New Map: Loemendor

[Arralen]

Kaljamaha said:
Second, the crater is a waste province, and also tagged as many sites, which should give it +50% site frequency, or at least +30%, in case the multiple terrain types don't stack (haven't tested this).

MAGIC SITE FREQUENCY
Kristoffer O posted 03 April, 2004 10:46
Not sure of the exact numbers.
(I'm not sure of the specifics. Waste might be 30, swamp and mountain 20. 'just a guess.)
I guess it works like this:
Magic: (site freq) + 30
Waste: (site freq) + 20
Swamp: (site freq) + 20
Mountain: (site freq) + 10
Forest: (site freq) + 10
Farm: (site freq) - 20
Only the most beneficial counts.
If site: Check what site. Random.
If site not possible: Reroll.
If site unique and already in the game: Reroll.
If site possible and rare: Reroll once.
Many nature sites are common but restricted to forests etc.
Unique sites are also rare or common. Inkpot end is unique and common. Crown of Darkness is rare.
No blood under water IIRC. Not sure about unholy.

As you can see, a "many sites" province is only marginally better than waste, if at all.
If you want to make it a really special prov, add a pre-placed site.
With random sites, you could -and would most likely- something totally unfitting anyway.

[Turin]

The map is really nice and I enjoy playing on it.

Some suggestions for improvement though:

1) Could you tag all preplaced sites with #knownfeature instead of #feature?(apart from the forgotten fortress of course) This way people who know how to read .map files don´t get rewarded compared to people who can´t be bothered to do that.

2) Some preplaced sites wield really lousy rewards for the strength of their guardians. Prime example is Arandor(72)
Killing 20 knights of avalon and two very effective mages(along with dozens of elite bodyguards) for a site that only lets you scry is a really bad deal.
The heavenfire crater is obviously another bad province.

[Endoperez]

I'm not sure, but I quess all provinces with special defenders are tagged as having more magical sites than common provinces (+30% bonus, the most beneficial one)

[Endoperez]

I'm not sure, but I quess all provinces with special defenders are tagged as having more magical sites than common provinces (+30% bonus, the most beneficial one). That is better than waste, and those provinces should be quite rich, too...

[Kaljamaha]

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

On the issue of the special provinces: I created them based how things are in my own homebrew fantasy world. So, thematics totally trumped balance when I designed the special provinces. Also, I play SP almost exclusively, with strong independents, very hard research and few (usually 25%) sites, so that obviously gives me a different perspective. And I'm mostly a sandbox type player.

That said, I fully understand that in this game, you expect to get a reward if you defeat some tough defenders.

Whether or not the pre-placed sites should be pre-discovered or not, I really don't have that big of an opinion. I originally set them as #features because I thought it would be neat for players to first fight the special defenders, and then "discover" the site they were guarding, in the same manner sites are usually discovered, instead of it just being "congratulations, you beat the guardians, now here's your prize". But as I said, I don't have any strong opinions either way (though I would have hoped for people playing, at least for the first time, to not have peeked in the .map file).

As to whether the guardians in each special province are of appropriate strength, I fully admit they were done on a... I don't know what the word in English is ("mutu tuntuma" for you Finnish types)... on intuition, if you will. The types of guardians of each place are, as mentioned above, thematically appropriate (though the Harvester of Sorrows idea for Heavenfire Crater is good). The numbers can very well be changed. When I designed them, I didn't want the special provinces to be so good that players would immediately rush to capture them. That's why I mostly stayed away from sites that let you recruit mages. My vision was for them to be more like somewhat beefier defenders for a guaranteed site, or other goodies. Thus the suggestion for 7+ indie strength. I did test the defenders of each site before I released the map, against a "standard army", which resulted in lowering the strength in some provinces. So you can imagine they were quite tough to begin with.

Another consideration towards the reward part is that some places with special defenders are also of great strategic value, Arandor being the prime example. If you want to travel from the Old Road to King's Road, unless you go through Arandor, you'll be in for a long trek.

And finally, apparently the "many sites" tag doesn't stack with underlying terrain. Well... crap. I remember reading sometime ago on this forum that multiple terrain types stack with regards to population and resources, so I thought it would be the same for site frequency. This might prompt some change, I'll have to think about it.

*reads through own post*

It seems I have some trouble communicating my thoughts today. Summa summarum, I am very much interested in hearing how people view the special defenders, if they are too tough or too wimpy for the province they guard, considering both sites and strategic importance.


K.

[Endoperez]

"mutu tuntunma" might be translated into "quesstimation".

Have you given any provinces special #poptype instead of special prescripted defenders? The troglodytes could work as most monstrous creatures, amazons might work in some cases, etc. I think you could add extra defenders in addition to the normal defenders by using the #land or #setland that DIDN'T overwrite the original settings.

[Chazar]

Judging from my tests of mapmaking, the #poptype command only affects the type of recruitable units available at a province, but not its initial independent defenders...

Thus it is difficult to strengthen the defense of independent provinces independently from the independent setting, especially not in a random way, i.e. I wish that there would be a map-command to say that the random independent force is to be set at global independent strength +/- something.

EDIT-PS: Of course, while setting the poptype one can set defenders manually as well, but randomness would help to allow oneself to enjoy one's own maps.

[Endoperez]

Pity. The one thing I most miss in mapmaking (or modding) is the ability to change poptypes, to add new poptypes, etc. They could add much flavour to, as an example, the Faerun map, and could (easily?) transform the random-map generator to a whole new level.

[Edi]

Doing things from a "mutu" basis can be best translated as doing things ad hoc. That's about as close as it gets.

Chazar said:
Judging from my tests of mapmaking, the #poptype command only affects the type of recruitable units available at a province, but not its initial independent defenders...

Indeed. The way it works is that first Dom2 creates the map from the neighbor and terrain info, randomly assigns poptypes appropriate to terrain, places indie defebders according to that poptype, assigns magic sites and only then starts reading the special commands from the mapfile. IF the special commands overwrite the previous poptype, then you're just [censored] out of luck when the jade amazons turned into basic slingers or whatever else happened, even if you did fight them for control of the province.

Similarly, scripted magic sites overwrite previously assigned ones if there are no empty slots available.

Chazar said:Thus it is difficult to strengthen the defense of independent provinces independently from the independent setting, especially not in a random way, i.e. I wish that there would be a map-command to say that the random independent force is to be set at global independent strength +/- something.

That'd help, but assigning some lightly armored crossbows (#47 or #48) and some of the ID #40 HI will usually beef up any indie quite a bit. Put about 15 and 20 of them respectively and it'll do the trick. And they work with almost anything.

Chazar said:EDIT-PS: Of course, while setting the poptype one can set defenders manually as well, but randomness would help to allow oneself to enjoy one's own maps.

The procedure above, assigning some common as dirt indies in small quantities will do the trick, and the random variation from native defenders does the rest.

Edi