Krazy Kingdoms [D, GP] - Cleaner Small Map 5/1

[dolomite13]

I have been pondering the mechanics of the seas and vikings. Because Vikings are the only unit that can utilize a sea zone. And because you cant attack an island without using "The Bomb" or "The Forbidden Lands" having the seas around islands be conquerable is worthless. I think that the other 3 seas with no islands should still be conquerable by vikings but they can be bombarded by any bordering sea so they are more for quick hopping across the sea.

So I will be changing it as follows.

Vikings
Can assault islands in adjacent sea territories.
Can assault land territories in territories adjacent to sea zones where they control an island.
Can assault seas from adjacent land territories
Can assault land bordering seas from a sea
Gain +2 bonus per island.
* other players may bombard a sea from adjacent land territories

Vikings
[[Island]] = +2
[[Land/Sea]] =assault=> [[Island]]
[[Island]] =assault=> [[Land/Sea]]
[[Land/Sea]] =assault=> [[Sea]]
[[Sea]] =assault=> [[Land/Sea]]
[[Other Players]] [[Land]] =bombard=> [[Sea]]

[dolomite13]

Because "Jungle 3" and "Desert 1" are territories I want to start with additional neutral forces to help create speed bumps at strategic locations I believe I'll need to move the crypt and mine that are on them.

Jungle 3 crypt will move to mountain 2.
Desert 1 mine will move to jungle 1.

This leaves desert 2 as the only empty territory not worth any extra bonus other than being favored. Might want to consider making one of the creature types utilize 4 rather than 3 territories and add the icon there.

Anyway I should get back to work

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[dolomite13]

I have been thinking about the gateways (suns) and now believe they are unnecessary. The map area for each race can represent their home kingdom. It would be fine if you could attack from your home kingdom/race location through your gateway to the territory with your gateway. Instead of the gateways deploying 2 or 3 the kindom space can autodeploy that.

I'm updating map with current gameplay direction and will update text as well shortly.

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[dolomite13]

Latest map image with some of the changes incorporated

Draft Version 0.0.2

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8319/7975 ... d568_b.jpg

Starting to take shape =)

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[dolomite13]

Another day another update....

- Removed gateways and any references to them.
- Added starting troops on the favored territory that can be assaulted by your kingdom.
- Upped the speed bump neutral territories to 7 so its harder to eliminate a player on turn 1 in a team game. There is still one of each color making it a little harder for someone to get all 4 favored territories but the same across the board.
- Swapped island 1 and sea 1 and increased sea 1 and sea 2 to 7 armies again to try and thwart turn 1 elimination in team games.

Draft Version 0.0.3

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8449/7978 ... e848_b.jpg

[koontz1973]

dolomite, I think you are heading in the right direction. Tuesday and Wednesday are my long work days so have less time to look at maps in the drafting room. But I like this direction and do have some ideas/suggestions. Give me till tomorrow and let me have a long proper look at it and will post it all then. You have not been forgotten.

[dolomite13]

dolomite, I think you are heading in the right direction. Tuesday and Wednesday are my long work days so have less time to look at maps in the drafting room. But I like this direction and do have some ideas/suggestions. Give me till tomorrow and let me have a long proper look at it and will post it all then. You have not been forgotten.

Sounds Great =)

I think the gameplay is in a good solid spot and the starting forces & bonus locations are where I like them. So now I am ready for the Spanish inquisition

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[koontz1973]

Ok dolomite, here are my thoughts ranging on most things.

Title. Why krazy kingdoms? When I look at the map I see lots of different species all having there own lands and abilities. What makes that crazy? Seems pretty much the norm for modern society now. I like the kk thing going on in the title but krazy seems wrong and maybe a different k word can be found to suit better. Just do not add another k to it or you will get kkk.

Story. This is nice and you should keep it in if at all possible.

Map.Not sure having the neutral 7 will stop round one eliminations in large team games. They also throw the map off balance because, of the high neutral it just seems out of place. An idea would be to drop them back to three or even a two and come up with an impassable for all of the territs that start and the seven. So Forest 1 and Swamp 1 cannot attack Mountain 1. Players would then need to go through 3 territs before attacking another player.

Graphics. Whilst I have no problem with you recycling graphics from earlier maps, those monsters are not the best thing to use. I know you are in the early stages and really do not want to spend time on graphics whilst things are still being sorted, please come up with something for the map graphically. Colours are very bright and need to be more subdued but also a different texture for each land and sea would be good to see.

Neutrals. As I said previously, the 7 neutrals are not working for the reason you put them on and in all cases will never be attacked in games. Why waste troops on a seven when you will only get a little back. Most games will be finished before a player gets to have any extra troops over what they lost. As I said, the sevens by the starting territs can go to the three and the ones you have in the middle also. If you want them to act as impassables of slow players down, then put impassables on the map. I am sure you will get more guidence on this from nole and ian in game play but right now, I feel the 7s are wasted territs.

