The Third Crusade [Quenched] Revamping

[barterer2002]

OK, I've been asked here for my thoughts so lets look at a few things.

1). It seems to me that whoever deploys in London gets a huge advantage. How, really would anyone attack London here. While I realize that there is some historical basis for this, in a CC map it needs to have some balance. Whoever gets London takes Wales and then just can move everyone to Cyprus secure in the 10 protection from the Channel. I don't see any of the Europeans attacking across that early in the game. On the other hand, the other players will all have to protect their home bases throughout.

2). IMO you've got way way way too many bonuses here. I count 17 different bonuses not even including the extras one gets for holding something plus another something (i.e. HRE plus Corsica and Sardinia).

3). Why does the Vatican start off as N6 and not Grenada. In terms of game play they're both important as either one or the other is necessary for the conquest. Historically speaking they're also important as Grenada is the choke point for the Med and the Muslim control limited what fleets of ships could sail through.

4). Since you're seeming to intend this to be a conquest game rather than a defeat your opponents type of game for the most part (see comments on London also you're earlier comments that it won't work for Assassin) are you providing a different advantage to the holder of Cairo who goes through two terts to get to Jerusalem over a starting point like Tunis which has to go through 5.

I guess my main concerns here are that the game play is fairly unbalanced with different starting positions having clear advantages over others.

[samuelc812]

Hey Kabanellas,

Your map looks great in my opinion, you shown great use of colour. I have a few suggestions that would improve your map.

1. I'm not sure why you have used diagonal lines on territories such as Cyprus, Granada, Cherson and Trebixond. As far as i can see there is no need for them, but forgive me if they do mean something. However if they don't then i would reomve the lines.
2. The attack routes are a bit clumsy as dashed lines, perhaps try a dotted line or some other type of line. I don't believe the dashes really fit in, in this case.
3. The bold borders seem to dissapear in the North East of the map?

Overall nice work, that's all i have right now, but i'll be back at some point in the future

Kind Regards,
Sam

[cairnswk]

Kabanelles. here for the preliminary review.
Your maps looks great and I can see there has been strict effort towards giving it a great appearance and legibility.
1. the colours are not distracting but pleasant and eyecatching
2. personally i find that image in the middle of the Med Sea distracting from trying to follow the gameplay.
3. you may have think about some of the cross-over routes between some terts as some players might see the crossing sections as confusing, i don't but others might.
4. Lot of suitable size bonuses for gameplay which everyone seems to enjoy as it provides opportunity for players to battle over and build up their armies.
5. my main concern comes from the image i scaled down below. I have reduced this map to the required 600px high version and i think you might have some issues with fitting some terts in particularly in the insert. You will see i have placed 22px army shadows on some of those terts.
When producing any map, i always do the small version first, and then upscale. While we still have size-restrictions, it's the small map that matters most as this appears to the default that is given us from the site with the large version our choice to use. But a small version must be produced and i think you might have challenges that will need to be overcome in these areas.

Good luck, I think you have a good map and something many will enjoy. I am sure you can also oversome the small map challenges.

[lostatlimbo]

OK, I've been asked here for my thoughts so lets look at a few things.

1). It seems to me that whoever deploys in London gets a huge advantage. How, really would anyone attack London here. While I realize that there is some historical basis for this, in a CC map it needs to have some balance. Whoever gets London takes Wales and then just can move everyone to Cyprus secure in the 10 protection from the Channel. I don't see any of the Europeans attacking across that early in the game. On the other hand, the other players will all have to protect their home bases throughout.

2). IMO you've got way way way too many bonuses here. I count 17 different bonuses not even including the extras one gets for holding something plus another something (i.e. HRE plus Corsica and Sardinia).

3). Why does the Vatican start off as N6 and not Grenada. In terms of game play they're both important as either one or the other is necessary for the conquest. Historically speaking they're also important as Grenada is the choke point for the Med and the Muslim control limited what fleets of ships could sail through.

4). Since you're seeming to intend this to be a conquest game rather than a defeat your opponents type of game for the most part (see comments on London also you're earlier comments that it won't work for Assassin) are you providing a different advantage to the holder of Cairo who goes through two terts to get to Jerusalem over a starting point like Tunis which has to go through 5.

I guess my main concerns here are that the game play is fairly unbalanced with different starting positions having clear advantages over others.

