Chandrea V4.3 (94prov) _AND_ Drea V4.3 (49 prov)

[Chazar]

<font color="red">Attachment is only a small jpg overview. See next post for download link of the actual high-resolution .tga and .map files (5MB)!</font>

Most recent is <font color="red">V4.3</font> (verify the number displayed in the map's title), which is described at Post#395567 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=395567) . DREA V4.3 (version with only 49 provinces) is also described in the aforementioned post.

Version history: Mapfile of Version 3.6 is attached to Post#386705 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=386705). Note that the tga has for V3.6 is different from the one for V4.3. Although they are white-dot compatiple, they do differ in province neighbourhood.
See post Post#384075 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/t395567hreads/showthreaded.php?Number=384075) for more info about V3.4. V3.4 consists only of a new .map file. Please use the .tga-file from V3.3. See post Post#371955 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=371955) for more info about V3.3. For changes in previous version 1.03 see older post Post#339513 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=339513) right here within this thread!
There might be some issues that I still want to change, hence a ToDo-List is present at Post#340052 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=340052).

---

Welcome to the rugged Land of Chandrea, also known as the dunken donut: It is a medium-sized wrap-around map (102 provinces), based upon maps from "Wizards Kings", a fantasy strategy hex-based board game by Columbia Games (http://www.columbiagames.com). I got their permission to distribute this map for private purposes. I do not now that board game yet, but someone here on the Dom2-Forum pointed out awhile ago that the Wizard Kings maps might make nice wrap-around maps for Dom2 too. Well, we'll see...

See the map's more detailed description in the next post.

[b]I tried my best guess to make it into a balanced dom2-map, but I am lacking the time to play on it intensively now, for I just have to finish my ongoging Dom2 games first. However, I did not want to delay publishing of this map anymore either, so I am here asking for your help to play-test my map so that I can balance it out for fair multiplayer games!

Because of the pervading oceans, my first guess would be that it is sensible to either play Vanheim, Marignon:Conquerors of the Sea,
Oceania, R'yleh, Caelum, Ermor or a water-cult (or to otherwise insist that nobody else plays one of these nations http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ). Please observe my recommendation to ban fortress-building on all bridges and using a magic-site frequency of 40 or below because of the many-site provinces.

Please post any mistakes and proposed changes to the map file here! I would hate it if there were various corrected vesions, since I took the trouble to give each province a new unique name. The names are silly enough to be recalled in another game, so all versions of Chandrea should be similar enough that these unique names are of use. (Do you know where e.g. the "Rift of Zyx" lies on Karan? Yes? See!)

Note furthermore that the map can be cut in half horizontally to yield two further, smaller wrap-around maps, but I do not recommend doing it until this one has been balanced out and corrected.

Have fun playing and thanks for reading through. Post#395567 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=395567)

[Chazar]

Due to upload-space limitations, the zipfile could not be attached to this post. It might become available for downloand within a couple of hours/days Arryn's (http://www.dominions-2.org/index.htm) and/or Arralen (http://www.politik-intern.de/bilder/chandrea.zip) site. Thanks!


The file contains the .tga, a changes.txt and two .map files. Here is the detailed description text included in the .map file for V3.2:

Welcome to the rugged lands of Chandrea:

94 provinces, of which are 18 water, 16 cities, 4 wastelands, and 3 swamps.

Legend:

* All cities, symbolized by orange circles, are densly populated large woodland provinces (i.e. high population, high resources).

* Each city is occupied/defended by two Wizard-Kings, a fellow Priest and their friends. If you do not like them, deleting them from the mapfile should be easy.

* All land starting locations are cities. (Can be turned off at each game creation.)

* Blue lines represent common shipping lines usable by unskilled sailors.

* Brown roads ensure province connection, but are meaningless otherwise.

* Many-site provinces can be recognized by unusual graphical features (6).

* Cities yield 2 victory points, Many-site provinces yield 1 victory point, Total VP: 38.

* All provinces names are non-random to ease memorization and role-play.

* Play with neighbors-mapfilter enabled until you know the map (press 8).

My personal recommendations for play:

6-10 players, independent strength 6, victory points (22) or dominion (666).

