New Map: Infinite Sands - Multiplayer Wrap FIXED!

[Valandil]

They look... familiar, actually.
Now, where would I find a giant antlion graphic?

[Zylithan]

Map was made in age of wonders 2 shadow magic editor.

I'm curious about the no start locations. I've played the map many times, and a bunch of other people have to and have never seen the no valid start provinces error. Is this still happening?

Thanks,
Z

[Zylithan]

Okay. I'm a moron. When I compressed the image to make it small enough to upload to this site, I lost a lot of the white dots apparently, and the whole map is screwed up. Sigh. I'll fix and respost, apologies to those who had this problem, and sorry for doubting. I had been using the real version, with better graphcis than the one I posted, which is why I didn't see this.

[Zylithan]

HERE IS THE GOOD GRAPHICS QUALITY WORKING MAP. 20 MB.

Private message me if you need a smaller, lower quality one uploaded. Thanks!

[Humakty]

Making most of the map a wasteland forces the player(s) to choose wisely who will play on this map. I tried it only with human civs, and a civ like Machaka could only produce a spider from time to time. I think the main pbm is the AI doesn't even try to adapt to low income, she tries the usual mass armies, which are condemned from start. To my sense it can be an enjoyable map, but not against the AI.
I let you guess what happened to the AI massive armies in those barren lands...

[Zylithan]

yeah, I sort of imagined that could be a problem. But thought it could be interesting for MP, because it changes game dynamics as you mentioned. THanks for the feedback.

[jutetrea]

I'm liking the map a lot.

Few thoughts: Seems that getting 4 sites at 75% site frequency isn't difficult, and with only 8 players with so many provinces it equates to a ton of gems. Playing an astral race, accumulated about 500 astral gems then just let loose with ashaic (spell i rarely use), usually 3-4 sites per province. Anything less was a rarity.

Have you thought about taking about a third of the provinces out (possibly down to like 35/player)? With so little reward per province it seems like you'd need em but having so many kind of defeats the purpose by still allowing moderate incomes. Or put in about 100 more mountains/chokepoints. Would change the map drastically though.

Possibly add 8 smaller farms/forests/grasslands between the positions. Gives an additional direction to shoot for and possible border castle.

I'm playing a blood nation, so it actually works out pretty well - lots of provinces where losing the 17g income isn't a big deal. Its not optimal, but I don't feel like i'm shutting down a gold producer to get slaves.

Possibly make the middle a bit more appealing, either a few special provinces/sites or increase the pops about 30% (most are 6k-8k it seems). Maybe even make the inner ring 15-20k pop provinces.

I ran my bigger game at 125 supply, plus I have 3 growth so I havne't run into many supply issues. AI seems to be doing ok with moderate sized armies or huge armies of undead. Could be that they're all dying before they get to me, but I border about 4 positions so unsure.

Would it work to make the starting green areas even higher pop? say 40k? Give death scales a bit more time and everyone slightly higher starting incomes.

Having fun so far, will let you know if anything else comes to mind.

[Zylithan]

Wait... 75% site frequency? I really didnt mean to do that. It's supposed to be the basic site frequency. Is that something you did, or did I turn that up somehow? If so, I'll change it. Thanks for letting me know.

Thanks for all the other comments. I appreciate your feedback, and am up for changing this map if people prefer a different way, and it will help me make better ones in the future.

[jutetrea]

its a setting when creating the game, I always do 75 cuz I like lots of magic... with so many wastelands its kind of unreal though. With no globals up i'm making large amounts of gems/turn. I'm probably at mid game, haven't been in a war yet (for some reason the usual AI tendency to attack the player didn't work, they're all fighting each other), and I'm making almost 40 of each per turn. (48 astral and 26 nature are the extremes).

Bit out of the normal though, I blew tons of gems on ashaic record which is uncommon, I'm near the top of the province charts, and I've fully searched every single one of my provinces.

As the map maker, the only thing you'd probably want to do is recommend a 50% or lower site frequency at game creation. 75% is nuts.

[Zylithan]

any other comments? I only see 20 downloads... but the attachment is sort of far down the thread. Maybe I'll try to fix that this evening when I'm with my files.