Prince Of The City

[Merciless Wong]

Will do on 1,2 and 3. Thank you kindly for the feedback.

Not sure on 4. You can currently take radicals and the poor and defend it by defending just one territory in Asia.
So its a 'stealth' + 2 continent. Meant to symbolize how the 'radicals' almost always influence the 'poor'.
I could add 2 more radicals and up it to +2 but that would make it a 'stealth'+3 continent and pretty powerful.
Plus I would have to cover up the pretty part of the background with two horsemen in it. Can I hear more feedback on this before I implement?

Not sure on 5. I agrees with Ustas. The features are the number of chokepoints, the spots where it is too your advantage to set up a forward defense (like Middlle East in Classic, there are a few of those).

[the.killing.44]

To be honest, besides the graphics, my only comment is that this reminds me very much of the "Rail" series, too much perhaps …
You say the GP feature is the chokepoints, so I invite you to look at cairns's "Rail Australia" map and view the "W" rail.

.44

[Merciless Wong]

Looked at Rail Australia and don't get it. Its got all sorts of special bonuses for getting rails and bonuses.
And the Adelaide thing which I don't understand. Not vanilla.

Price of The City is plain vanilla with lots of choke points, non-special rule incentives to set up forward defenses and some continent combinations that are designed to be synergistic.

Look, its got a city-politics theme, improved art and a reasonable niche in no fancy rules with good checkpoints and non-special rule incentives to set up a forward defense. It is pretty different.

I think Discworld, San Francisco, Space might be close but none have the same theme and there are still slight rule variants. Alexander's Empire, Ancient Greece, Archipelago, Artic, Ireland, Iberia, Hong Kong, Carribean and the Midkemia one are a bit more like it but less opportunities to strengthen your defenses by occupying one spot of the enemy to eliminate having to defend two of yours and less synergistic continents like Middle Class + Commerce.

I would argue if its OK to have multiple vanilla maps that are just different geographies, a fictional city map with a political flavor as a vanilla map should be fine. I looked and there are plenty of maps with special rules and conventional maps based on geography which tend to have few chokepoints. There are not that many non-geographical maps with no special rules.
That's a niche.

Are we still unhappy on graphics? For a draft, I think we are doing fine now I am in Inkscape. I've got a few points from posters on text sizes and fonts but would love more.

[Merciless Wong]

To be honest, besides the graphics, my only comment is that this reminds me very much of the "Rail" series, too much perhaps …
You say the GP feature is the chokepoints, so I invite you to look at cairns's "Rail Australia" map and view the "W" rail.

.44

Well, if you thing it looks like "Rail", it must mean that its no longer too much like"Classic" which was the previous objection. Agreed?

[Merciless Wong]

Hey, is anyone looking at this. I'm happy to move on to xml. Please let me know what else needs to be changed and which will work better?

I have added the one special bonus +2 for holding 3 out of 4 points.... for those who insist I have to have a special feature.

Off center position of white circle is to give it a bit of a 3d look...

[sailorseal]

I like this a lot. Seems to be a fine map. Maybe add more GP features that play to the Prince of the City theme

[captainwalrus]

I think you should either get rid of the white army circles or at least center them cause it makes the map look more sloppy than it actualy is.

[Merciless Wong]

I left the white circles off center to give a 3d feel to the circles making them 'spheres' as in 'spheres of influence'.
I would appreciate it if this actually gets looked at, I have taken in lots of feedback and would like to get a start on xml.
Isn't this clearly an advanced draft?

[ustus]

ok, i'll say again that the gameplay looks fine to me. no reason to change the gameplay (no, sailor, i'm not following you arround preventing gameplay features, i actually feel that way...)

Graphically, on the other hand, i feel like this needs a lot of work. The actual map looks like a series of ribons placed on top of a map of a city. This effect could work, kind of a plan to take over the city, except that these ribbons look incredibly cartoony.. If this was your intention, i would suggest making the army circles and connecting lines into something that makes sense. If the idea of a plan to take over the city was not your intention, i would suggest that you re-think the way that these are done at all. I see your spheres of influence idea posted above, perhaps you could make dotted lines of specific colors around portions of the map, and then lightly shade in each terit with it's color? you could even lightly shade each continent with its color and then use a vivid or dark dashed line to show where the edges of each terit lie. Remember, spheres of influence are rarely actually spheres.

As i said, i think the gameplay of this map should be interesting, especially without spoils, and i look forward to seeing this get through the foundry. I like the idea of a map with a lot of chokepoints, and no non-classic gameplay devices. if you want to add bombardment or autodeploy or etc... go for it, it's your map. But i advise against it.