The map is based upon maps from 'Wizards Kings', a fantasy strategy hex-based board game by Columbia Games (www.columbiagames.com). Permission to use this map for private purposes is kindly granted by Columbia Games. The map was reworked and de-hexed by Chazar de Waahn, who is not connected to Columbia Games in any way. As long as this paragraph is included, you are free to distribute (and maybe alter) this map for non-profit purposes. Chazar can be contacted through Shrapnel's Dominions2 Forum. Always remember to have fun!

[Chazar]

Post became obsolete due to extensive editing of previous posts.

[Alneyan]

30,000,000 gives 30 MB (a bit less than that, but more than 29 MB), but the limit might be expressed in bits rather than in bytes (where a byte is equal to eight bits). If it is so, the actual limit is below 4 MB, around 3.6 MB or so. The limit does say it is bytes, but that could be a typo, or there is something else altogether going on here.

You might wish to try to compress your map in the RAR format, which usually leads to some gains in compression over Zip. That could be enough to drop the size below those 3.5/3.6 MB, assuming it is actually the limit.

As for the description, I think the trick to keep formatting requires to use an Unix formatting (using linefeeds at the end of each line). You would then add two newlines in a row to create a new paragraph. Cutting and pasting the description from another map with the proper formatting may be another solution: the linefeeds signs should appear then, and you would only have to paste them where they are needed.

[tinkthank]

Hello! I also cannot download your file, sorry. WIll try again later.
Question: Are you also interesting in making sure that the map should also be playable for nations which are not Van, CotS, Caelum, etc.? Will also try to test for that.
Question2: These "bridges" provinces, which I can currently not see -- do they also have population? Then it seems that it may be odd to have them as distinct provinces.
But of course I will wait for the map.

[Jarkko]

Chazar said:I do not now that board game yet, but someone here on the Dom2-Forum pointed out awhile ago that the Wizard Kings maps might make nice wrap-around maps for Dom2 too.


Well, I guess I am "guilty" for that http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif Nice that somebody who knows how to make maps took the time to work with them, I sure would like to test the map http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Too bad I am not able to download the map, unless it is the .jpg file attached to the first post (that has a picture of the map, looks good http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif ).

[Chazar]

Mapfile:Arralen volunteered to host the map on his webspace. I have just emailed the map to him, and he will probably give notice once he has it up. Thanks!
@Alneyan:Even splitting it into two smaller files (2,5MB) did not help. All I got were some error messages that there is something wrong with the post's header. This is really annoying!

Description:I actually wrote the description with xemacs on a linux system, so there should be linefeeds, but I am going to check that, thanks!

Nations: I think that nations that are aquatic or are otherwise agile by sailing and flying will have an even better advantage than usual. There is a lot of water on the map which hampers movement, though I included some shipping lines to help those who cannot move over water (i.e. I merely connected some provinces across the water, but this gives flyers an illogically increased reach. So maybe those shipping lines need to be removed again.)

However, you can play with any nation - there are no predefined starting positions. Maybe the odd water cult themes could be exceptionally useful here. And add Ermor to the list, for they can also cross water pretty easily.

Bridges:Initially I wanted to include road-provinces to model roads (see earlier thread), but then decided against that. However, the maps I reprocessed included some bridge pictures, and I thought to make them into chokepoints by giving each bridge a province status having population. The bridges are all small provinces (the only other small provinces are two mountain passes and a coastroad). We shall see whether this is a good idea, but I think it is not to illogical that bridges have population: Small settlements were usually founded at places were one can cross the river, so think of the bridge-province to include the area around the bridge as well, but it would just look ugly to give each bridge its own province boundary line.

Someone suggested to give these bridge (or road provinces) known sites for supply, so that big armies can use bridges without the fear of starving, but I decided against it, for bridges should be bottlenecks...

However, I think that the game would be slowed down to much if bridges could be fortified, so I think it might be sensible to ban fortifications on bridges, but that is of course up to everybody himself...

Oh, btw, aquatics can only swim upriver until they hit a bridge. They should be able to enter the bridge however. I might have forgotten to connect each bridge to its adjacent sea province, so tell me if there is such a spot (cant check right now).



@Jarkko:Thanks for pointing that out. I am by no means an expert for map drawing, but no one else seemed to pick up your suggestion. I think Dom2 definitely lacks smaller/medium-sized wrap-around maps. Anyway, just converting the hex-based wizard kings maps was not so difficult...

