Europa [Quenched]

[sam_levi_11]

here these map can help you with balkan countries shapes.I think that you have space to improve these.

note-i get PM from Mrbeen to give opinion about balkan countries shapes

funny enough this map could be used to make a great balkan map

[hulmey]

Also which are the Meditteranean islands, coz its not very clear on your map!

there's a legend on the bottom right of the map. Also, all the islands in the Mediterranean on the map are the Mediterranean Islands.

i see it now (bottom right)...good stuff. still concerned about the malta issue

[George3356]

I like it.

[oaktown]

*note , Malta was and never will be a state of Italy!! Could you please make a Meditteranean State or sumthing?

Hmm... it would be a nice twist if Malta were not a part of a region other than the Med. Islands bonus. You could do the same with Cyrpus, as there are plenty of turks who would take offense at the fact that it is a part of Greece. You'd have to add a line to the legend somewhere: "Malta and Cyprus are independent states."

Also which are the Meditteranean islands, coz its not very clear on your map!

I think the confusion stems from the fact that in the legend it says "5 Med. islands" when there are in fact seven on the map. I get that what you are trying to do is give a bonus for holding any five of the seven, but this confused me at first as well. Maybe the legend should say "5 of 7 Med. Islands" or the text in the corner needs to spell out how to get the bonus.

[MrBenn]

Update
- Following my request to qwert for feedback about the Balkans area, the borders have been redrawn and look a lot better now
- I've added an attack route from England to Netherlands (good suggestion MarVal)
- I've tweaked the legend for the med island bonus to read "any 5 med islands +3", so hopefully that is clearer now
- A similar note has been added to the bottom-right corner
- The colours of Central Europe/Benelux have been swapped, and West/Balkans have been made a bit darker. I've looked at a greyscale version, and the different colours are more distinguished/discernable now
- Army numbers have been put all over the map
- Liechenstein now has a tiny little line to connect it to its label and army number
- I also got rid of a strange shadow that had appeared at the top of the map (that nobody seemed to notice)


I have forgotten to update any of the bonus values - so now we can begin that discussion in earnest...

[MrBenn]

Update
- Following my request to qwert for feedback about the Balkans area, the borders have been redrawn and look a lot better now
- I've added an attack route from England to Netherlands (good suggestion MarVal)
- I've tweaked the legend for the med island bonus to read "any 5 med islands +3", so hopefully that is clearer now
- A similar note has been added to the bottom-right corner
- The colours of Central Europe/Benelux have been swapped, and West/Balkans have been made a bit darker. I've looked at a greyscale version, and the different colours are more distinguished/discernable now
- Army numbers have been put all over the map
- Liechenstein now has a tiny little line to connect it to its label and army number
- I also got rid of a strange shadow that had appeared at the top of the map (that nobody seemed to notice)



I have forgotten to update any of the bonus values - so now we can begin that discussion in earnest...

[oaktown]

- I also got rid of a strange shadow that had appeared at the top of the map (that nobody seemed to notice)

you were probably just sitting too close to the monitor when you last saved it.

[MrBenn]

I've just noticed that the minimap needs redoing to match the shifted-about colours...

...and I think I spend too much time sitting in front of a monitor as it is - there is NO threat of me getting too close! lol

[Ruben Cassar]

Just a thought...you might consider swapping the colours of the Balkans with some other region like Western Europe for example because the colour of the Balkan region is a bit similar to the river next to them.

[hulmey]

*note , Malta was and never will be a state of Italy!! Could you please make a Meditteranean State or sumthing?

Hmm... it would be a nice twist if Malta were not a part of a region other than the Med. Islands bonus. You could do the same with Cyrpus, as there are plenty of turks who would take offense at the fact that it is a part of Greece. You'd have to add a line to the legend somewhere: "Malta and Cyprus are independent states."

Also which are the Meditteranean islands, coz its not very clear on your map!

I think the confusion stems from the fact that in the legend it says "5 Med. islands" when there are in fact seven on the map. I get that what you are trying to do is give a bonus for holding any five of the seven, but this confused me at first as well. Maybe the legend should say "5 of 7 Med. Islands" or the text in the corner needs to spell out how to get the bonus.

gibraltor as well should be independent of Spain coz its a British Colony. Maybe as oak said you could have a twist or a kit-kat
if you count gibraltor theres 8 meditteran islands!!

[ZeakCytho]

You can't count Gibraltar as a Mediterranean Island because it's not an island. I rather like the groupings as they are now.

