Map Dabble

If i took out the blobby O'hare thing (chicago airport), it looks like the South Island of NZ - (Back to front) :) If the game play and map details, dimensions get sorted, then the graphics can be worked on, It would still need a theme of sorts, as is, It's not that attractive to me either and I'm stuck for a war theme, but the game play is starting to look interesting and that's a good thing. Also, Bishop is showing some enthusiasm :thumbs: which is of value. Good game play and real location accuracy makes for a good risk map. Anyone can take over the graphics if they are interested. Obvious dimension impression is it's a vertical map, and the scrolling. It is however, accurate land mass dimensions for Chicago, and close to accurate information (locations/rivers) The blobby O'hare would look better just gone, but it makes the required width of the map dimensions (1024) work. A title could probably fit in there, right now I just filled it's space with the Chicago flag. The neutral area in Far North and North West regions, are actually a couple of cities inside Chicago boundaries (interesting). Considered using them to make a region. Just realized now that North West is Kanye West's (Rapper) daughtersname, and Kanye is from South Shore Chicago (Found this out by notable residents from that area). Now I get a better understanding of his daughters chosen name, North West! I'm not sure about rotation, but am going to play around with it once the game play seems sorted, and wouldn't mind hearing from players from the area on the map details. [spoiler=Latest Bridge edit][img]http://oi66.tinypic.com/nv5qpv.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

Yes, I think I like it as it is. Gameplay is different from most of maps we have now, but this doesn't mean it is "wrong". First thing I can remark (before someone jump here saying to change everything) there are more large regions than what we are normally used to. This is something welcome for me. We cannot have all the maps based on small regions: for example (amongst the newer) New Zealand, Italia, Anchor Bay, The Philippines, and also Texas. The most common map, World Classic, has an average region size of 7 territories; all the other maps have (in average) smaller regions. Not that I want to take World Classic as example, I'm just saying we should allow a map with larger regions once on a while. Second note, regions and bonuses are very well balanced. All the regions with the same bonus have exactly the same number of territories and the same number of borders. The only exception to this is the southern green region that I proposed to reduce at +3. It's impressive, it doesn't seem possible they are just the Chicago neighborhoods exactly as they are in reality (geographical accuracy is something I really appreciate) and they are just so well equilibrated as game regions. Looking into the possible super-regions and border minimizations, I realized the map is composed by 4 main defensible blocks, partially overlapping in some points. So my third subject is the whole shape of the map: pritty simple really, but notice the perfect role played by the lake connection line. If it was longer, the whole map would have been too circular, or shorter, would have been too linear. As it is, it's just a good middleway that connects all 4 blocks together with one line only. See image please. [spoiler=Image: super-regions & map-shape][img]http://i1354.photobucket.com/albums/q700/Photo_Bishop/ChicagoSR_zpsbscwkrrv.jpg[/img][/spoiler] I added in the image also the minimal borders and the compound bonuses of the super-regions. Note, also the super-regions seems to be perfectly sized and equal in bonuses and locations. By the way the two outer blocks (+9 in red) are very well defensible compared to the two inner blocks (+10 in green). So as a bonus finalization in my opinion it would be required to reduce them from +9 to +8, by lowering the two largest regions from +6 to +5. This is normally justified by saying those two regions are more apart from the others. I tried to study the cap's, without very good placements at the moment. But I will look more into it if the general gameplay is confirmed.

Not a big fan of huge, hard to defend regions, and I think most people feel the same way (false consensus bias!). Especially not the 4/4 North and Northwest, bleh. But, it is nice to have different options in gameplay. Maybe a different connection line on the West side mimicking the effect on the East? Dunning to Asburn maybe? Just a way to open movement a little instead of having it stymied at 3 or 4 chokepoints, might help the vertical flow.

Let me say that Tamriel is very unpopular, and its region average size is 7.33 (similar to world classic). It has many borders too, like this one, even the superregions are, in general, easier to defend. People tend to like small easy regions better than small hard ones, and those better than big easy regions. No one tends to bother about big hard regions.

