[Abandoned] - Switzerland

[pamoa]

wow thenobodies80 are you studying statistics or some are you just a math geek
don't misunderstand me I really appreciate your implication

in fact I started the map with 47 territs which is far more better
so I'll remove München from the map (for your eyes only Scania N113 )
so foreign cities are on the map as destination cities for main highways which stick better to the crossroad of Europe theme
the bonus will be +1 each 2 (starting will be Stuttgart / Milano / Lyon)

for German cities it seems statistics speaks for dividing by 2
so the bonus will be +7 each 11

[Evil DIMwit]

Huh. Better get this map out fast while there's still a Switzerland.

[pamoa]

Huh. Better get this map out fast while there's still a Switzerland.

all this story because Geneva police dare to arrest his son who was beating up two domestic in an Geneva hotel

[Dreamer]

Nice idea! At last there's a new styled map! I suggest you put some tunnels like the Simplon, Grand St. Bernard or Lötschberg as well. Some bank, chocolate, cheese bonus could be interesting too. Nice start anyway, looking forward to playing on it!

[nick_horny]

As a real Swiss (Swiss-German) Guy, I can say that you have done a realy good job with this map. I'm looking forward to play this one. Thank you mate

[pamoa]

a Swiss map by a Swiss SWITZERLAND v03 new features : bonus structure, Adelboden removed, new roads in the Alps

Click image to enlarge.

[porkenbeans]

Nice map pamoa,
There are a lot of things that I like about this one, but for brevity's sake, I will only comment on what I don't like.

#1.) Your name should not be a part of the legend. there is room for it on the lower right side of the map, if you just rotate it 90 deg. counter clockwise.

2.) The history lesson at the top left of the map is really inappropriate, unless it is a part of the gameplay. I would consider just using some other Swiss icon or flag in its place.

3.) The legend has rectangles to represent circles. Not a biggy, but there seems to be plenty of room, if you shift things around a bit, to replace the rectangles with circles.

Other than these three very minor details, I believe that you have got a winner here. Good luck on the quench pamoa.

[Evil DIMwit]

I don't mind the history lesson at all. It's quite interesting.

[porkenbeans]

I don't mind the history lesson at all. It's quite interesting.

I do not mind it either, if, it were part of the game. Otherwise it will provide confusion, for those that do not know, it is meant only as a history lesson. I would rather see some sort of icon or image that is universally associated with Switzerland. Be it an image of the Matterhorn, the flag, something ski related, A Swiss clock, a Swiss army knife, Swiss cheese etc...
If it can be related to the game and provide some sort of reason for being there, Anything more than a simple universal icon, will only clutter up the map and subtract from its playability as a game. If you truly want the map to be some sort of history lesson, by all means do it. there are a few really good maps at CC that pull it off fairly well. And those are the ones that incorporate the lesson into the game play itself. Not merely add some useless text, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the game at all.

[pamoa]

sorry porkenbeans but I will disagree with almost all your comments

if you read the history lesson once believing it is part of the gameplay legend
then you have learned something playing CC
besides as you read it once you won't read it a second time when you look for bonus instructions

I put my signature where I want
and once read ...

about putting some idiot tourist symbol of Switzerland
you would never think about a map of USA with some cow-boys, sheriffs stagecoaches and Indians chasing them
I won't do it for Switzerland I respect myself and my country
this is a map not a chocolate box

but I will round the angles of the rectangles

[lt_oddball]

3.) The legend has rectangles to represent circles. Not a biggy, but there seems to be plenty of room, if you shift things around a bit, to replace the rectangles with circles.

That will be quite large circles then...
Spoils the map...leave the rectangles.

History milestones is good..fine.


At first the blood red splash worked as a ..red flag .. one me.
Despite understanding the idea of the red color of the swiss flag...but then where is the big white cross (in the background..greyer?) ?
After a minute, I got used to the colour and the idea of a having the entire swiss flag in the background (so that parts of switzerland is also red/blurred) is dismissed.

Looks fine and good.

Maybe you can rethink why to have next to french , german and italian speaking circles the "touristic" circles ?
Is Geneva , Luzern not touristic ?
I'd go for handing those touristic circles back to the german/italian/french speaking areas and perhaps add bonus icons to the few cities that are economically important for switzerland: 1st Banking , 2nd International organisations, 3d (Olympic)Skiing resorts.
Conquer 3 out of 5 of these locations and you get a stunning +5 bonus....

[pamoa]

Maybe you can rethink why to have next to French , German and Italian speaking circles the "touristic" circles ?
Is Geneva , Luzern not touristic ?
I'd go for handing those touristic circles back to the German/Italian/French speaking areas and perhaps add bonus icons to the few cities that are economically important for Switzerland: 1st Banking , 2nd International organisations, 3d (Olympic)Skiing resorts.
Conquer 3 out of 5 of these locations and you get a stunning +5 bonus

touristic resorts are on the map because they are important skiing or holidays destinations but are very small town
the "normal" cities were chosen from their inhabitants size
if I put tourist resort bas normal they would be less representative than much larger other cities not on the map
putting them as touristic resorts is in fact a way of speaking about the weight of tourism economy in this country
and except maybe for Luzern all other cities generates more money from services or production economy

about adding another level of bonus by stipulating 5 major cities
Zürich, Geneva, Bern and Basel are the 4 major cities
but choosing a criteria for the 5th is more problematic

