I like the idea of using the ship's wheel as the army circle, but I am concerned for the legibility of the numbers on top of the spokes. If you can show me an example which shows that it's not a problem, that would be fine. If legibility is a problem, I would suggest expanding the wheel so that the hub is the size of the other circles, with the spokes outside of that. Of course, depending on the length of the spokes, your wheels may then be getting too large, and you may have to move some text, but I think there is room in the ocean.
And if you continue to get objections to the parish puzzle pieces, you might consider reuniting the whole island while retaining the parish boundaries at their current width by making them appeared to be impressed or embossed or whatever word you want to use to say that they are pressed tight to the background image while the parishes themselves bulge toward the viewer.
I should say that when I jumped into this thread recently, and saw the mini-map, I was a bit confused, because at first I thought it was illustrating the four zones/XML continents/historical regions (Surrey, Cornwall, W. & E. Middlesex). And, apart from Falmouth (or whatever its parish is called), it does, especially if you note the slight difference in shading of Surrey (which may just be due to the background). Now that I have gone back and read the entire thread (let me just say
), and absorbed the legend next to the mini-map, I get it now. It might help others avoid my mistake if the sample red parishes were the ones surrounding the one containing Spanish Town, which come from three different zones. Or perhaps the red is unnecessary: a plain mini-map still serves as a visual definition of the term "parish" which I think is the point of it. The text beside it explains the bonus structure just fine once we know what a parish is.
For the sake of the XML coder on this map (volunteering if you need one), I hope you are not still thinking of giving the parish bonuses only for
connected parishes. The XML can easily handle a bonus for having a minimum subset of the territories in a continent, but to enforce connectedness would entail, I think, a very large number of continents and some pretty hairy overrides.
Finally (for now), every time I see the text for Gordon Town, I think that Surrey has a fourth parish. I always have to look twice to see that Port Maria is the ruling settlement. Perhaps you could put "Gordon Town" in one line going due east just south of the middle of its army circle so that it does not touch the E. Middlesex area. This might force a move for "Port Antonio", but this could be, say, diametrically across its circle, which would then perhaps force Hectors River to move as well, perhaps being flattened to a single line of text too. I think names crossing parish borders are more acceptable if they remain within their historical region.
Glad to see this topic active again. I hope it regains its activity without regaining the rancour.