[MarVal]

- I've added an attack route from England to Netherlands (good suggestion MarVal)

You're welcome

- The colours of Central Europe/Benelux have been swapped

Fine orange of the Benelux, just like the color of the Dutch Lions

Great new update

Grtz
MarVal

[MrBenn]

Just a thought...you might consider swapping the colours of the Balkans with some other region like Western Europe for example because the colour of the Balkan region is a bit similar to the river next to them.

I like the colour-balance at the moment - switching the blue/orange around seems to throw that off a bit...

Does the darker blue make a difference? I thought it looked OK on black/white.... do you still think I should make the Balkans a tad darker?

[MrBenn]

*note , Malta was and never will be a state of Italy!! Could you please make a Meditteranean State or sumthing?

Hmm... it would be a nice twist if Malta were not a part of a region other than the Med. Islands bonus. You could do the same with Cyrpus, as there are plenty of turks who would take offense at the fact that it is a part of Greece. You'd have to add a line to the legend somewhere: "Malta and Cyprus are independent states."

Also which are the Meditteranean islands, coz its not very clear on your map!

I think the confusion stems from the fact that in the legend it says "5 Med. islands" when there are in fact seven on the map. I get that what you are trying to do is give a bonus for holding any five of the seven, but this confused me at first as well. Maybe the legend should say "5 of 7 Med. Islands" or the text in the corner needs to spell out how to get the bonus.

gibraltor as well should be independent of Spain coz its a British Colony. Maybe as oak said you could have a twist or a kit-kat
if you count gibraltor theres 8 meditteran islands!!

As already mentioned, Gibraltar is not an island, so does not form part of the Med Island bonus. (as an aside, does the new wording on the legend help the Med Islands bonus?)
I've toyed with the idea of making Gibraltar pink and putting it with the British Isles, but this would require a line of explanation on the map - something I'm trying to avoid.

I think I'm settled with the region groupings as they are at the moment. Yes, aguements can be made for differnet region groupings, but of all the ones I've experimented with, the current arrangement is the most balanced. Yes there are a couple of compromises (Cyprus/Malta/Gibraltar/Greenland), but on the whole I think the areas work well.

[MrBenn]

I'm ready to start talking gameplay now...

[AndyDufresne]

Hm...Game play. I'm going to jump all around, so forgive me:

When occupying Russia, one can also attack Lithuania and Poland (I.E. "From" Kaliningrad), yes? It's not exactly clear if it is yes, but I'd assume it will be clear in the dropdown menus. If yes, then it also makes the territority Russia somewhat strategic, if only because you can hop past Belarus and Ukraine into Poland with possible slightly quicker expansion into Baltics, Central Europe and beyond.

The attack route between Faroe Islands and Denmark almost seems improbable, due to the seemingly large distance it covers. But I understand it is there to keep Scandinavia from becoming a linear continent.

Transcontinental has 2 borders, Russia and Turkey, yes? With 5 countries, I'd knock this down to a bonus of 3, considering the only two borders I see are also pretty darn strategic themselves (I.E. look at how many places you can attack...5 different bonus continents.

Hellenics look similar to Baltics and Benelux, 3 territories and 3 borders each. Have you made Hellenics a Bonus of 1 due to the role Cyprus and Crete play in the Med. Islands bonus? It seems like it might be worth 2.

Central Europe could perhaps be a 3, if you knock down Transcontinental.

Western Europe looks pretty nice and strong. Take a look at its borders and easy exanpsion possibilities. It has 3 borders, yes? France, Corsica, and Balearics. Now, Western Europe has a wonderful possibility to expand into Sardinia to limit it's borders to 2 for Bonus of 5. It could even expand to Siciliy and keep 2 borders with that 5 bonus. Now consider if you take both Sardinia and Sicily, you basically can grab Malta while your at it because it is a dead end.

Now...what do you have here? Well if you've managed to hold Western Europe (+5), and have managed to capture Sardinia and Sicily and Malta, limiting your borders to 2, you also hold 5 Med. Islands for an additional bonus of +3. In summation, you have 2 borders, for a bonus of +8, with 11 countries (I.E. you'd probably pick up an additional army from random territories around the map). This seems kind of strong, yes?

Possible ways to alleviate this. Make the Crete attack route to Malta rather than Sicily, so you can't use a dead end Malta to grab easy Med. Bonus from Western Europe. This keeps the Italic States still with 3 borders.

You could even consider adding a route between Italy and Sardinia, but that might just be adding too many routes in the general area.

I'm sure there are some other ideas too, I just haven't thought considered them too much.

