Italy

The looks of the map, in my opinion, looks great, except for the mountains. The mountains look marginal. However, the gameplay doesn't seem that fun... none of the regions look that defensible...

anyhoo,

that's my two cents,

urgullll

I agree with the lack of defensible regions. Look at the green region by the Ionian Sea. Why put the port on Catanzaro? Now you have to defend all the territories in the region.
Same thing with the port on Lecce (yellow region on the right).

In the upper right blue region why connect Trieste to Venezia? Just makes the region harder to defend.

I understand why some of the regions just won't be very defensible but you shouldn't make these regions less defensible to match. It's more fun when you can get a foothold somewhere and start growing.


The numbers on the mini map seem a tad blurry to me. Probably because they are turned at an angle. Were they put on the main map and then resized and rotated? That would account for the blurriness. I think they should be straight like the territory names and not rotated. Both should be the same one way or the other. Also they might look better with a one pixel black stroke around them.

The overall look is pretty good but I would like to see a little bit of rough texture added to the ocean. It looks too smooth to be what it is, a printed gameboard on a table. If there is some paperboard texture there it isn't strong enough to notice.

Thanks for all the very quick feedback. I'm sure The_Bishop will take care of the details for all the suggested game play changes required and I will amend all the graphic requests.

About graphics, I think that the sea is too smooth and the unplayable area too rough. I also feel that the mountains could be improved.
Aside from these, I think it looks great!

Most things have been said for me, except for the missing 'with' word (or possibly 'of' on the key card

I find difficult to see yellow and green ports. Also, some labels make the map look very busy. I think some of them will be better if you guys put them slightly out of its territory (Catania, for example).

I have no more time to comment now, I will elaborate later.

Thanks aeronautic for posting it. This gives me the tools for making a gameplay description as I wanted to do. (some months ago, sorry for the delay!). But I think I still need a couple of days for do that.

Probably Psymon is right, ports should be brighter in order to be easier to see, and the sea is a bit smooth I know it. I hope Aeronautic can care about these graphics issues.

I have the hard task to convince Vexer about my gameplay choices. At least I hope so! Thanks for every feedback by the way.

Edit:

@Vexer - For now I can say that 2-territories regions normally gives a +1, and 3-territories regions (all 3 bordering) normally gives a +2. A region with 3 territories, 2 of them bordering, is a middle case where +1 is too low and +2 is too much. Since I wanted them all to be equal. In any case I think the smaller regions (2 or 3 territories) don't need to be really defensible. Especially when they are many it will be hard that someone will try to break you when he can simply build his own. But here the game is more based on defensible super-regions, being there areas with high bonuses with only 3 or 4 borders. Plus the connection Venezia-Trieste has historical/social reasons and the port in Lecce is crucial to give connectivity from Sicily (the southern island/region) to the North-East. Catanzaro port is less useful but I wanted to have the 4 main Italian seas with 3 ports each... It looks just beautiful to me.

You shouldn't remove ports, agree, but you can just move the two right-most green ports one step to the left, and that yellow region suddenly becomes attractive.
Moving the Cataranzo could make the south a sort of good super region, but if you don't move it the shouthern part seems a bad place to be in my opinion.

Top-right 3 regions: 4 borders for +7.
Bottom right 3 regions: 6 borders for +6.

So although the top 3 is a better place to be, at least for the south you can start with a good region: 3 territories with 2 borders for +2 or one with 4 territories and 3 borders, but for +3.


So why not move those two green ports one place? Makes the map better in my opinion?

I'm with matty.

I'm with vexer.

Well, it looks like many agree with Vexer and Urgul asking for more defensible regions.

Your proposal doesn't sound bad, thanks Matty.
If I understand correctly you mean to move ports from Lecce to Taranto and from Catanzaro to Reggio Calabria. It improves the defensibility as asked by Vexer and it doesn't change so much my design. If both are approved then it would be good to have also an easy region in the North removing the connection Venezia-Trieste. This will create a little dead-end that is not bad.

Really I didn't want that, it wasn't so necessary in my opinion, but maybe I am wrong on that...


By the way here the Italy map with the region names for easy comment on them.
(If you want to see the map look above on this page the aeronautic's post)



I included also the English names in brackets (where they exist) supposing that they are more pronounceable for many.
(Some names are not complete: for example "Friuli", its official name is "Friuli - Venezia Giulia" )

Bishop, Virtuo's recent poll shows that people prefer DEFENSIBLE and perhaps OVERPOWERED regions, as Mediterranean and Caribbean were adjudged to be the two most popular maps.

That is why.

I think that the regions at the moment are fair, because they are all equally indefensible. Besides, they use the same maths as the World Expanded Regions.
For a +2, three borders one interior is fine.
For a +3, four borders one interior is fine.
For a +4, five borders one interior is fine.

These bonuses are the same as in World Expanded (a very popular map). I don't see why they're so indefensible now that they are on a new map.

There are many regions in this map that should be looked into, I only looked at the northern tip and the southern tip (actually I think the Venezia - Trieste connection isn't that bad, it gives the southern part a start advantage, where the northern part has the late game advantage).

However, for the southern part (the one I proposed to change) what you (@Virtuosity) say does exactly NOT hold. Because they have regions with NO interior, as opposed to one interior.

(Did I already mentioned I love where this map is going?)