Starting positions. You have a 3 on the kingdoms and also on the starting favoured territ. Is this how you plan to have the starts? Why not have each player only start on there kingdoms. Not to sure how this was going to be but if it is only the kingdoms, an arrow to the starting territ would be nice. It might be the only territ it can attack but the visual aid would really help non English players. If you plan to give both to players, still add the arrow.

Positions. As you are going to have starting positions on the map, you can tell the xml the starting troops. This will also stop players in team games manual deployment stacking one player. Further reducing the need for the high neutrals.

Auto deploy. +3 is way to high. A +1 will suffice. Remember, in chained and adjacent reinforcement games these are likely to be left out of the game after round 2 or 3 and will just be built up over rounds. In unlimited games, it gives a lot of troops to players.

Text. A lot of text and a lot of small text as well. Do me a favour and scale the map down and see if the text fits is readable.

I have a lot more but that can be for another day.

[dolomite13]

Title. Why krazy kingdoms? When I look at the map I see lots of different species all having there own lands and abilities. What makes that crazy? Seems pretty much the norm for modern society now. I like the kk thing going on in the title but krazy seems wrong and maybe a different k word can be found to suit better. Just do not add another k to it or you will get kkk.

Well partially because the wizard who discovered the land went mad/crazy by the corrupted magic and partially because you get a different race/type combo randomly and that's sort of "crazy" but I can see where your coming from and will think about a new K word.

Story. This is nice and you should keep it in if at all possible.

Thanx I want to keep that too as I think anyone who reads the forum for the map will enjoy it =)

Map.Not sure having the neutral 7 will stop round one eliminations in large team games. They also throw the map off balance because, of the high neutral it just seems out of place. An idea would be to drop them back to three or even a two and come up with an impassable for all of the territs that start and the seven. So Forest 1 and Swamp 1 cannot attack Mountain 1. Players would then need to go through 3 territs before attacking another player.

Graphics. Whilst I have no problem with you recycling graphics from earlier maps, those monsters are not the best thing to use. I know you are in the early stages and really do not want to spend time on graphics whilst things are still being sorted, please come up with something for the map graphically. Colours are very bright and need to be more subdued but also a different texture for each land and sea would be good to see.

I can easily change the 7's back to 3's and the autodeploy for kindoms down to 1. I will take a look at the impassible idea and see what can be done to make that work.

I plan to remove the monsters in favor of better ones. I have been sketching out graphic ideas and do not plan to use the bright colors and want the territories to have distinct patterns on them to identify them more so than color. The current colors are only there to allow quick identification during the early phases of development. Same with the symbols on the map.

Starting positions. You have a 3 on the kingdoms and also on the starting favoured territ. Is this how you plan to have the starts? Why not have each player only start on there kingdoms. Not to sure how this was going to be but if it is only the kingdoms, an arrow to the starting territ would be nice. It might be the only territ it can attack but the visual aid would really help non English players. If you plan to give both to players, still add the arrow.

Positions. As you are going to have starting positions on the map, you can tell the xml the starting troops. This will also stop players in team games manual deployment stacking one player. Further reducing the need for the high neutrals.

The plan is to be eliminated if you don't control a territory on the map so starting with only your kingdom will eliminate you on the drop. My sketches for the graphics include an arrow. The red numbers represent "player starts" and the blue numbers represent "random drops".

Auto deploy. +3 is way to high. A +1 will suffice. Remember, in chained and adjacent reinforcement games these are likely to be left out of the game after round 2 or 3 and will just be built up over rounds. In unlimited games, it gives a lot of troops to players.

Agreed ... I wonder if starting the kingdoms at "1" and autodeploy "1" would be fine I just wanted to represent the part of the story where the kingdoms can send troops in one direction through the "archway"

Text. A lot of text and a lot of small text as well. Do me a favour and scale the map down and see if the text fits is readable.

I am planning on trying icons or symbols in place of allot of the text. After I change the map to accommodate better start positions with greater distance between them the map may grow rather than shrink. But I will see.

[koontz1973]

1+1auto for kingdoms should be fine. Rest sounds fine.

For the monsters, maybe something out of mythology would look good as you have a lot of old world elements here already. If you do use an impassable, not sure if anything can be found as the normal ones would go against the theme of the map. Mountains with mountain people on do not work. Rivers and forests also for the same reason. But I will have a think on it as well.

[dolomite13]

If you do use an impassable, not sure if anything can be found as the normal ones would go against the theme of the map. Mountains with mountain people on do not work. Rivers and forests also for the same reason. But I will have a think on it as well.

IMPASSIBLES Well I think something revolving around the chaotic magic. Maybe a magical void zone of sorts that is impassible or huge seemingly bottomless chasms.

