Conquer Club

... Glad to hear you're still with us!

... A few things:

1. I looked at your map after my last post and thought, "Well, for a Large map it's actually rather small". haha! Good news, because making the bigger one will be easier (more space to work with!).

2. As for islands as countries, that's a tough one. The only sizeable island I can think of that might be used as a country would be Awaji - between Hyogo and Shikoku Island (a very boring place anyway - who'd want to conquer it? And bridge fare to get there is a crime).

3. Marvaddin (sp?) pointed out to me, quite helpfully, that you'll find a "built-in discrepency" with the xml, with regards to where the numbers appear on the map. You'll need to adjust one's coordinates in your xml and keep tweeking it until it's dead-on where you want it. Then you use the same differences (just add or subtract - I forget exactly) the same number of pixels you moved the first one, for all the rest. It was actually quite a ways off, thinking back.

... Keep at it!

... Yeah, that last bit about "Saga and Nagasaki" - that would be REALLY long in the drop-down lists for attacking and fortifications. Saga is such a hick, middle of nowhere place, I'd go with Nagasaki... but that's me.

Right, well I'm back to work on it again now... Deleting the border between Kanagawa and Tokyo was something I considered to begin with, but then that leaves me with 44 countries, where do you suggest I go from there? Use one of the islands? Take out a few more countries perhaps?

I'm also going to set to work on making it smaller (vertically). The way I named them was in Wikipedia, there was a map set into 47 sections straight away, so I took 1 away and merged 2 together (Saga and Nagasaki). And Awaji was originally in there as a "neutral" island, but I didn't include it becuase I was looking to balance out the other side of the map.

3. Marvaddin (sp?) pointed out to me, quite helpfully, that you'll find a "built-in discrepency" with the xml, with regards to where the numbers appear on the map. You'll need to adjust one's coordinates in your xml and keep tweeking it until it's dead-on where you want it. Then you use the same differences (just add or subtract - I forget exactly) the same number of pixels you moved the first one, for all the rest. It was actually quite a ways off, thinking back.

I don't understand what you're getting at...

Anyway, off to work again on the first version, thats just coloured in hehe.

He's talking about the x,y coordinates you must enter so that the army numbers show up in the correct place (right in the middle of the circle).

Unfortunately, the x,y coordinates you will find in your design program will not be the ones you'll end up using. I think it was something around x -20, y +20... In other words, if the actual coordinates on the image are x=135, y=280, the coordinates you'll enter into the xml file will be closer to x=115, y=310.

Like Marv said first, they'll always be off by the same amount, so just figure out the difference for one, and adjust all others accordingly.

Has anyone worked out the formula behind this? It seems to vary depending on the size of the image.

... Grim explained that so well. I was typing after 2 glasses of bourbon last night... reading that x,y explanation I wrote - I'm not understanding it this morning either!

Just so you guys know I haven't given up on this, I'm just trying to find the time around my studies... Almost finished with the next update

Ok, so it's a long time overdue, and I've had a few people asking me about this... I am still continuing it, and I've completely changed some parts of it... For starters, there are now some textures (Paper) to give it a slightly oreintal and map like feel. I've taken out Hokkaido and merged Tokyo with the country beneath it...



Any feedback is welcome, I'm back to work on it now...

I really like the paper texture... if you could bring that style out even more in the map somehow it'd be cool.

Em... because the country is so narrow, looks like it might suffer from the same sort of linearity that the indochina map does. A solution might be to do ports or airports. Then again, you might like it as it is... But I think as it stands whoever takes the top right continent is going to be very powerful as they can expand without increasing their borders much at all.

I do think that some continents do need more borders really... Hmmm *ponders*. I suppose I could do an port to one of the already red border countries to increase the white borders.

Well, first, I dont like too much the paper texture...
Second, its a shame if Hokkaido is not in this map. Its not Japan without Hokkaido.
Third, here we have no problem of linearity. Discworld map is more linear than this, in a continent link analysis. And even in a country analisys, only the red continent is more linear.
4th, I believe there are too many borders already. Some continents should have a bit less. Examples: yellow, orange, pink and green.

Well lets see...


