British Isles

[sevenwarlocks]

Here, as promised, is the British Isles map I've been working on.

www.sevenwarlocks.com/British Isles.zip
http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/images/Britain.jpg

[Gregstrom]

It's a thing of beauty. Many thanks.

[Meglobob]

Wow! Thats a cool looking map. Now I can conquer my home and inflict utter destruction on London, great!

However, the link appears not to working at the moment.

[Slobby]

Great looking map!

[sevenwarlocks]

Thanks! Please let me know if you find any errors.

[rdonj]

I can't download it :(

[sevenwarlocks]

Oops - the link was bad. Try again now and it will work.

[rdonj]

Now the only thing your maps really need... is to have some provinces set to no start. There are some province that would be terrible start provinces. For example, the one at the top of ireland. I had an AI start there in my ireland test game. In my test game for this map, I had a minor issue as I started on the bottom right of the map. Unfortunately I chose to play as ma man, so I'm pretty well stuck there, too.... You either need to be unable to start down there, or be able to get to the mainland from at least one of the southwestern provinces.

[sevenwarlocks]

Thanks. Having played a couple games now, I can see the need for no-starts. I've heard that in multiplayer games each start should connect to at least 4 or maybe 5 provinces to prevent large discrepencies in resources available to the starting province. Given the differences in terrain on this map, I'm not sure that would entirely prevent such discrepencies, but it would be step in that direction, and I don't think the remaining random element would be intolerable.

As for no start on the mainland, I'm not sure. I could see it being a problem if there were only a small number of players, but with many players, the dis-advantage of needing to cross water relatively early might be balanced by the advantage of having a few provinces that are unlikely to be attacked early.

If it is a problem, I'll probably connect Calais and Dover rather than make the whole main-land no-start.

I could also connect Ireland with Scotland accross the Celtic Sea if that would improve the map, but I sort of like the strategic aspect of having to choose when it is best to go in the water.

[rdonj]

Oops. By southwester I meant southeastern. Sorry, my fault for posting when not fully awake. It's just those 12 provinces seperated from the entirety of all other land provinces. If you are a land nation and you're stuck there, there's a pretty good chance you'll not accomplish anything the entire game. Especially if you have no native water or air access.

Connecting ireland with scotland is less necessary, as there's at least a significant amount of land there. By the time you've more or less conquered ireland getting to england/scotland should not be nearly the problem it would be in the southeast.

Also yes, in multiplayer people tend to prefer all starts to be more or less equal with say 4-6 provinces around each cap and at least 3 provinces between each player's capitols. The next most important thing players care about is relative availability of gold. In this map there's an awful lot of mountainous terrain up north in scotland and descending into england. You might want to compensate the players that end up there by increasing the population in some of those regions to keep the gold level more or less balanced.

[Gregstrom]

Also, a minor request:

With the image being quite substantial in size, would it be possible for updates to the .map file to be made available as separate downloads?

[sevenwarlocks]

Also, a minor request:

With the image being quite substantial in size, would it be possible for updates to the .map file to be made available as separate downloads?

No problem.

http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/British Isles.map (http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/British%20Isles.map)

Last update was 7/18/09 - fixed a couple of neighbor omissions.

[sevenwarlocks]

How do these starting locations look?


http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/images/Britain-starting.jpg

[Dragar]

This begs for a Defender of the Crown game :)

[rdonj]

Good more or less. There could maybe be another start in northern scotland, but having only one up there does help balance available gold out a little. Hopefully if you're putting one in the area of france you're putting a land crossing in there?

[DakaSha]

nice map :)

[sevenwarlocks]

Good more or less. There could maybe be another start in northern scotland, but having only one up there does help balance available gold out a little. Hopefully if you're putting one in the area of france you're putting a land crossing in there?

Yes, putting in the land crossing. And yes, I left out a possible starting location in Northern scottland because it would have monopolized the only available farm-land up there. As is, players will have an equal shot at it.

[sevenwarlocks]

Oh - a couple of questions... Is it advisable to use the "many sites" indicator or not? And do you know if "fresh water" has any in-game effect?

[elmokki]

Oh - a couple of questions... Is it advisable to use the "many sites" indicator or not? And do you know if "fresh water" has any in-game effect?

There's nothing wrong with the many sites option.

Fresh water, if I remember right, increases income.

[sevenwarlocks]

Latest update:

July 20, 2009

Now 22 possible starting locations (19 land and 3 sea). All land starting locations have 4-7 radials and are at least 4 spaces away from each-other. Added Calais - Dover connection accross the English Channel. I thought this needed to be displayed, so unfortunately I had to change the map, hopefully for the last time.

http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/British Isles.map
http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/images/Britain.jpg
http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/images/Britain-starting.jpg

[sevenwarlocks]

Latest update:

July 20, 2009

Sorry - the updated .tga file is here:

http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/British Isles.zip

[rdonj]

Small typo - Gloucestershire is spelled Gloucetershire.

[sevenwarlocks]

Friday, July 31

Fixed typo - no need for map download, so here is the link to the map file.

www.sevenwarlocks.com/British Isles.map

[SlipperyJim]

Busted link above. Try:
http://www.sevenwarlocks.com/British%20Isles.map

(HTML doesn't like spaces in your links....)

Thanks for the excellent map, sevenwarlocks!