Celtic 7 Nations v4.0 [Quenched]!

[The Bison King]

Post by Sniper08 » Tue Jul 06, 2010 8:18 am

MarshalNey wrote:
2) Cornwall. Something needs to be done here, I think, especially if the Isle of Mann is left to open deployment. The only thing worse than easily droppable bonuses are imbalanced ones, and Cornwall is way harder to hold than the Isle of Mann, yet has the same measly +1. At the same time, Cornwall is also very likely to be dropped... and +2 is an even bigger gamebreaker. I smell a conundrum, for which I have no easy solution.



I agree ,something needs to be done about Cornwall and adding an extra territory will make it harder to obtain on the drop.

Yes Cornwall is sort of a "special" bonus and by "special" I kind of mean "Shitty". Which I think is kind of fine, it's not like every bonus has to be a strategic gold mine but here's what I got. Step 1 is Erasing the connection between Leinster and Devon. Step 2 is adding a connection from Domnonee straight to Stonehenge. This will prevent Cornwall from being quite the Crossroads that is now, and will give players another way around it. This will also prevent it from acting as a southern choke point (you can defend 3 bonuses with Celtic sea and Devon). I'm going to try and resist adding a territory to the bonus but I could be convinced with the right argument.

[The Bison King]

P.S. If you just came straight to this page, please read the last post on page 4 for it is new as well

[MarshalNey]

Yes Cornwall is sort of a "special" bonus and by "special" I kind of mean "Shitty"...

hee.

Well, if you're williing to make the Isle of Mann, et. al, start neutral, Cornwall isn't so bad in comparison if left to open deployment. So then, it'll be hard to hold and undervalued, but non-neutral which will lessen its fugliness for players.

... here's what I got. Step 1 is Erasing the connection between Leinster and Devon. Step 2 is adding a connection from Domnonee straight to Stonehenge. This will prevent Cornwall from being quite the Crossroads that is now, and will give players another way around it. This will also prevent it from acting as a southern choke point (you can defend 3 bonuses with Celtic sea and Devon).

Sounds good... very good, actually.

I'm going to try and resist adding a territory to the bonus but I could be convinced with the right argument.

You will get no such argument from me (yet).

[theBastard]

now it looks nice. just change Circinn and Goddodin...

[The Bison King]

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

Changes:

added neutral territories (not visible check home page for specifics)

Raised Wales to +3

Removed Leinster-Devon sea connection

Added Domnonee-Stonehenge connection

now it looks nice. just change Circinn and Goddodin...

I forgot to do it on this draft but you are right and I'll fix that on the next one

[mattattam]

I think Stonehenge and Isle of Man should start neutral 3 instead of 2. They are already the subject of a lot of attention in this map and the bonus' you get from them shouldn't be so easy.

[Sniper08]

1) Now brittany is undervalued with that added connection ,3 territories to defend with only +2 bonus. Moribhan to Asturias seems a unneccessary connection ,if you remove it ,i think that will balance the bonus.

2)

Added Domnonee-Stonehenge connection

This is a good connection as it will stop the south from becoming easily defended from 2 territorys to 3 now.

[Industrial Helix]

The number one thing I dislike about this map are all the straight dotted lines. There has to be a better way of making this map and I say this now because I think you should consider something different for the gameplay besides the usual sea connections.

What if you had massive territories, like Celtic Sea, that bordered the celtic land territories, like Munster or what have you... sorry to draw all over you're pretty map, but I think an illustration might show you better what I mean.

Click image to enlarge.

[The Bison King]

The number one thing I dislike about this map are all the straight dotted lines. There has to be a better way of making this map and I say this now because I think you should consider something different for the gameplay besides the usual sea connections.

What if you had massive territories, like Celtic Sea, that bordered the celtic land territories, like Munster or what have you... sorry to draw all over you're pretty map, but I think an illustration might show you better what I mean.

Hmm... I must confess I'm not a very big fan of this suggestion. The Gameplay aspect at least. I will completely agree that the dotted lines are substandard visually and that is something that I will address later in Graphics. I'm putting a lot of thought into what territories attack what territories, and there's been a lot of discussion too. We've been very careful and selective when it comes to picking territory connections. The gigantic sea territories I think take away from that. They make everything too interconnected and I think it really get's away from what this map is all about. The function of the sea territories you suggest is already being filled by territories like the Celtic Sea, Stonehenge, and the Isle of mann, but with those territories I can be a little more reserved about what attacks what, and why.

[The Bison King]

Besides I really like the web of connections I think it makes the whole thing really interesting and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of others felt the same way. But any way I'll make the actual connections look way cooler later on in graphics don't worry about that

[MarshalNey]

Besides I really like the web of connections I think it makes the whole thing really interesting and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of others felt the same way...

<raises his hand>

I'm not a big fan of seas as normal land regions. It messes up the gameplay, and what's more the open interconnectedness (I'm using a Don King word here) is not even really accurate except in the modern sense. In the time frame this map uses, sea paths were generally very specific, well-charted if possible and hugged the coastline depending on how good one's shipbuilding skills were.