You guys... You just have found a model that works and you want to reproduce it at infinity. Yes, you can add a north-south connection in the west side and split some of the larger regions, makes some impassibles or cheat some borders, and you will get just a map like many others. [u]Personally I like all maps to be different.[/u] It seems like Hoodlum has a very long experience through different sites and probably he played many different kind of maps. If you don't trust my opinion at least trust his experience. Please @Hood post your favorite World map of your previous site, you had already posted it somewhere but I cannot find it right now.

Oh, don't mistake me, I don't want to have every map the same! Just stating that they are less popular. In fact every map the same is boring. Different maps need different approaches, and make gameplay different and more interesting. But if regions aren't attractive enough, they won't play a part in the map.

@Psymon Some players will conquer some small regions, some others won't conquer any, just as it is in World Classic. When everybody gets a small bonus the game tend to be more stalemating, so I think it's good sometimes to have few small regions. Who doesn't hold regions has still the option to go for many territories (12 or 15) to get a higher reinforcement, or he can simply stack all his troops in one territory keeping his paths free: staying ready to kill at the right moment. Who holds regions instead grows faster but usually he cannot reach a very good position for kill as he has troops distributed on all the region borders, or even if he stack them at some point, still it is possible his own territories will block him. [size=16px][i]It's a war with different weapons: sitting lions vs flying vultures. Personally I prefer to be the smart vulture but if there are no big regions there I cannot fly and I will be forced to be the stupid lion.[/i][/size] The reasons of the popularity of maps can be different and complex. For example Africa1980 has many defensible easy regions but few people still play that map, once was very popular though, but now seems like people get bored to play it, However geographical maps usually are more attractive than fictional maps, but I wouldn't call Tamriel "very unpopular",,If you think like this then the only popular maps are Caribbean, United States and Med. States (and World Classic of course!). In my opinion it's a good map, but unfortunately most of people have no idea what Tamriel is. This one is different, it's Chicago City :o many will want to try it! [spoiler=Map for reference][img]http://oi66.tinypic.com/nv5qpv.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

I hadn't played any different risk maps till I came to d12, before that I played the sameeeeee world map, that could have extra links as an option. Other than 2v2 games we created manually. My favourite setting was an 8 player, 80% (Domination) Increasing cards, with all the extra links, and it was always +6 cards needed for a fly trade. This was the main game played at one time by all the ladder players when it was popular online and the only place to play risk online. Extra links included, Svalvard, Hawaii, Philippines, NZ... We used a random drop setting, but placed troops manually. There was a type robotic play when all pro's were playing. If you were first in turn (consecutive) and if you had a territry dropped in Australia - OR - South America you had your preference and the unwritten rule was you should only take that continent after 2-3 rounds minumum or roamers and even another continent holder would probably keep you in check. Africa was allowable within 4 rounds. Other continents were for what we called roamers (remaining players without a continent). Sometimes Europe was taken by a player, but never asia or north america. The continent holders (southern hemisphere) wouldn't build their borders more than 3, but they would have a back up behind their border just in case, for future rounds. The bulk of troops was needed for protecting roamers against eachother and from other strong continent holders. A new player would always make the game more interesting, otherwise you waited for a slip up of a missed block, or someone with 5 cards at the wrong time. The extra links were convenient for roamers in place like Hawaii - Central America where strong continent holders could protect you. They protected you of course for their own game to win. This was the way pro's played it, it would often be a mindset of roamers vs Continent holders. If a continent holder took his region too early in the game, roamers would align together to break it and block eachother, they werent as strong but they needed to keep the continent holders in check, making sure they dont get too greedy, and they were never allowed any sattelite territories (outside of their continenet area. Roamers would work together to kill the one spots for easy cards. Often a roamer was in the best position to win, if he found the best holes to hide in, and set up on other roamers for a sweep game when ascending value was right. Game's would last roughly 2 hours. Later years the main popular setting is a 6 player SET card (cannons, calvary, soldier) value system, with no extra links. map settings [spoiler][img]http://oi64.tinypic.com/2mrw5dx.jpg[/img][/spoiler] map in the game [spoiler=typical pro set up][img]http://oi66.tinypic.com/314rzh1.jpg[/img][/spoiler] game can be downloaded [url=https://www.dropbox.com/s/4e5f9apn4jolfju/US_version.exe ]download[/url] and play on PC too. For this Chicago map, I feel it might be popular because it's looks simple (like USA) with a difference that it's vertical and has a the skip traffic link or links, it's more balanced, and it's a real location that makes maps popular. It doesn't look complicated. I didn't like USA at first because it looked simple, but it's one of those maps that grow on you and learn to appreciate for certain settings, and it's a popular map (maybe because it's the USA).

