The Soviet Union [Quenched]

[khazalid]

moscow is an improvement, i see nothing else in need of plausible revision. congrats on a very nice map, im sure this will be in ff very soon

[lanyards]

I agree with your edit, it doesn't look good. Mabye you could change the text to have a different color glow or something. FF better hurry up.

--lanyards

[reverend_kyle]

mountains, they still don't quite fit.

[pepperonibread]

mountains, they still don't quite fit.

I guess I've hit a dead end here. I think they look fine now tho.

[iancanton]

the new colours are now suitably distinct from the non-playing area. however, to the uninformed player, brick-red moscow now appears to be a separate continent of its own and not a part of european russia. if that's not the intention, then moscow needs to be the same orange colour as the rest of european russia. the moscow bonus can perhaps be better denoted by the army circle being made a star shape, coloured red, with the star symbol also being shown in the bonus key.

i can see that the tweaks made to the map so far tend to have balanced the gameplay well, with one exception: the far east, which is politically and economically the least important region of the mainland (other than perhaps sakha), has too much power. this is caused by a significant bonus coupled with the far east's isolation from all of the other small continents. in a multi-player game, whoever holds the far east is therefore likely to be able to win by conserving his forces while his opponents, to expand, must fight each other in the west. alternatively, fierce battles are fought over the frozen wastes of the far east to prevent this from happening!

i'd therefore favour adding to the far east the yellow territories up to and including amur, to make the borders equal to those of present-day russia's far east federal district (excluding sakha). this leaves a smaller continent in the middle which is not so vital to success, whereas the far east player will actually have to do meaningful work to gain bonus armies.

a minor niggle is that the kaliningrad exclave is missing from the map. this territory is separated from the rest of european russia by the baltics (its other land border is with poland). do u think that putting in kaliningrad for completeness will mess up the gameplay in the west?

the mountains, which i like, are obviously still a bone of contention. maybe they appear not to fit because there's only one mountain range! what if the easternmost river, which goes from nowhere to nowhere, is replaced by mountains (the highest mountains of the verkhoyansk range, which form part of the eastern border of sakha, are in that region)?

ian.

[onbekende]

revision thuesday

or give Arctic Islands a bonus of 3 or delete them out of the bonus list (didn't read previous pages, so dunno why they are 0)
Perhaps redo the bonus list in this order:

Western Republics - Arctic Islands
European Russia - Sahka - Far East
Kazahkstan - Western Siberia - Southeast Russia
Central Asia - Moscow

or something west => right if Arctic islands stay 0

Bonus are cool, no comments there



Army circles:
Move the Tatrstan in European Russia of the Large map a bit to the left
Move the Yakutsk in Sakha of large map a bit up


rest I don't mind, nice map

[edbeard]

the new colours are now suitably distinct from the non-playing area. however, to the uninformed player, brick-red moscow now appears to be a separate continent of its own and not a part of european russia. if that's not the intention, then moscow needs to be the same orange colour as the rest of european russia. the moscow bonus can perhaps be better denoted by the army circle being made a star shape, coloured red, with the star symbol also being shown in the bonus key.

I'm not saying I don't agree with the rest of your post, but I agree with this. Moscow doesn't appear to be part of European Russia. And, ian has provided a good solution.


Kazahkstan with a bonus of 3 seems small to me. I know it's only 5 territories, but 4 of them are borders. It touches 3 continents, with 8 territories being able to attack it.

[pepperonibread]

Thanks for the posts everybody. I agree with most things you guys said, but I honestly don't want to go through all the comments right now. The next update, probably sometime next week, should have almost all of this stuff, but I'll give a reason if I don't add something.

[wrightfan123]

Looks good, Wade. You might want to add and atomic bomb explosion or something else to give the map a Cold War effect. Or maybe make it an animated gif and have a bomb explode at the beginning of each turn! But anyway, Final Forge, here we come!

-W123

[Angus Khan]

I've read the comments and agree about the mountains. I think the easiest way to fix them would be to reverse the shading, make the Perm side the dark side, with the dark brown on Kazakhstan it is a difficult image to see.

Good for you for doing this map, kudos!

