Conquer Club

While I was waiting for my last map to be accepted or rejected, I came up with an idea for another one, so I started working on it. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the Discworld, but it's the setting for a series of humorous fantasy novels written by Terry Pratchett. Unlike Earth, which is a globe, the Discworld is flat and rides on the back of four giant elephants, who in turn stand on the shell of an enormous space turtle. Over the years it's become a rather detailed and complete world in itself, so I thought it might make a good basis for a realistic but fictional Risk map.

Here's my current draft ("small" version). The thicker borders represent uncrossable mountains.


For continent bonuses, I'm currently thinking something like:

Counterweight Continent (gold): 3
XXXX (red): 2
Oceana (cyan): 2
Ramtops & Hub (blue): 4
Unnamed Continent (green): 4
Klatch (pink/purple): 6

I'm wondering if maybe the Unnamed Continent should be 5, though. It doesn't have that many countries, but it looks like it might be somewhat difficult to hold (and it happens to have Ankh-Morpork in it, which seems like it should be worth something).

Also, I'm a little worried that the image is a little bit tall. I'm not sure how much I can do about that, though, since scaling it down much more would make it difficult to read.

Very unique...I like the idea. Really I just like to see things other than specific real life geographic regions. I think it has a lot of potential after the balancing issues are figured out.

Only thing I see right away is that once you acquire gold, the red will likely follow easily into a quick 5 from only a few countries and having then only 2 access points. But really I'm sure it isn't that much of a problem, and lots of arguments for how it is.

--Andy

Yes! Terry Pratchett is great! As you can probably see from my loacton im in love with his books. The idea for the map is great and I think the continents look pretty good, I'll comment morde once I've had some time to look it over more.

Red needs another access point, also copyright could be an issue.

This is a great idea, I have always loved the discworld, it looks good. you might want to put in dejelebi.

Is legal use an image like this? I liked the idea, but we need edit it, huh? Maybe put the map in a normal square perpective.

AndyDufresne wrote:Only thing I see right away is that once you acquire gold, the red will likely follow easily into a quick 5 from only a few countries and having then only 2 access points.

qeee1 wrote:Red needs another access point

I could add a sea route from Purdeigh Island to No Thingfjord. The Hub & Ramptops continental region could probably use a fourth border country anyway.

qeee1 wrote:also copyright could be an issue.

Marvaddin wrote:Is legal use an image like this?

The original map is much, much, much larger than this, so I'm thinking that an image of this resolution should be a small enough portion of the entire work to safely fall under "fair use". It's not unlike Google caching and displaying thumbnails in its image search results.

Marvaddin wrote:I liked the idea, but we need edit it, huh? Maybe put the map in a normal square perpective.

I'm not quite sure what you mean. Aren't the map's dimensions already square?

Maybe put the map in a normal square perpective.

Isn't that the whole idea of Discworld? A Disc?

I've uploaded a new version of the map, in small (http://grunk.org/risk/risk-disc5-small.jpg) and large (http://grunk.org/risk/risk-disc5-large.jpg) sizes.

After I play with the XML a bit, I'm hoping to reduce the size of the dark circles somewhat. They're kinda getting in the way of the place names. But other than that, what do folks think? Now that there's been some time to think about it, does anyone see any balance or playability issues that should be addressed?

looks great! the only thing i would suggest is moving the circle for purdeigh island over the island instead of floating in the ocean. you could then move the circle for terror incognata "northeast" a bit so they're not touching. also lancre has no circle. i'd definitely like to try this map out.

oh yeah..what is the significance of ankh-morpork? i'm not familiar with discworld.

Politically and population-wise, Ankh-Morpork is the biggest city on the Disc. It's also where many of the stories are set, and is at least mentioned in most of the others.

"I'm not quite sure what you mean. Aren't the map's dimensions already square?"

Yeah, and I had nothing against a disc map, but Im worried about the copyright... I think we should at least change the art in the disc borders.

Well, I presume the player that starts with Ankh Morpork will have a little bonus for doing nothing... how unfair!!

i love the map, it came out really great. its nice to finally see it all drawn out seeing as how Pratchett never does that.

Marvaddin wrote:Im worried about the copyright... I think we should at least change the art in the disc borders.

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah, I probably should remove it. The final map won't look as cool, but it will give a few extra pixels of leeway in setting the image resolution.

Well, I presume the player that starts with Ankh Morpork will have a little bonus for doing nothing... how unfair!!

Hmm. I thought it'd make a nice little incentive to encourage people to go after the city. On the one hand, it's a bonus for the player who starts with it, but on the other hand, won't it make him or her a bigger target for everyone else to attack? What do people think?

I think having something like that is a pretty cool idea, but I see Marv's point about the unfairness of it. Maybe you could split it into the twin cites Ankh and Morpork. That way you could have the bonus but it might not neccesarily be given to the player who had the best luck starting. Do you think that woud mess with the balance too much?

kingwaffles wrote:I think having something like that is a pretty cool idea, but I see Marv's point about the unfairness of it. Maybe you could split it into the twin cites Ankh and Morpork. That way you could have the bonus but it might not neccesarily be given to the player who had the best luck starting. Do you think that woud mess with the balance too much?

I agree. if the bonus city was divided up into two "countries" and you had to hold both in order to get the bonus, then it would be less of an unfai starting advantage.

That sounds like a great idea. The only problem I see (aside from my needing to legibly fit two nations into that area of the map) is that it'll make 41 countries total, a prime number. That means that any game with this map will necessarily have at least one neutral country.

Maybe assimilate Purdeigh Island into Terror Incognita? That would give you an even number.

How about split The Hub, or Trollbane Mountains? The second option is better, I think.

Marvaddin wrote:The second option is better, I think.

Well, that goes without saying, otherwise you wouldn't have posted it.

As I look it over, I'm starting to think that the Unnamed Continent might have too high a ratio of border countries anyway (6/8 even after Ankh-Morpork is split), so I'm going to add a country to the eastern part of that region somewhere. I'll boost its point value by one as well. 6/9 is still kinda high, but owning that continent will give you the AM bonus as well, so I think that's fair. I agree that Trollbane looks like it's probably a good place to break a chunk off of; I'll look at the map more closely and see.

I'm not sure if this is possible, (because I really have no idea how the technical bits of this online risk work), but maybe you could have Ankh-Morpork still confer the +1 bonus, but make it always start as controlled by a neutral player. This would mean making sure that there is a prime number of countries including Ankh-Morpork, so one of the larger countries could be split, as some of you have already suggested.

Yeah, I was thinking something along those lines too, but I just don't know how easy that would be to do or if its even possible...

Incredible!! I was thinking about this, too. Im thinking about a phantasy map with portals that can attack to everywhere... But its a very good feature to one player starts with, so I was thinking about this... Is it possible?

Well I think it's a cool idea, the programming isn't in place though. Jota suggested having "scenarios" (see Mission Cards?) where the author defines starting positions in the xml for the map. So you could make a "scenario" for this map where Ankh-Morpork starts off neutral. This is something that would of course have to be prioritized with all the other improvements so don't expect to see it soon.