Game play suggestions [spoiler=gameplay suggests][img]http://oi64.tinypic.com/33u8t8w.jpg[/img][/spoiler] The connection for game play purpose gives it some symmetry, but are the troops travelling by train and yachts? hehe. bonus change mention (bishop) / connection mention (naathim)

I've not got much time, but here's my first impression: I'm intrigued! Overall I think I like it. The main aspect of this map's gameplay is for me, going for the kill. There are so many territories that weaker players will inevitably have armies in the Far North +6, Far South East +6, and West +5 or South West +5. The 4 chokepoints in the middle of the map make the killing stage of the game interesting - to make a kill you need to have a few large armies around the map, rather than one huge army (which I like!). Distribution could be as important as regions here. I wouldn't change the chokepoints. Maybe split the Far North region across the river to form a +4 and a +2 region. Maybe not, it's up to you. I would definitely play this map with its current gameplay.

Hard to comment on this map. We've seen and tried the jungle map, with large regions that no one ever got (except the people that fought themselves to death). Of course, the regions there weren't only large, they were also only connected to the center lake, and it was a hard map to move around in. This map is not like that, it actually has two good regions to get (and with the right neutrals, maybe one or two more), so if you want to try, defenitely go for it. I agree that not all maps should be the same, but then I defenitely don't think we have many maps that are the same. Maybe world classic and world modified, but that was the whole point of them. For one I agree with His Eminence, we defenitely shouldn't model all maps to the one working concept we have. But then there are reasons why that concept works. We all played increasing card games, we all know that a region is only worth it if you can get and hold it in the first few turns of the game (ok, huge maps are an exception, but then this map isn't that huge right?). So yeah, try something weird, defenitely do so, but it might turn out to be a failure. That's just something to keep in mind. You already have some really good maps, so I'd appreciate it if you try weird things even if the maps turn out to be not that much in the end, but it is something you have to keep in mind if you try something grazy. I still want Glanru to make his trails of the west map without regions at all. Not sure if it'd be fun, but then we never tried right?

yeah.. that's what i feel this map dabble thread is for really. just to learn, experiment and try stuff, and if something comes of it.. cool. if not, still fun to try. In this Chicago one, wanted to tackle something that wasn't islands, as all my maps have been, try rivers and bridges etc, and attempting to make a decent gameplay out of it. just had another play around today with dimensions - less scrolling but more compact and less room for text. Google maps background idea. Scaled version - dimensions 1024 / 700 [spoiler][img]http://oi65.tinypic.com/m9m1hs.jpg[/img][/spoiler] edit ..OOPS don't know why i thought those were the dimensions lol...back to the drawing board

Might give more space for labels now :) Shaves off 275 vertically from the original size [spoiler=1024x825][img]http://oi64.tinypic.com/106fqfo.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

and a play around with the old westeros outline [spoiler][img]http://oi66.tinypic.com/fmp7js.jpg[/img][/spoiler]

I think you flattened the map, which is not necessarily a bad idea, but man, the map feels incredibly crammed :S