[Blitzaholic]

Thanks for the posts everybody. I agree with most things you guys said, but I honestly don't want to go through all the comments right now. The next update, probably sometime next week, should have almost all of this stuff, but I'll give a reason if I don't add something.

looks good to me pepper

[wrightfan123]

Too build off Ian's post, you should change the tint of Moscow back to the same color as it's continent. You should then change the army circle into a yellow star, and have the star in the key. Then you should bribe Andy into taking this FF.

-W123

[a-person1192]

cant wait to play

[pepperonibread]

New Update:

Large:



Small:



Large Test:



Small Test:



For wrightfan :



Changes:
-Took away red tint on Moscow territory
-Moved Orenburg army circle and label (large & small map)
-Made Moscow army circle(?) star-shaped
-Added a small star in the bonuses legend
-Nudged Yakutsk army circle (large & small map)
-Nudged Tatarstan army circle (large map)
-Replaced river farthest right w/ mountains (the verkhoyansk range)
-Adjusted XML accordingly (see 1st post)

To do:
-I wanted the mts. to be uniform, so I redid all of them for this update. They might not look as good as before (I may make them a little thinner) so I'll still be tinkering with them. Also, like Angus Khan said, I reversed the shading on the mountains, as they were shaded at an opposite angle to the rest of the map anyway.
-Ian: First of all, thanks for all the feedback. Most of the stuff in this update is for your comments. Regarding the Kaliningrad exclave, it's actually on the map, on the very tip of "Baltics". Because it's so small, I think it would be kind of... pointless, I guess to add it in. About the power of the Far East, I personally like the gameplay how it is, but I'm not much of a gameplay expert as it stands. Maybe lowering the bonus to 2 would work? Suggestions, anybody?
-Onbekende: I fixed the other stuff, but I left the Arctic Islands bonus as it was. During the time of the Soviet Union, these islands were sparsely (if at all) inhabited (at least I remember ian saying that at some point ). While they don't give extra armies, their "bonus" is being able to get around the map.
-Edbeard: Kazahkstan's bonus is 3 because it's easy to expand to there once you get Central Asia. But again, I'm not really a gameplay person, so this could be up for debate.
-Comments?

[wrightfan123]

See? How cool is that A-Bomb! Do a poll to see who wants it in for real.

-W123

[iancanton]

I wanted the mts. to be uniform, so I redid all of them for this update. They might not look as good as before (I may make them a little thinner) so I'll still be tinkering with them.

no negative comments on the new mountains so far!

Regarding the Kaliningrad exclave, it's actually on the map, on the very tip of "Baltics". Because it's so small, I think it would be kind of... pointless, I guess to add it in.

accepted. it's actually part of european russia, not the baltics, so adding kaliningrad would have added a layer of complexity.

About the power of the Far East, I personally like the gameplay how it is, but I'm not much of a gameplay expert as it stands. Maybe lowering the bonus to 2 would work? Suggestions, anybody?

comments certainly needed from our more experienced players. my gut feeling is that the far east player has much more room to expand than anyone else before treading on someone else's toes and therefore ought to be handicapped by making him take over a continent of reasonable size before securing bonuses. setting the far east boundary between amur and chita has the advantage that this is a real federal district boundary and not one that we made up.

in addition, let's up the western republics bonus to 3. it has 4 territories and 4 borders, which makes it harder to hold than both of the other small continents.

now some changes to make to sakha. it was known to the outside world as yakutia (or, more formally, the yakut assr) for almost 70 years, then changed its name to sakha just before the soviet union was dissolved in 1992. yakutia is therefore the logical name for a soviet-era map.

http://www.yakutia.org/index.php?option ... &Itemid=31

spelling: verkhayansk is actually verkhoyansk and srednekdymsk is actually srednekolymsk.

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/resources/rfn/sakhamap.html

"novo ostrova" means "new islands", which leaves out the most significant part of the name! perhaps we can use the english translation, "new siberian islands", which is less of a mouthful than the full russian name?

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/resources/infosheets/8.html

after a brilliant start (as a mark of how good the first draft was, the current map looks virtually identical at first glance), the map still has a few updates to go before we arrive, as we can't do much with the xml till everyone's happy with the gameplay. however, we are surely progressing toward final forge.

ian.