I completely agree with everything barterer has said.

Your bonus structure is also perplexing - I'm still trying to figure out what the bonus is for the maroon-ish territory group surrounding Kiev is. I've looked over your legend a dozen times and I'm pretty sure it has been excluded. I wonder if I'm just missing something here, because I can't see that anyone else has mentioned this oversight.

Additionally, many of the bonus values seem off:
1 terit Antioch is +1 bonus (plus potential for Templar bonus)
2 terit Edessa is +2
4 terit Hungary (with no safe terits!!!) is +1????

I think this has already been said, but all the solo terits that have no purpose - Prussia, Alans, etc - just cut them out, make them a neutral gray or assimilate them into nearby territories. it makes no sense to have all these solo terits with different colors when you already have a map full of color issues and bonuses. visually, those terits make me expect a purpose, but they're just filler. imo, they need to look as irrelevant as they are.

I also second the re-organization of your legend. Having the Edessa green directly under France and England, creates the illusion of it being the Iberian bonus. The order of these is jumping all over the map. Instead, pick on corner of the map and start there, then work your way clockwise (or counter-) around the map. This and better colors (and maybe continent names on the map) will do wonders.

Constantinople needs to be a +6 neutral to coincide with the Vatican, Jerusalem, etc.

Overall, I really like the visual style you've chosen for this, but there are a couple places that look a little sloppy - primarily the Templar image that is seen in the Mediterranean. You can see a straight, hard line coming down vertically, just below Sicily and another horizontal edge between Apulia and Larissa. If you take a little more there and maybe fade both of these (the NW bckgnd image as well), I think it will look great.

The lone ship just above West Egypt, however, is out of place. I'd suggest dropping it altogether, but if you have your heart set on a ship image, try to find something that fits in visually with the other two images - something you can slip into the background of the sea. As it is now, I don't think it suits your theme.

Personally, this map simply has too much going on. Too many bonuses and color codes that are difficult to discern - even on the large map. Too many combos and one way attacks and a subset map that is extremely difficult to determine what borders what between it and the main map.

In some ways this reminds me of the Iraq War map, but something about its inset map of Baghdad worked where this one is lacking. I'd have to compare the two side by side, so maybe I'll leave some additional feedback when I have the time.

Long story short - nice visual effort, but I hope you can eliminate some of the excessive/filler elements and lay everything out in a way that's a tad easier to digest.

[Kabanellas]

Thanks a lot guys, for all those precious comments!

A lot of questions have been raised and I’ll try to summon all up in the best way I can. And forgive me, as you’ve probably noticed English it’s not my mother/first language.

First of all let me ask you for some patience and historical comprehension when approaching this map – this is intended to be a little less ‘flat’ than the classic -straight and simple- map design. Also, please read all the past posts carefully – some of what has been said now was explained and debated before.

Whitestazn – I’ve tried the minimap feature before to avoid legends – but I couldn’t make it. I just couldn’t find the space. As for the 1 territ bonus -this is a positional map – people will start in those positions marked.

Barterer – well the game is not intended to be fought over Central/Northern Europe – those 10 neutrals in the English Channel are there to emphasise that. Remember victory points are in the Mediterranean- Middle East. And the Third Crusade was fought there.

Bonuses appear to give that extra flavour to the game and in many cases to force the game-play to actually resemble the wars fought in the Third Crusade time frame – I know that in a first approach they will seem a bit confusing, But I’m sure that by the second time that people get a good look at the map and familiarize with it, they will all be pretty self-explanatory.

Good point there in the Granada situation – I’ll change it to 6

As for the assassin game – yes, it’s not a map intended to be played in Assassin mode – the concept itself doesn’t lead to it..... (can be played though.. as long as Killers and Victims don't appear right close to each other)

As for Cairo... well they are near Jerusalem (in the first crusade they actually owned Jerusalem), and they surely need some starting advantages they will face all European powers at their doors. France, England (and HRE) will have good auto-deployed bonuses in the area.

Samuel – those diagonal have been discussed before with Helix.... I’ve already simplified all naval pass ways. But I’m afraid that I’ll really need those crossing lines in the Black Sea.

No bold borders in the East European countries because they give no bonuses (the intention of those territories was widely explained before)

Cairnswk – I’ll definitely start working on the smaller version now.