I've never really understood the prejudice against dotted lines (or lines in general) as long as they were clear. I suppose it's an aethetic thing that doesn't offend me in the same way that it does others.

[Industrial Helix]

I really hate line connectors and totally find them unclear. It might be a me thing, though cause I've found a couple of people who seem to think they're fine. I can't play something with too many lines, especially without BOB... for some reason I have a decent time on Rt. 66 though.

Anyway, i just thought it looked way ugly and wanted to suggest before gameplay was solidified.

[natty dread]

I agree with IH to an extent - personally I have nothing against line connections, they work fine for many maps, but there are just too many lines here.

What you could do is, make the sea territories like in IH:s suggestion, but add port icons to the land territories that border them, and no icons to territories that don't. This way you could keep the gameplay as it is and reduce the cluttering lines.

Of course you would have to keep the lines where two land territories connect directly, but either way this would reduce the amount of lines to a tolerable level.

[The Bison King]

I don't really see an actual problem here. This is more like a voicing of personal opinions. The connections are fine. No ones given an actual reason to add ports or sea territories other than a visual preference. We can work on the way it looks later. Right now I'm focused on what specific territories connect to which and why. The sea connections I've been using have been working great for this. I have a lot of reasons for what connects to what. Feel free to ask me, I'll back it up. I'm not going to add ports because this map takes place in a time before major cities. Remember we are dealing with tribes with limited sea fairing abilities.

[natty dread]

Fair enough. I'll try to take a peek at the gameplay when I have a spare moment.

[The Bison King]

I plan on doing a new draft soon, but I've been really busy lately so I haven't had time. If you want something to discuss I'm trying to decide if Ireland would be more effective as a 7 territory bonus worth +4 or a 8 territory bonus worth +5? 7 for 4 would be easier to take, but there wouldn't be a really powerful bonus to take on the map. 8 for 5 would make it a really important bonus but it might be to hard to take and would be ignored until the end game.

[Evil DIMwit]

8 for 5 would make it a really important bonus but it might be to hard to take and would be ignored until the end game.

8 territories is not that hard to take, especially given the multiple small bonuses all around.
Then again, it's a very small map, so the games will be short.
At any rate, I think 5 for 8 is better than 4 for 7.

[MarshalNey]

At any rate, I think 5 for 8 is better than 4 for 7.

Seconded.

[The Bison King]

I'll be back on this next week.

[The Bison King]

I'm Back!

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

I changed Dyfeds connection to Cornwall(bonus) from Devon to Cornwall(territory). Why? Because before there was equal pressure being applied on both of cornwalls territories. Now 3 territories attack Cornwall while only one attacks Devon. This essentially creates a front and back door to the Cornwall bonus.

[Evil DIMwit]

Why does Powys start neutral, and not, for example, Devon? It seems the Cornwall bonus would be a better candidate for a bonus drop block.

[The Bison King]

Why does Powys start neutral, and not, for example, Devon? It seems the Cornwall bonus would be a better candidate for a bonus drop block.

Because I want Wales to be worth +3, I think it was you who was telling me that that would be too high for a bonus you could potentially land on the drop. I see what you are saying about making a territory on cornwall start neutral. I'd have to do some mathe to find out if adding a neutral will screw up the numbers too much. If so, I'll have to come up with some creative thinking. That or we remove the neutral on Powys at the risk of a player maybe starting with wales to block the likely event that a player starts with Cornwall.

[Evil DIMwit]

Ah, I see. Well, 7p games would start with a lot of neutrals with 27 deployable territories; that's about the worst of the danger. If you don't like that, you can add another territory somewhere. It's also possible that the possibility of dropping 1 bonus isn't so bad, though I don't know that there's another map this small that allows for that so easily.

[The Bison King]

Ah, I see. Well, 7p games would start with a lot of neutrals with 27 deployable territories; that's about the worst of the danger. If you don't like that, you can add another territory somewhere. It's also possible that the possibility of dropping 1 bonus isn't so bad

If so I don't think Cornwall would be a bad one for a risk of potential auto deploy, since it's not very powerful, centrally located, so easily removed. Also there always is the option of adding a territory to Cornwall.

though I don't know that there's another map this small that allows for that so easily.

Netherlands.

[Evil DIMwit]

though I don't know that there's another map this small that allows for that so easily.

Netherlands.

Yeah, that's about right. Cornwall is a bit less connected/central than Utrecht is but the scale is about the same. On the other hand, Utrecht has less clear expansion potential, while Cornwall sits next to two relatively small bonus areas as well as Stonehenge's auto-deploy. Next to Stonehenge, the extra troop could be a fairly meaningful advantage early on. Then again, the same is true (to a lesser extent) of Brittany...

I would increase Stonehenge's starting neutral to at least 3, quite possibly 4.