"The Eight Gates"
STORY
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While the Pantokrator ruled, there was relative peace in the world. Skirmishes would break out from time to time, but not major wars. The people were united under one god. Since his sudden dissappearance, the world has turned to Chaos. The various peoples of the world have each rallied under their local deities and are fighting for primacy. Even the world itself is being torn apart - rifts have opened up in the fabric of the world, swallowing land and lake alike into voids of nothingness. In the wake of this chaos, eight flavors of magical gates, previously only accessible to the Pantokrator and his highest servants, have opened up across the land. Any common man can travel the gates, crossing huge areas of land in a short time - but sometimes there is a horrible price for travelling the Gates.
With the people warring and the world itself in destruction, one supreme god must rise to power, to calm the world and to rule the heavens. Will it be you?
DETAILS
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Roughly 230 provinces, 10 water, rest land. Not wrap-around, but efforts have been made to reduce/eliminate the advantages of edges and corners. Start locations are not set, but are restricted to a set of provinces all of which are roughly balanced. A water player is allowed, but would likely be at a serious disadvantage.
The map has a lot of chokepoints, and a fairly low number of average neighbors. This is countered by The Eight Gates - a means of teleporting across the world. This means that despite the low average connectivity, there is no/little chance of getting boxed in because of myriad options for expansion/attack.
more info
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...5&o=&fpart=all
screen shots (as usual, the real map is prettier)
Four of eight magic nodes
Preview of (a small part of) the overland map (without province borders). It's a swampy area with 4 flavors of gates visible. Clockwise from top left: water, life, blood (the pool of blood at the bottom), astral. The blood gates look different from the other 7 flavors of gate because blood magic is different from the 7 other types of magic in dom3.