Arduria map + a new one in the works

[Crandaeolon]

Is the final Version ready? I'll put it up tonight anyway.

I've been testing it for a few days, might as well put it out since I can't find any glaring errors. Here's the new mapfile (1.1): mapfileonly.zip

This will probably be the final Version, unless something really drastic is spotted. Knock on wood...

Updated the zip too.

[Crandaeolon]

Got the semester wrapped up, and I'm thinking of putting a new map into the works. It will probably be larger (around 250 provinces or even more) and a _bit_ less watery. I'm also toying with PvK's ideas about water regions.

Creating the map will be done similarly compared to the previous one, so that's about as pretty as it can get.

Now (again? )would be a good time to chime in with comments, suggestions and/or feedback on the previous map.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Crandaeolon:
Got the semester wrapped up, and I'm thinking of putting a new map into the works. It will probably be larger (around 250 provinces or even more) and a _bit_ less watery.

Wish I had time for developing x-large maps.

Definitely looking forward to this next map !! The really large maps of 300+ provinces are rarely created. I believe the largest map available for download from Illwinter's website right now is the WorldMap of 339 provinces.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
Definitely looking forward to this next map !! The really large maps of 300+ provinces are rarely created. I believe the largest map available for download from Illwinter's website right now is the WorldMap of 339 provinces.

While I do love large maps, the problem with them is that, at least as of 2.08, the nation overview display would corrupt when an overly large number of provinces was listed.

Also, maps should be MORE watery! There's already not enough water for our water nations to play in, and Illwinter is rumored to be introducing a third water nation. We need MORE water, not less!

[Crandaeolon]

Arduria has 34 underwater provinces out of 188. The ratio will probably remain about the same. There will be landlocked seas and large lakes, a couple of oceans etc... I'll include "support" (start location placement & balancing considerations) for the rumoured 3rd nation right out of the box.

It won't take a horribly long time to create the map with the pseudo-random, fractally-generated and filter-prettified method I'm using. The tedious parts are drawing the borders and checking neighbour connections, the rest is all fun.

It's done when it's done.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
While I do love large maps, the problem with them is that, at least as of 2.08, the nation overview display would corrupt when an overly large number of provinces was listed.

I would gladly sacrifice using "the nation overview display" for a map of 300+ provinces. I love the x-large maps which usually has enormous armies marching around. In one game Ermor(computer AI) had 1,200 troops on a single province.

[Crandaeolon]

Well, the new project just ceased to be fun - I had drawn about 3/4ths of the borders when PhotoShop complained about "corrupted pixels" due to a "disk or SCSI malfunction" when loading the image. And sure enough, there were large discolored and garbled stripes across the map.

I had saved the image frequently, but all the borderwork was done on the same file, and now it's corrupt. Bugger that. Any ideas on how to recover from that? Scandisk reported nothing to fix, BTW.

Knowing myself, I probably won't restart the work unless the summer is _really_ boring. So, if someone wants to carry on the torch, give me a holler and I'll make the original available.

Here's a preview (the original is 4600x2300 pixels):

[Gandalf Parker]

Wow it looks nice. Please keep working on it. How "large" did you have in mind (land province, water provinces)? I have a little talk-paper on maps which might have some things to consider though its more about random-generated maps.
http://www.dom2minions.com/maps.shtml

Im not sure how large the provinces were going to be but your terrain areas might be large enough that a nation might end up surrounded by only one terrain type. Something to keep in mind (ctis cant take anything but mountains, ulm surrounded by all the good farmlands, etc)

I know more gimp than photoshop so this next part might need some translating. In general terms.... make a copy of the map, lower the colors gradually to something like 16 colors you should get a cartoon image of your map with big areas of brown, blue, green, white. Select a color like red. Then use an "edging" option (might be named something like borders?) which shouild draw red borders around all of the large color areas. Now go in with a line command and draw some lines chopping areas that seem too large into smaller portions. Remove everything but the red (drop paint, or "mask", or select-color and copy-to?). Bring up the original (well for safety, anothe copy of the original) and paste the red lines on top of it.

Usually this isnt perfect but its often enough of a start to change it form a massive job to a tweaking/editing one.

[ May 27, 2004, 15:07: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Crandaeolon]

Never mind - I figured out a way already. I drew the borders on a separate layer, and it's easy to fix the corruption.

It looks to be around 300-400 provinces. I'll have to decide the size of water provinces still, and whether I'm going to make it appear like Mercator projection or not.

Im not sure how large the provinces were going to be but your terrain areas might be large enough that a nation might end up surrounded by only one terrain type. Something to keep in mind (ctis cant take anything but mountains, ulm surrounded by all the good farmlands, etc)

I took that into account, lesson learned from making the previous map.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
In one game Ermor(computer AI) had 1,200 troops on a single province.

You know, the interesting drawback of a "huge" map in this regard is the fact that the battle map is 58x28. Assuming that the map is absolutely jampacked wall to wall with human-sized units, this means that there is room for, at most, 4872 units. Halve this number for the number of units that a single side can consist of and still fit on their side of the battlefield at start, resulting in 2436 mans per side. The 1200 troops you mention comes rather dangerously close, especially if not all of them are human sized, such as longdead horse.

Obviously, this number can be larger if the army consists of longdead hoburgs. But you're seeing a clear problem here.