Tribal War - Ancient Israel v16.1 [2014-05-22] pg23 Quenched

[Seamus76]

CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-11-30:
- This version includes the added starting neutrals, which if the other capitals are left open would total 15 neutrals. There are 84 total terts, so 69 would be avail starting points, which fits in with the magic numbers. If someone could recount for me just to be sure that would be great.
- Updated bonus numbers according to Nolefan's feedback. We'll wait for Ian to let us know some final info when possible.
- Toned down all of the region borders.
- Toned down the glow from Reuben and Gad, as well as Issachar (which I used the color from Judah but adjusted it to be different, but the same).
- Went through and fixed any tert borders that had overlapped, etc.

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v9.1 - Large (840x800)

Click image to enlarge.

[nolefan5311]

I'm not sure this has been answered yet, but I was curious if there is a reason you have 2 Dead Sea territories that border each other and serve pretty much the same function?

[Seamus76]

I'm not sure this has been answered yet, but I was curious if there is a reason you have 2 Dead Sea territories that border each other and serve pretty much the same function?

Two reasons really. One, which is the underlying theme of God's prophecy, and choice and sacrifice. I wanted to create situations for players to have to make a choice of going the short way and losing some troops, or fighting it out the long way. Two, and more importantly I didn't want someone who has Tzoar to be able to just take one Dead Sea tert and be able to go all the way up to Gath. I thought about making it one tert with a large neutral like +5 or something, but I like two smaller terts which allow players to cross into Dibon without being exposed and seen by so many other terts.

[Seamus76]

If any of the graphics mods can take a quick look and let me know what to work on that would be great. I'll have some time this weekend and want to get this one on the way up. Also to that point, let's finalize any current gameplay issues as soon as we can, I don't think there are many at all so let's knock them out.

[koontz1973]

Rivers
Mountains need shadows
Bridges look very blurred
Some of the glows do not reach the borders

Why are you asking, you must know these things already.

[generalhead]

I would like to see what it would look like with some color integrated into the Jordan river. It looks a little bland now.
Koontz is correct the bridges do look blurry.
I thought the mountains did have shading, does he mean a drop shadow?
like Koontz said the highlight too ex the bottom left of DIBON and Bottom of JEZREEL
Could you try lowing your bonus region borders to 75% opacity too see if that looks good. It might not, i will leave that up to your discretion.
There is a strange faint white line above the title of the map I don't know if that was meant to be there.
Is there a way to blend in the line better between the Jordan river and the Dead sea. It looks a little odd, like it is a seperate entity and not joined.
The highlight for Simeon blend in with the river around it. I don't know if you have any colors left to use but a different color might make the river stand out more.
The highlight around Rimmon too blends in with the water, especially with it being at the end of the river it looks like it flows into it. Again I don't know if you have any colors left to use.
Sorry I haven't commented lately, I am no good commenting on game play. I like looking at graphics though.
As always these are suggestions, just trying to give a new way to look at the map. I am no where experienced in the graphics field. just trying to give my opinion for what it's worth

[koontz1973]

Line between the dead seas, give it a fluid look (curvy) so it is not so straight.

[Seamus76]

Rivers
Mountains need shadows
Bridges look very blurred
Some of the glows do not reach the borders

Why are you asking, you must know these things already.

You know how it is after you look at the same image for weeks at a time, you miss some of those little things. I'll work on the glows, which might be off just a tad. The bridges are from an extremely large and detailed image, so maybe it's the drop shadow that is making them look blurred, but I'll try loading them and scaling them again to see if that helps as well.

You need to be more specific when you say "Rivers", I'm not sure what you mean. Also for the mountains as well. I've added the black side to them to give the shadow so I'm not sure what you mean.

Post by generalhead » Sat Dec 01, 2012 8:25 am
I would like to see what it would look like with some color integrated into the Jordan river. It looks a little bland now.
Koontz is correct the bridges do look blurry.
I thought the mountains did have shading, does he mean a drop shadow?
like Koontz said the highlight too ex the bottom left of DIBON and Bottom of JEZREEL
Could you try lowing your bonus region borders to 75% opacity too see if that looks good. It might not, i will leave that up to your discretion.
There is a strange faint white line above the title of the map I don't know if that was meant to be there.
Is there a way to blend in the line better between the Jordan river and the Dead sea. It looks a little odd, like it is a seperate entity and not joined.
The highlight for Simeon blend in with the river around it. I don't know if you have any colors left to use but a different color might make the river stand out more.
The highlight around Rimmon too blends in with the water, especially with it being at the end of the river it looks like it flows into it. Again I don't know if you have any colors left to use.
Sorry I haven't commented lately, I am no good commenting on game play. I like looking at graphics though.
As always these are suggestions, just trying to give a new way to look at the map. I am no where experienced in the graphics field. just trying to give my opinion for what it's worth

I want the Jordan to be that way actually. I want it to be a background thought and not really noticeable. I tried a couple of ways to color it, and stripe it, and give it a feel like the other rivers, but it didn't work, I didn't like it, and I'm not planning to put anything else in there. The Dead Sea is a separate entity, so it should actually look like that. The faint white line is just a part of the background paper image texture, and is there on TW-Fla as well, since they are the same image. I guess I have to work on the Rimmon color, since it is not a lake, and shouldn't be confused as such, if in fact that is what you are referring to. Keep up the comments GH.

