Castle Lands [Quenched]

[pikkio]

OK!

i change the colour of the towers. now they are grey. the walls seems made with red bricks, so i didn't change it.

what do you think about?

Click image to enlarge.

[thenobodies80]

i think that the castle is good now, but can you change the tile roof in the inner castle?
they don't llok very well and seems a bit uncontextual with the rest of map.
I think you should make a smaller castle with a big fortifications around (your walls& towers).

What's about starting positions and neutrals one?

[pikkio]

yeah. you're on right!

now i changed the colour of the castle roof and it's look too much better! thanx! ^_^

Click image to enlarge.

for the gameplay, i decided that it's better if we keep it normal, so i trashed my idea of the victory objective "conquer and hold one turn castle and towers".

the only particularity will be that at the start of the game, the castle, the towers and maybe the bridges are neutral. and the Castle,neutral or not,takes +2 autodeployed armies each turn. this is what i think at now, but i don't know how many neutral army are better to place at the start, and i wait some critic and suggestion for this propose.

[pikkio]

well, the poll ended 15 Vs 15. but after the colour change of towers and castle, all the vote gone to the 8.4 (except 1), so i think that some of the old vote to 8.1 will go to the 8.4 at now, but many people didn't come back and didn't see the changes (and didn't change the preference).

finally, the official version is 8.4

now let talk about gameplay! ^_^

i trashed the idea to make a victory condition (conquer and hold castle and towers), and the game will have normal victory conditions (depends of the selected game mode).

i made an example for the starting positions, talking with thenobodies.

Click image to enlarge.

the idea is to reduce the players territories to 24, cause when you play a game in 2-3-4 players, if you start with many territories, you deploy too much army in the first round and the gameplay is not balanced (with the risk to hold a whole country at the start..).
I decided to made neutral the castle and the towers, cause those are territories with interesting bonus and cause it's good for the feel of the map if the castle must be assaulted from all and nobody is advantaged doing it.
Start with the bridges and half of the courts neutral too, make the players obliged to assault the inner zone from the outer lands, and this is the natural roleplay of the map.. ^_^

comments??

[iancanton]

i thought at first that this map was too much like siege!, but i love the new look!

i trashed the idea to make a victory condition (conquer and hold castle and towers), and the game will have normal victory conditions (depends of the selected game mode).

why? i thought the victory condition was a good idea.

the idea is to reduce the players territories to 24, cause when you play a game in 2-3-4 players, if you start with many territories, you deploy too much army in the first round.

if the players start with up to 35 territories, then each player deploys 3 armies in round 1: not too many! having only 24 starting territories means that there will be many territories, especially those on the outside, that remain neutral throughout the game.

I decided to made neutral the castle and the towers, cause those are territories with interesting bonus and cause it's good for the feel of the map if the castle must be assaulted from all and nobody is advantaged doing it.

neutrals will not have have +2 auto-deploy. the xml currently does not allow this.

start with the bridges and half of the courts neutral too, make the players obliged to assault the inner zone from the outer lands, and this is the natural roleplay of the map.

if half of the courts start neutral then, in an 8-player game, only half of the players will have access to the castle. even worse, in 4v4, the most likely starting split is 3 courts against 1 court, which is most certainly not balanced.

i encourage u to give some more thought to the gameplay!

ian.

[MrBenn]

I decided to made neutral the castle and the towers, cause those are territories with interesting bonus and cause it's good for the feel of the map if the castle must be assaulted from all and nobody is advantaged doing it.

neutrals will not have have +2 auto-deploy. the xml currently does not allow this.

start with the bridges and half of the courts neutral too, make the players obliged to assault the inner zone from the outer lands, and this is the natural roleplay of the map.

if half of the courts start neutral then, in an 8-player game, only half of the players will have access to the castle. even worse, in 4v4, the most likely starting split is 3 courts against 1 court, which is most certainly not balanced.

i encourage u to give some more thought to the gameplay!

ian.

You could define the courts as starting positions to ensure that everybody gets at least 1 territory there.

[MrBenn]

Poll Result:

which castle do you prefer?
Poll ended at Sun Feb 22, 2009 1:23 am

the one in version 8.1... 15...50%
the one in version 8.4... 15...50%

Total votes : 30

[rishaed]

Poll Result:

which castle do you prefer?
Poll ended at Sun Feb 22, 2009 1:23 am

the one in version 8.1... 15...50%
the one in version 8.4... 15...50%

Total votes : 30

which means to me to take the best of both versions and combine them.

[pikkio]

the poll is about the castle design. it's impossible to combine the castle in version 8.1 with the one in 8.4 cause the very different style and the different prospective.

thanx to ian e mr been for the suggestions. i will make another version of starting position tomorrow.

[pikkio]

NEW BETA STARTING POSITIONS

Click image to enlarge.

i decided to don't use a victory condition for many reason. first cause it make the map not good for all the game mode, but also because with no autodeploy for neutrals, it will be too easy to conquer castle, expecially in a map with not much territories like this one.

by the way, with the new starting positions, there is 32 territories for the players, and 10 starting neutrals.
i decided to made neutral one court, cause in this mode i have 32 territories (much more divisible than 33) and cause if i didn't there is the unlucky possibility that one player hold all the courts at the start, expecially in 2 players mode, but in 3 and 4 players too.
but i'm not sure if it's better to made neutrals the catapuls too, or not.. what do you think about?

[thenobodies80]

in my opinion catapults must be neutrals, probably 3 armies.
in this way you have 32-4=28 territories assigned.
Nothing else in my opinion.