Lostalimbo – Crusade kingdoms (Antioch, Armenia, Tripoli and so on...) are not intended to be self sustained zones by themselves... They should be what they really were – territories protected by the intervenient powers. Their bonuses should be low.

Hungary/Serbia – will always be a buffer for the Byzantine Empire. A Player that starts there could move (or not) his/hers borders a little further to central Europe without having a real big benefit for it. And again, this was debated before..... I’ll try to repost everything concerning this matter below.

The map of Jerusalem – I’ve tried the first and obvious position – near the middle East. Couldn’t make it fit there - it turns out that I kinda like the way it appears now
Good point there, I’ll redo the art work in the Mediterranean, the picture frame is appearing. And I do have the same feeling about that lonesome cog – I’ll try to make it smaller just to see what happens (but I’ll probably end up to just sinking it)

[barterer2002]

Barterer – well the game is not intended to be fought over Central/Northern Europe – those 10 neutrals in the English Channel are there to emphasise that. Remember victory points are in the Mediterranean- Middle East. And the Third Crusade was fought there.

Bonuses appear to give that extra flavour to the game and in many cases to force the game-play to actually resemble the wars fought in the Third Crusade time frame – I know that in a first approach they will seem a bit confusing, But I’m sure that by the second time that people get a good look at the map and familiarize with it, they will all be pretty self-explanatory.

)

But here's the problem, In a game of risk while you don't want the battle to be fought in Northern/Central Europe because you're putting players there it will get fought there. It may be nice to say that the battle needs to be fought in the middle east but you're really giving great advantages to those who get London IMO. I realize that you're pushing the game to be objective based but you've created it so that certain starting points really can't be eliminated early while others are at immediate risk and can be taken on the first turn if the dice fall great. To me, that's a major design flaw.

As for the bonuses it seems to me that you're adding them in to cause people to want to move into areas such as Prussia and yet consistently stating that you don't want the battles fought in Europe but rather in the Middle East. It strikes me that this is contridictary.

I have a couple of solutions.

Solution 1). Instead of making the map neutral except for 8 starting points, distribute the players around the map. Remove the 10 Killer neutrals on the English Channel, historically speaking its unrealistic for the English to believe that the French (or the Spanish or the Dutch) wouldn't be invading. While they sent armies on the Crusades they also keep the home front protected which isn't something that is necessary here. You can make the Channel a killer neutral, and start it as a neutral because there is something to be said for that but 10 just serves to keep the English alive more than they deserve.

Solution 2). Keep the map as a conquest style map with just 8 starting places but adjust those positions so that each starting position is reachable by 1 other starting position in the same number of moves. i.e. if you want to keep 2 terts of 3 neutrals between Paris and Lyon then keep that same spacing between each of the others.

[dolomite13]

First I should start by saying that I really like this map.

I read the comments since the preliminary review was sent around and I happen to agree with the comments from the other reviewers. If we could make maps that remove game types such as assassin we would be able to make much more complicated and focused maps however when the maps work well in all of the game types there is a broader appeal and more people will get to experience them.

I noticed the map dimensions of 800px × 840px and believe that you have the height and width reversed from what the foundry lists as max size. 840px × 800px. You can probably chop 40 pixels the height without much issue.

I noticed you list an autodeploy bonus for holding two territories (london + cyprus), I was unaware that you could assign the location a bonus goes to like that. I thought you needed to assign autodeploys to a single territory and that a bonus for two territories would be assigned as though you were holding a continent and the bonus would be a generic bonus that could be dropped anywhere you control. Perhaps you could ask an XML expert thought as I looked through the XML samples and can't find any code that would do it as you have it listed.

Looking forward to this one =)

==D

[Kabanellas]

Barterer, It’s not like those 10 killer neutrals are an impassable region... and they are not so very hard to beat. But the fact of those just being there gives a chance to England not to be wiped out in one round... if you escalate in Normandy preparing to overrun the E.C. to get to London, you’ll be giving a warning to the player starting in London that an imminent attack will come.

I just feel that England can fall very easily without that buffer.

But I got your point, I’m saying that the (real) war should be fought in the Near East/Mediterranean but I’m giving plenty to fight for in Europe. But I just didn’t want to go in the way that the ‘New world’ map went, having the European powers in a small frame without connection between each others.

