New Map: Loemendor

[Kaljamaha]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

On the issue of the special provinces: I created them based how things are in my own homebrew fantasy world. So, thematics totally trumped balance when I designed the special provinces. Also, I play SP almost exclusively, with strong independents, very hard research and few (usually 25%) sites, so that obviously gives me a different perspective. And I'm mostly a sandbox type player.

That said, I fully understand that in this game, you expect to get a reward if you defeat some tough defenders.

Whether or not the pre-placed sites should be pre-discovered or not, I really don't have that big of an opinion. I originally set them as #features because I thought it would be neat for players to first fight the special defenders, and then "discover" the site they were guarding, in the same manner sites are usually discovered, instead of it just being "congratulations, you beat the guardians, now here's your prize". But as I said, I don't have any strong opinions either way (though I would have hoped for people playing, at least for the first time, to not have peeked in the .map file).

As to whether the guardians in each special province are of appropriate strength, I fully admit they were done on a... I don't know what the word in English is ("mutu tuntuma" for you Finnish types)... on intuition, if you will. The types of guardians of each place are, as mentioned above, thematically appropriate (though the Harvester of Sorrows idea for Heavenfire Crater is good). The numbers can very well be changed. When I designed them, I didn't want the special provinces to be so good that players would immediately rush to capture them. That's why I mostly stayed away from sites that let you recruit mages. My vision was for them to be more like somewhat beefier defenders for a guaranteed site, or other goodies. Thus the suggestion for 7+ indie strength. I did test the defenders of each site before I released the map, against a "standard army", which resulted in lowering the strength in some provinces. So you can imagine they were quite tough to begin with.

Another consideration towards the reward part is that some places with special defenders are also of great strategic value, Arandor being the prime example. If you want to travel from the Old Road to King's Road, unless you go through Arandor, you'll be in for a long trek.

And finally, apparently the "many sites" tag doesn't stack with underlying terrain. Well... crap. I remember reading sometime ago on this forum that multiple terrain types stack with regards to population and resources, so I thought it would be the same for site frequency. This might prompt some change, I'll have to think about it.

*reads through own post*

It seems I have some trouble communicating my thoughts today. Summa summarum, I am very much interested in hearing how people view the special defenders, if they are too tough or too wimpy for the province they guard, considering both sites and strategic importance.


K.

[Endoperez]

"mutu tuntunma" might be translated into "quesstimation".

Have you given any provinces special #poptype instead of special prescripted defenders? The troglodytes could work as most monstrous creatures, amazons might work in some cases, etc. I think you could add extra defenders in addition to the normal defenders by using the #land or #setland that DIDN'T overwrite the original settings.

[Chazar]

Judging from my tests of mapmaking, the #poptype command only affects the type of recruitable units available at a province, but not its initial independent defenders...

Thus it is difficult to strengthen the defense of independent provinces independently from the independent setting, especially not in a random way, i.e. I wish that there would be a map-command to say that the random independent force is to be set at global independent strength +/- something.

EDIT-PS: Of course, while setting the poptype one can set defenders manually as well, but randomness would help to allow oneself to enjoy one's own maps.

[Endoperez]

Pity. The one thing I most miss in mapmaking (or modding) is the ability to change poptypes, to add new poptypes, etc. They could add much flavour to, as an example, the Faerun map, and could (easily?) transform the random-map generator to a whole new level.

[Edi]

Doing things from a "mutu" basis can be best translated as doing things ad hoc. That's about as close as it gets.

Chazar said:
Judging from my tests of mapmaking, the #poptype command only affects the type of recruitable units available at a province, but not its initial independent defenders...

Indeed. The way it works is that first Dom2 creates the map from the neighbor and terrain info, randomly assigns poptypes appropriate to terrain, places indie defebders according to that poptype, assigns magic sites and only then starts reading the special commands from the mapfile. IF the special commands overwrite the previous poptype, then you're just [censored] out of luck when the jade amazons turned into basic slingers or whatever else happened, even if you did fight them for control of the province.

Similarly, scripted magic sites overwrite previously assigned ones if there are no empty slots available.

Chazar said:Thus it is difficult to strengthen the defense of independent provinces independently from the independent setting, especially not in a random way, i.e. I wish that there would be a map-command to say that the random independent force is to be set at global independent strength +/- something.

That'd help, but assigning some lightly armored crossbows (#47 or #48) and some of the ID #40 HI will usually beef up any indie quite a bit. Put about 15 and 20 of them respectively and it'll do the trick. And they work with almost anything.

Chazar said:EDIT-PS: Of course, while setting the poptype one can set defenders manually as well, but randomness would help to allow oneself to enjoy one's own maps.

The procedure above, assigning some common as dirt indies in small quantities will do the trick, and the random variation from native defenders does the rest.

Edi

[Daynarr]

So, is there a new version of this map?
It looks really nice.

[Kaljamaha]

Well, there's the one and only update I made for the map, posted in this thread (just above the post with the picture of the map). The map on Arryn's site also has the new map files. I didn't put any version numbers on the map files, in hindsight that may have been a mistake.

I am probably going to do one (hopefully last) update for this map. It will change the special provinces, in order to balance the strength of the defenders with the rewards. But before I do that, I am waiting for people to report on how they feel said balance is for each of the special provinces.

Other than the possible imbalance with special defenders, there seems to not be any problems with the map. So, if you like playing without specials, go ahead and use the map. The no-specials map file is not going to see any updates (unless some problem appears).


K.

[Rathar]

So uhh I d-load this map et-al and un-rar it etc and I get some swede telling me things are broken when I create a game with it..

I am D-loading it into the maps folder and un-raring it there as well. Not sure what else I am missing! (Of course, if I was sure, that would be the problem.. Kind of like how one finds the car keys in the last place you look. Well duh it's the last place as thats the place you finally found them in..)

I have D-loaded and made other maps work with no difficulty so..?

Rathar