north, tick it, it's small, ok, oh, and here's a swamp, just another tick in the editor .."). Draw your map, then place the borders at the edges of terrain features (as it's done with the original Illwinter maps).