I want Europe to participate in the map, rather than just making a map of the Near East. A lot of interesting things were going on in that time frame. The Byzantines fighting to regain their lost influence; the appearance of the Seljuks that will later become the Ottoman Empire, over the ashes of the Byzantines, the struggle of the Holy Roman Empire over the Papal States to force recognition as heirs of the Charlesmagne empire; the war fought by the Iberian kingdoms against the almohads that eventually ended up with Granada being a vassal to Castille.

Well....enough of History

As for the game-play, I think that everybody has a fair chance of making it through the game.

A player starting in:

Paris, will try to secure France – he should make it in 3/4 turns and then turn his attentions to Tyre and its Eastern bonus.

Ratisbone, will most definitely (I would) try to take Seleucia and the eastern bonus in maybe 2 turns. With those auto-deploy bonus he would secure Armenia-Cilicia, and with the rest he could start by making the HRE bonus (supported with the Armenia-Cilicia bonus).

Leon, (and this one, yes, it seems a little handicapped) will try to make the Iberian Kingdoms bonus and secure the Balearic isl. and/or Granada without having to worry about his northern borders because of the Paris/Iberian effect. This will take him 5/6 turns... which seems an awful lot.... this must be revised.

Tunis, will try to take the Almohads bonus and secure Granada for the extra Muslim bonus. 5 turns here. I predict a fight for live between Tunis and Leon. With Tunis starting with the upper hand.

Cairo, will make the Saladin’s dominions bonus in 3/4 turns and then turn his attentions to the Jerusalem kingdom and Jerusalem itself. This player has a big bonus potential. Players starting in France and England (and others) must definitely unite to avoid a big bonus clash from this player.

Amasia, will make the seljuks bonus in 3/4 turns secure it and probably take the
Edessa bonus and go for Rakka for the Muslim bonus. All done in about 7 turns...

Thessalonica, will go immediately for Constantinople a/d bonus and try to secure the border at Nicomedia, and hopefully make the Byzantine bonus in 5 turns. Starting here could be fun, despite the fact of being between powers it sure has a lot of directions to expand.

(at last) London, this player will play in important role, along with the one starting in Paris. They should avoid Saladin’s expansion. He will make England bonus, and then assault Cyprus taking it in the 3rd or 4th round. I may reduce England bonus to 1.....

Honestly the position that most concerns me is the one starting in Leon, and for this one I’d like some solutions.

[Kabanellas]

Thanks very much Dolomites for you comment. You are indeed correct – I mixed up. I’m working on it now.

As for the XML question, it’s well put. If some XML expert could advise I’ll appreciate:

Can we have an auto-deploy region that is triggered by possessing another region?

[lostatlimbo]

Hungary/Serbia – will always be a buffer for the Byzantine Empire. A Player that starts there could move (or not) his/hers borders a little further to central Europe without having a real big benefit for it. And again, this was debated before..... I’ll try to repost everything concerning this matter below.

Okay, I went back and read your posts about this. It doesn't quite make sense to me to have no man's land bonuses and simply make them not worth holding onto - especially when we're talking about 12 territories. I appreciate the historical aspects of the game, but since this is a map that people are playing a game on, gameplay should be a high priority.

That said, if you keep those 'no-man's land' territories, I still think you need to change the colors or otherwise signify that they do not belong to any bonus. The slightly darker borders don't cut it. THe colors themselves need to look neutral.

It is simply too confusing for a new player trying to spot all the numerous color/bonus connections on the map, only to find out that several of the colors don't exist in the legend. If you had a 5 bonus map, it would be no big deal, but with so much going on, you need to make your legend as clear as possible.

[thenobodies80]

Can we have an auto-deploy region that is triggered by possessing another region?

I thought you needed to assign autodeploys to a single territory and that a bonus for two territories would be assigned as though you were holding a continent and the bonus would be a generic bonus that could be dropped anywhere you control.

Correct
Autodeploy bonus is assigned to a specific territory (<bonus>):

Code: Select all

<territory>
<name>Blackwidow Roost</name>
<borders>
<border>Frogstomp</border>
<border>Deadmen Dancing</border>
<border>Magic Wand</border>
<border>Gizzard Gue</border>
<border>Well of Spells</border>
</borders>
<coordinates>
<smallx>430</smallx>
<smally>450</smally>
<largex>530</largex>
<largey>549</largey>
</coordinates>
<neutral>6</neutral>
<bonus>1</bonus>
</territory>

[Kabanellas]

Ok Limbo, you've got a point there. The thing is that I wanted to mark the different ethnicities in the region and somehow enrich the map.... But I’ll make a different version.