(Note: I very well could be wrong in my above analysis. I often misread maps while looking at game play, that is why my score is horrible. So if it is all a bunch of bunk, forgive me. I tried at least.)


Regarding Graphics:

Could you improve the route between Scotland and Northern Ireland? Maybe nudge the name a little left so it is clear that the route is not connecting to the Republic of Ireland, and swoop the attack route a little more in the north of Scotland.

Some of the route dots are inconsistent, or appear that way at least. Examples: To the right of Iceland, there seems to be a larger dot at the end of both routes, and the same appears south of Faroe Islands. Perhaps if you make where the route "attaches" to land a slightly larger dot like those, that'd be fine, otherwise make them all small and uniform like the others.


--Andy

[wcaclimbing]

Could you move "impassables" a bit to the left, so the river behind it can show through?
Right now it just looks like a blue line on the background instead of a river. If you leave some space and make it easier to see, that would help some.

[hulmey]

Hm...Game play. I'm going to jump all around, so forgive me:

When occupying Russia, one can also attack Lithuania and Poland (I.E. "From" Kaliningrad), yes? It's not exactly clear if it is yes, but I'd assume it will be clear in the dropdown menus. If yes, then it also makes the territority Russia somewhat strategic, if only because you can hop past Belarus and Ukraine into Poland with possible slightly quicker expansion into Baltics, Central Europe and beyond.

The attack route between Faroe Islands and Denmark almost seems improbable, due to the seemingly large distance it covers. But I understand it is there to keep Scandinavia from becoming a linear continent.

Transcontinental has 2 borders, Russia and Turkey, yes? With 5 countries, I'd knock this down to a bonus of 3, considering the only two borders I see are also pretty darn strategic themselves (I.E. look at how many places you can attack...5 different bonus continents.

Hellenics look similar to Baltics and Benelux, 3 territories and 3 borders each. Have you made Hellenics a Bonus of 1 due to the role Cyprus and Crete play in the Med. Islands bonus? It seems like it might be worth 2.

Central Europe could perhaps be a 3, if you knock down Transcontinental.

Western Europe looks pretty nice and strong. Take a look at its borders and easy exanpsion possibilities. It has 3 borders, yes? France, Corsica, and Balearics. Now, Western Europe has a wonderful possibility to expand into Sardinia to limit it's borders to 2 for Bonus of 5. It could even expand to Siciliy and keep 2 borders with that 5 bonus. Now consider if you take both Sardinia and Sicily, you basically can grab Malta while your at it because it is a dead end.

Now...what do you have here? Well if you've managed to hold Western Europe (+5), and have managed to capture Sardinia and Sicily and Malta, limiting your borders to 2, you also hold 5 Med. Islands for an additional bonus of +3. In summation, you have 2 borders, for a bonus of +8, with 11 countries (I.E. you'd probably pick up an additional army from random territories around the map). This seems kind of strong, yes?

Possible ways to alleviate this. Make the Crete attack route to Malta rather than Sicily, so you can't use a dead end Malta to grab easy Med. Bonus from Western Europe. This keeps the Italic States still with 3 borders.

You could even consider adding a route between Italy and Sardinia, but that might just be adding too many routes in the general area.

I'm sure there are some other ideas too, I just haven't thought considered them too much.

(Note: I very well could be wrong in my above analysis. I often misread maps while looking at game play, that is why my score is horrible. So if it is all a bunch of bunk, forgive me. I tried at least.)


Regarding Graphics:

Could you improve the route between Scotland and Northern Ireland? Maybe nudge the name a little left so it is clear that the route is not connecting to the Republic of Ireland, and swoop the attack route a little more in the north of Scotland.

Some of the route dots are inconsistent, or appear that way at least. Examples: To the right of Iceland, there seems to be a larger dot at the end of both routes, and the same appears south of Faroe Islands. Perhaps if you make where the route "attaches" to land a slightly larger dot like those, that'd be fine, otherwise make them all small and uniform like the others.


--Andy

wow, I believe thats the biggest post ive ever seen any make on a map

[cairnswk]

Hm...Game play. I'm going to jump all around, so forgive me:

When occupying Russia, ......
Some of the route dots are inconsistent, or appear that way at least. Examples: To the right of Iceland, there seems to be a larger dot at the end of both routes, and the same appears south of Faroe Islands. Perhaps if you make where the route "attaches" to land a slightly larger dot like those, that'd be fine, otherwise make them all small and uniform like the others.


--Andy

wow, I believe thats the biggest post ive ever seen any make on a map

Watch out. Andy's on board!