[iancanton]

in my opinion catapults must be neutrals, probably 3 armies.

the catapults do not need to start neutral. the only territories that they can bombard, the castle and towers, start neutral, so the catapults cannot do anything useful yet!

all four towers are the same; all four bridges are the same; all eight courts are the same. do u notice a pattern? rotate the courts by 22 degrees, so that four courts connect to a bridge but no tower, while the other four courts connect to a tower but no bridge. this makes some of the courts different from each other, while the court bonus becomes slightly easier to hold than before (though still very difficult).

ian.

[MrBenn]

You can ensure that the court territories are handed out equally by using starting positions - so there is no need to start with any of them neutral.

PS. Please could you remove the word 'Beta' from the thread title

[thenobodies80]

in my opinion catapults must be neutrals, probably 3 armies.

the catapults do not need to start neutral. the only territories that they can bombard, the castle and towers, start neutral, so the catapults cannot do anything useful yet!

all four towers are the same; all four bridges are the same; all eight courts are the same. do u notice a pattern? rotate the courts by 22 degrees, so that four courts connect to a bridge but no tower, while the other four courts connect to a tower but no bridge. this makes some of the courts different from each other, while the court bonus becomes slightly easier to hold than before (though still very difficult).

ian.

You can ensure that the court territories are handed out equally by using starting positions - so there is no need to start with any of them neutral.

PS. Please could you remove the word 'Beta' from the thread title

Ian and Benn spoke right.
I will contact pikkio to ask him if he could rotate the courts.
For me is good to use starting position, but I left the decision to pikkio because he has the ownership of this map ( i will develope only XML).

Thank you for these suggestions.

[LED ZEPPELINER]

i was thinking that instead of oilseed you could do flax seed, its just my personal preference

[pikkio]

version 8.5

Click image to enlarge.

i changed the borders of the courts to have one court access to bridge and one to tower alternate. the gameplay it's now better balanced and i think that it's looking better too, cause the courts are less regular and more realistic.

i didn't know that it's possible to mark some territories "starting positions" and be sure that it's impossible to one player to hold all that territories at the start. so now i decided to mark all the 8 courts as starting position, and mark starting neutral only: Towers (5 army each), Castle (7 army) and Bridges (3 army each). in this mode there are 29 territories for the players, do you think that it's good or may i put another neutrals to have 28 territories?

i also fixed the bonus and lowered it a bit, what do you think about?

[thenobodies80]

Pikkio i suggest you to post the map with the neutral displayed on it, could be easier to see what territories you chose to start as neutral
For me now, the gameplay could be fair.
Only few things:

can you move the field tower circle few pixels on the right and the forest tower one few on the left?
It's could be nicer to have a similar position with the other two (desert and mountain tower).

Rocks in desert territories are strange (pixelous?), you can fix them?
I don't like the light brown zone near the bridge E name.
And why not to remove wilderness upper left rocks and add something similar to this:

show

Finally remove one house from courts and add something similar to this (if you can/like):

show

When gameplay is fixed send me a PM so i can start your xml

Have a nice day

[pikkio]

here is the example of the starting positions:

Click image to enlarge.

the brown zone between the mountains and the bridge are necessary cause it's impossible to have half of the bridge on the mountains and half at forest floor altitude..

i moved the army circles of the tower, it's looking better now?

the problem with skull and other little particular is the scale.. i just tried with many objects, but if i put they in not absurde scale (not correct but a minium realistic..), they seems like a group of pixels and it's impossible to understand what they are..

i don't know what's wrong with the rocks.. one other people said it, but i can't understand what do you dislike about it.. that rocks are took from the same set of many other things in the map (i used only 2 different set for all the images, except the catapults and the farms), and if they look pixelated, my only answer it would be: yes it is, and all things in the map are pixel-rpg style too!

[thenobodies80]

Pikkio in my opinion gameplay could be considered valid and balanced now.

The four quadrants are assigned randomdly.
The 4 bridges as neutrals assure that nobody can take an advantage in the first turn and they assign bonuses only if 2 are taken.
The neutral towers make assure the same thing and castle could be taken after some turns.
Capture the castle is not too difficult to do why catapult could reduce to 1 troop the towers and players troops on courts could do the final assault.
Courts as starting position , so the bigger bonus can't be assigned with the starting drop or in the first turn.
All is clear to distinguish.

I suggest you to ask some final suggestions to old foundry members ( they speak right on 99% of suggestions ).

About graphic, there's some outer border to fix (the outer line), but you can do it when you're going to fix graphic in general.

[gimil]

THe only real issue I have is the the red tint on the walls compared to the more grey colour of the towers.

Other than that I think this is a fantastic piece of work.

[pikkio]

the different colour is an idea to differentiate the walls (impassable) and the towers (way to the castle).. but if the bigs of the foundry say that it will be clear with walls and towers of the same colour, i'm happy to make the walls grey!

shall i do it?

[gimil]

the different colour is an idea to differentiate the walls (impassable) and the towers (way to the castle).. but if the bigs of the foundry say that it will be clear with walls and towers of the same colour, i'm happy to make the walls grey!

shall i do it?

I think you can get away with it!

[iancanton]

i'd like to see each of the outside bonus regions have access to only one bridge, so that ur strategy can be to block ur neighbour from crossing the moat. this can be done by having the bridges from earl to thicket (but not oilseed), lord to precipice (but not woodland), bishop to wasteland (but not peak) and marquess to oats (but not savannah).

at the moment, it's very difficult to block someone because each bonus region borders two bridges.

ian.

[pikkio]

awesome suggestion!!

i changed it. the bonus still remain the same, and probably with this gameplay they are more adeguate than before.

version 8.6

Click image to enlarge.

ok guys, i think that now i'm ready for the gameplay stamp, isn't it?

[Qwert]

hmm,how these going to look in small map?