Nobodies thanks. But what can be done? I need that bonus to work the way it works – i.e. London-Cyprus with the bonus appearing in Cyprus. I need some ideas....

[eigenvector]

Hi,

This map looks awesome; I can't wait to start playing on it.

I have some suggestions/questions, mostly about historical accuracy:

(1) The county of Edessa had been destroyed in 1044 and was a total goner by the 3rd Crusade. I suggest you remove its bonus to indicate it was no longer a separate political entity.

(2) I don't get the "Byzantine Bonus" of +3 for holding the Vatican and Constantinople. What is the basis for this?

(Apropos, I do not think the name Vatican was in use to refer to the Papal State in the Middle Ages but I could be wrong here.)

(3) I confess I do not understand the three extra rules about London/Paris/Ratisbone. Can you please explain?

(4) The Byzantine empire used to contain the Seljuk territories and in fact during much of the 12th century it managed to regain at least a suzerainty over them (until Manuel's debacle at Myriokephalon on 1176). So I suggest a special bonus for holding both areas.

Way to go!!

[Kabanellas]

Thanks Eigen for your support.

1) You’re right, of course. But I think that its appearance would spice up a bit the Middle East scenario inset. Think of it this way: Maybe restoring the County of Edessa could be an option if the Third Crusade had gone in a slightly different way.

2) Another Spicy situation – Since the break of the Roman Empire, the idea of bringing back the West and the East together subsisted for centuries... Being so, if someone unites again Rome and Constantinople should be given a bonus for it.
As for the Vatican issue.... I’m not sure either... I didn’t name the region ‘the Papal States’ for they were indeed much larger. I could call it Rome – but it would lose the religious meaning that I find important to be represented in the map

3) The rules: Paris, for example. If you have Paris and Tyre you’ll get a +3 Bonus auto-deployed in Tyre (the crusade army) on the other hand I gave a negative effect to a player owning Paris and invading an Iberian region – so the wars between European countries in Europe don’t get too appealing.

4) The Seljuks existed in that area and they were strong there, by 1190. I preferred to make the Byzantium motherland zone bonus in its natural core giving the extra bonus to Trebixond, Cyprus and Cherson. Both trebixond and Cherson were actually possessions of the Byzantine Empire in 1190 (Cyprus was conquered by the English), but they are quite hard to protect. So I had to keep them separated.

[Kabanellas]

Ok. version 6 ready.
It comes with 2 options.

One with different colours representing the different ethnicities in Eastern Europe, another with a grey scale on them so people don’t get mislead and think that those territories give bonus.

Size corrected now – 600 pixels height

Click image to enlarge.

Click image to enlarge.

[barterer2002]

The problem I have is that while you're right that the EC isn't impassable, it certain is until the first set of cards comes in. A player in Paris isn't going to be able to get there until at least that time. And while I understand the idea of protecting London from early attacks it seems to me that London is protected and none of the other opening areas are. For instance what's to prevent the paris owner from fighting with rattisborne? For instance start with 3 on Paris, Deploy your three there. Good rolls will take you through the 3 on Lorraine and the 3 on Rattisborne before that player even has a chance to move. Its very good rolls of course but it has been done and can be again. I don't see why you're protecting London here and not others. That's the issue with the EC 10 in my mind.

[Kabanellas]

Barterer, remember that you have negative effects:

About the France-Ratisbone issue:

Remember that there are negative effects from having Ratisbone and any French region…. Being so, if a player starting in Paris got so lucky to take Ratisbone He would be put out of game… (he would receive the normal 3 but would have a negative effect of -4 – He would have no armies to deploy in the next round.)

[Industrial Helix]

Right, but can't the Paris player capture everything but Ratisbone and use that against which ever player is there? So he can break the HRE bonus if he choses but the Ratisbone player can not break the France bonus.

[barterer2002]

Yeah I see that although I think the map isn't clear on it. I would suspect that many players playing the game for the first time won't see that and will lose due to map trickery. Your phrase reads that its -4 for any time Rattisborn invades France. Now in truth the way it works is that holding Ratts and any French tert is going to be -4 but for some reason you haven't gotten it written that way. (you've got the French/Iberia type of thing that should likely be fixed).