[pepperonibread]

I wanted the mts. to be uniform, so I redid all of them for this update. They might not look as good as before (I may make them a little thinner) so I'll still be tinkering with them.

no negative comments on the new mountains so far!

Regarding the Kaliningrad exclave, it's actually on the map, on the very tip of "Baltics". Because it's so small, I think it would be kind of... pointless, I guess to add it in.

accepted. it's actually part of european russia, not the baltics, so adding kaliningrad would have added a layer of complexity.

About the power of the Far East, I personally like the gameplay how it is, but I'm not much of a gameplay expert as it stands. Maybe lowering the bonus to 2 would work? Suggestions, anybody?

comments certainly needed from our more experienced players. my gut feeling is that the far east player has much more room to expand than anyone else before treading on someone else's toes and therefore ought to be handicapped by making him take over a continent of reasonable size before securing bonuses. setting the far east boundary between amur and chita has the advantage that this is a real federal district boundary and not one that we made up.

in addition, let's up the western republics bonus to 3. it has 4 territories and 4 borders, which makes it harder to hold than both of the other small continents.

now some changes to make to sakha. it was known to the outside world as yakutia (or, more formally, the yakut assr) for almost 70 years, then changed its name to sakha just before the soviet union was dissolved in 1992. yakutia is therefore the logical name for a soviet-era map.

http://www.yakutia.org/index.php?option ... &Itemid=31

spelling: verkhayansk is actually verkhoyansk and srednekdymsk is actually srednekolymsk.

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/resources/rfn/sakhamap.html

"novo ostrova" means "new islands", which leaves out the most significant part of the name! perhaps we can use the english translation, "new siberian islands", which is less of a mouthful than the full russian name?

http://www.spri.cam.ac.uk/resources/infosheets/8.html

after a brilliant start (as a mark of how good the first draft was, the current map looks virtually identical at first glance), the map still has a few updates to go before we arrive, as we can't do much with the xml till everyone's happy with the gameplay. however, we are surely progressing toward final forge.

ian.

Thanks for the comments, I'll be sure to add that stuff in. Also, Andy, I see you've been on a quenching/FF'ing spree, maybe FF after this next update ?

[1st chair flute]

See? How cool is that A-Bomb! Do a poll to see who wants it in for real.

-W123

no poll conor. you cant see the armies on moscow if that happens.

[Coleman]

See? How cool is that A-Bomb! Do a poll to see who wants it in for real.

-W123

no poll conor. you cant see the armies on moscow if that happens.

Actually the armies would appear in front of the explosion, obstructing most of it. I think it would probably look really dumb, I'd vote no if it came to that.

In addition, there is some loss of color and contrast in the gif version that I don't like.

[pepperonibread]

See? How cool is that A-Bomb! Do a poll to see who wants it in for real.

-W123

no poll conor. you cant see the armies on moscow if that happens.

Actually the armies would appear in front of the explosion, obstructing most of it. I think it would probably look really dumb, I'd vote no if it came to that.

In addition, there is some loss of color and contrast in the gif version that I don't like.

I was never planning on using the gif, anyway. If I did, it would probably not be in a loop, just once at the beginning of your turn. Loss of detail or not, it still wouldn't really fit with the map. Conquer Man, on the other hand, looks freakin' awesome...

[mibi]

forge it!

[RjBeals]

forge it!

agree - without the explosion gif.

[gimil]

forge it!

[MrBenn]

Your map looks really good... I've only had a quick look at it, and I'm impressed.

My only niggle is that I thought the writing in the bottom left said 'Impossible Gardens'; and it took me a while to twig that that wasn't your signature ... perhaps it's worth making the B look more like a B, to stop muppets like me getting confused

[pepperonibread]

Your map looks really good... I've only had a quick look at it, and I'm impressed.

My only niggle is that I thought the writing in the bottom left said 'Impossible Gardens'; and it took me a while to twig that that wasn't your signature ... perhaps it's worth making the B look more like a B, to stop muppets like me getting confused

I'll fix it. But impossible gardens... maybe that could be implemented into the gameplay somehow...