Conquer Club

Map Name: Nantucket
Mapmaker(s): Minister X
Number of Territories: 35
Special Features: TBD
What Makes This Map Worthy of Being Made: Whaling theme.

The blue text below was in my original post but is now obsolete.

I do not intend for this to be a serious map submission. It's just that while waiting for for feedback on some other maps that would enable me to move forward on them I was fooling around and found a lovely old map of Nantucket, which I've used as a base for this. I wish more of it showed through. It was quite interesting comparing that 1776 map to current-day ones. Nantucket has changed! Especially the western bits where low-lying islands and sandbars have apparently been reconfigured often by storms.

Look... I just like making these maps. I post this one with little or no expectation, simply to share. More as art than as a candidate for actual CC usage.

Note: The "bonus" numbers aren't even estimates. They are simply the number of terts in each bonus region.

Original Map Image:



Current version large:

like it, looks great - all them jamaican dudes on here would LOVE this i bet... .

BTW, here is a crop of the original base map. I had to erase, swipe over, paint over, and/or copy over all the text and lines and whatnot. (It was easier than you might think. There are all sorts of tricks of the trade one can employ.)



I just love these old maps. This one is from 1776.

And here's my map without all the junk that obscures the base.

yup, looks like another winner, Minx - really like the pastel colours you chose, gives it an "aged" look. ooc, are you working on ALL the maps you've posted recently?

riskllama wrote:ooc, are you working on ALL the maps you've posted recently?

No, as I said above I'm waiting for answers on each to critical questions. I know that sometimes this can take a while and I can't really speed that process up without making a pest of myself.

looks like a great idea, lets get moving on this

Mageplunka69 wrote:looks like a great idea, lets get moving on this

Let me be as clear as I can: I have no intention of doing anything further with this map. I posted it merely to share something I thought looked pretty.

I might have changed my mind.

This map may have been attractive but there was nothing special about it in terms of gameplay or uniqueness. Then I got a bright idea. What was old Nantucket known for? Whaling. Now whaling may be very un-PC these days but back then it was big business. We may hate it but if anything is worse than whaling it's war, and most maps depict some sort of war. So why not reorient this map around the theme of whaling. I searched through Flickr Commons and found some old woodcuts and etchings of whales and, well... here you are:



Now note that all the sea terts will start neutral 2, so to reach the whales you have to begin at one of the five land terts that provide access to the sea (west to east Tuckernuck, Madaket, Town, Quaise, and Squam) and then work your way around from the north end of the island to the south end (the whaling grounds). This inaccessibility justifies making owning the whales worth a nice bonus.

I squeezed all these whales (and the old whaling ship) onto the existing map and it's gotten a mite crowded. I might enlarge the map some to fix that.

UNLOCKED

Like it!

sexy map

• Map enlarged and things moved around some.
• Melville quote added.
• Whale bonuses increased.

I think these changes do a lot to improve the appearance and thematic strength of the map. I strongly believe the whaling theme, though hardly as sexy (thanks, Jack!) as many CC map themes such as famous battles, times or places, needs to be reinforced as much as possible. Otherwise this is just an attractive map of an obscure island with nothing special going for it. (Which is why I posted initially as I did, just as "art".) The four whale images and the quote from Moby Dick are really the most important things on this map. They are what CCers will remember.



I feel that increasing the whale bonuses is worth doing to reinforce the theme of the map and to entice players to make the long voyage around the island. (Not really so long.) If necessary to protect the integrity of bonus allocation rules the starting neutrals on some or all sea terts can be increased.

Question: must the eleven land bonus regions be named? I hope not. For one thing, there are no logical names available. For another, names take up space. But I'd understand if they are required for reasons of being able to notate who owns what. I think on the inset map I'd just "name" them "A" through "K" preceding the bonus amount, as in "A+3" and "B+2". Something like that.

I now regret that I posted this to The Melting Pot and ask Ian if maybe this thread can be moved to a more appropriate forum.

XML will need to have some type of name.

HitRed received 3 bonus troops for holding "???"

Hitred, until you actually volunteer I don't want to presume. Making these maps is fun for me. I can't imagine that writing the XML is much fun. But if you say I should consider you a permanent and perpetual coding partner, I'll cease using question marks with glee.

Minister X wrote:Hitred, until you actually volunteer I don't want to presume. Making these maps is fun for me. I can't imagine that writing the XML is much fun. But if you say I should consider you a permanent and perpetual coding partner, I'll cease using question marks with glee.

Hoist the sails. I'm on board.

HitRed

Well you're in for it now. I just counted up all the maps I've worked on for CC from 2008 until now. This includes stupid ideas I spent less than an hour on to maps that are more or less finished. FIFTY-SIX. Even just this morning I started collecting maps available from all possible online sources for a new one. And I have one I completed to my liking over a month ago but haven't posted because I already have too many in the hopper. (I know... I've posted two new ones since. I just couldn't help myself.)

But frankly it seems like a long shot for any of these to reach the point of actually needing coding. Before I absented myself from CC for some years I had (besides Caesar Mortuus Est) three maps I thought would make it farther: Gettysburg, Mafia, and Tenochtitlan, plus a few others I had lesser hopes for. None made it to the stage of needing XML, and that was back when these carto forums were very active and the mods very involved. Given the current state of things here it might take a year or more before any XML is needed -- if ever. That's fine with me. I just like drawing maps and could care less about whatever honors or ego-boosts come from actually getting published. (Though I would really like to play some of my maps!) But that said, I could be wrong about the outlook. Maybe we'll be surprised. Que sera, sera.

Pi-School Timeline

1st post Thu Jun 08, 2017 6:00 pm

Currently in Beta testing on the main site.

Maybe 4 years or 5 total

HitRed

I think XML is fun. As they are approved I will have a look at them.

If possible I would like to see the Gettysburg map.

needs more whale access points

MyNameIsJack wrote:needs more whale access points

I'd like to consider this suggestion and it would help if you'd explain why you think the whales should be more accessible.

HitRed wrote:If possible I would like to see the Gettysburg map.

The old thread, now in the recycling box is: viewtopic.php?f=242&t=150433

the v3 update, which includes a working image and legend with speculative bonuses, tentative border divisions, names, colours and textures, aesthetic features and background image, qualifies the map to be [moved] to the drafting room.

ian.

Thank-you very much!

try to find a way of making the town much more important.

if u think that the baleen whale looks like the bowhead whale, then that's probably what it is, but that's not wrong: baleen whales are the collective name for all species of whale that don't have teeth and include all of the whales pictured!

ian.