Conquer Club

First, let me introduce you to something I just stared working on.



I know the map may look a little similar to the European map we already have, but this map is focused in on the Mediterranean (and the Black Sea), and game play of this map would focus entirely around getting across the Sea.


Now the real point of this thread is to ask the question of Straights and Canals. I want to know if theres any way to use the XML to make my idea work.
It may be obvious, but I want to have the port countries (noted with a Ship icon) be able to all attack eachother. Meaning, you could attack from Tripoly to Italy to Greece, even though they share no physical borders. That of course is no problem to do with the XML. The real question comes with attacking from Portugal to Italy, or Saudi Arabia (I know the port is currently on Egypt, but i'm going to move it) to Greece, or Romania to Tripoly.
What I want to do to make gameplay more interesting is make it necessary for you to own the straights to be able to attack. Through out history, Galipoli has been very important to hold because of the link of the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Straight of Gibraltar has also been fought over heavily because of its link to the Atlantic. More recently, even before the Suez Canal was built, France and England were already fighting for the rights to the land so that they could get their own companies to build it.
So since they're of such importance through out history and the real world, it would seem silly for them not to be important on a map like this! So what I want to do, is make it so that you can only attack from Portugal to Italy if you own Gibraltar (and likewise, you can't go from Italy to Portugal without owning it). Also if you wish to go from Portugal to Saudi Arabia, you need Gibraltar and Suez.
Basically, to attack from one port to another, you have to own any straight/canal thats along the way (noted with glowing borders). Its a pretty simple concept so I dont konw why I spent so much time explaining it, but yea. I don't know of any way to make this work with the xml that I used in making my last map.

Don't worry too much about people not understanding this when they're playing, I'll worry about all that after finding out if its possible. Really thats all this thread's purpose is right now, so don't put too much effort into commenting on the map so far, its an extremely rough version.

I don't think there's any way to get the effect you're after, unfortunately. My first thought was to suggest just treating the straits as ordinary ports, and to just have Portugal only border on Gibraltar (but not on the other ports), and likewise with Egypt/Suez... which could theoretically be similar to what you wanted, except for the fact that Portugal borders on Spain anyway, and Egypt sticks out into the Mediterranean anyway, so there wouldn't seem to be much point.

One alternative might be to take away most of the land borders: make it a purely naval map, where you can only attack places that you can reach by sea. Then the suggestion of having Portugal border on Gibraltar but not on Spain might work. Of course, you'd need to break up your coasts into a lot of smaller "countries" (e.g. Egypt would need to be separate territories on either side of the canal), and you'd need to toss out anything that didn't touch the right seas, but it could maybe work out.

Hmm thats an interesting idea. Only problem I would see with that is it would be too hard to control any territories. Almost everything would border everything else.

Mmm. You could maybe group the ports somehow: anything with, say, a pirate port could attack anything else with one, but not stuff with a British Empire port (unless it had an adjacent coastline, like in normal Risk).

Hmm thats an interesting idea too. I wonder if it would get confusing. I'll give it a try next time I open up photoshop.

Until then, please someone let me know if you think theres a way to get my original plan to work.

Jota's idea would make the map work or not work the same way the London underground map would work or not work, so it wouldn't be an isolated concept. But that doesn't help your situation.

One somewhat unsatisfactory way to do it would be to make each strait (but not each port) a territory separate from the countries that border it, like a kind of city-state - the way Gibraltar almost is in real life. The problem is that this wouldn't allow you to attack with an army from the Portuguese port (Oporto?) to the Italian one even when you control Gibraltar without having to transship everybody at Gibraltar through fortification - it would be the same effect as if the straits weren't straits at all, just land barriers with ports on both sides.

If that's the best that can be done, it is an option, though I'm sure one you've already contemplated.

I like these suggestions, they would be fun to play with. But for some reason they or your idea doesnt turn out right, i think it would be too similar to the european map to finish making. The only thing that is making this different is the ports idea.

I really like the idea of a Mediterranean Sea map, I've been hoping someone would take a stab at it.

First off, you could really stand to lose the whole brown continent, as the only purpose it serves is to frame the Black Sea, which to my eye isn't adding a whole lot to the map. You could pretty much just chop the map down to the top of Austria, getting rid of the faux ocean you've got where Germany, etc. should be.

There's also a lot of wasted space in the south of the map; does it really make sense to have the Sahara Desert in a map where the hook is meant to be seaports? You could easily cut out everything below Tripoly and still keep Libya and Egypt, although I'd just as soon axe the former.

If you've ever played Axis and Allies, you have an idea of how sea routes can be controlled... which I know is not the effect you're going for, but it would put more of the action in the water...

Anyhow, that's it for now, if I come up with anything else I'll be sure to post it.

yea i agree, if you chop a horizontal line through france and austria it will make it look alot less like the europe map. and it will get rid of that wierd ocean that isnt supposed to be tehre.

yup, you don't necessarily need all of france displyed, just the med coast, you could even call it marseilles or nice or montpellier or something. Austria also probably isn't a med country... ;o) you could just have the edge of the map running along the top of italy, slash hungary and make the black sea shorter so that Ukraine & Russia still touch.
Is Tripoli spelt with an 'i' at the end? And Crete with a 'c'?
I like it though, it could almost be a roman empire map...
Phil