[Arralen]

You can download the map *deleted - the server is no longer available*

[Arralen]

Had a quick look at it. It's great.
Only some minor issues:

It's too big: The Cradle Map (220 prov) is 1600x1600 pixels, yet Chandrea is 1500x2188. This makes the icons appear very small if in standard size.
Solution would be to re-do the map in ~1300x1300 pixels, or, alternativly, use #defaultmapzoom x.y command, with x.y= 0.8 - 1.2 as it suits your taste.

Nevertheless, you could't get a complete overview even at minimum zoom.

City shouldn't be grassland: Grassland has about -50% ressources vs. Plains, and even those don't have much. But ressources in DOM aren't ore, but production capacity, which may come from ore, wood, trade or whatever. By making cities grassland, they won't be able to produce anything unless you plant a high admin castle there. And even than output will be small, as in inherent ress would be doubled, but only a %tage drawn from the neigbouring prov. So a wood/mountain province with a watchtower could have a higher production capacity than a city with a castle ...

Furthermore it's slightly irritating that province flags show up in the cities, but those might not be centered in the province at all.

So my suggestions: Make all city icons provinces on their own, maybe even with pre-build forts or pre-placed site (Archaic or Firbolg Fortress etc., which the AI tends to find reliably. Pre-Known Sites do not work, as castles are generated on finding it) Pre-placed castles is better for AI players, which tend to go for every castle they see. Players on the other hand could 'cheat' by taking over the province, but never attacking the province troops which defend the castle, not the province.

Making the city province "plain, large", it will have lots of inhabitants, but also some usuable ressources. Province border may have to be adjusted, so that the cities do not border only the province they're in atm. A city with multiple neighbours could one or more of them turned into grassland, so there're still some high-income provinces around.

More after I did some test games ...

[Chazar]

Cities as farmlands: I think that cities should be highly valuable focal places, therefore making them into large farmlands seemed logical. Furthermore I think that it is good to discourage chosing a lot of sloth and a low-admin castle. However, maybe it would be a good solution just to add a known resource-bonus site like an iron-mine to each city - if other people think so as well.

Previously I had cities as their own provinces, but later on I decided against, as it would make the map bigger and even more inaccessible. It also seemed illogical to me that a player could fortify both the city and its sourroundings. Similar to Arralen's proposal, I already tried to shift the province boundaries somewhat, so that cities and their surrounding provinces became identical. BTW, this is in the end the reason why the flags are still placed within the cities...

I also thought about outfitting each city with a thematic "fortified city"-fortress, but then opted against it as it would discourage choosing such a fortress type even more. The resource issue and the benefits for AI are good points. What do other people think?


Mapsize: I deliberately choose a big map size. The main reason was that Dom2 breaks the picture up into tiles. These tiles are displayed overlapping, producing a notable glitch. The higher the resolution, the lesser the glitch. I also think that smaller icons for fortess and temepls are quite nice, since they do not obstruct the map view anymore but are still noticeable. On the other hand, I admit that it is annoying not to view the whole map at once, but only a small portion is hidden at minimum zoom. I do not see that this is a really big problm - while resampling the map means a lot of work, especially replacing all province dots (Due to inexperience, I merged all layers before placing the white dots. Placing them again means doing the .map file again from scratch, which is a thing that I do not want to do.) Good point about the default zoom though!

[Arralen]

Possible Map Errors:

???

edited:
Upon reloading the game today, the provinces #68 &amp; #76 do not show up as direct neighbours.

Strange, really. Haven't seen something like that before - but I'm 100% shure that they where shown as neighbours yesterday. I checked at least twice while playing and writing the bug report.

[Chazar]

Arralen said:
Possible Map Errors:
#68 &amp; #76 are direct neighbours


Are you sure you got that numbers right? According to the map file that I did not alter so far, they are not neighbours. However, they have #64 as their common neighbour..

[Chazar]

I've been told that Neighborship (4-19), (102-13) and (13-25) are wrong and need to be removed. I am currently deciding on adding known Resource-Sites and preset Fortresses to Cities. Any suggestion which Cities need boosting as compared to others?

