Eastern Hemisphere [Quenched]

[lostatlimbo]

Another great looking map oaktown!

Forgive me if this has already been addressed, but didnt the Ottoman empire still have some chunks of Northeast Africa at the turn of the century? Or is the idea that their hold on those areas was fleeting by then?

Not trying to nitpick - just curious!

[lostatlimbo]

Also - the mountains on Australia might be confusing for some. It is clear that Australia and New Zealand connect, but the placement of those mountains suggest an impassable boundary.

[bryguy]

I havent been able to comment on this for a while (i dont know if i ever did originally... I might have, I know I meant to at one point or another) but all Ive got to say is "Wow!"


This looks very good, another great map oak

I do have some comments tho...

1) I dont really care for the mountains. Don't get me wrong, their great, but if I look at them straight on they look like canyons.
2) Netherland flag and France flag keeps getting me confused
3) I dont really understand the Naval Superiority thing. Can it be attacked by basically any country (GB, Neth, Germany, France, Italy)? Also the 4 in the to neutral (4) if held is hard to read
4) Does the flag over at portugal/spain go to portugal or spain?
5) Some of the attack dots (routes?) are hard to see, or hard to tell that the are there. Thats just my opinion
6) Its a bit annoying how some names (middle east, oceania, those type names) have stuff going through them, or behind them. Mainly the ones that annoy me are N. Africa, Middle East, and Oceania. Those are the only ones that has something actually going through a letter, the others have it going between letters, or not at all (except for So. Asia, but that one is less noticible)


once again, lookin great

[sailorseal]

1) I dont really care for the mountains. Don't get me wrong, their great, but if I look at them straight on they look like canyons.

I agree they just give me this weird feeling. The way they ripple makes it look like a wound stitched up. They give me the creeps but I do not think they should be Oak's top priority.

[bryguy]

1) I dont really care for the mountains. Don't get me wrong, their great, but if I look at them straight on they look like canyons.

I agree they just give me this weird feeling. The way they ripple makes it look like a wound stitched up. They give me the creeps but I do not think they should be Oak's top priority.

Agreed. If needed, they could probably be fixed in FF.


I just put it first cause it was the first thing I noticed.

[sailorseal]

1) I dont really care for the mountains. Don't get me wrong, their great, but if I look at them straight on they look like canyons.

I agree they just give me this weird feeling. The way they ripple makes it look like a wound stitched up. They give me the creeps but I do not think they should be Oak's top priority.

Agreed. If needed, they could probably be fixed in FF.


I just put it first cause it was the first thing I noticed.

I am glad for once someone agrees with me. I think with the Jury there should be a both option(Needs changes but should move to FF). Hopefully everyone else agrees with that...

[oaktown]

Holy crap, that's a lot of comments. This map thread has had virtually no feedback since September, now everybody's a critic.

Click image to enlarge.

I was going to quote everything and respond to each, but that would be a record post for me, and if you've followed my history of writing Foundry novels you'd know that this would be something of a feat. As Mr. Montoya said, "Let me explain... no, it is too much, let me sum up." What I'm doing is reading, making changes on the fly, and posting what I do. Down below I'll mention the most significant suggestions that I am opting not to implement, and those about which I am still on the fence.

• China glow made more yellow and more opaque. Glow brought in a few pixels along the northern and southern borders.
• South Asia a darker red, and the region title changed to "S. Asia" and moved out of the way.
• South Africa glow is more opaque, grungier, and given a hint of violet (was just grey); title made stronger and easier to read.
• Text already has a glow, but I've moved some text off of borders (eg. St. petersburg).
• Connected some sloppy borders in Scandinavia, Asia and Africa.
• Amur title and circle moved north and west to clarify that it is a single territory.
• Kept German S.W. Africa with periods, but removed a space to tighten it up.
• Autralia - NZ attack route redrawn so that it's not coming out of the mountains (interest catch, I hope this is a decent fix).
• Naval Superiority explanation ammdended for calrity, font is larger; "4" changed to "four"
• Attack route dots given a dark glow to help them stand out.
• Portugal changed to "PORT.", order of elements moved to make it distinct from Spain.
• Flip-flopped Sumatra name/circle.
• Flipped the Dutch colony flags to run right to left... there's no way you can mix them up with the french and/or german flags now.
• Oceania text moved off of the attack route, but other region titles look good to me... I like the effect of layering titles so long as it doesn't impede play.

I've removed the army circles from this version - please tell me if you all think that the army counts are readable sans-circles before I start moving shit around to accommodate as many counts as possible on the actual territories.