I'm also not finding the starting positions to be balanced and maybe you're right on Paris/Ratts that the protection is there for both of them but you've got 8 starting positions and they're certainly not all protected. Compare to Cairo, Amasia, Thessalonica, there isn't any. They're closer to the objectives but also are subjected to standard take outs (which the Europeans aren't. That may be what you're going for historically speaking but this isn't a map to show history, its a map to play Risk on and giving certain starting positions advantages in terms of not being able to be taken out early is a grave issue IMO and one that still isn't being addressed.

[lostatlimbo]

Kabanellas - I like the grayscale version. I think you could add a little more contrast there between the various regions and find a happy compromise between the gray and the 'ethnic' versions, but the gray works, in my opinion.

I noticed another color issue - is Malta part of the England bonus, because the color looks identical to me. You might want to put that to gray as well, if not.

The background images are looking better, but I'm still not feeling the ship(s). If I had not seen the larger version before, I'm not sure I'd know what those are at their current size and they'll be even more indistinct on the smaller map.

Now in truth the way it works is that holding Ratts and any French tert is going to be -4 but for some reason you haven't gotten it written that way. (you've got the French/Iberia type of thing that should likely be fixed).

Yeah, I was rather confused by this as well and to a larger point, I think this will be tremendously frustrating during gameplay as a player holding Paris or Ratisbone will have no recourse to disable their opponent to the West. In Risk, it isn't enough to just defend your territories well, you need to be able to hinder your opponents growth as well.

You said earlier:

But I just didn’t want to go in the way that the ‘New world’ map went, having the European powers in a small frame without connection between each others.

However, this map has similar boundaries. Unlike New World, a player CAN attack from France to Iberia, but why would they? The border between Toulouse and Iberia may as well be impassable from Paris's POV, except that the Leon player can torment them endlessly - without fear of retaliation.

It also means that the player in HRE can drop troops on Corsica & Arles and if any other player got ahold of Tyre, the Paris player is trapped and cannot move anywhere on the map. (Unless they then go north, which requires passage through 7-10 territories to reach anything resembling a significant bonus.)

Still, that's a minor problem compared to not being able to attack an opponent in Leon. Ditto for the Ratisbone player trying to hinder his Paris opponent. While I love the visuals of this map, this element of gameplay would instantly turn me away.

[Kabanellas]

Helix, the negative effects working in just one way was intentional, so players can move east through Europe. To compensate that I made France easier to defend from Iberia point of view having just 1 border region and HRE with just 2 borders.

Barterer, I realize that they are not all equally balanced (yet), but that happens in some others maps too. Bringing up the New World map example again: if you start in a European country you’ll get an advantage over someone starting in the native’s homeland, because of the ‘landing point’ bonus.

Ok... Guys I could change it all! Drop the negative effects and all.
But wouldn’t we be losing more than we would gain in terms of interesting game-play situations?

One of the things that I find appealing is that each position/player will need to have a different style of play in the map never forgetting that the game is won by achieving objectives. I’m finding hard to believe that European countries will run onto each other a let Saladin/Cairo calmly reach victory.

[whitestazn88]

just noticed something... don't put your name on that white space in the inset of the map thingy... it made me think that was a territory.

[Kabanellas]

Limbo, changed the Grey grade and sunk the ships.

Stazn, changed the name location (forgot to do it in version A)

[barterer2002]

Barterer, I realize that they are not all equally balanced (yet), but that happens in some others maps too. Bringing up the New World map example again: if you start in a European country you’ll get an advantage over someone starting in the native’s homeland, because of the ‘landing point’ bonus.

But the difference between starting positions in maps like New World are minor. Here there is some major imbalance in play.

[Kabanellas]

The way I see it we have 2 options:

A) We keep the starting positions (and start focus on game-play, trying to reduce advantages where we feel there’s too many)

or

B) We change those starting positions to neutrals keeping the previous ones, and everybody starts scattered all over the map. (I had to drop the negative effects of course and take down those 10 neutrals from the English channel)

What do you think?

(I’ll start preparing a map for option B anyway)

Btw, I’ll most probably have to drop those ‘auto-deploy’ connections (London-Cyprus/Paris-Tyre/Ratisbone-Seleucia). The XML doesn’t support it.