[Merciless Wong]

The original idea was an abstract shapes and connections map with the naming being the key.

I added a city background under suggestion just to make it prettier, now I'm told that the spheres and ribbons don't make sense and I should move to a more conventional map divided by dotted lines. I think if I did that, I would have difficulty with some of the connections I want to make.

Plus I have seen quite a few conventional maps...

Anyway my ideas are to:

1) Leave it as is

Click image to enlarge.

2) Remove the background map....

Click image to enlarge.

3) Or to try and come up with some kind of arrows to replace the ribbons. - This is too much work
4) Lighten the spheres and ribbons considerably to bring out some of the underlying city map like this earlier version

Click image to enlarge.

5) Try and make it look like the Midkemia map.... make the ribbons look like roads. I am experimenting with putting one ribbon under a smaller ribbon then blurring the larger ribbon to get and the same for text.
-This worked well I tweaked the ribbon to match the nearest road (if any) giving it a highlit road effect between spheres
-The blurred spheres look good
-Made the text clear by white outlines and then altered the colors of the underlying picture

Click image to enlarge.

6)A white circle and color lines only version

Click image to enlarge.

I'll edit this post and show some alternatives later...

My view is the blurring method looks really good, please reject all or indicate a favored number

So far based on the odd PM - I am favoring the blurring

[Merciless Wong]

So if my map gets ignored all the time by the drafting room cartographer, do I have any right of appeal?

Click image to enlarge.

[oaktown]

Hey merciless... I see that there has been some progress since I last poked my head in.

What I like: the gameplay is fairly straightforward. I personally prefer a simpler map without extra rules that i need to follow, and for anybody making a first CC map I think this is the best way to go. I also appreciate that you are allowing for multiple good places to start with a few little bonus regions.

What I'm less excited about: You seem to have two competing images going on here; the city background which I assume you did not create (if you're going to use a lifted image make sure you have permission) and the overlaid playable elements. The two styles don't really work together - the crisp, line-art, computer generated book and dagger don't belong on a blurry 16th century Italian city map. The best options that you have presented are the ones that emphasize either the old or the new, but on #5 where you've made the old image more prominent the attack lines and colors are just really hard to work out. You best bet might be to start with map #2, with no background, and try to develop all original elements. This will take a really long time, but some of my CC maps have taken six to eight months to complete so you need to be prepared for a long process.

You have a couple of little twists which may or may not be good for gameplay. For instance, I'm not sure about the daggers hitting each other, and I don't know why they are daggers - a gate is represented by a dagger? Why not just draw a gate?

There have been some comments above about using attack lines instead of making regions... my experience is that people around here don't like attack lines very much unless the theme of the map really justifies using them... railroads, for example. Regions would seem to make more sense to me for a city map, because it's not as if there is only one way from neighborhood to neighborhood.

[captainwalrus]

I agree with most of what Oaktown said but personaly, I think attack lines can work it they are right. If you have slightly less blurry attack lines which are all one color and follw the streets of the background picture then It would look good. If all the attack lines are the same color then you would need to make the aremy circles colored. If you take cirlces and then usesthe dodge tool to make a little brighter spot slightly off center in the cirlces then I think you might get the orb feel. I hope I made scence.

[ustus]

first things first, don't complain when my advice clashes with a more experienced map maker's. I'm simply stating what I *personally* like or don't like about the map. I'm not one of the people who can get you through this process faster if you listen to me, or one of the people who's done this before and can say what others will like or dislike, i'm just a freemium, CC member who likes to see maps in the making, and enjoys graphical art a bit.

Secondly, i think option #5 looks like a definite step in the right direction. it's still a bit blurry and graphically not perfect, but it certainly makes me think "we have a map on the way here!"

third, i'm not a fan of the extra elements you've added with the secret societies. if you want to keep them go for it, but i *personally* think it over-complicates gameplay which did not need to be changed.

fourth, if you really want to do this map, don't give up. Just a word of encouragement, i think that we need more classic gameplay maps coming out of the foundry, though personally i would like to see 100+ terits on quite a few more maps. I like what you have so far, and i think you can make progress. Personally, if you have the rights to use that picture you have in the background i would like to see more of the style of the background map carry over into the territories. if you don't have the rights to that pic, try making your own or such.

Good luck whatever you do!

[Merciless Wong]

The background pic is very much public domain..its hundreds of years old.

Aura effect

Click image to enlarge.

Spheres (They have gone transparent but can be fixed)

Click image to enlarge.

