Conquer Club

i know it sounds picky, but..

On Bay of Bengal title, is it possible to distort/skew the B and A into the crease of the book cause it looks like its floating.
Or tell me to go F#$% myself

alright oak...its been a really long time since I've been on here (too busy with my website) but I got a little nostalgic and came back to check out the maps. here are some opinions I have...

graphics
-maybe continue the coastline to the edge of the page? im not a huge fan of floating maps, I prefer to see them connected to the mainland.
-the green of the one continent is too sea green, id go more olive?
-the last red mountain between bhal and sindh looks odd, maybe continue the arc of the other mountains through sinh?
-curve malwa text the other way? like a smile instead of a frown?
-I'm not a big fan of the way the continents are labeled...im not sure if its the color or text or what, just dont like it. if possible some color in the key would make for quick reference. I had trouble reading the key and figuring out the continents, and my trouble not real trouble, it was just a bit awkward. color in the key would actually remove the need for them named on map, except the color blind people might complain...(seems like we have a lot of those? I wonder if there is a gene tied to colorblindness and fondness for board games)
-railroads seem kinda ugly, they dont match the artistic look of the rest of the map. I feel like they mar the clean look. maybe less rails (more spacing?) I dunno.
-is "and countries adjacent" necessary in the title?
-tips of blue mountains kinda have a brown speck on them?
-is it further india or farther india? key and continent label dont match

otherwise sweet graphics, I love the style. and the book background is great!

gameplay
-bonuses for continents seem balanced by size and borders.
-railroads are ok, but seem to me to only add mediocre interest. they are in the middle to 'increase gameplay in the middle' but I dont see them being held. the two mid ones seem to hard. the south one is easier, but wont increase play in the sea of yellow in the middle.
-seems to me itll be too concentrated on the sides.
-I think you need some more pizazz to gameplay somewhere. I get what youre going for with the railroads, it just doesnt seem to me like its quite pulling it off.

ha. look at my sig, it links to my old map in progress.

This map is truly breathtaking.

So what are we waiting on? I think this map is Foundry-ready.

TaCktiX wrote:So what are we waiting on? I think this map is Foundry-ready.

Well, I haven't updated this map in a month, so there's no rush.

This map is delicious but the yellow area seems real faint to me... especially in the Malwa and Rajpoo area. Also can you bring some color down to the legend, it would help deciphering the bonus regions.

mibi wrote:This map is delicious but the yellow area seems real faint to me... especially in the Malwa and Rajpoo area. Also can you bring some color down to the legend, it would help deciphering the bonus regions.

I really like this map. I like the color scheme you created. I like the yellow how it is too. Keep it up.

I'm going to do two things here...

Firstly, as it has been over a month since the last update, and following discussion with Oaktown, this map is being put onto vacation for a short while, and so will be moved into temporary retirement.

The second thing I'm going to do is to give this map a draft stamp, as the map is definitely Foundry-ready...



This means that when Oak is ready to continue with the map, he can go straight into the Foundry proper.

I'm back! There's nothing significantly different here about the gameplay... I had kind of walked away from this because I found the thought to drawing the railroads somewhat daunting. But widow's idea of scrunching text together along a path to make a line gave me the idea of packing "#" signs together to make railroads that can be manipulated. They aren't perfect yet, but they're a huge improvement over what I had!

Anyway, when last we say this map there was some discussion around the regions. Personally I like the idea of having the big Bengal Presidency region - no, it won't be held much during a game, but neither is (Asia) in that map we all used to play.

I need to do a lot of work on some elements to make this map easier to play - I can see that now. Throw your thoughts at me!

Nice one with the railways Oak.
Just a couple of quick things I picked up.

-You'll need to do some hand editing still on the railways where they join. At the moment they look a bit strange.
-I assume connecting cities via rail means holding every territory the railway goes through. That may need to be better worded as at the moment as I can see confusion with people who think they only need to hold the cities.

Balsiefen wrote:Nice one with the railways Oak.
Just a couple of quick things I picked up.

-You'll need to do some hand editing still on the railways where they join. At the moment they look a bit strange.
-I assume connecting cities via rail means holding every territory the railway goes through. That may need to be better worded as at the moment as I can see confusion with people who think they only need to hold the cities.

I recently discovered you can add a layer mask to a text layer, so you should be able to use that to to tidy up the joins without rasterising...

MrBenn wrote:

Balsiefen wrote:Nice one with the railways Oak.
Just a couple of quick things I picked up.

-You'll need to do some hand editing still on the railways where they join. At the moment they look a bit strange.
-I assume connecting cities via rail means holding every territory the railway goes through. That may need to be better worded as at the moment as I can see confusion with people who think they only need to hold the cities.

I recently discovered you can add a layer mask to a text layer, so you should be able to use that to to tidy up the joins without rasterising...

I could do that, or I could smooth out the curves enough that they don't break. I fixed a lot of gaps before I posted this, but it was clear that there were more than I wanted to tackle at the moment.