I've also been told that bloodnations might have an advantage due to cities, but I do not think so, as smaller maps are disadvantageous to blood nations anyway and because blood hunting does not profit from highly populated areas (&gt;5000) except for the duration of the hunt - while game duration should be shorter due to the small-size map. Comments?

[Arralen]

No, blood hunters won't have an advantage, unless you count crippling your gold income by decimation the pop through extensive blood hunting an advantage. An experienced blood player would go hunting in the numerous 5-6k provinces and leave the others alone, to get more gold to buy more mages.

Did 2 test games against AI on the map, and here's what I had to find out:

The map size is far from ideal - it's simply to "stretched" in the vertical direction for a wraparound-map. Together with the (therefore) NW-SO "wrapped" land masses this makes for a very strange game. And it becomes complex fast - but in such a sense, that you have lots of interlocked fronts within short time, and have to check neighbours etc. constantly.

The Bridges as provinces is something I can't get used to. They end up with about 4500 pop. and 14 ress., despite being small plains (have to be plains, otherwise terrain movement restrictions would apply) - so they are more worth than some full-sized mountain/swamp provinces.
Even worse - they don't work as intended. A bottleneck is something you have to pass through. But they only make distances longer by 1, and you actually move into them and sit there. Unless you're caelum, in which case you're happy about another way to use you province hopping ability. Furthermore, they're cluttering the map horribly with all those additional prov flags which, if you zoom out, seemingly are placed right on the borders between "real" provinces.

The oceans/seas are too small/too few - seafarers, esp. Vanheim gets an unfair advantage this way. The vans could simply move everywhere as if the seas wheren't there. Heck, if even the AI could use this to it's advantage ..

Adding pre-placed sites to the cities will not be sufficient Even if you add the "best" ressource-giving site, it's only a meager 50 ress. Which are not doubled by building a castle on top of them, IIRC. Better make those prov. "plain" plains and add additional pop via map command. (basically, that's what the "grassland" flag does: 150% pop, 50% ress. IIRC, and lesser chance to find magic sites)

My suggestion: Drop the bridges. There are bridges on other maps (e.g. Cradle) which work quite well as a hint for prov. neighbouring. Add cities as "standalone" prov. - they are much more easily discernable.


But don't get me wrong - it's a great map, nicely done and absolutely playable. Actually, I'm being trashed by my own modded Ulm in the 2nd game, and it's the DOM2 game I have the most fun playing ever ! But the map shows so much potential to be even better ...

[Chazar]

I have finished a revised version of my map: V1.03

Unfortunately, a new .tga file was necessary, since boundaries changed and even another province was added. I cannot host the files myself, but look out for the updated files at the places where you can get the old map files right now. The new files are all named chandrea2.map, chandrea2.tga, etc. in order to avoid name clashes and confusion.

There are three variants of the map files now:
Standard Cities contain two wizards and a priest (see notes below) Bridge provinces removed (also see a paragraph below)

Changes are: the big water province with the logo inside has been split into two, limiting water movement and sailing a bit (i.e. there are 103 provinces now instead of 102).
some coastlines have been disconnected to limit water movement and sailing: (34/44), (41/32), (56/43), (64/47), (80,95), (75,64), (33,40), (12,26), (7,12).
fixed and altered some neighborships
bridges are kept as small provinces, but their neighborship is limited to land provinces now
terrain changes: one more swamp and waste each instead of plains
defaultmapzoom added
proper linefeeds added to map description, making it readable
filenames end in a "2" now to avoid name clashes and to allow ongoing games to continue (i.e. "chandrea2.tga",...)
every city now has a feudal population (does not work as intended, since independent defense forces seems to ignore the poptype... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif )
every city now has an Iron Mine, Otzburg has a mine of Superior Iron (due to its poor neighbors).
starting positions are restricted to the cities for land dwellers now

The last two address the often criticised lack of resources. Since every starting position resets the resources to 81, this should be less of an issue now! Furthermore an Iron Mine has been added to each city, which also helps the situation. From my test, I think it is fine now. Nevertheless productivity is recommend for nations that need to built high-resource units! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Initial Wizards: I also wanted to fortify and defend the precious and important cities, but since they are also starting positions, predefined castles would change the balance to much. I tried to add some independent defense, but the drawback is that these units become owned if that city is choosen as some nations starting province. However, I found a variant with two wizards per city quite amusing, since the wizards may add interesting random paths to a nation. However, you cannot built wizards, so guard them well! I recommend difficult research for this variant though, since wizards are also great researchers.

