gimil wrote:Oaktown, any words from you on the gameplay perspective?
Sure... my first real peek at this map, so apologies if this full of repeats.
Imperial Castle has quicker access to the outside world than the other castles - only one "2" between it and the 10-neutral 'gateway' territory. Not sure how much of impact this will have in games, but if you're trying to make everything as equal as possible...
Feudal Castle has the worst access to the other realms - to access a bridge, it has to go right past Might's gateway territory, which no other player has to do. The Might player can deny Feudal access while lurking around the rest of the map (for better for for worse).
Barbarian faces a much similar issue, as they could easily be cut off from the rest of the world by the Imperial player. Seems like to make the game as open as possible you don't want to set this map up so that each player has one clear enemy - give players some options.
Some Castles have access to more than one village, some only to one. The Imperial and Rhu players have pretty easy access to a second village should their first option be taken or if they just get greedy, while it would take slogging through enemy territory for the Might or Feudal players (for example) to access a second village.
Worst starting location in my opinion: Feudal, which is 11 territories away from a second village (starting at the gateway territory), and has to go through three potential enemies to get there. Access to the world must go through an enemy.
Best starting location: Clan Rhu. Second closest village is just five territories from his gateway territory, and the two factions that are closer to it will likely be fighting each other to get to it since their paths are parallel.
Moving the Xeu village down to the bottom of the map and swinging the Barbarian gate up to the top of his region might solve a lot of these problems.
Seems to me that Zeu 18-22 will be dead area for most of the game, as it doesn't conveniently get you anywhere of value.
I'm shocked - there doesn't seem to be a single location in which a territory can hit two territories of the same number... I lost a game in the first Feudal because I wasn't paying attention to which 7 I was attacking. Or was it a 9? Anyway, nice work on that!