[koontz1973]

When I say rivers, you now have 3 types of water. The dead sea which needs to be different as it is a territ. Sea of Galilee is OK but it is the sea (under the legends)which is even lighter than this and the river impassables. Make the impassable rivers like Galilee and you might be onto a winner. Also, make them darker in the middle and try to give them some movement.

Mountains, try to give them a little shadow. This is up to you but I thought it might look nice.
Large bridges scaled down rarely work. Do them yourself, very easy to do and would look better. If you keep these ones, post the link from where you got them for royalty free checking.

[isaiah40]

... post the link from where you got them for royalty free checking.

I would say Public Domain because royalty free does not necessarily mean you can use it for commercial purposes. Now if a commercial license was purchased, then that is another thing.

[cairnswk]

Seamus76
what i do with my rivers is try to keep them the all the same colour and a slightly different colour from the ocean.
you have a difficulty 'coz u have no ocean
what i suggest you do, and i don't know what software you're using...
is create non-stroked layers with the pen tool that have a water/fluid texture to them so that you fulfill the requirement some are asking for in that the water looks like it is flowing...
place this layer under your land terts so that the land outlines create the river/inland-sea edges...give the Dead Sea another very faint slightly washed edge so it appears just slightly different from the other rivers at the edges, perhaps something like a very weak washed out light brown
for the terts on the Dead Sea indicate them with dotted/stroked lines atop the water layer so that there is still continuity with the water that is not interrupted by plain strokes as you have now.

Hope this helps.

[cairnswk]

addition. the river mouths to the sea and inland rivers have to be open-ended
check what i did on my NZ map

[generalhead]

Cairns is correct, the rivers in his New Zealand map look more natural. Give it a look when you get a minute.
New Zealand
Here is another one that shows the rivers opening up and matching the ocean
map

[iancanton]

the layout is certainly unusual, though faithful to tribal war florida. the bonuses are mostly good, except for there being not enough differential between the larger areas and the smaller ones.

my first observation is that judah, which has 15 regions, is lkely to be a wasteland that no-one wants, unless u hike the bonus to something that really cannot be ignored, such as +10.

gad also deserves an additional +2 to bring it up to +7 because trying to occupy and defend such a high number of easily-accessible regions is risky when there are quicker ways to earn a bonus.

an extra +1 for nephtali, making +5, is in order. like gad, it has more regions than most other bonuses and borders one of the war zones.

ian.

[Seamus76]

CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-04:
- Updated all of the rivers. Let me know some thoughts. This is how I had the river on TW-Fla, but for these I added some additional color.
- Redid all of the bridges by hand. I think they look pretty good.
- Updated bonus numbers based on Ian's feedback.
- Removed the main color on the Dead Sea terts but left a little glow around the edges. Also, changed the divider line.
- Fixed any border glows that were lacking.

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v10.0 - Large (840x800)

Click image to enlarge.

[generalhead]

Muy bueno mi amigo! bonito trabajo

[Seamus76]

Gracias GH.

So now that the bonus values are done is there anything left for gameplay, or can we get a stamp on this? Thanks all.

[cooldeals]

I really like the concept of this map Seamus. Keep up the good work.

[nolefan5311]

I'm going to go ahead and sticky this for the GP stamp, but give it longer than the usual 48 hours to make sure we can get a headline posted and get the rest of the community to pop in.

[Seamus76]

Sounds great! Thanks so much.

[Seamus76]

CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-05:
- Added the scroll to the bottom right corner, and skewed the text a bit so it looked more part of the paper.
-Went through and tried to touch up some of the river borders.

Going to start with the small map since the text is going to be a killer to redo. The gameplay stamp should be imminent, so please let me know what graphics updates need to be made. Thanks everyone for all of the feedback. This should be a really fun team game, or an epic 1v1.

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v10.1 - Large (840x800)

Click image to enlarge.

[cairnswk]

Seamus76, good job on what you've done the rivers...
can you slightly tweak the river mouths at the Med Sea so they fade into that cream background, either that or add the sea marking on the coastline...
and the river in the legend still has the light blue around it, but should show black edges.
apart from that. nothing else from me, well done!

[Seamus76]

CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-06:
Thanks for the feedback cairns.
- Added the border around the river in the legend.
- Also, reversed the flow of the rivers on the Med Sea side so the mouths blend in more.

Going to start with the small map since the text is going to be a killer to redo.

CURRENT MAP VERSION:
v10.2 - Large (840x800)

Click image to enlarge.

[cairnswk]

CURRENT UPDATE INFO - 2012-12-06:
Thanks for the feedback cairns.
- Added the border around the river in the legend.
- Also, reversed the flow of the rivers on the Med Sea side so the mouths blend in more.
...

Nice!

[nolefan5311]

Ok Seamus, I think there is only one issue holding you up. After doing a little bit more research into this, the only real issue I have remains the capital bonus.

From what I can see, 5 of the 12 capitals will start neutral. This leaves 7 capitals as droppable; Beer-Sheba, Shiloh, Samariah, Adamah, Edreh, Mahanaim, and Arder. With only 4 required for the bonus, that leaves a 16% chance that a bonus will be dropped in 2 and 3 player games, which is just too high.

You have a couple of options here though. The simplest is to code 3 of the above as starting neutrals, leaving 4 to be deployed at the drop. This drops the percentage to 1% in 2 and 3 player games. The other option is to code those remaining 7 as starting positions in the XML, giving a maximum of 3. It's up to you, but this will have to be changed before the stamp can be issued.