About sailing: It has also been criticised that sailing/sea access is to easy. I hope that I have changed the situation a little bit now. I am open to further suggestions on altering sea access and shipping lines!!!

About bridges: I really like the bridge provinces. They are small, but their their possesion is of help when moving walking armies around terrain that would stop them. However, I included an alternate mapfile that has the bridges removed, due to popular demand... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/redface.gif Unfortunately, one cannot disable provinces in the mapfile and removing them properly would require an altered tga and a lot of renaming within the mapfile. Therefore I just adjusted the neighborship relation to disconnect all bridges from the rest of world. This means that they will still show up with province flag and that forced might teleport into those provinces (for whatever reason), which some people might find pretty annoying too.

[Arryn]

Chazar said:
I have finished a revised version of my map: V1.03

I cannot host the files myself, but look out for the updated files at the places where you can get the old map files right now.


The updated archive, repackaged with RAR to save almost 30% space and download time, is available on my site. The original version has been one of the most popular maps on my site since it was released.

[Chazar]

As always, you're pretty quick, Arryn! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif Thank you! And thanks for your great site! Nice to hear about that download ratio, too! Although searching the MP Forum occasionally for "Chandrea" does not reveal too much...ahh, I've been told that I am always too pessimistic... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[The_Tauren13]

Province 65 has a Great Iron Mine instead of just an Iron Mine. This gives a player starting there a sizeable advantage. I would mark it nostart.

[Chazar]

<font color="blue">This is an updated list of known errors contained in the current V4.3 !!!</font> Feel free adjust the files for yourself, I might post the corrected .map files here as well. Furthermore, thanks for reporting any encountered map errors or problems here in this thread! Please report anything that is not already in contained in my following todo-list:
Great Iron Mine near Otzburg: This is not a bug! The Great Iron Mine mas intentionally placed at the mountain pass nearby.
NO KNOWN BUGS.

[Saber Cherry]

I like the map!

But I have to add a vote to the "Bridges shouldn't be provinces" camp, and a vote to the "It's hard to tell where provinces are" camp. The map is very pretty and making the province borders thicker or brighter may make it less pretty, but it would also make it more clear. For example, it's not at all obvious (unless you have adjacency arrows turned on) that provinces 31, 40, and 41 are separate... from the pink lines, they could all be the same province. Same with 41, 48, and 50. Of course, rather than uglifying the map with lines, you culd make an obvious "Province Center Marker," like a little town or cabin icon, and a little coral reef icon for underwater province centers. Then it would be obvious where provinces are even without borders...

Anyway, thanks for your good work!

[Chazar]

Saber Cherry said:
For example, it's not at all obvious (unless you have adjacency arrows turned on) that provinces 31, 40, and 41 are separate... from the pink lines, they could all be the same province. Same with 41, 48, and 50.


http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Thanks for your input, but I have trouble understanding you:

I assume you refer to V1.01 rather than V1.03, right? I see your problem: I think of rivers and coastlines as natural borders, however this concept is clearly broken at some places, like "Drüh Rogg" (38 or 39 depending on version), "Stepping Stones" (37 in V1.03), or "Shallow Waters" (85)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Admittingly, I never tried my own map with the province adjacency arrows turned off. However I fail to see the benefit of explicit province center markers, like the little cabins you proposed: How would they function differently from the province flags placed by dom2, which already mark province centers? Or are you refering to the city provinces, which are marked at the city instead of the province's center?

So there is still the problem with those provinces cited above where the natural borders are different from the actual province borders...

[Saber Cherry]

Chazar said:
I assume you refer to V1.01 rather than V1.03, right?



Hmmm... I downloaded it today from Illwinter's site. The version is not listed in the map file, but it says #domversion 175. I assumed it was 1.03.


I see your problem: I think of rivers and coastlines as natural borders, however this concept is clearly broken at some places, like "Drüh Rogg" (38 or 39 depending on version), "Stepping Stones" (37 in V1.03), or "Shallow Waters" (85)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Admittingly, I never tried my own map with the province adjacency arrows turned off. However I fail to see the benefit of explicit province center markers, like the little cabins you proposed: How would they function differently from the province flags placed by dom2, which already mark province centers? Or are you refering to the city provinces, which are marked at the city instead of the province's center?



