Battle for the Spice Islands

[Bruceswar]

If I were making this map I would surely get rid of those army circles on the land masses. I think they take away from the look of the map if you ask me. Otherwise looks like a nice map. Keep going!

[vaughn03]

I can do that???

[Bruceswar]

Sure you can as long as the numbers can be seen. Look at my Baltic States Map and see how I did it.

[vaughn03]

Sounds good - I'll do it. I guess I just thought all along it had to have circles - I see on the Napoleon that I play all the time they're the colors just knocked back. I think there's something wrong with my brain, like old age maybe.

Thanks.

[nolefan5311]

This is such a pretty map, vaughn.

[aad0906]

Very nice map, I can't wait to play it, might become one of my favourites!

[thenobodies80]

Any news about a possible update?
Thanks
Nobodies

[sannemanrobinson]

Great looking map and eager to play this. There is still a mixture of English/Dutch names for the island territories (Kingdom of... , Sultanate of...).

Names of continents in Dutch can be more coherent.
in a geographical direction from the middle:
- Noordwesten
- Zuidwesten
- Midden
- Zuidoosten
/ or relative within a region:
- Noordwest
- Zuidwest
- Mid
- Zuidoost
of which I would prefer the geographical ones.

Sandlewood = Sandalwood

There are two territories on the map called SP1. I assume this is the same territory. Is this possible in XML? If not, it should be left out on the mini-map.

Content wise: the conditional border between ports and fleets makes the large Land Bonusses less attractive. Cutting the Midden Land Bonus might solve it there. So Maynila, Palawan, Mindanao, Luzon and The Black Islands could be part of a seperate Land Bonus called Noordoosten.
And maybe Mindanao and The Black Islands could be connected by land attack?

[MrGlassB]

I like it overall. The yellow troops are very hard to see in Zuidwest though, and the slate isn't ideal on the grey background either.

Neither is the white on the gray background. Maybe darken the ocean a bit?

[vaughn03]

New revisions - sorry for the delay...

[iancanton]

looking promising! the white arrows aren't pretty, but they serve their purpose well. the oceania bonus needs to come down further from +3 to +2 because the area is in a corner. malasia is more correctly sarawak (modern name) or cerava (old portuguese spelling).

http://www.borneotropicana.com/tours/sarawak.html
http://www.bt.com.bn/golden_legacy/2008 ... rst_sultan

there are likely to be one or two more name changes as anachronisms become clear, but this need not affect analysis of gameplay.

siam, not burma, ought to extend to both sides of the pensinsula and border malaka. not only is this historically more accurate, but also makes the bangkok army count a bit clearer.

the above is still to be done.

ian.

[vaughn03]

Lowered Bonus for Oceania. Changed border of Siam/Burma. Renamed Malasia to Sarawak. I'm sure there are problems with anachronisms - I know the area and read a lot about it, which is probably part of the trouble - the names are always changing and in different languages... Happy to change names for better/more accurate versions...



Open to suggestions regarding 'Land Attack Arrows' seen here in BLACK. If anyone has a nice example of something better, I could probably create it.

[Seamus76]

Hope you're back for a while with this one. lol

Sorry if these have been brought up, or explained earlier, but three things:

- What is the little +2 in the legend, next to the -2 in Sea Passage Decay? Maybe that's supposed to be moved up to the Oceania bonus box?
- Personally I think you should get rid of that chain part next to SP3. It serves no purpose, looks out of place, and doesn't look like it's connected to any other chains since it's much smaller.
- Personally I like the black, which in my opinion is more what the map makers would have used during the time. I do think it should be toned down a bit, and not so "shiny" black. Instead of black, and for just about everything, I use 3f3f3f which is a very dark gray I guess.

Anyway, I know a lot of people would like to see this map in play, so stick with it.

[vaughn03]

Yeah - the +2 fell down...

The little chain leads to the magnifying glass in the map.

I'm OK with making arrows that color.

[Seamus76]

Yeah - the +2 fell down...

The little chain leads to the magnifying glass in the map.

I'm OK with making arrows that color.

Cool. Personally I think the map would be better served with out the little chain, but might just be a personal preference.

[vaughn03]

You may be right - thanks.

[iAmCaffeine]

I really like this, still. My main issues are how hard the cyan is hard to see on the blue land, and the same with yellow on yellow.

[iancanton]

Yeah - the +2 fell down...

in that case, we're close enough to the gameplay stamp that i'm happy to freeze the basic layout, so that u can work on improving the look of the map without wondering whether we'll ask u to change borders and attack routes. while the last few pages of comments are evaluated, we might still recommend changes to bonus amounts, neutrals, names and other gameplay elements which do not need u to redraw the map.

ian.

[vaughn03]

Sounds good - I'm just kind of waiting for changes... I could lose the small chain on the map and alter the color some more for readability. What else? Happy to make changes let's get 'er done. Thanks again.

[iancanton]

do u count 29 land regions, excluding ports? if so, then we had better limit to 9 the number of players on this small map, for a minimum of 4 starting regions each, with the sea positions starting as n1, minor ports n2 and major ports n3: exclusions will be games for 10 or more players, with all other types available for play.

i recommend 29 randomly-allocated starting land regions and 9 fleet start positions, with a maximum of 2 fleets per player, each fleet having underlying n1 neutrals. this gives 11 regions each in 2-player games, 11 in 3-player games, 8 in 4-player games and so on, down to 4 in 9-player games. the 2-fleet maximum prevents anyone from starting with a +2 armada bonus.

while the start positions need u to write the xml in a certain way, the good news is that u will notice no difference on either the playing area or the legend: simply keep a record of the start positions and neutrals in the first post of the thread for future reference, so that no-one forgets about them later on.

other than the armada bonuses possibly wanting to be bumped up to +3, the revised bonuses look fine now. onward and upward!



ian.

[RedBaron0]

Grats kiddo, don't see a lot of issues here. Your main issues will be making sure army colors don't clash, especially if you're going to keep any sort of army circle off the map. Lets see what everyone thinks though before you get all your color tests put together.

[vaughn03]

Great sound - getting close. What do I need to do?

[RedBaron0]

write your XML (or ask someone to do it) so we can do the alpha testing on the Beta site.

[vaughn03]

Can I finish this map? I think it just needs coding..?

[riskllama]

Can I finish this map? I think it just needs coding..?

sure hope so, really looking fwd to playing this sucker.