Conquer Club

jakewilliams wrote:Gameplay discussion:

According to Widowmakers' spreadsheet, bonus values should be 3.67 for Dixie, 3.92 for Georgia, 7.5 for Florida, 1.5 for Jamaica, 3.25 for Haiti.

According to MrBenn's calculator, at least one player will drop the missiles, US ships, and the USSR ships in a 2p/3p game. fairly likely someone will drop the MQ bonus as well.

We may have to add some neutrals and starting positions to negate these.

Okay here are a couple of suggestions.
1. To eliminate any player starting with missiles, start them as neutrals.
2. Change that one Soviet ship from starting as neutral to starting normal.
3. Divide Atlanta and put in Dalton, and only connect it to Atalanta and Athens. This shouldn't change the bonus value any.
4. Put 4 Soviet and 4 US ships as starting neutral to help eliminate the possibility of any player starting with a bonus here as well.

If my addition is correct this will give you 44 starting territories and 31 territories starting neutral for a total of 75 territories.

Just what I see.

V17




Change log:

Added "MILITARY QUARANTINE" under the actual Military Quarantine for added clarity. Done in the same style that the U.S. states are done in to keep consistency. Also brightened the glow around the mini-MQ in the bottom legend.
Added "Calhoun" territory by splitting Atlanta.
Replaced 88s with actual neutral value numbers since we all know that the 88s can fit, and it's easier to analyse the gameplay now.
Redrew some of the dotted lines. Some of them may be redrawn further down the line to make them smoother and possibly slightly change the color to improve contrast.

Calhoun will work as well

Looking good!

Both Calhoun and Dalton are shitholes I ate at Pizza Hut in Calhoun once, and a very good friend lived there.

No comments/feedback in the past week?

V18: slight changes to the lines

Looking at it, I'm thinking you are going to have a problem with the legends on the small. Is there anyway you can readjust the legends so that the text is readable on both maps? You have some room for the top right game play instructions to be made bigger. You have some extra room down in the bottom left corner.

I wish I could help more for gameplay, but this map isn't in my comfort zone of maps that I usually play and understand. But I'll give it a look over.


--Andy

isaiah40, I'm not too worried about the legends until we get to GFX - gameplay is more important at this stage, and we may end up supersizing this if it makes sense.

Andy, thanks. You can play as many 1v1 games against me on this map as you want once it goes beta until you learn how to play these

New animated GIF showing the progression from the base maps to the current proposed map:

If you ask me I think you can improve on the water background. I know this is not game play related, but might help some of the small visible problems people will have with those lines.

Also have you looked into other fonts? The font does not seem to match the rest of the map.

The gameplay looks good to me, so I'll go ahead and sticky this.

i like the gameplay too. there's plenty of strategy, with some elements of arms race in a more open environment. i'm not sure how many regions start neutral, since the first post contradicts itself (31 or 16), but both numbers sound good (assuming there are 75 regions total).

the +1 for every 3 ships bonus is the only aspect of which i'm not too fond: the bonus is too small to make taking ships worthwhile, so virtually the only purpose it serves is to give a fairly common starting bonus on a lucky drop. this can perhaps be modified to no bonus for ships alone, but +1 per ship (or even +2 per ship) for the naval control operation. this single change ought to be enough to move the map to the graphics workshop.

neutral values will almost certainly have to be amended when in beta so, being new to the map, i shall not attempt to make a judgement on their suitability here.

rather than the little-known cornwall county and middlesex county, i suggest using the names of the two best-known jamaican cities, montego bay and kingston.

ian.

This might be the way to go.

iancanton wrote:i like the gameplay too. there's plenty of strategy, with some elements of arms race in a more open environment. i'm not sure how many regions start neutral, since the first post contradicts itself (31 or 16), but both numbers sound good (assuming there are 75 regions total).

the +1 for every 3 ships bonus is the only aspect of which i'm not too fond: the bonus is too small to make taking ships worthwhile, so virtually the only purpose it serves is to give a fairly common starting bonus on a lucky drop. this can perhaps be modified to no bonus for ships alone, but +1 per ship (or even +2 per ship) for the naval control operation. this single change ought to be enough to move the map to the graphics workshop.

neutral values will almost certainly have to be amended when in beta so, being new to the map, i shall not attempt to make a judgement on their suitability here.

rather than the little-known cornwall county and middlesex county, i suggest using the names of the two best-known jamaican cities, montego bay and kingston.

ian.

Thx for the input Ian.

You're right, 44 starting, fixed the initial post.

Let me think about the ships. I don't want something just for holding the control, but a way to get the bonus from the ships themselves too. Changing it to require 4 puts the odds of ANY player getting it 26% in 2p, 39% in 3p (according to MrBenn's nifty bonus probability calculator). How low of a number on the probability do we want?

Yeah, I can agree with the name changes on Jamaica.

Isaiah asked me to post over here and see what I thought.

The biggest qualm I have is that the invasion crafts start completely open... I think they shouldn't be attackable by he ships nearby and one should have to go through the government orders to do it. I think it would make that section of government options much more of an attractive place to attack
and thus bring it in the game more.

