New map by Jason Lutes

[Kristoffer O]

I suppose we'll have to do something about that.

[Graeme Dice]

The major problem I have with this map is that it's mostly forest and mountain provinces. There are very, very few good farm land and plains provinces to give you any kind of gold income, and strategic movement is not particulary useful when your troops all have to move through mountains anyways. I also don't really like how rivers carve up the land so badly.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
The major problem I have with this map is that it's mostly forest and mountain provinces. There are very, very few good farm land and plains provinces to give you any kind of gold income, and strategic movement is not particulary useful when your troops all have to move through mountains anyways. I also don't really like how rivers carve up the land so badly.

The gold income does seem to be an issue - then again, it forces a different style of play. Likewise the rivers - on the usual maps, there's very few real chokepoints or places that it really is important to place a fortress.

This feels to me more like a medeival / historical map, given that rivers did present huge barriers to armies - likewise mountain ranges. Places where the rivers were fordable, places where bridges had been built, passes through the mountains, those were where fortresses were built.

Whereas most of the Dom2 maps, you tend to have to put a solid blanket of fortresses, because there are precious few natural barriers.

A nice change of pace to the style of play required by other maps.

The only thing I see really flawed about the rivers is, as I've mentioned in this thread, that river's really really shouldn't pose a barrier to flying armies, and possibly not to aquatic races and sea-farers like Vanheim and the one Marignon theme.

[Yossar]

Are 99 and 109 supposed to be connected? Don't seem to be now.

[tinkthank]

I dont mind the lack of farms. Feels good, feels different.

But Cainehill makes a good point. The rivers kind of get me too.

It would be nice if in the future there could be a chance in the way that borders work; there could be a "barrier", over which flying or sailing units can pass (for rivers) or just flying units could pass (for mountain ranges).

EDIT: Actually, can you say what additional magic bonuses one could expect in those special magic starburst areas? I havent found much magic in those places --- is that just random luck?
Thank you!

[ April 04, 2004, 13:45: Message edited by: tinkthank ]

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by tinkthank:
Actually, can you say what additional magic bonuses one could expect in those special magic starburst areas? I havent found much magic in those places --- is that just random luck?

Near as I can tell, the "Extra Magic" flag simply means there's 30% more likelihood that magit sites are in the province. Unfortunately, that overrides the bonus from mountains (10%), forests and wastes (20%?), and whatnot.

So it then becomes random luck, and somewhat frustrating when you take the province and there's _nothing_ there, or one extremely minor site.

But I guess there isn't any MAP command that puts a random site in a province, and the general consensus seems to be that putting specific sites is unbalancing, as people rush locations they know will be containing a great site.

[J. Lutes]

Originally posted by Yossar:
Are 99 and 109 supposed to be connected? Don't seem to be now.

Yes, they're supposed to be connected. Thanks for that, it'll be fixed in the next Version.

I agree about the lack of realism regarding the river borders, but ultimately I like the limitations it puts on the map. The whole reason I designed "Cradle" that way was because I generally find Dom2 maps to be too open, with fewer strategically important provinces than I would like. The cities, farmland, ports, magic sites, and bottlenecks are all in there to provide focal points for strategic decisionmaking.

The main problem may simply be that I used river graphics, which breaks the suspension of disbelief. In terms of basic design, they might as well be mountains or magical barriers. I agree that the ideal solution would be to allow for the setting of borders as "water," "mountain," or "impassable" in the map editor. Maybe in Dominions 3...?

But I am definitely taking all of these opinions into account as I think about my next map. I really appreciate everyone's comments!

[Yossar]

I don't think rivers should be crossable. The high number of chokepoints already puts fliers at a large advantage over land armies since they can easily fly over chokepoints. If you let them fly over rivers too, there's almost no point at all in building a land army.

[Cainehill]

Hmm - I thought the map was set up to only allow provinces with 4 or more connecting neighbors as starting provinces?

I just started a new game with my capitol as province #111, only 3 neighbors and one is a water province.

Side question: Is there a way to tell the game to display the province numbers? I know the general logic to how provinces numbers work, but still took about 4 minutes of clicking to find one of the ones people had mentioned as being incorrect.

[J. Lutes]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Hmm - I thought the map was set up to only allow provinces with 4 or more connecting neighbors as starting provinces?

I just started a new game with my capitol as province #111, only 3 neighbors and one is a water province.

Side question: Is there a way to tell the game to display the province numbers? I know the general logic to how provinces numbers work, but still took about 4 minutes of clicking to find one of the ones people had mentioned as being incorrect.

Thanks, Cainehill -- I've removed #111 as a possible starting place.

As far as I can tell, there's currently no way to get a display of province numbers.