Let's see, could there be anything else about this map that folks don't like? Anything at all?

your mountains look like veins

The mountains do look like veins but it's suits the map IMO.

Seriously, is there anything that you guys don't like about the graphics?

The mountains...

I dont really care for the mountains. Don't get me wrong, their great, but if I look at them straight on they look like canyons.

The way they ripple makes it look like a wound stitched up. They give me the creeps but I do not think they should be Oak's top priority.

What was that? Could somebody just tell me how you really feel?

First off the mountains are an important distinguishing feature that really helps the map out but at the same time I do not like how they look. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the purpose of them and I think that mountains need to be used but the implementation of them just does not feel right. Some of them just look like scars laid over the land (Eastern Russia and Australia). The mountains around China are very nice. I think they look good because they go from mountains to hills to flat land. The colors blend well and the entire image is integrated. The mountains I mentioned above just seen stuff on top of flat land. The ones in eastern Russia look good until the reddish bases don’t blend into the brown base of the map image. Same goes for the AU mountains too. I really think those should just be removed (I posted on that much earlier in the map development)
I would suggest that you take all names and colors and borders off of the map and try to make the mountains look integrated into the base image. Then once they look seamlessly integrated into the look, turn back on your other layers. That way colors and borders will not affect your mountain style.
Also it was mentioned earlier that there is no legend info explaining the mountains are impassable. I think that is needed as well.

Really??

Also - the mountains..

Alright, I get the point. I will play around with them.

Suggestions from the past 48 hours that I would argue against...

Creating more territories in Russia and splitting it into two regions. If this were a map of anything other than a very specific time in actual world history, I could see this change. But Russia was truly a behemoth at the dawn of the 20th century. This is a map about historical empires, and cutting the Russian Empire in two wouldn't make sense.

Increasing Japan's bonus to +3. While there are many ways to get a bonus on this map, there aren't a lot of easy starts; Japan is the easiest start, with for territories and easy expansion out into China. It is not subject to the bombardments of the other regions. On some maps a four territory, three border territory would rate a +3, but i would say not on this map.

Suggestions I'm still considering, but less than excited about.

Adding color to the legend. We went all over this three months ago, I presented some options, and they looked like crap. I could try again and probably make something acceptable, but it's not as if this is a fantasy world... Europe is Europe, Russia is Russia.

Explicitly stating that mountains are impassables. Haven't we all played enough CC maps to know that mountains are impassable borders?

[the.killing.44]

tbh, I kinda like the mountains. But what I'd do is either/both split up the ridges so there is some divider (like ---- --- -- -- instead of the current ----------- if you know what I mean), or make them a tad thicker.

.44

[pamoa]

Explicitly stating that mountains are impassables. Haven't we all played enough CC maps to know that mountains are impassable borders?

It's a silly recurrent Map Foundry issue I never understood but were forced to apply... I hope you not

[sailorseal]

So now that you have made these changes can the jury re-vote?

[cairnswk]

....
Explicitly stating that mountains are impassables. Haven't we all played enough CC maps to know that mountains are impassable borders?

Yes, we veterans might have, but what about the newbie who decides to give this map a go first time round because it "looks good" and they like the theme. Don't you think they deserve the same chance as everyone else has been given....and it would only be due process for you to follow the foundry standards and notate this on your map.

You see without the notation, any mountain range could be regarded as simply that....a geographical feature of the map and thus it might be considered simply as a border, and not as impassable.
That is why it is Foundry Standard.

[oaktown]

You see without the notation, any mountain range could be regarded as simply that....a geographical feature of the map and thus it might be considered simply as a border, and not as impassable.
That is why it is Foundry Standard.

Is it a Foundry standard? Maps without notation re. impassable mountains include:
Africa
Age of Realms I
Age of Realms II
Age of Realms III
Alexander's Empire
Ancient Greece
Archipelago
Asia
Australia points out what a mountain range looks like, but does not say it is impassable
British Isles
Canada

I stopped looking after the first two rows of the map finder; most of the other maps in the first two rows don't have mountains at all. In fact, there are only two or three maps that I saw that do actually mention the mountains, vs. the 11 above that do not. I would say that the foundry standard is to NOT note the impassability of mountains on a map

As far as I can recall, nobody has ever come into the Foundry to complain about the play of the mountains in any of those maps - some of which have been around longer than I have.

[MrBenn]

Mountains are one of the most obvious impassable objects; I'm not convinced you need to explain this on the legend.

