Moderator: Cartographers
isaiah40 wrote:The fence between William Good and Elizabeth Proctor is very hard to see.
ender516 wrote:The Elizabeth Parris / J Whipple fence is much the same.
TaCktiX wrote:Could you copy the Daniel Rae / Benjamin Porter fence style across all of them? That one has terrific definition to it and doesn't get all muddy in single colors.
ender516 wrote:That one does seem to have an additional dark glow behind it which improves the contrast. Most of the fences against the gray are fine, but that one is a bit better, and the contrast is what is needed against the colour of the Accusers.
ender516 wrote:The trees do make an effective alternative to the fences, by virtue of their contrast. Good choice.
Is Daniel Rae's neighbour's name really Banjamin Porter, or is that a typo?
cairnswk wrote:ender516 wrote:The trees do make an effective alternative to the fences, by virtue of their contrast. Good choice.
But do the new fences work as mentioned above.
isaiah40 wrote:cairnswk wrote:ender516 wrote:The trees do make an effective alternative to the fences, by virtue of their contrast. Good choice.
But do the new fences work as mentioned above.
Except in the legend
MarshalNey wrote:OK, the starting positions look mostly fine, but there's an XML question to which I'll be getting an answer by tomorrow that should clear things up for me.
The XML question involves coding start positions so that bonuses can't be dropped. Right now, the map has 5 Accusers, 7 Accused (2 hanged) and 12 Townsfolk as starting positions if I'm counting correctly. If the positions are left up to random deployment, bonuses could be dropped. By far the most likely bonus to drop will be an Accuser + Accused pair. There's also a very small chance on 2p and 3p games that the townsfolk bonus [7] can be dropped.
However I'm guessing that the start positions won't be random but grouped, however I'm not 100% certain how that works, thus the question that I've PMed out. Once that is answered, I'll know how to proceed.
There are however 2 starting positions that need some clarification...
Joseph Buxton in the center of the map appears to have no exit. I'm pretty certain that this is a graphical oops with the fence and that he's supposed to be adjacent to the B15 Buggy Stop.
Elizabeth Parris can only attack Rev. Parris, which is shown as neutral 2 instead of 4. Is that a mistake, or is it for the sake of the starting position so that it isn't more 'blocked in' than the others?
Finally, the bonuses for the Reverends and Judges might need a little boost, considering the higher neutral values. I realize that the bombardment capability (particularly with the Judges) and the other bonuses that they factor into will make them attractive, but only for a single; as a group there is very little incentive to them. Therefore I suggest increasing the Reverends bonus (with 16 neutrals to kill) to +4 or +5 (I lean toward the latter), and the Judges bonus (with 20 neutrals to kill) to at least +4, possibly +6.
Finally I think that in light of this being a conquest map, the bonus for the Accused is unattainable, and should probably be either erased entirely or the requirement shrunk. There are 15 Accused I think, and they are spread all over the map. It'll just never happen, except maybe at the very end of the game. Certainly at +5 it's not worth pursuing intentionally (one can only get 10 Accused/Accuser pairs, and if I've got that then who needs the Accused bonus from the 5 extra regions?). Perhaps something like the Landowners here, such as Accused[6] for +3 or some similar ratio that's roughly in line with the Accusers? (the Accusers bonus gives +5 for 10)
-- Marshal Ney
cairnswk wrote:ender516 wrote:The trees do make an effective alternative to the fences, by virtue of their contrast. Good choice.
But do the new fences work as mentioned above.
TaCktiX wrote:The change in the fences is good, but several of the connected fences strangely change from white to gray as they change territory. It doesn't look quite right. I would be fine with fully gray fences and fully white fences, but the gray/white we-ran-out-of-paint-for-your-fence setup is odd.
ender516 wrote:cairnswk wrote:ender516 wrote:The trees do make an effective alternative to the fences, by virtue of their contrast. Good choice.
But do the new fences work as mentioned above.
Sorry, my silence was assent. The fences all look good.
EDIT: I took a close look at the old map on the Project Gutenberg link and confirmed my suspicion: it was "Dodge's Grist Mill", not "Dodge Grist's Mill".
cairnswk wrote:My bad, i left a copied fence on his property ... he has access to B13.
cairnswk wrote:Understand. the good Reverends, no probs.
cairnswk wrote:I'd be happy to make that a +6/7 to make it worthwhile rather than drop it.
cairnswk wrote:But with the judges, there are two starting positions in town. If there is a battle over them and one player wins, that could become an easy bonus to attain even with such a high number of neutrals to conquer. So my question is:
should the judges bonus be made less accessible with a fence between Gedney and Hathorne?
MarshalNey wrote:So my anonymous XML source tells me that it might be best to use the 'max' command to limit the number of starting position 'batches' to 1, so that smaller games (i.e., 2-player, 3-player & 4-player games) won't have a distribution problem.
In this case, I'm thinking that organizing the starting positions into groups of 3- essentially for the 8-player format- might work best. Then setting the max number of groups per player to 1, that way in all types, 2-player thru 8-player, each player would start with 3 regions. This would eliminate any chance of dropping a bonus and also provide a relatively balanced game for any number of players.
Ender, from your experience does this sound like the smartest route to take?
ender516 wrote:...
One starting position right now, though, has a problem. The blue group includes Elizabeth Parris, an accuser, and William Hobbs, an accused, which will earn an immediate bonus.
A minor tweak, mostly graphical, but important to explaining gameplay: the little maplet which illustrates roads and buggy stops is clearly a copy of the stretch of road between B12 and B16, but is labelled with B11 and B15. This small correction would remove a visible flaw from a gem of an illustration.
