World Double

just an idea
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The_Bishop wrote:
Yes you are right Naathim, but I think we can do maps good both for DM and for Cap's. There are several ways to improve the connectivity without ruining the defensibility.

The problem is, if your wish is to have a World Double map respecting the World Classic gameplay, well, then we are in a completely wrong route. This map is not designed for that. You see all the small regions are in the middle? How do you believe this map may have a similar to World Classic gameplay?

I feel like I'm observing one that wants to move on, with the reverse gear in. That snake in the middle is the weakest point for me: it should be added a connection Argentina to Middle East as suggested by Psymon, or even better I would say Argentina to East Africa (just because Middle East it's one of the greatest transit points, already bordering with 6 territories).

Here are my impressions on this map when Clarke put in place his special layout and Hoodlum began the graphic realization:

The_Bishop - Apr 17, 10:15 PM
Mercatore is typical of Hasbro Risk board, but the gameplay we are defining here is a total novelty even if it takes the territories of World Classic exactly as they are. And I am sure it's a novelty because I think nobody have never made a joining like this using real boards: because it's too complex, it would require to cut the map using the scissors. It's something you can only do with computer boards. Since in this case I like the paper background style because it means a mix of old and new: I see this map like a modern concept camouflaged with a traditional dress!
I were not involved at all in this project but I liked it so much and my judgment were ultra positive.

But if you really want something respecting the World Classic gameplay, you should look at something more like my draft in the first post here. The joining should have be done with the northern regions, not with the southerns. Then I improved it a bit, but I avoided to post it because there was already this version in progress. Now you are asking for something respecting the traditional gameplay, so let me see what you can menage to do... For now it has not much to do with the World Classic gameplay.

Otherwise if the only task is to get a good gameplay and you let fall the commitment of respecting the Classic connections, then you can be much more creative. You see how this map is creative in its essence? Try to put a bit more of fancy playing with the connection lines. Nothing can be wrong, even some weird connections can stay, it will simply accomplish the creative style of this map!

Edit: thanks @Cbt for showing the bonuses, I cannot understand what is Europe +8 really.
«God doesn't play dice with the World» ~ Albert Einstein
Matty wrote:
Why 4 borders for N America? Why not just 3?
"Strength doesn't lie in numbers, strength doesn't lie in wealth. Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers." ~Maria
aeronautic wrote:
There is obviously a lot of difference in opinion on the connections for this map.
The problem is not with the amount of suggestion or suitability of any of the proposals, but with the lack of open minded compromise from all involved in the feedback.

All those proposing connections have made valid points about why it is needed, but as Bishop said, there are numerous possibilities of connection combinations that will work on this map. However, we can't decide on one and we are holding up a really good map over this and so if there is no compromise found (even if it's one that is okay for all and has no legitimate reasons for rejection), we should try our best to drop all personal feelings about the proposals and look for what will be best for all types of games & all types of players.

If The_Bishop has a different proposal to those proposed & inherited so far, he should show it soon.

Please all bare in mind that the connections & bonuses on this map cannot adhere to World Classic and will be mostly unique.

If you feel that a particular 'connections proposal' is best overall for all games & players at D12, including being aesthetically pleasing, please say so.
What we don't want; is to have a web of lines across the map and we don't want to revert to ports.
Hyd yn oed er fy mod Cymraeg , dim ond yn siarad Saesneg, felly yr wyf yn gobeithio y bydd y cyfieithu yn gywir.
cbt711 wrote:
Gameplay matters. Diverse gameplay, balanced gameplay. I was never trying to recreate specifically world classic - I just appreciated the 2 border 2 bonus aspect. I like Africa in classic, now Aussie in World double.

I think on a large map where people will start out with +5 bonus each round for shear number of territories, North America needs to be harder to defend for a +5 bonus. Someone gets N. America early and it's game with all skill level being equal. +5 is too powerful for a large map with only 3 borders. And taking the bonus down to just +4 makes it redundant in bonus to Africa and Europe. And gives more paths for capital games.

This is an amazing map. I feel the gameplay should be worthy of it. And if arguments are made for gameplay that make sense, I will like them. I am not arbitrarily drawing lines with no purpose. From the beginning of the thread, the thought was the lines seemed arbitrary and the gameplay was going to be sporadic through the middle. The lines per Vexer should have been made with gameplay in mind vs. geographical sense that hurt gameplay.

And if no one agreed with me, then this would be done and over. And that's still the case.
The_Bishop wrote:
Basically I agree with most of things you say Cbt -- it's a good base for finding an agreement -- except the problem of redundancy in bonuses.