[iancanton]

*note , Malta was and never will be a state of Italy!! Could you please make a Meditteranean State or sumthing?

Hmm... it would be a nice twist if Malta were not a part of a region other than the Med. Islands bonus. You could do the same with Cyrpus, as there are plenty of turks who would take offense at the fact that it is a part of Greece. You'd have to add a line to the legend somewhere: "Malta and Cyprus are independent states."

this doesn't work well for cyprus because hellenic states will have only two territories, which creates a starting advantage (bonus from the drop) in many two-player games.

The colours of Central Europe/Benelux have been swapped, and West/Balkans have been made a bit darker. I've looked at a greyscale version, and the different colours are more distinguished/discernable now

Just a thought...you might consider swapping the colours of the Balkans with some other region like Western Europe for example because the colour of the Balkan region is a bit similar to the river next to them.

every single continent, where possible, has another of similar colour right next to it, for example central europe next to benelux and balkan states next to hellenic states. is there a reason for this? it seems logical to swap the colours of balkan states and western europe, for example, so that the two blues and two reds don't border each other. another possible swap is central europe and baltics, so that the two oranges and two greens are not adjacent.

Liechenstein now has a tiny little line to connect it to its label and army number

this is an improvement. can u also change liechtenstein from lt to li, since lt is both the iso country code and international vehicle registration code for lithuania?

http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/is ... ements.htm

from the iso code list above, vc is st vincent & the grenadines, while va is vatican city.

the peleponnese peninsula needs to be connected by a land bridge to the rest of mainland greece.

http://www.in2greece.com/english/maps/maps.html

is it possible to draw scotland a bit bigger so that the army count fits inside the country? similarly, can u move the ireland and england army counts so that they are completely within the borders?

I like the gameplay as is, but if you needed to restrict it, you could make other rivers impassable.
My biggest problem with this map by far is the lack of capitalization. Please please please please please capitalize the first letter of each territory.

I like the idea of putting some 'shape' to the micro-states, so I'll have a look at that.
Thinking of rivers, I'm sure somebody mentioned a river between Germany/Poland - that might be enough to help things in the middle - I'll have a look at some more maps...

Speaking as Grammar Nazi™, I must admit I don't mind the lack of capitalization...

Ordinarily I would be a grammar purist too, although I do like the lowercase look . It's my intention to put up a poll to settle this debate, but I want to get another update or two done first.

it was i (does this meet with the approval of the grammar nazis?) who mentioned drawing the oder-neisse river between germany and poland. this will help to shelter germany a little from constant attack on the main east-west route, though central europe will still be hard to hold even so, since it is adjacent to five continents, at least one of which is likely to be hostile. i think the existing bonus of +4 is good.

http://www.nccg.org/preussen/preussen8.html

using lower case for everything lets the map have an up-to-date look that matches the clean and crisp style of the graphics. i'm in favour.

add one mountain between slovenia and austria, to make it clear that italy cannot attack austria.

i'm thinking that the title might look better in the sea to the left of the faroe islands, with the gold star increased in size by a factor of four or five times. obviously, this impacts on greenland. do u object to greenland being removed from the map? i don't think it belongs here anyway, since it is geographically part of the north american continent (it's much closer to canada than to iceland) and culturally tries to distance itself from europe in every way possible (preferring links to inuit organisations instead), but just happens to belong to the danish crown as a historical accident. the united nations lists greenland as part of a region called northern america.

http://data.un.org/CountryProfile.aspx?crName=Greenland

the hellenic states bonus ought to remain as +1 because this continent is in a corner. reducing the baltics to +1 is a possibility, also because of the remote location. now that benelux has a connection to the british isles, it becomes more difficult to hold and +2 can be justified. the addition of gibraltar makes it less likely that anyone will want to spend time on gaining the western europe bonus. perhaps increasing it to +6 will do the trick.

ian.

[oaktown]

Image included to start new page...


Hellenic states troubles me for a few reasons.

1. Most of this map is made up of countries, and even the biggest countries in terms of area aren't split up. Russia and Turkey are huge, yet they aren't split into smaller sub-regions. Heck, even that little part of Russia (which will need some explanation I think) isn't its own territory. So why is Greece split up? And Italy? Because nothing about Crete or Sicily suggests that they are self-governing states. But in terms of gameplay it makes sense to make the islands their own territories... and it's even fun to throw in the islands side bonus - and I love make-your-own-region bonuses. So this is a toss-up.

2. Greece is part of the Balkan Peninsula, so if you're going to name a region "balkans" greece could be a part of that bonus.