Can I stick with the attack line style of map.. I want to emphasize politicking is more about connections than geographies.

I'm happy to get rid of the secret societies. In which case I would simplify the map further and just have one link from trade gate to foreign powers but I'm getting pushed in both directions by the forum. I stuck it in there because I just want to get this over with and nothing seems to make it out of draft because normal is not 'unique' enough lately. Seems stupid to me given the games played are almost all simple maps.

Lastly to try and get the background consistent with inkscape style drawings, I turned it into black and white then ran a trace bitmap to get the abstract modern background behind. This can be cleaned up a little but what does everyone think of it?

I can then go back to the opaque spheres and ribbons on top of it or stick with the blurred 'aura' effects, whichever will get this out sooner. I can also add non-dotted lines to the auras (like the sea-rote but not dotted) to make it clearer.

Anyway - I'm going to play around with some automatic methods of transforming the background then try and trace the drawings key features as a background.

[rishaed]

background seems fine as is

[ustus]

ok, the aura effect looks great to me. I like what it does for the map.

Also, the background looks a lot better now, a lot simpler. I personally think that should be all you have to do to get it out of drafts. buuut.... i'm an idealist... just see what you can do to make it look as stunning graphically as you can. Basically, if you can get your points / army circles to line up with the map a little more, then get the aura connections to mesh with the map, you should be fine. And set yourself for a long process. that's what it takes, and that's what it should take. it keeps CC from having boring or under-thought maps.

If you want to do a completely standard game play map,i will personally do everything within my power as a random cook who happens to like looking at and commenting on maps to get it pushed out of the drafting room. lol.... Personally, i think the secret society thing looks like a gimmick to make the map "more unique" (say the quotes in a prissy voice). That phrase seems to me to be used occasionally simply to prevent simple maps. I like simple maps. Don't add any game play elements you wouldn't want to play on to your map. Don't make a map you wouldn't want to play. Just my personal opinion though...

[Merciless Wong]

Just a draft... but I used paint.net to sepia then sharpen the image. Its vanilla with auras. Terit names are going to be a lot smaller...

Click image to enlarge.

[ustus]

this is what i've been directing you toward, you're now beyond my expertise. Best of luck, i'll keep an eye on the forum and see if i can help out at all.

[Merciless Wong]

Hate to say it, but Mr Benn is the gatekeeper to getting out of draft... and he hasn't looked at this map since our dispute.

[ustus]

ah, he should be through here sometime. it looks drastically different than it did then...

go ahead and finish putting army circles on and drawing in your paths. You're not done with this draft yet. No way you'll get out of drafts till it is done. I didn't mean you're done in drafts, i meant i have no more advice that i personally can give you. It's a months long process to make a map, takes patience... I wish you luck, i'll keep commenting on anything i see.

[Merciless Wong]

My finished draft is up. I'm going to devote less time to this from here. Those who liked it and contributed - great thanks.
I'm betting Mr Benn kills this by refusing to review it.

[Emperor_Metalman]

The original idea was an abstract shapes and connections map with the naming being the key.

I added a city background under suggestion just to make it prettier, now I'm told that the spheres and ribbons don't make sense and I should move to a more conventional map divided by dotted lines. I think if I did that, I would have difficulty with some of the connections I want to make.

Plus I have seen quite a few conventional maps...

Anyway my ideas are to:

1) Leave it as is

2) Remove the background map....

3) Or to try and come up with some kind of arrows to replace the ribbons. - This is too much work
4) Lighten the spheres and ribbons considerably to bring out some of the underlying city map like this earlier version

5) Try and make it look like the Midkemia map.... make the ribbons look like roads. I am experimenting with putting one ribbon under a smaller ribbon then blurring the larger ribbon to get and the same for text.

6)A white circle and color lines only version


I'll edit this post and show some alternatives later...

My view is the blurring method looks really good, please reject all or indicate a favored number

So far based on the odd PM - I am favoring the blurring

Option 1 looks the best


Also, the bonus for holding 3 secret societies should be removed as the secret societies are too far apart to be held easily. You should just have a +1 autodeploy for them.

[Merciless Wong]

This is the latest, call it version 7.

Small Map

Click image to enlarge.

Can everyone who has a view indicate whether or not it should go forward? I am trying to demonstrate that the Cartographers are unfairly strict on maps with no funny rules by public acclaim. If it doesn't deserve to get out of draft indicate if its a graphics or gameplay objection.

[Emperor_Metalman]

The new version is good but the background image is way too pixelated. Either find a higher-resolution version or find another image.