And Balseifen is right with the wording - perhaps something simple like "hold all rail territories to connect two cities" - except I think we're moving away from the word "territory." Would "provinces" be appropriate on an old India map?

oaktown
if you're using PS3, there is railway line brush available at
http://www.adobe.com/cfusion/exchange/i ... id=1044414

cairnswk wrote:if you're using PS3, there is railway line brush available...

Shit, yeah, that's a lot easier.


Made some stuff easier to follow, moved things around, added some images, and changed the territory layout around Calcutta - the old system made no sense.

oaktown, i imagine that link was a great help.
can i offer that the text in between tert names and region names is looking quite cluttered
since you already have the regions in the legend, is there any need for them to be on the map if you colour them in the legend.
This would surely remove a lot of clutter with names crossing one another in many instances.

cairnswk wrote:oaktown, i imagine that link was a great help.
can i offer that the text in between tert names and region names is looking quite cluttered
since you already have the regions in the legend, is there any need for them to be on the map if you colour them in the legend.
This would surely remove a lot of clutter with names crossing one another in many instances.

yep, there's a lot going on. I was thinking I'd either find some kind of alternative for the region names, or rework it using a mini-map in the bottom left corner. It's a work in progress.

Gameplay thoughts, anyone?

oaktown wrote:...
Gameplay thoughts, anyone?

Since the Andaman Islands are part of the Indian Union and featured in the British occupation of India, perhaps a sea route from either Calcutta or Madras to the Andamans? Would that be relevant?

MrBenn wrote:1. I just wanted to clarify the railway bonus - do you need just the start and end points, or do you need all the territories along the route?
2. The Calcutta-Delhi route increases the total for Bombay Presidency to +11 for 11 terrs... That has some sort of epic appeal
3. The Bay of Bengal and the rivers going through Bengal are very distracting... it took me a while to work out which area Bengal was... the position of the terr name helps a bit, but is still confusing...
4. The crease of the book feels a little bit too pink... is it possible to change the colour balance of the book layer to make it slightly browner?
5. the mountains could do with a little bit more variation - they look good, but I can see the recurring 'M' shape too easily
6. You mentioned the railway graphic - I've worked out why it looks out of place; there should be two tracks between the sleepers {=|=|=|=} instead of {-|-|-|-|-}
7. Have I mentioned that I like it? Keep up the good work

1. The legend could still be interpreted either way
3. This is a million times clearer now - issue resolved.
4. I still think the crease would be better being brownie-orange rather than pink... and the the glow around the region names should be paper-coloured (ie where the text goes over the crease, the glow should be the same colour...)
7. Can I say it again?

My biggest concern at the moment is #1 above, as it has a big impact

Tweaks in this update...
• Region names in the legend now stroked the color of the region.
• Region names on the map are now lighter, and they are the bottom layer. I still like them being there for colorblind help, and I hope that by hiding them a bit they don't interfere with other elements.
• Played with some mountains to reduce the number of "M" mountains.
• Rail description changed... any better?
• Made Bengal a +7, from +8... MrBenn pointed out that with the rail bonus its +11, which may be a bit too "epic."
• All territories have army counts, just for purposes of getting everything in the right place... since there will be no army circles, I hope.

cairnswk wrote:Since the Andaman Islands are part of the Indian Union and featured in the British occupation of India, perhaps a sea route from either Calcutta or Madras to the Andamans? Would that be relevant?

Question: would a sea link from the Andaman Islands to either Calcutta or Madras (Coromandel Coast territory) be beneficial to play? It would make the Farther India region singificantly harder to hold, but add connectivity across the map. Going to Madras would certainly open the map up more, but add a border territory to the Madras region as well. Hmm?

No, to your question. Those continents have plenty of borders as it is.

Oak, you REALLY need to post a tutorial on how you made those mountains.....

also: i can barely tell apart those 2 orange/yellow continents.

In my humble opinion oaktown, Bengal and Madras are far to similarly coloured. It took a good close look for me to realise they were two different continents. On the map as well central and farthar india look very similar as well. I had a hard time differentiating these continents from their bonuses.

just to let u know that i'll be stamping the gameplay on this map.

farther india looks distinctly magenta in the legend but violet on the map iteslf. unrelated to gameplay, below is a link to a map published by john bartholomew of edinburgh where farther india refers to what is today known as indochina plus the malay peninsula.

http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps5279.html

another one, showing farther india as upper and lower burmah plus indochina.

http://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet ... r-India,-C

since farther india consistently includes indochina, i suggest burmah as the continent name.

for the title of the map, i like indian empire: british raj or something similar, so that it fits alphabetically in the gamefinder list. british east indies includes singapore, british malaya and british sumatra, which are not part of our subject matter.

ian.

The graphics are the pretty similar to the Eastern Hemisphere map and the War of Tripple Alliance maps (not so much the second one). I like them but if all three get Quenched your going to have to make them pore different.

Also. The bonus fot the bombay-calcatta line shoucld be 3 not 4.