Just let me please retrace how things occured, because I think someone didn't followed all the thread from the beginning

HISTORY OF THIS THREAD

First draft came from me. Very simple in its essence, very close to what World Classic is, but a bit lacking in connectivity.
#0 Bishop's Original (click to show)
Then Clarke came up with a new joining idea and a totally new layout.
http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e277/Richard_B_Clarke/D12%20Maps/World%20Double_zpsat8k6xek.png

Virtuosity98 did the first attempt to put in place the connections. It was not bad really, but a bit lacking in defensibility.
#1 Virtuosity's (click to show)
Clarke shown his own, really it seems like he simply adjusted Virtuosity's proposal giving more defensibility.
#2 Clarke's (click to show)
Hoodlum overtook the job and some new connections came in place there and one more territory was added.
#3 Hoodlum's (current) (click to show)
Then fortunately he sent the file to me, just few days before his hard drive burnt out! This is luck for real!

The gameplay seemed refined and I had even already placed the Cap's in order to evaluate how the New Zealand addition was good for that matter or not. My judgement was positive, but not everybdoy agreed with the new territory. It seemed like it was the only little thing we still had to decide, but...

One day Cbt woke up with the idea that cannot exist a good Risk map without easy small regions. May God curse his mouth! (joke) This concept is totally new for me, probably I am not up to date. Really I think it's pretty boring to have all maps based on who ran first in the small region, and fortunately we also have few maps that don't follow this banality. I've already mentioned NYC and Balkans as positive examples.

Unfortunately Cbt found many fans. Most surprising for me is Psymon -- which is one that I trust in gameplay evaluation -- to bear that theory of the easy region being something mandatory. In fact it doesn't exist at all the concept of easy region in his maps, take a look at them please. But apparently now he's changed his mind.

So here we are with these new proposal in place, from older to recent:

#4 Cbt's (click to show)
#5 Matty's (click to show)
#6 Hybrid (click to show)

And while I am here I would like to post also a small adjustement of the bonuses in the current version in progress.
As it is for me the only thing that really needed to be refined. I think NA bonus was a bit too high set at +5, it should stay equal to Europe (+4). But then comparing the possible super regions Aussy+Aussy at +6 seems is a bit to high compared to NA+SA at +6 as well; unfortunately giving 1 point less it would result in Aussy+Aussy = +4 and now it's too low! So I came up with a different bonus formula that gives a reward for holding twin regions (the same was suggested once for Hawaii Dual map). It gives many positive balancing effects, for example I can reduce Africa to +3 as it is a bit easier compared to NA and Europe, in fact it's a sort of +3.5 because Africas are connected each other and holding both one will get a reserved +7 bonus.

#7 Current with new bonuses (click to show)

Then if you want something really new, I believe I can come up with something cool.
@Aero, just give me a couple of hours, please.
«God doesn't play dice with the World» ~ Albert Einstein
PsymonStark wrote:
The_Bishop - Nov 23, 06:19 PM
Most surprising for me is Psymon -- which is one that I trust in gameplay evaluation -- to bear that theory of the easy region being something mandatory.
Lol - you trust in gameplay evaluation a guy who has never played a decent game of Risk :D

I have designed different kinds of maps, and, from them, the most popular are those that have relatively easy regions. I already said that I don't like cbt's version (in my opinion it is forced to keep the borders at a minimum to an excessive extent). I like Matty's because it's more balanced, and allows better connectivity than the Hoodlum's version. For the record, if you want to go from one world to the other in that version, the fastest ways are the SAs, thus, reducing a lot the % of anyone conquering the regions.

The difference with this map with other ones, is that normally there are a bunch of easy-medium regions (up to 6t-3b) and this map has no option for that, with the isolated regions being huge (NA, Europe, Asia). The rest? Two easy regions, 5-3, and two theoretically easy regions, 4-3 which give only 2 (maybe should be 3?) and are in the middle of the map. That would probably result in my opinion in an excessive fight for Aussies (oh what a surprise!) and SAs. Definitely not a newbie map. And many newbies will want to try this, don't they? And get disappointed and stuff.

I have no more time to evaluate. I continue later.
Living proof that everyone can be a brilliant great good decent cartographer.
The_Bishop wrote:
@Psymon -- I do really think you have good eye for gameplay, doesn't matter if you are good or not at playing.

As for your maps, if you exclude East Indies that it was forced to have a defensible gameplay, since it is an archipelago, the others like Baltic, Balkans and Tamriel... I cannot see where the easy regions are except +1 for holding Kaliningrad Oblast but I don't think that one makes the difference.