The main difference is that you only see flags in provinces adjacent to your empire, and for distant areas, it is really hard to tell what a province is or isn't.

Rivers make nice borders, but they are not used as borders in most Dominions II maps, and the roads look like borders too, and somtimes coastlines are borders and sometimes not, and the shipping lines sort of look like borders as well, and...

Places with victory points and cities are obvious, but otherwise, a "province center" designation in non-obvious provinces (bigger than 1 pixel) would be helpful to me, if not to other people.

[Chazar]

Actually it should read "(V1.03)" within the title. V1.03 should have 103 provinces, while the old version has only 102. Furthermore all filenames contain a 2, i.e. chandrea2.tga. I thought that #domversion is not about the map itself, but about the minimal version of dom2 required to play, isnt it?

---

Oh, I see, I forgot about that problem that flags cannot be seen from afar. I agree, there ought to be a more clear designation for the provinces -- added to my ToDo's now!

[Saber Cherry]

Oh, it was called Chandrea.map, no 2. #domversion is the Dominions 2 version, but... there is no version 175, which is why I mentioned it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Cainehill]

Since I just found out about this map and rather like it (makes a very nice replacement for Aran, with right around 100 provinces) I thought I'd give it a bump.

Thanks Chazar!

[Cainehill]

Woot! Just realized it's a wrap around map, so very awesome replacement for Aran sized MP games.

[Chazar]

Thanks very much!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Actually I thought that there was not much interest in my map, as it seemed unpopular in the multiplayer forum (havent checked lately though)... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Some complain that the map is broken because of those +resource sites at the starting positions, which might erase national sites for those nations having 4 starting sites, but I think that it is straigthforward to erase them from the mapfile anyway...

However, there are still some issues (see my updated to do list in this thread), but I am pretty busy in my life right now, but if my current shepherd game is finished, I think I will do it and ask around here for players to play with me on my map eventually...

[Chazar]

<font color="blue">There is a new version of my map: V3.3</font> Check the title of the map that you are using the most recent version.

The changes between 1.03 and 3.2 are:
All Bridges properly removed now (nobody loved those bridges except me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif )
No more predefined sites in possible starting locations (for they might have hidden national sites).
All cities have a population of 33333 and are large forest provinces. The forest tag shall increase resources somewhat.
.map file reorganized: cities/start locations choosen by "#start" instead of "#nostart/#terrain 512" and now neatly grouped, so it should be very easy to alter the file to suit personal needs.
Minor changes to terrain.
Known Bugs from previous version removed.
A proper version number instead of this silly dot-zero-something thingy.
Cities with only one neighbor have a preset defense force in that neighbor (provinces 40 and 80). This is done at the very end of the file, and the force should be on par or a bit better than independent strength 6 (10 Knights, 10 Shortbows, 20 Heavy Infantry Men)
Cities have predefined defenders, to make it more difficult to capture them. These troops become also owned by players starting at a city. This is feature. The troops consist of 2 Wizards, a mounted Priest, 12 Heavy Cavs, 12 Crossbows and 34 Heavy Infantry. Water Nations obtain Shark Knights, Ichtyd Warriors and Tritons instead.
(Please note: The last two points might cause problems if starting at predefined locations is disabled. I therefor advise to change all #start command into #nostarts as well as deleting the preset defenders at #40 and #80 if completely random start outside cities is what you want.)

The changes between 3.2 and 3.3 are: City Population decreased to 27275 City Population changed to Crossbow/Hvy Cav Added neighbors 29/38, 74/80 Removed neighbors 51/75

[Cainehill]

Cool! I've been wanting to get games going on this map, and it sounds even better now. Thanks!

[Arryn]

The latest (3.3) archive (.rar) is now available on my site for downloading.

[Cainehill]

Cool - thanks Arryn!

[Cainehill]

Hmmm. Having each nation get 12 heavy cav, 30+ heavy infantry, and 12 crossbows seems like it may be a bit unbalancing, since nations that aren't supposed to have solid troops, or aren't supposed to have good missile troops (or any, ie Abysia) are pumped up at the start. Almost any nation likely can, and probably should, attack an independent with an army on turn 2.

