Angevin Empire

[Sebrim]

Thanks, Oggyyy! That makes it a bit clearer. Don't worry about the 48 thing. anything above 36 is perfectly fine. We have many big maps, and this one would be a bit smaller

What about you add the colours to the bordering region in the cities? So, to the north, it would be light blue, and to thewest and east it would be darker blue? Maybe matted a bit, but I think it would help.

I'm also wondering a bit about the river crossings you have added everywhere. I undestand it in Domaine Royal, but would it maybe be an idea to have the only river crossing in Normandie within the city of Rouen? Same in Bretagne within Rennes. That would add an interesting twist to taking these two commands London is that way already, right? And Dinefwr is on the border, right? I like the fact that the cities have different kinds of relations with their surroundings. And your hand drawings promise to be something really special!

Btw, what is that river running right across the continent from the Atlantic to the Mediterraneran? If it is meant to block access, I would definitely prefer to have some mountains in the middle, because that defies Geography.

The command called Toulouse, would you not rather want to call it Languedoc or Midi or Provence, or something?

 

[Oggyyy]

Thanks, Oggyyy! That makes it a bit clearer. Don't worry about the 48 thing. anything above 36 is perfectly fine. We have many big maps, and this one would be a bit smaller

What about you add the colours to the bordering region in the cities? So, to the north, it would be light blue, and to thewest and east it would be darker blue? Maybe matted a bit, but I think it would help.

I'm also wondering a bit about the river crossings you have added everywhere. I undestand it in Domaine Royal, but would it maybe be an idea to have the only river crossing in Normandie within the city of Rouen? Same in Bretagne within Rennes. That would add an interesting twist to taking these two commands London is that way already, right? And Dinefwr is on the border, right? I like the fact that the cities have different kinds of relations with their surroundings. And your hand drawings promise to be something really special!

Btw, what is that river running right across the continent from the Atlantic to the Mediterraneran? If it is meant to block access, I would definitely prefer to have some mountains in the middle, because that defies Geography.

The command called Toulouse, would you not rather want to call it Languedoc or Midi or Provence, or something?

Excellent points Sebrim =)

The rivers aren't totally accurate but rather required along the regions to break up the map

The main river in the south is a bit wrong like you say - it is meant to represent the Garonne, Tarn and Hérault rivers - but as you point out they don't interact totally with each other so therefore I will research this and change the flow of the rivers - I will probably re-draw them too as they are a bit "sketchy"

in regards to the cities, yes I think them interacting in different ways with each region was the desired effect and the flow of commands could certainly be changed by removing bridges - like you say, by having river crossings in cities only.

Yes the "Castle" of Dinefwr will be attackable on the border with Powys, similarly London from Wessex and East Anglia.

I'll be honest, i'm not totally sure about the topography of France - so I will need both a bit of guidance and to do some research to add mountain ranges =)

 

[smi]

hey oggyyy , wow the city drawing of Paris is pretty damn good!

One minor detail: it seems like its near a beach due to the light blue color used and due to the fact that none of the houses are inside the light blue area. ( which seems correct generally since you want to show that Paris belongs to the Domaine Royale command ) .

Maybe use another color? Or add some trees/ windmills / houses to show that this is land not sea?

Or maybe use stripped light blue?

 

[Oggyyy]

hey oggyyy , wow the city drawing of Paris is pretty damn good!

One minor detail: it seems like its near a beach due to the light blue color used and due to the fact that none of the houses are inside the light blue area. ( which seems correct generally since you want to show that Paris belongs to the Domaine Royale command ) .

Maybe use another color? Or add some trees/ windmills / houses to show that this is land not sea?

Or maybe use stripped light blue?

Oh yea! I never thought of that, i'll have a play later - I definitely agree

I should probably get some real work done first =)

One minor note - the choice of colours - blue and red in particular are to represent the historic "House Colours" of each Ruler - Blue Representing Louis VII and Red representing Henry II

I think Ireland may also have been part of the "Empire" at this period of time - although this is completely minor and more for cosmetics

 

[Oggyyy]

Few minor additions, boats, trees and windmills - pretty small...!! so not sure if this achieves / solves the problem raised regarding the "beach look"

 

[linkinpark]

Hey, I love your map, this should be fun to play.

I'd just like to point out a few typos: It should be "Vassaux royeaux" (plural) and "Angleterre" has only one "t". Also, "Navarra" is "Navarre" in French. "Angoulême" is spelled with an "ê" rather than an "é". "Pays de Galles" doesn't have an "e" in "Pays". And you forgot an "a" in "Mer Méditerranée".

 

[Oggyyy]

Hey, I love your map, this should be fun to play.

I'd just like to point out a few typos: It should be "Vassaux royeaux" (plural) and "Angleterre" has only one "t". Also, "Navarra" is "Navarre" in French. "Angoulême" is spelled with an "ê" rather than an "é". "Pays de Galles" doesn't have an "e" in "Pays". And you forgot an "a" in "Mer Méditerranée".

Excellent thank you very much

Not bad considering I haven't spoken any French since school =)

I will update them in due course

 

[Oggyyy]

Typos corrected and Dijon added - again same as Paris, split in to two Regions, starting Neutral (3) - both attackable from, and surrounded by Bourgogne

Bourgogne text needs adding to the Dijon minimap

Also - not sure about colouring the "City" regions.

I'll add troop placeholder positions soon, and remove the names temporarily to give you an idea of the map without region names

 

[Sebrim]

Great job

linkin had a typo himself: it's vassaux royaux, whtout an 'e'

I'm not sure if I like the background colours in the city squares. Especially if the cities themselves are not going to be coloured. Is Dijon a two-tier city? With one part as a city and one part as a meadow? One thing you have to think about, is that you need troop containers in each territory. they should be 32px by 16px. And the territory name needs to fit in as well - a bit bigger than the current font, I guess

 

[linkinpark]

Hah, thanks Sebrim, French is a tricky language, isn't it? ^^

 

[Oggyyy]

Ok so heres my new thoughts.