The smaller regions in the middle and the larger in the edges is something cool in opinion, it's different from usual but it doesn't mean it is wrong, really it's pretty interesting gameplay for my taste. The cost of this is to have the smaller regions a bit less defensible, I think we could live with it instead of trying to 'fix' it.
«God doesn't play dice with the World» ~ Albert Einstein
Virtuosity98 wrote:
Matty's World Double (click to show)
CBT's World Double (click to show)

For me, CBT's hybrid map is another small improvement. Only one connection was changed from Matty's suggestion; it adds an extra border to N.America, which I think improves the fairness of the bonuses.

Another interesting effect of the change is that the macro-connectivity of the map increases significantly (diagonally between the two N.Americas). It did take 7 steps to travel between N.America1 and N.America2, but now it only takes 3 steps. This would help people be able to make kills on players who have 1 or 2 armies far across the map.
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Matty wrote:
Yeah, I think Chris' last change is an improvement in the connectivity, although I'm not sure if the extra boder is nescessary - we can just adjust the bonus if we want.
We already have europe and afrika with 4 borders, and only aussie with three. So that's why I think 3 borders is nicer.

Still, I could go with his last one.
"Strength doesn't lie in numbers, strength doesn't lie in wealth. Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers." ~Maria
The_Bishop wrote:
Sry got a connection problem I hope dosnt fall again

I need time to load images n post
«God doesn't play dice with the World» ~ Albert Einstein
The_Bishop wrote:
In my opinion Matty's proposal was not bad but what I loathe is the removed connection between Brazil and North Africa that is something very traditional.
Hence I tried different solutions. However the idea of having some easy regions is good for me, but my speech was just for saying it is not mandatory at all.

4 different proposals. Given them names by fancy, but you can just call it A B C D
They all match the idea of having at least 2 easy small regions with 2 borders only.
Total bonuses on the map between +48 and +52.
+1 in red means = '+1 for holding Twin Regions'

Images are reduced at 3/4 size for the ease of opening them in the thread.

#8 Alternative (click to show)
Basically this follows more or less what we all have developed so far, but with some differences that's why I call it alternative. This is pretty sober style. Removed the central connection amongst Africa's for better capital placements. It follows Cbt's idea to connect new zealand with C.america (or W. US). I moved the connection Argentina-W.australia to argentina-Indonesia to keep Oceania easy to defend.

#9 Balanced (click to show)
This one has some crappy long connection lines from one world to the other going through new zealand's. They look weird but still they're quite intuitive being in perfect straight lines. This way much of the transit is moved from the center to the edges that's why I call it balanced. This is my favourite for gameplay. Nice semi-circular cap' placement for uneven number of players.

#10 Centralized (click to show)
This one also seems quite sober. Removed connection between new zealand's. Most of interest is in the center again, that's why I call it centralized, but the added NA connections also provide a good connectivity in the near periphery. Capitals needed to stay a bit more next to each other in order to have equal distances, specially in case of 6 and 9 players.

#11 Diagonalized (click to show)
It is a funny experiment, it's not necessary to explain the name. It was mostly to find a virtual justification for removing the central connections between Brazil and N.africa. NA's got to be the most transit area. I don't think I really like this one, anyway it has also some interesting points. Gameplay matches the idea of having high connectivity in the wide, but still easy to defend regions like SA, and interesting niches to grow your army like Africa.

------------

Otherwise we also have the option to go for something more similar to the classic. So I can propose an adjusted version of my first post. This one really has much of the gameplay of World Classic. All the small regions are untouched. The larger are connected each other respecting the original borders. No bordering territories added, no connections removed, no changes on bonuses. This way would be much easier to find an agreement, we have just to decide 3, 4, or 5 connections amongst the worlds (not necessary mine) and the trick is done! This really is a Double World Classic map, with all the good and the bad of it.

#12 Bishop's Newer (click to show)
«God doesn't play dice with the World» ~ Albert Einstein
Cireon wrote:
I personally think for the reason of connectivity a map that "wraps around" is somewhat important. Your newer proposal doesn't do that. The older proposals keep those intact and are in my opinion more interesting.
“This is how humans are: We question all our beliefs, except for the ones that we really believe in, and those we never think to question.”
- Speaker for the Dead, O.S. Card
The_Bishop wrote:
Okay, so you suggest not to go back to the original "classic layout" (low interest really) but keep going on with the "artistic layout" we have been working so far.

So what is the best arrangement for the connections?
I put several proposals, perhaps I went too far and I have made more confusion. I can show an image for comparison then:

Comparison Image (click to show)
Others are also possible and you can find all the proposals above in this page.
«God doesn't play dice with the World» ~ Albert Einstein
Matty wrote:
Well, you know my opinion. I prefer my version or CBT's reaction to mine. Either of them is fine IMO.
"Strength doesn't lie in numbers, strength doesn't lie in wealth. Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers." ~Maria