Draft:
- Click image to enlarge.
Layout
To accomplish the huge number of territories I have chosen a tessellation (a repeating pattern that leaves no gaps) to create the territories. This idea first came to me from our very own WidowMakers who proposed a map made entirely of hexagons, a shape that naturally tessellates. I have strayed slightly from that idea, and chosen a combination of octagons and squares because this provides room to label each territory on the territory itself. I personally don't like grid labeling systems because they are a huge headache for users without Clickable Maps, so labeling each territory will be a necessity for this project. As you can see, the naming convention still comes from grid coordinates, where each territory is labeled by row and then column. The rows go from A-X and the columns from A-Z.
Gameplay
The gameplay will be unique simply because this map will have more territories than any other - 312 to be precise. To make things more interesting, I think the map should model a traditional Conquer Club map with one key difference - the impassables which normally divide regions will not actually be impassable. Instead, they will be walls of neutral armies that can be hacked through by the enemy. In this draft I have chosen a river delta as the background image, because deltas naturally divide areas into many small regions. The idea is that every space touched by the river would start as a neutral army in the range of 10-20 troops. Effectively this divides the map into many small areas which will have independent battles. Once a player manages to defeat all of his opponents in a region he is very safe behind the wall of neutrals. However, players will not know exactly where the enemy will try to break through because there are many entry points. Once the wall is broken, the defending player can plug it with his own armies, but that may leave other parts of the region susceptible to further attacks. I think this will create a very interesting game, especially in 8 player games where different regions are captured by each player. Balancing the size and bonus values of each region will have to be a careful task since the map is so large. Additionally I will consider troop reductions similar to the conquer man map, where players don't receive an army for every 3 territories. Instead each player may get a bonus reinforcement for every 5 territories or something similar.
These are my initial thoughts for this map. Eventually the graphics will improve to create a natural looking landscape, but until the gameplay is hammered out I will not put much work into improving the background image.
Your thoughts?
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