The free mages may have something of the same effect, boosting restricted magic nations like stock Ulm or New Era Pangaea quite a bit.

But on the other paw, since I view this as being a perfect map for 5-6 players, it might simply be that the extra starting troops &amp; mages help people get into the thick of things player vs player wise more quickly.

[Chazar]

First of all, deleting those troops from the mapfile is fairly easy, since it is all in one place inside the map file. For convenience, I attached an edited mapfile with starting locations being outside cities, i.e. each player starting without these troops.

That said, in the original mapfile these troops serve as defense for the cities, who should be focal points of the map. There is no other option to strengthen the defenders of a certain province. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif The population type does only influence the availability of recruitable troops, not the type and numbers of the actual defenders. Therefore I placed them by hand, which then leads to nations start with these troops. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Injured.gif

However, I think this is fair as everyone starts with the same troops. Thus one gets a quicker start on even terms, which is something I do like (for having more than one starting province is not advisable on my map, as many cities are adjacent!). Furthermore those troops are easily available to anyone holding a fortified city anyway.

The mages were just added for fun. But now I think that they might balance things as well: I do not like it that finding a single magical site such as a library is such a huge advantage. So everyone gets two those independent wizards for free, boosting research a bit for everyone. (One might consider difficult research as well) Furthermore, their random paths cannot be taken into account at pretender creation, so a player has to adapt to what he gets and has to deal with these options (I really liked the randomly assigend predesigned-pretenders in the Shepherd's Scenario).

Also, I do like the idea that these three commanders are rather unique and thus present a nice prestige goal for assassins... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif Same holds for the Cavalary, or how do you obtain those again bearing your home province's name? I have fun by using them cautiosly and nuturing them to high XP as my pretender's elite bodyguard... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

In the end, it's everybody's own choice whether to play with the troops or not: I like them, as long as nobody convinces me that they shift the balance in favor of the powerhouses Caelum, Vanheim, etc,..

[Chazar]

VERSION 3.4:
Note that the chandrea3.tga remains unchanged, so find attached to this post only the altered .map file and a .txt file generated by CJN's mapinfo script.
All provinces feature a simple commander with #randomequip 2. Enjoy hunting the trinkets! (Assassins beware, for the commander always has a weak bodyguard.) Cities have two sages and 20 X-bows instead of two wizards and cavalry. (Idea: The x-bows still make it a bit more difficult to capture independent cities; the priest-sages should compensate ill-luck with respect to early turn lab/temple loss as well as offsetting early library finds.) Some minor corrections that I cannot recallHave fun!

EDIT: Buggy file. Some commented-out stuff is still read by dom2. Fix in my next post!

[spirokeat]

Nice one Chazar...Nice to see the trinkets getting some playtime. I will enjoy having a go at this map.

Hats off to ya sir.

Spirokeat

[Chazar]

Here is the corrected file. It's called 3.5 now.

PS: The two underwater locations do not have victory points assigned. This might annoy an underwater player, though the map hardly puts any underwater nation at a disadvantage. Nevertheless, it is easy to add the victory points if desired.

[NTJedi]

Looks nice... any chance we'll see a map with over 200 provinces?

[Chazar]

...and again a new version of the map file available for download.

Changes: Simply 2 item-wielders per province, because just one per province did not make much of a difference (considering the difficulty of finding the low-level items after a battle). Missing victory-points for the two underwater starting locations added. The two provinces which are each single-adjacents to possible starting locations received a lowered preset independent force. A few more idependents for many-site provinces. Their leaders have #randomeqip 3, so there should be something to lootAlways remember to have fun!

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@NTJedi: No, for I especially made this map to address the lack of small and wrap-around maps... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Chazar]

Note that the attachment for V3.6 only includes the .map file! The tga file has not changed since V3.3, so please download V3.3 from e.g. Arryn's nice &amp; useful site: http://www.dominions-2.org

Arryn also provides V3.6 in addition to V3.3, which is good, since it the difference are rather a matter of taste...

The reason for not providing the file here is that the forum does not allow to attach files of that size http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Sorry for any inconvenience caused.