MarshalNey wrote:So my anonymous XML source tells me that it might be best to use the 'max' command to limit the number of starting position 'batches' to 1, so that smaller games (i.e., 2-player, 3-player & 4-player games) won't have a distribution problem.
In this case, I'm thinking that organizing the starting positions into groups of 3- essentially for the 8-player format- might work best. Then setting the max number of groups per player to 1, that way in all types, 2-player thru 8-player, each player would start with 3 regions. This would eliminate any chance of dropping a bonus and also provide a relatively balanced game for any number of players.
Ender, from your experience does this sound like the smartest route to take?
-------------------cairnswk wrote:My bad, i left a copied fence on his property ... he has access to B13.
Aheh... whoops, yeah B13. That's what I meant. Must've hit the '5' key by accident.cairnswk wrote:Understand. the good Reverends, no probs.cairnswk wrote:I'd be happy to make that a +6/7 to make it worthwhile rather than drop it.
Awesome. I was about to say that +6 for 7 Accused was too high of a payout, but then I realized (again) that Judges can bombard any part of this bonus.cairnswk wrote:But with the judges, there are two starting positions in town. If there is a battle over them and one player wins, that could become an easy bonus to attain even with such a high number of neutrals to conquer. So my question is:
should the judges bonus be made less accessible with a fence between Gedney and Hathorne?
Hmmm, well there are a couple of things to consider here.
First, if the starting positions are grouped as mentioned above, then the starting positions in town might not be dealt out in every game except for 8-player games. Also, they would be grouped with other regions that would almost certainly provide easier and better bonuses to grab (less neutrals and a higher payout). At +2 for 20 neutrals, it's a very hard sell if I was playing the game. I'd definitely want one Judge, so that I could disrupt Accuser +Accused pairs of other players and have an outside shot at the Witch Hill + Prison + Hanged bonus. But no more than that.
Second, the Reverends can bombard the Judges, which makes holding all of them more difficult. Even if I didn't start in town, I'd still be able to disrupt that bonus from a Reverend. I honestly don't think that the Reverend bombardment ability will come into play too often, but when it does I think it will be used against a player who is making a nuisance of themselves by bombarding from a Judge. (It's a delightful bomabrdment food chain that you have in this map, btw!)
That said, it's obviously up to you as to how desirable you want the bonus to be, since it won't imbalance the map if it turns out to be undesirable during beta testing. But I have a strong feeling that right now the Judges bonus will be a non-factor.
-- Marshal Ney
ender516 wrote:...
Absolutely. To be honest, with the conquest style and the 2-region zones (accuser/accused pairs), I don't see any other way.
cairnswk wrote:OK. I understand what you are both saying in regards to starting positions...but I am concerned (and it could be of my limited understanding of starting positions for a complicated map like this) that having grouped starts would allow players (after a couple of attempts) to target certain player positions (like 1,3,5, 7 in larger games) to gain an advantage and thus almost farm the map.
Is this an issue?
ender516 wrote:cairnswk wrote:OK. I understand what you are both saying in regards to starting positions...but I am concerned (and it could be of my limited understanding of starting positions for a complicated map like this) that having grouped starts would allow players (after a couple of attempts) to target certain player positions (like 1,3,5, 7 in larger games) to gain an advantage and thus almost farm the map.
Is this an issue?
Unfortunately, I don't understand the specifics of your concern. The starting positions are distributed randomly, so I don't understand what you mean by "certain player positions".
<positions>
<position>
<territory>Ann Putnam Jr</territory>
<territory>Samuel Brabrook</territory>
<territory>Alice Shaflin</territory>
</position>
....
</positions>
Here is my concern. The player starting with Thomas Beadle is quite close to the judge Johnathan Corwin. This could give him bombardment capabilities against the accused early on. One or both of the following would fix this:Point two would also be useful if we were considering allowing more than one starting position per player, which I believe we should. (Otherwise, 1v1 games will start very slowly.) By keeping the accused out of the starting positions, we avoid handing out an instant accuser/accused bonus on the drop. We could allow a maximum of two starting positions, so that 4 player games would start with as many active regions as 8 player games, and even 2 player games would have half of them active.
- Move that starting region further from that judge
- Do not use the accused as starting regions
cairnswk wrote:Code: Select all
<positions>
<position>
<territory>Ann Putnam Jr</territory>
<territory>Samuel Brabrook</territory>
<territory>Alice Shaflin</territory>
</position>
....
</positions>
MarshalNey wrote:Hmmmm, I think that either one or both of us is confused about the nature of starting positions as proposed... I confess that it may be me
As I understand it, starting positions as you showed in the XML psuedocode below-cairnswk wrote:Code: Select all
<positions>
<position>
<territory>Ann Putnam Jr</territory>
<territory>Samuel Brabrook</territory>
<territory>Alice Shaflin</territory>
</position>
....
</positions>
-would have a 'batch' of three starting positions that would be distributed to a random player along with the other batches (of three). It would not automatically get assigned to the 1st (red) player.
MarshalNey wrote:What I think Ender was proposing was to raise the number of max starting positions per player from 1 to 2, with the understanding that each "starting position" is actually a batch of three (so in reality he was proposing to raise the max starting positions per player from 3 to 6). This would allow smaller numbers of players (2, 3 and 4-player games) to have 6 starting positions each, while large games (5 players or more) would still have 3 starting positions per player.
-- Marshal Ney
Users browsing this forum: No registered users