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Map Title: Prince Of The City
Mapmaker: Merciless Wong, Killerpit4e may end up doing the XML
Territory Count: 4+4+2+2+7+7+10+9=45
Bonuses: 7 regions, academia +2 with 4 territories, theocracy +2 with 4 territories,
poor +1 with 2 territories, radicals +1 with 2 territories, middle class +4 with 7 territories,
commerce +4 with 7 territories, the masses +7 with 10 territories, upper class +5 with +9 territories
Theme: The "Prince of the City" map is about city politics. You win issues by deploying supporters, controlling key groups, using links between groups to get more groups on your side, building coalitions of groups with related interests and controlling strategically important groups. Politicians 'fight' over areas by promoting or doing favors to your supporters and buying support with the right policies and appeals. Think Saul Alinsky and his "rules for radicals", think Mayor Daley and Chicago machine politics. Think about the Republican coalition of the religious right (theocracy), business (commerce), the rich (upper class) and parts of the middle class. You could say that politics is like war and battles are key votes, key appointments, nasty battles in the press. Your soldiers are your supporters and territories districts or interest groups you control. The map represents key districts and groups and how they influence one another. It takes some artistic license where those groups are located to correctly show how these groups influence one another.
Machiavelli is a very famous figure in strategy and in politics. He wrote a very famous politics/strategy book called the Prince. He wrote the book as an advisory to 'the Prince', a ruler of an Italian city state. He advised the ruler of a city to be very ruthless and made observations on political strategy. He was arguably one of the first realists in political science. His surname yielded the modern political words “Macchiavelli” (a person of acute and scheming intelligence) and Machiavellianism (the use of cunning and deceit in politics or generally). His quote seems fitting for the map.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavelli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machiavellianism
The term 'Prince of the City' has multiple meanings. It could be the actual ruler of a third world, fantasy or historical city. It can be a reference to Machiavelli's book. Plus in American political slang, it can be a successful mayor. Mayor Gulliani's biography is titled "Prince of the City". This all fits very well with the names.
Gameplay: Standard
Unique features:
1. There aren't many attack line maps other than the trains. Haven't seen a block style map as background.
2. Most vanilla maps are just geographic maps, no one has done a vanilla fantasy/historical city theme map.Theme is Machiavellian political control, setting could be a third world coup, city politics, criminal gangs or even factions in a historical or fantasy city.
3. Lots of continent pairs that make great combinations, lots of forward defense positions that give an incentive for continents,also many good niches to use as a power base during the early game. Different from Classic but has many of the features I think make Classic so great.
4. Names for continents and territories carefully chosen as social commentary (poor continent combining well with radicals, theocracy having links to academia, academia linking to upper class through civil service. The key positions in the game are often those that are critical to political control of a city e.g. barracks, hospital, tower, city council, gates, ferries, foreign powers, courts, speaker's corner, sheriffs & baliffs
Criteria for non-draft status:
1. Took lots of feedback, making it clearer, changing gameplay to make it less like classic, resolving conflicting elements,
considered a special rule then went vanilla after feedback. I clearly have some support.
2. Different from other vanilla maps, I think it may be the only vanilla city map
3. Note there is a forum faction that insists on special rules but there is clearly a faction that will use a vanilla map that is not another geographic location. I argue that you can have a theme in the art, names and type of play the layout will favor without adding special rules.
Size: Large 800px × 640px; Small 600px × 480px
Small Image 600x480
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Large Image 800 x 640
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Alternative Small
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Alternative Large
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Old Versions
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