[Chazar]

New map available: Drea V4.3, a 49 province wrap-around map, suited for Blitzgames, Duels or a bloody 9 Player Deathmatch.

The map is essentially the lower half of my previous Chandrea map (94 provinces), which is now also available in version 4.3!!!

Both maps can be downloaded from Arryn's www.dominions-2.org (http://www.dominions-2.org). Many thanks to Arryn for her nice website! Others are welcome to make the maps available on their own Dom2-related websites, too. Each map brings its own new tga-file as well as a mapinfo (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=318224)-generated txt-file containing the map details in a human-readable format. If you play my map, please report whether you like or dislike it here. Thanks!

The following changes apply to both Drea V4.3 and Chandrea V4.3: Shipping lines have been removed! This makes travelling much more interesting and puts strategical flyers back to where they belong. Connection is still ensured, because: There are three Pocket Ships items located in each city. Therefore each land nation starts with three PocketShips already when using the special starting locations (i.e. in Cities) and can acquire more pocket ships by conquering further cities, provided you catch the pocket-ship item holders. Each city is preoccupied by three sage-priests and some ordinary crossbows. So all nation starts with three sage-priest. The idea is that they help somewhat against an early temple/lab loss (for there is someone there to rebuild) and against late library findings (especially on a small map) by providing a good initial research base. Each province now contains three commanders with #randomequip 2 and only 2-5 bodyguards (in addition to whatever idependent strength you choose). All many-site provinces have at least one commander with #randomequip 4. It is still pretty difficult to find items... :/ Cities are now large mountain provinces plus extra population, which yields an even ratio between forests and mountains on both maps. (Recall: Farmlands have few resources, therefore mountains plus extra population are better here, as cities should be focal points of my map, being both rich in gold and resources.) Minor neighborship changes (Mount Nimrod became inland, Giant's Causeway lost a remote neighbour, etc.) Minor terrain corrections, especially removal of some freshwater tags and adjustment of small/large as well as more nonstart provinces tags, e.g. "Mount Nimrod" is now a 'large many-site non-start mountain waste' instead of a mere 'many-site mountain'. Bug fix: Province Otzburg Pass (40) had erroneously an odd mixture of independent defenders in V3.6.
Apart from two connected main continents, there is a single province island and a 5 province island. It is possible for a player to start on the 5-province island, but it contains 2 cities and a nice many site province (Mount Nimrod) already, so it allows a nice start. Leaving the island can then be done via the Pocket Ships. I think the necessity for sailing adds much more fun to the map! - I even think about removing the province "Stepping Stones" entirely from both maps...

[PashaDawg]

Thanks for making a small province!! I play a lot of 1x1 games and this will come in handy!

Pasha

[Chazar]

@all: Have fun and please tell me what you think about the map.

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I do not have any demand myself currently, but in case that there is some demand for another small wrap-around map:
I can easily turn the upper half of Chandrea into a proper seperate wrap-around map. It would probably be more suitable for 1:1 games, for the upper half will wrap into a single continent with no islands and less water provinces, thus removing the need for the Pocket Ships entirely (but personally speaking I like the Pocket Ships).

However, there is one thing preventing me to do so: After splitting the map, one has to delete all the lower-number provinces from the mapfile and renumber the remaining ones. This is straightforward to do, but pretty tedious and quite error-prune for a human, since one has to take great care which numbers refer to a province and which do not (e.g. for just one example, if province 32 shall become province 4, then "#terrain 32 32" should be changed into "#terrain 4 32" and not into "#terrain 32 4" nor "#terrain 4 4". Similar for distinguishing "#setland 32" (number changes) from "#units 20 32" (numbers remains unchanged, 32=archers)). I have described the arising problems somewhat more detailed in this Post#396275 (http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/threads/showthreaded.php?Number=396275).

However, it should be straightforward to let the computer do this job, but I am not eager enough to code it myself (since I consider Chandrea &amp; Drea to be finished now, except for yet unknown bugs). If someone knows python, then CJN's mapinfo tool (I already linked to its thread here in previous posts in this thread below) might even be a good base to start from, since it already encodes the complete mapfile parsing (but I do not know python myself).

I am also sure that other mapmakers will welcome such a tool for altering mapfiles as well, to there is some praise to earn there! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif