Troubling Times: Game over, Marverni wins

[Numahr]

Working on the map now.

It will be random starting locations, each of us will be attributed one randomly.

It can be nice to have "thematic" starting locations, but then we can know where each nations is exactly and it removes an element of mystery and the fun of exploring. Plus, I don't feel comfortable from a balance point of view about deciding who is who's neighbor.

[Numahr]

OK here is my proposition. Do not hesitate to comment / suggest now.

I did my best to try to produce something balanced for all 24 starting locations. For each location, I asked myself: if I were starting here, would I complain or would I rejoy myself due to its unbalanced nature?

But at the end it is a difficult exercise, so feedback is welcome... as long as it comes soon enough to be taken into account.

I think its great. Although I wouldn't particularly like to be 20, 16 or 14, I still say the map looks pretty balanced and would accept any of those positions anyway. *knocks on wood*

[Numahr]

Thanks Grijalva for feedback.
New version, with these changes:
- # of the exact target provinces
- less density in the centre, for players surrounded by other players (those mentionned by Grijalva)
- analyzed connections made by Edi on the map. In particular, some locations are not the deadend they look like at first glance due to connected neighbors; islands are all connected to each other and finally to the main continent at severl points, so no reason to exclude them for land players. That also helped to reduce density in the centre.
- moved starting locations giving already a VP or located on a "non start province" defined by Edi, since he must have had good reasons for those.

I still have the technical part to do, but now I wait for more feedback, or at least confirmation by the game admin to implement this scheme.

[Amhazair]

Looking great for the most part. The second version definitely is an improvement. Only problem I see is starts 19 and 20 being too close to each other. (Only 2 provinces between them.) I think moving start #20 to province number #24 (just south of where it is now) would be better.

[Aethyr]

Agree with Amhazair's observation.

Looking good Numahr, thanks for your hard work on this!

[13lackGu4rd]

oops wrong thread, disregard

[Numahr]

Thanks for feedback.

So:
- starting locations in the South have been generally tweaked to give more space to every one, at the expense of a starting location close to the edge.
- map file moded.

You can find attached both the new map overview and the .map file. I double checked it, there should be no surprise.

All this took quite some time to do, so please understand that I may be one of the last to upload my pretender...

Edit: for some reason, uploading the files did not work. I will try again later.

[Numahr]

Here are the files

[Verjigorm]

There hasn't been a turn yet. Not all players have joined.

http://www.llamaserver.net/gameinfo....TroublingTimes