Make the cities one region - neutral 5 start with an auto-deploy +1 when held?

That would make the map 53 regions with 10 definite neutrals at the start

I'll also remove the city colours and see how we go with black and white

 

[Sebrim]

I liked the cities, the way they were, actually, but we need to find a better way of fitting them into the surroundings. I don't like these last thoughts.

Instead of making the surroundings coloured, you could also just name the territories around, like in the Great Britain map, where the cities are also somewhat difficult to understand at first, but consistent nevertheless. I very much like the 2-tert-city idea, and I would like to see that implemented. If it's clear that every city has two territories, then they might be different from city to city, while still easy enough to understand.

So, please continue the original line of thought - if the cities are going to remain black and white, you might try to fade the colours of the surroundings even more?

PS - the troop containers will make it clearer too

 

[Oggyyy]

Ok i'll stick ti the two tert cities and play around with the contsiners, named and colours to see whst we can so

 

[Shepherd]

Hey all, sorry I'm playing catch-up on this. And my apologies if I ask something that's already been asked or suggest something that's already been dismissed.

First, I'm usually not a huge fan of maps within maps, but since the cities all follow the same basic rules on this map it'll be pretty simple to understand what's going on. I'd say go with the cities in two parts as originally planned.

That said, is there a compelling reason to make the city regions start neutral? The site won't allow a player to start a game with all of one city, and since there are nine cities (18 regions) it's likely that everybody will start with some city regions even in large games. It's more fun to start a game by attacking a player than by attacking neutrals. I guess the concern might be that player one would have an advantage, especially in 1v1 games, but in my opinion folks shouldn't be playing 1v1 games on large maps anyway because player one always has an advantage.

With the cities, there is a danger of them being somewhat confusing, since the location of the city drawings can't really relate well to the rest of the map. For example, the Dijon box is closer to Toulouse on the map than it is to Dijon. I see why it is where it is, and I wouldn't suggest changing it now, but it means the map isn't idiot-proof. o

But there's a possible fix: one advantage to the way our game engine maps playable regions is that you could show a small version of each city on the map and have the small city region highlight with the larger city region. That way when you mouse over Paris on the main map, Paris on the side map highlights.

OK, better to show than to explain. In this quick example the player has run their cursor over the eastern half of Paris on the inset map. That region highlights as white on both the inset map AND the main map. Also, the bordering regions highlight as red on both the main map and the inset map. The beauty of this is, of course, that you can see how the cities fit in and interact with the rest of the map just by running your mouse over the map.

I should note that you're already working at the max map size... we try to keep the maps smaller than this, but if we need the space we can use it. Other than that, don't get too hung up on graphics at this stage... let's focus on the game play and get that right first.

 

[Oggyyy]

Shepherd I definitely think the idea of making "mini" representations of the cities would probably be be better than simple symbols - With the map being very vertical it seemed to make sense to add that extra twist with the "cities" - that is why they were included originally.

I also agree that the pop out city placement isn't ideal - but I certainly like the way that the region highlighting can help solve this.

As for the city regions starting neutral? - no concrete reason at all, I think I wrongly feared that the initial map generation at the start of a game would potentially swing things in favour too early - but like you say, this should be balanced quite easily with large player games - and one small note there is actually 10 cities - making 20 regions (all 2 each)

Yes the map size - I wrongly assumed that they were all this size - bit of a newbie error on my part.

I really appreciate this invaluable feedback - so graphics aside I will implement the tweaks addressed so far, and hopefully we can start analysing the map for bottlenecks / hotspots / any other problem areas.

Thanks guys

 

[Sebrim]

Antoher way to improve the linkage could be to have some kind of lines going from the city on the main map to the pop-out image of the city. I hope you understand what I mean

 

[Oggyyy]

Ok so taking on board the comments here is the current map (white hotspots being city regions to be added)

At this point I am interested in the flow of the map primarily - the city only crossings, positioning of bridges etc - feedback greatly appreciated!

1 minor point - a border + a bridge in Toulouse is missing by accident - this will be a mountain range

 

[smi]

Ok some notes about the gameplay:

Ireland + pays de Galles seems to be our map's Australia: 1 border (Powys) to guard 9 territorries and get +4

This is also the only place from where you can begin AND expand while maintaning around the same border count.

Also isnt Aquitane a bit underpriced at only +4 ? You gotta invest a lot to keep a command like this

 

[Oggyyy]

Ok some notes about the gameplay:

Ireland + pays de Galles seems to be our map's Australia: 1 border (Powys) to guard 9 territorries and get +4

This is also the only place from where you can begin AND expand while maintaning around the same border count.

Also isnt Aquitane a bit underpriced at only +4 ? You gotta invest a lot to keep a command like this

I will research the border at York to see if this can be moved so Gwynedd is attackable. similarly with Mercia and Dyfed.

Failing those I'll check the likelyhood of a sea crossing from Cornwall to Dyfed

Aquitaine + Toulose can be defended with only 3 borders if you branch out for a +7 bonus (Aquitaine, Angouleme, Tolouse and the Toulouse Region) not including the standard +5 from holding 15 regions for a massive +12 although I do agree on its own it seems a bit cheap + getting this far would require considerable effort I guess.

I'll see what other people think regarding this + any other potential problems

 

[Oggyyy]

Ok so after further research sea routes have been altered to reflect historical accuracies

The borders around Pays de Galles have been altered - Dyfed is now attackable from Wessex and Mercia

Tolouse has been corrected