For your consideration, California

[JrFan88]

Hey all;

This ifs my first attempt at creating a map, so be gentle but be honest. Give me all the feed back you can: too complex? to simple? not enough? too much? unique or not? playable? Help guide me through the process!!

Click image to enlarge.

[wcaclimbing]

Just a few problems I see:

1. 4-way borders: when four territories come together at a single point. Such as the Sequoia, Muir, Owens, Inyo area. Those are bad to have, cause they can confuse people and are generally annoying.

2. Huge, wide open spaces: With all the space in the center of the map, most of the continents would be extremely difficult to hold. California has mountain ranges in it, maybe you could add some of those in to divide the area up a bit.

3. Territory size: Each territory has to have space for army numbers. Continents such as Delta, SF Bay, and other areas around there have territories that are way too small, leaving no room for army numbers.

If you find a way to fix those things, I think this map would be much better off.
Good luck!

[JrFan88]

Hmmm, good points. I have an alternate that eliminates the counties altogether, just using the regions; I'll work that up and post it tomorrow.

P.S.: I did this with MS Paint, so my options were limited. I tried to follow the general geographic regions (Coast Ranges, valleys, deserts, etc.) but had no option to add terrain. As I said, this is a basic rendering that cries out for modification. Let's see how the modified map fares.

[JrFan88]

On second thought, I think I'll put this on the back burner for now. I can see now that I may have been way too ambitious and maybe should have started with something a lot smaller in scope and detail. I'll let this one slide into the archive for now and re-think my approach.

Thanks to all who left a comment, it is really appreciated. They also made me stop and think. Which is a good thing.

[wcaclimbing]

P.S.: I did this with MS Paint, so my options were limited. I tried to follow the general geographic regions (Coast Ranges, valleys, deserts, etc.) but had no option to add terrain. As I said, this is a basic rendering that cries out for modification. Let's see how the modified map fares.

Well, you should NEVER use MS paint. You'll never be able to produce a high quality map with that.

If you need a better graphics program, try downloading GIMP (its free!).

[oaktown]

Hi JrFan, it's nice to see new faces coughing up map drafts! Sad to see you may already be walking away, because I'd love to see a California map developed - there may even be mapmaker out there willing to take this on to do the graphics if somebody can develop solid gameplay.

Just in case you decide to continue, I'll begin with the usual speech that I give folks who try to start up maps about an individual US state:

Sadly, US state maps rarely attract a wide audience, because they are generally only interesting to folks who live in that state. I've seen dozens of state maps, from California, New York, Arkansas, Arizona, Pennsylvania, etc, go down in flames because they don't get much support. If you are dedicated to making this happen (which I hope you are, because as a Californian I'd like to see such a map) your best bet will be to find some aspect of the state beyond simple geography that pulls people in - major cities, economic factors, terrain features, historical period, etc. In short, try to find yourself a theme.

Next, I suggest you go back and read through the old attempts to make a map about California and see what problems those mapmakers ran into... here's one from almost exactly one year ago. I was involved in the same conversation about trying to give that map some flavor, and folks came up with some good ideas.

Finally, it looks like you drew the boundaries of this map using counties (more or less), which makes sense from a geopolitical point of view but it may not make for the best CC map. It means all of the bonus regions are next to impossible to hold (unless you come up with impassables as mentioned above - sierras, coastal ranges, transverse ranges, cascades), but of greater concern to me is the size of the territories. Somehow you have to fit a 22x22 pixel army circle into Amador and Sutter Counties, then you have to shrink the whole map down 25% and fit those army circles in again. You've already taken some license with the counties around the bay, I think you may also want to merge some counties mid-state.

[JrFan88]

Thanks for all the input! As for a theme, you've given me the germ of an idea that I'll try to work up; possibly based around the Mexican-American war that brought the state into the union in the first place. It may be easier to work with a map of old Spanish/Mexican California than a more modern one. For now, though, my original idea seems just too complex right now. Spent WAY too much time on it. Not dumping the project, just re-focusing.

[oaktown]

Spent WAY too much time on it.

Believe me, I know how that can be.

I think a historical map of California would be fun. 18th Century gives you Spain and the mission trail, a 19th century map gives you the gold rush, Mex-Am war, and western expansion, but my favorite idea would be a war to control water rights in the early 20th century... what's a more ongoing California problem than securing fresh water? You could give bonuses for controlling a water source and bringing the water to farm land and/or urban centers.

[Juan_Bottom]

I'll voice my support for this map now. I'd also love to see a map of California... and fortunitly for the mapmaker, the state is large enough, geographically diverse enough, and historical enough to give JrFan88 a decent chance of making a go at this.
I'll also say something for gimp, it may be free, but it is an awesome program. And it has a hundred other attachments that you can get for it too. It's frickin' sweet.

[NightWolf]

I support a map of virtually any US state, being American. Also, with fixing the problem of territories that are too small, I recommend merging smaller territories with other smaller territories. Also, if you like, you could possibly maintain your territory count by slicing larger territories in two. I just noticed, however, this is a county map. It is okay not to include every single county, just make sure your counties are as close to their relative location as you can get (this is what I am doing for my map).

Lastly, I would like to say that given I am not a graphics-picky person, I would not have a problem playing this map given a few geographical tweaks of this map were to be made, which should be done.

[DBandit70]

One idea I had if anyone takes on this map is to include the San Andreas Fault Line and perhaps instead of the California State Theme, it could be all the fault lines in southern California. I am no map developer so I do not know the limitations, but if their was a fault line running through certain areas, I would not want to see a penalty for holding those areas every round, Perhaps their has to be a trigger mechanism that opponents can trigger to cause the fault line to shake thus those in that region would lose 2 armies per territory affected and if they have only 2 or 1 on the country to reverts to nuetral. After the damage is done whatever the trigger mechanism is resets

DBandit

[MrBenn]

This map has been moved into retirement.

It would appear that development of this map has stalled, as there have not been any updates for some time.

If the mapmaker wants to continue with the map, then one of the CAs will be able to help put the thread back into the Foundry system

Mr B