Lurker Thread

[Qgqqqqq]

SPOILERS




So what I did is I rolled a Mirrorland map to determine placings, and then turned it all to water. The starting locations are as follows:












Each gets a crafting/mining resource, a agriculture resource, and a calender resource. The strength of each is balanced against the whole, to make them within shouting distance of one another. They can move, and each of them has a plains hill to move to, but it will cost them one of their resources, and they will no longer be a canal onto one of the lakes. They each have 4-5 hills, a couple of plains river tiles, and a pair of grass tiles (the player who has rice gets floodplains to compensate).

4 border regions each:

- Jungle (only one currently drawn in)
- Desert
- Icey Wonderland
- Mana Marsh (???)


Main thing I'm worried about (apart from the almost cliche setup) is that the map is going to end up too big...it's already 1200 tiles, and missing (most) islands, and a ton of bulking out the border regions. The flipside, of course, being that it *is* toroidial, so needs to be a bit bigger than normal. Eh, idk.

[AdrienIer]

I think you just invented the concept of a toroidal swastika

[Commodore]

Yikes, that's freaking huge. You can fairly tone it down, methinks.

[Qgqqqqq]

Heh. This is very much not a unique concept - people have been doing maps like these for ages.

[Qgqqqqq]

I cut a 4 tile hunk out of it in both X and Y, effectively 300 tiles removed. That small enough for you, Commodore?

[GermanJoey]

How many land tiles is it total?

[Qgqqqqq]

I haven't finished drawing it yet, I've only done the capitals (and repurposing it down a size had a ghastly effect on the border regions).

[Commodore]

900 tiles for 5? Much better, although still large.

Hard to have 5-player originality for a toroid, s'ok though.

[Qgqqqqq]

FFH maps are generally larger. I was operating under a between 800 and 1000 (land) tiles rough boundaries.

[Qgqqqqq]

I can't figure out when I'm going to turn in for the night, but here's about 95% of the map done.

Islands still need drawing in, but there's a template that you can observe (marble, fish, pearls, 4 tiles), and a whole bunch of areas still need tweaking.


Basically, there are four main areas: Winter (Fur, Whales, Deer), Desert (Gold, Floodplains in abundance, Incense), Jungle (varys slightly, as I have to allow for natural luxuries, but generally Silk, Gems/Sugar, Bananas), and Pastures (Ivory, Cows/Sheep/Pigs, Wine). These areas form the link/border zone to ones 4 neighbors, and have a central mana node each.

They are individually tweaked to adapt to the requirements of each civilization (inasmuch as, if your starting area has Gold, you'll be compensated for having supposedly one less lux to go after) and aimed to be roughly as attractive as one another (though I definitely foresee Winter/Pasture losing to Desert/Jungle) and roughly equivalent to other civs versions. Roughly is very much the word of the day - this is FFH, and I'm not bothering around with counting grassland tiles or somesuch. I know that, in some cases, certain areas are actually substantially larger, or otherwise have potential advantages, but this is done to a) compensate for another defect (like poor Calabim's double Floodplains) and b) not given much weight. The idea is definitely for each to have the same chance within a stones throw, and I believe the map accomplishes that.

So, quick feedback? I want to release this tomorrow, which is why this is coming out now, even though I know it has some tweaking/livening up terrain to go.

Edit: Damnit, looks like the whole thing is smaller than I would have liked, only ~650 or ~125 each. Ah well.
Edit2: Perhaps the reason for this is that there are virtually no unusable tiles - a la the icy regions in many games - and no backfill/exploratory regions, as some of my previous maps have had. Here, there's a opponent in ~15 tiles in every direction.
Edit3: Updated attachment. This one is a LOT closer to being done, all islands done and everything.