3. Cyprus is not a modern Hellenic state, as it isn't ruled by Greece. I guess you could go back in time and say that at some point it was an ancient hellenic possession, but so was much of turkey and italy.

So my suggestion would be to make mainland Greece a part of the Balkans, and make Crete, Cyprus and Malta independent of any bonus other than the Islands bonus.

Another little thing... the line going from Licht to the "lt" looks like an attack route into germany. Perhaps it should be a straight line from the army count to the territory?

[Ruben Cassar]

Hellenic states troubles me for a few reasons.

1. Most of this map is made up of countries, and even the biggest countries in terms of area aren't split up. Russia and Turkey are huge, yet they aren't split into smaller sub-regions. Heck, even that little part of Russia (which will need some explanation I think) isn't its own territory. So why is Greece split up? And Italy? Because nothing about Crete or Sicily suggests that they are self-governing states. But in terms of gameplay it makes sense to make the islands their own territories... and it's even fun to throw in the islands side bonus - and I love make-your-own-region bonuses. So this is a toss-up.

2. Greece is part of the Balkan Peninsula, so if you're going to name a region "balkans" greece could be a part of that bonus.

3. Cyprus is not a modern Hellenic state, as it isn't ruled by Greece. I guess you could go back in time and say that at some point it was an ancient hellenic possession, but so was much of turkey and italy.

So my suggestion would be to make mainland Greece a part of the Balkans, and make Crete, Cyprus and Malta independent of any bonus other than the Islands bonus.

Another little thing... the line going from Licht to the "lt" looks like an attack route into germany. Perhaps it should be a straight line from the army count to the territory?

Oak I beg to differ. Maybe you are not from Europe so you might not be noticing some stuff but none of the groupings are "pure". For example in real life Russia is part of Eastern Europe and Italy is also part of Western Europe. So although Greece is part of the Balkans it doesn't matter because it is impossible to define groupings for the European states as many countries fit in two or even three groupings. I think the Hellenic states idea is great. Besides the majority of Cypriots (around 80%) are of Greek origin and Cyprus has strong ties with Greece. It is culturally and ethnically linked to Greece to this day apart from the Turkish north which is not recognised by anyone apart from Turkey.

[yeti_c]

I'm with Ruben...

We either

a) Stick with what we've got
b) Rewrite the map and make a shit load of overlapping "continents" that no-one can argue with (i.e. Greece is in Balkans & Hellenics etc)

C.

[oaktown]

Maybe you are not from Europe so you might not be noticing some stuff but none of the groupings are "pure". For example in real life Russia is part of Eastern Europe and Italy is also part of Western Europe. So although Greece is part of the Balkans it doesn't matter because it is impossible to define groupings for the European states as many countries fit in two or even three groupings.

You're right, of course, Ruben (as you often are). Now, assuming that none of the groupings will ever be "pure" on this map, what groupings are best for game play? The hellenic thoughts above were random gameplay musings... here are some more.

For starters, we could make Kaliningrad its own territory. I know, it's not an independent state, but neither are Gibraltar, Sicily, Crete, Corsica, or the Balearics, so this wouldn't be breaking any rules. Call it Kaliningrad (Rus) if you like. It could be included with the Balitcs, and that region made a +3; or it can remain a part of Transcontinental and keep the bonus as is.

I know the islands are being discussed... Hellenics are good for gameplay as is I guess with the little bonus. Note that Benelux is the same size and leads to easier expansion but gives a +2 bonus. Baltics also give +2 but have nowhere to go really.

British Isles would be a better +3 if it had one more border... even allowing denmark to hit england or scotland would slow a player's march out of the Isles. Seems like the British Isles-Benelux combo is best start on the map... take either and you can get the other, then central europe presents a nice target with the +4, and ta-da you have a +9 bonus with only four borders when you take France.

Another impassable somewhere in eastern europe would be nice... a river that does what the Danube does down south? I don't now the region well so maybe this is a bad idea.

[Ruben Cassar]

For starters, we could make Kaliningrad its own territory. I know, it's not an independent state, but neither are Gibraltar, Sicily, Crete, Corsica, or the Balearics, so this wouldn't be breaking any rules. Call it Kaliningrad (Rus) if you like. It could be included with the Balitcs, and that region made a +3; or it can remain a part of Transcontinental and keep the bonus as is.

I agree. Kaliningrad could be another territory on its own. It doesn't actually fit in with the Baltics since it's part of Russia so I would make it a part of the Transcontinental region.