[cairnswk]

^^ Then i stand corrected. But wow betied anyone! who asks me to explain this on any of my maps again.

[sailorseal]

So now that you have made these changes can the jury re-vote?

is anyone going to answer?

[oaktown]

So now that you have made these changes can the jury re-vote?

is anyone going to answer?

There's no voting per se... when and if you think the map is ready to advance on the Forge you just give it your thumbs-up and your affirmative will be noted. Maybe we need to come up with a graphic for this - a third of a map stamp?

[cairnswk]

... Maybe we need to come up with a graphic for this - a third of a map stamp?

oaktown...speaking about the map stamp....this is becoming bureaucratic BS...why make more work for yourself when there already exists a tidy process? just forge the map or have someone do it for you.

[oaktown]

... Maybe we need to come up with a graphic for this - a third of a map stamp?

oaktown...speaking about the map stamp....this is becoming bureaucratic BS...why make more work for yourself when there already exists a tidy process? just forge the map or have someone do it for you.

It was intended as an experiment in group map-making, and I didn't want to subject anybody's else's map to a test process. Consider it jury duty beta.

And just to be clear, cairns, I wasn't trying to call you out for suggesting that noting mountains as impassables was foundry standard - I knew that some map had the notation and some didn't, and i was genuinely curious to see what the break-down was. In general I am in favor of giving more information than necessary in a legend, and I think it is good practice to include info about anything that may not be obvious to 98% of players. In this case I think we've reached a point where mountains as impassables have become a CC standard - it will now be up to me to make it clear that they are, in fact, mountains and not tree roots.

[bryguy]

So now that you have made these changes can the jury re-vote?

is anyone going to answer?

I will!


but Im not on jury...


oh well, I still say this should be forged already. I cant see any major things that need fixing (maybe the mountains, but they aren't really high on my priority list) , most of what I see (if any) that needs fixing is just minor tweaks here or there, nothing big.

so yea, I say we get this thing forged

@--> Oak

lol now that you mention it, if I turn my head just right, and close one eye.... and maybe close the other eye... they look just like tree roots!

[/threadjack]

[yeti_c]

it will now be up to me to make it clear that they are, in fact, mountains and not tree roots.

Look like Mountains to me.

C.

[oaktown]

it will now be up to me to make it clear that they are, in fact, mountains and not tree roots.

Look like Mountains to me.

C.

Thanks yeti... and that new medal looks good on you.

[Bootsmann Rommel]

wow, looks like a awesome map, It is up there with WORLD 2.1. Hope to be playing it soon, and I would like to see more in Aisa possibly, maybe in the south????

[cairnswk]

...it will now be up to me to make it clear that they are, in fact, mountains and not tree roots.

oaktown..i always thought they were mountains and never had any issue with them.

[pamoa]

I love those tree roots

Great graphics as allways...

[oaktown]

Click image to enlarge.

Changes to this update are subtle, but many. In fact, this update took considerably more time than the last update.

First, since we seem to be leaning against army circles (nobody complained when they were removed) the change requires rethinking where the army counts will go... you can't just drop a count on top of a mountain without a shadow for contrast. I've moved a lot of flags, borders, territory titles, and attack routes to better accommodate army counts sans-circles. I've stuck a lot of sample counts in there as examples.

Mountains... you either love them or hate them, with the exception of WM who actually came up with some suggestions.

First off the mountains are an important distinguishing feature that really helps the map out but at the same time I do not like how they look. Don’t get me wrong, I understand the purpose of them and I think that mountains need to be used but the implementation of them just does not feel right. Some of them just look like scars laid over the land (Eastern Russia and Australia). The mountains around China are very nice. I think they look good because they go from mountains to hills to flat land. The colors blend well and the entire image is integrated. The mountains I mentioned above just seen stuff on top of flat land. The ones in eastern Russia look good until the reddish bases don’t blend into the brown base of the map image. Same goes for the AU mountains too. I really think those should just be removed (I posted on that much earlier in the map development)
I would suggest that you take all names and colors and borders off of the map and try to make the mountains look integrated into the base image. Then once they look seamlessly integrated into the look, turn back on your other layers. That way colors and borders will not affect your mountain style.

The Australia range remains, but it is much less prominent I hope. The other ranges have had their highlights brought down and shadows brought up (love those dodge and burn tools) in hopes that they will contrast less with their surroundings. Also, I have added considerably more texture mountains to the landscape in more or less appropriate places. My hope is that everything blends together better now.