When I placed the terrain types I did so with the creation of the "personal continent" in mind. Each favored terrain and each bordering terrain make up that area. The impassibles would throw off the balance of the territories ... This could bee solved with conditional borders... if you control both sides of a "chasm" you would be considered to have the ability to bridge the gap and the two territories become adjacent for you.

VIKINGS & SEASI also think that Vikings need to change. They should probably get a less threatening name like "Fishermen", the islands could be removed and the Fishermen would instead only be adjacent to a sea from territories they already control. This would stop the sea like "sea 2" from making the trip from Tundra 1 to Mountain 4 still need to go around the sea and not need the added impassible. Fishermen would get +2 bonus for every two seas? with maybe a +2 synergy bonus if all 6 were held.

For the monsters, maybe something out of mythology would look good as you have a lot of old world elements here already.

Wow I totally agree, the more I play with the sketches I have for iconography the more the monsters need to change. I am considering changing them to "magic maelstroms" whose power is only accessible by wizards rather then monsters and sort of taking the "sequel" aspect out of the map and divorcing it from Monsters!. The current sketches I have done take the map in a different direction from Monsters art style.

I also noticed that the Dwellers "cavern" in swamp 2 should be swapped with the radiation symbol in forest 3 for the same reason we are adding the impassibles so I did that.

Now the map would look something like this...

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8297/7984 ... 9666_b.jpg

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[dolomite13]

Just noticed something ... If we remove Sea 1 and Sea 4 and extend Forest 2 and Jungle 3 to the edge of the board then add chasms to separate the starting territories from them I can then move the creature type bonus items to the empty spaces on the map instead making every start territory border an empty territory. This would make sure no one could grab a bonus for the first few turns.

You would start with 1 favored territory (+1) if and say we keep the 3 troop minimum so that would be 4 troops to deploy on your first turn. If you conquered one territory on your first turn you would have have an additional +1. If that territory had a type symbol it could be +2 if you were "Miners" or "Undead".

Elementalists needed to be changed as well so that ever 2 volcanic or every 2 tundra grant the bonus rather than +2 for every combination of 1 Volcanic and 1 Tundra because of the placement of Tundra 1 and Volcanic 4.

Lets consider this map

Click image to enlarge.

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[dolomite13]

For ease of creating a key that explains favored territories for people who don;t read english I am considering changing Dwarves to Gnomes that would give each territory type and each race a unique starting letter. So icons could be arranged in a key like this.

Gnomes
[G] + [M] = +1
[G] + [M][M][M][M] = +4

Ironically "Horde" "The Bomb" and "Underworld" also work out like that

=A=> Assaults
=B=> Bombards

[B] =B=> All Map Territories
[U] =A=> [Demonic Symbol]

For bottomless chasms the key would read something like

<=x=> not adjacent
<=a=> adjacent

[Land A - Player A] <=x=> [Land B - Player B]
[Land A - Player A] <=a=> [Land B - Player A]

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[koontz1973]

dolomite, I know it is slow in the foundry at the moment and I really want to get this moved on. Keep working on your Game play aspects as you seem to of solved most issues that I can see and the GP mods will get you the rest of the way. But right now, I need you to think more of the graphics. Can I ask you to start working on these issues...
Icons, none of them seem to match and if you add more, best to get these in one style now and save work later.
Texture, what if any are you going to use on the map.
Impassable, I liked the idea of magic coming in here but the blobs do not do that justice.
Colour scheme, please please tone it down.
Get these some what solved and I will pass this along.

[dolomite13]

dolomite, I know it is slow in the foundry at the moment and I really want to get this moved on. Keep working on your Game play aspects as you seem to of solved most issues that I can see and the GP mods will get you the rest of the way. But right now, I need you to think more of the graphics. Can I ask you to start working on these issues...

Yep. I have some free time this evening and plan to start on the map and icon work. What we have thus far is merely a rough draft that I could easily hack into shape and I used the bright colors so it was easy to see where everything is. Now the real work can begin. I have a board game night tonight and will be busy for about 2 hours but the evening till about 10 is mostly free so I will see what I can get done and post something asap. Even if I just post a scan of the sketches I have done thus far so you can see where I am going with all of this.

Icons, none of them seem to match and if you add more, best to get these in one style now and save work later.

I agree. I am currently have a sketch book with a ton of icons all in the same style. I need to scan the page then start photoshopping them.

Texture, what if any are you going to use on the map.

I have been looking at a lot of cartography sites and board games looking for inspiration and think that I have some sketches that will work for this and help with the color brightness.

Impassable, I liked the idea of magic coming in here but the blobs do not do that justice.

Yea I think a bottomless chasm with a magic mist at the bottom will be a good way to go. Again I think that as I now work on the map it should start to take shape.

Colour scheme, please please tone it down.

Absolutely



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