Version 20:

Bruceswar wrote:If you ask me I think you can improve on the water background. I know this is not game play related, but might help some of the small visible problems people will have with those lines.
Also have you looked into other fonts? The font does not seem to match the rest of the map.

I think the sea is okay for now and the font is there for legibility. These are issues which we can focus on in the graphics forum - we're on about gameplay for now but I agree that we should make the dotted lines more prominent. Is that change enough or do they need more tweaking?

Industrial Helix wrote:The biggest qualm I have is that the invasion crafts start completely open... I think they shouldn't be attackable by he ships nearby and one should have to go through the government orders to do it. I think it would make that section of government options much more of an attractive place to attack and thus bring it in the game more.

I can see your opinion with the Cuban Landing Craft - Cuba is very accessible via SIX points on the Military Quarantine. It doesn't necessarily need another access point via the ships connecting to the Landing Craft. HOWEVER, if we took this connection away, we'd have to take it away from the Soviet Landing Craft into the US, merely for consistency. If we did this, the US would only have 3 access points to 20 territories, and the two jets. I really don't think that's sufficient, especially given that simply getting to the "American Invasion Authorization" would take 3+5+4 neutrals, then another 3+ neutrals (or equivalent) on the actual Landing Craft. Hopefully making the two ships that connect to these neutral (see reasoning below) makes those a little more interesting, since they one-way attack the ground, they are good spots to drop (but not critical to own).

iancanton wrote:the +1 for every 3 ships bonus is the only aspect of which i'm not too fond: the bonus is too small to make taking ships worthwhile, so virtually the only purpose it serves is to give a fairly common starting bonus on a lucky drop. this can perhaps be modified to no bonus for ships alone, but +1 per ship (or even +2 per ship) for the naval control operation. this single change ought to be enough to move the map to the graphics workshop.

After looking at was was possible with the XML, I decided to add starting positions to eliminate dropping the ship bonus. There will be 6 starting positions, each with one US and one USSR ship. Each person will get a max of 2, with the unused ones being starting neutrals. In 2p/3p games, that means each player will start with 2 of each type of ship, and in 4p-6p games, each person will start with one of each ship. In 7p/8p, the starting positions are ignored, but there is only a 17% chance of someone dropping 3 ships. We can keep the +1 for 3 bonus without having anyone drop it. To do this, Provomyy and USS Randolph were changed to a neutral 3 each, in addition to changing B-59 from neutral 2 to neutral 3 (so all neutral ships match).

The Naval Control operation bonus was also changed.



The "Bonus w/ Naval Control" column is what we previously had. The far right column is the adjusted new bonus with +2 per 2 ships with the Naval Control operation (including the initial +1 for 3 w/o naval control, so it's a cumulative figure). I think this would make it worth it. What do you think?

Changes:
Changed the wording of the Invasion Authorizations to make the bonus more clear.
Renamed the Jamaican regions.
Made the dotted lines darker.
Fixed a small grunge issue (see below)
Made the Naval Control +2 for every 2 ships of the same nationality rather than +1 for 2.
Changed Provomyy and USS Randolph to neutral 3. Planned for starting positions to eliminate bonus drop.

Minor grunge fix:

Well jake, that is a good compromise I believe. So I'll give this a few more days to see if anyone has any other comments of suggestions.

good logic on the landing craft regarding balance between the US and Soviet sides.

jakewilliams wrote:Changed Provomyy and USS Randolph to neutral 3. Planned for starting positions to eliminate bonus drop.

u've spotted an elegant solution provided by the new xml!

since any further potential gameplay issues are likely to be minor and not involving changes to attack routes, let's now move on to graphics.



ian.

List of graphics issues/comments that are (possibly) outstanding:

isaiah40 wrote:Looking at it, I'm thinking you are going to have a problem with the legends on the small. Is there anyway you can readjust the legends so that the text is readable on both maps? You have some room for the top right game play instructions to be made bigger. You have some extra room down in the bottom left corner.

Bruceswar wrote:If you ask me I think you can improve on the water background. I know this is not game play related, but might help some of the small visible problems people will have with those lines.

Also have you looked into other fonts? The font does not seem to match the rest of the map.

I'll certainly give a proper look over with a bit more time, but you do have a solid image already, so keep it up! Just a quick glance and the thing that pops out right away is the flag icons. Not amazingly accurate, and kinda ugly because of it. I suggest just going with red and white stars which are easier to draw at any size and easily denote which side is which.

V22:



Fonts addressed first, see first post for poll. Also want feedback to gauge if others want to see a different look to the water.

I like the original fonts you used. IMO they are cleaner and easier to read.

Florida Fonts if I have to choose from these I think.


--Andy

Original font was fine but the Florida is the best of what you have now.

I really like Dixie, myself, though I'd say Georgia would be my second pick. Florida's lower-case a's just bother me for some reason.

-Sully

Wow! This map looks great. I usually stay away from maps with so many different attack routes & sequences, but this one seems worth it. Complex in a way that is put to good use and stylish graphics. Well done!

Personally, I like Cuba font the best, but I think Florida is a close second.