---As it stands I forsee what qeee has noticed also, an imbalance in regions similar to the Indochina map. Once the North is taken, a domino effect can nearly be established. I'm not sure about the ports/airports, since it really hasn't even been tested with one map yet, so I can't say that would make it really any better.


--Andy

So... Any suggestions? I'll put Hokkaido back in and see what people think about it. Maybe I can reduce the linear-ness (if there is such a word) of Red and connect it Via a port in White... Making white harder to hold and Red less linear... Then I can work on reducing more borders elsewhere?

I see to recall you took out the mentioned area so the map wouldn't be so tall, adding it in wouldn't be a problem? Perhaps some sort of sea port idea (rather than airports, I definitely prefer the former over the latter) would help. But I would suggest if you go that route...don't just have 1 port in your map. With one, a few others should follow. If not, it would seem like it was simply added as a quick fix, rather than an intricate part of strategy.

--Andy

If anything, this game makes me want to play Shogun...

Nice-looking map though, I'd play it

I had a look at the Shogun game board when I was making this... It's a very big game board though... Over 65 countries...

You could probably fudge the position of Hokkaido a bit to make it fit better -- putting it a bit to the southwest of its actual location, maybe. And I don't really think it's too terribly linear, especially if you can get away with having Hokkaido border on the green area as well as the white.

The main problem I see is just that there's no way between any of red/yellow/blue continents and any of the green/orange/white/Hokkaido ones without going through purple (as other people have pointed out). If you do use ports to address this, I agree that they ought to be more than just a one-border thing. You could even do a set of ports down each coast: one connecting red, purple, white, and Hokkaido, and another connecting blue, yellow, purple and orange (or maybe just blue, purple, and orange). If you do blue/yellow/purple/orange, then the ports can probably replace the southern blue/yellow searoute even.

The port idea is interesting... But I'm not sure I get what you are getting at, are you saying that I have for example 1 port in each blue/yellow/purple/orange, and each of those ports can attack every other port?

That was how I was thinking about it, yeah. For example, the southeastern blue country, the southeastern yellow one, the southernmost purple one, and the southernmost orange one might all be able to attack each other if they all had Pacific ports.

Well I'll play around a little and see what I can do.

This is a rough, rough draft outlining a suggestion for ports... Does this solve some of the bottleneck problem? Or does it present other problems? Let me know and I'll change it... This image is one before any textures are added by the way. I can even try and add a bit of artwork for the ports if everyone thinks it's a good idea and I decide to go ahead with it.

So what way were you intending the ports to work. Can all the southern based ports attack each other, or is it just the one/two they're explicitly connected to.

All of the ports along the certain route (May be a bit vague). Can attack each other...

Maybe I could do each port reaches out two lines... So Blue can attack Purple, Yellow Orange and Red Green...

I think perhaps the blue to yellow link is unescessary, those two continents can already attack each other and yellow already has 2 borders. For a 4 teritory continent that's enough. I'd just go straight from blue to purple. Other than that I think it works pretty well.

I don't know what you were suggesting in that last message, but I think... opening up the map as much as you are suggesting would be a bad idea.

Oh and you'll need to explain the port system somewhere on the map. But you've got a load of space to the top left so that shouldn't be a problem.

Oh and yeah, I think the curved dotted lines was a very good way to illustrate the ports, well done.

Man, your map has no bottlenecks, ie, sequences of two countries, two countries, heh, two countries... as in Indochina map. And there is much worse, because it makes useless 2 continents. Your continents instead have more borders than they should, I cant see none strong points with 2 borders, except for the east purple country and the southwest orange country. There is another one that allow a player hold both yellow and blue continents, defendinf only the east yellow country and one of red countries... but its easy of correct, only removing those mountains in red continent.

Anyway, as the continents are very difficult to hold, nothing wrong with some strong points... Did you realized that in Europe map you can hold 4 continents defendind only Spain and Croatia?

See the numbers of countries and borders of your continents (without ports):

White: 4-2 (normal)
Green: 6-5 (very high)
Orange: 6-4 (high)
Purple: 9-5 (high)
Red: 7-4 (high)
Yellow: 4-2 (normal)
Blue: 6-2 (low)

So, a route between blue and purple could be good (since the purple country is already in the border), but the others are unnecessary. In fact, could be good decrease some numbers, green specially. Its my advice.