Lugano 3rd banking place Italian speaking
Lausanne 5th largest city
Winterthur major production centre

besides adding another bonus level on an already very complicated bonus structure may seems not very appropriate
in 2 or 3 player game it will be already very difficult to figure out how your opponents could get an easy bonus
as you have to count how many cities of each type they have
to understand which bonus is the easiest to gain
and then where on the map they can get it
as any city of chosen type may fit
and then position yourself in order to maximize your advantage
but being able to counter-attack

besides besides I'm still waiting for a draft stamp

[porkenbeans]

sorry porkenbeans but I will disagree with almost all your comments

if you read the history lesson once believing it is part of the gameplay legend
then you have learned something playing CC
besides as you read it once you won't read it a second time when you look for bonus instructions

I put my signature where I want
and once read ...

about putting some idiot tourist symbol of Switzerland
you would never think about a map of USA with some cow-boys, sheriffs stagecoaches and Indians chasing them
I won't do it for Switzerland I respect myself and my country
this is a map not a chocolate box

but I will round the angles of the rectangles

Yes you can put your sig where you want. It was just a suggestion. As for the Tourists symbols, as a citizen, You are the best qualified person to choose what icon should be represented for your own country. The universal icons that I mentioned were just examples, I am sure that you have a much better prospective on this than I do.
As a side note, I would not by any means be upset about cowboys and Indians being used for a USA map, if it were a map of the 1800s. Is there any symbol that comes to your mind when thinking about the time period of this map ? Maybe some flags of the various countries that were the seeds of your country.

[barterer2002]

OK my first time looking at this one. Thanks for the call nobodies.

My first reaction is that its a whole lot of red. I'm not thrilled with that but see that you're going to address the graphics later so let me take the gameplay issues here.

My first reaction is that the Italian bonus isn't much. Isn't there more Italian in Switzerland. Can some of the resorts be moved into the Italians?

I wonder if you've given too much importance to Zug. It feels to me that its a N/S bottleneck point which is something that you've done a great job at avoiding.

Why are the dates in the corner? Aside from the Federal Charter of 1291 they don't seem to have anything to do with the map other than as a brief history lesson of CH.

The highway bonuses strike me as irrelevant. Essentially I see them as something that will be used only when one player is clearly dominant in the game. Not sure if it'll be used other than that.

Overall, I'm looking forward to playing this one. I'd like to see some graphical changes but from a gameplay standpoint it looks like it'll be fun and different to play.

[Industrial Helix]

Well, i thin gameplay wise you're pretty solid, short of a few quirks.

The Italy bonus seems like it ought to be 2.

I'm leaning towards not having a foreign city bonus, this is a switzerland map after all. Seems like it breaks the theme of the map.

The German bonus seems a but large in terms of territories. While I understand the importance of German speakers in a map like this, I think something along the lines of hold 4 territories for 4 men would work better because if I were plying this map, my focus wouldn't be on German speakers as it stands. I would go for one of the smaller bonuses.

I know you're saving graphics for later, but I want to give some thoughts as this is a prelim review.

The A2 highway where it turns into dots... I think this ought to be just a green line. Not sure why you did it like that, but its slightly confusing.

I do like the idea of using the nation's flag to inspire the map and i think you've done it nicely, though I would favor some desaturation of the red.

I also think it would be nice to throw in some borders of the foreign states, nothing too distinctive or flashy though. perhaps a slightly darker red or a gray.

I do like the history lesson as I think one of the cool things about maps is ho they teach us about the area we're playing on. Keep it for sure, though some future graphical overhaul would be good.

On Bienne/Beal... is there are specific reason why its two names? I mean, if it stands for two towns or are two language versions of one town then I'd say pick one and run with it.

Anyway, nice work so far. Keep it up!

[pamoa]

...My first reaction is that the Italian bonus isn't much. Isn't there more Italian in Switzerland. Can some of the resorts be moved into the Italians?
I wonder if you've given too much importance to Zug. It feels to me that its a N/S bottleneck point which is something that you've done a great job at avoiding.
Why are the dates in the corner? Aside from the Federal Charter of 1291 they don't seem to have anything to do with the map other than as a brief history lesson of CH.
The highway bonuses strike me as irrelevant. Essentially I see them as something that will be used only when one player is clearly dominant in the game. Not sure if it'll be used other than that.

first of all thanks guys guys for commenting
Italian is spoken by only 6,5% of the population
the choice of cities is purely logical and statistical

largest cities by inhabitants of the agglomeration
Canton's captitals
main tourist resort by number of bed available
and major neighbouring cities

if you get the feeling that their is a north-south bottleneck in this map
then I'm very proud of myself as Switzerland is born on this bottleneck
so you get the exact feeling what Switzerland geographically means

one of the cool things about maps is ho they teach us about the area we're playing on

your right highway bonuses were thought as a quick ending game feature

...The Italy bonus seems like it ought to be 2.
I'm leaning towards not having a foreign city bonus, this is a switzerland map after all. Seems like it breaks the theme of the map.
The German bonus seems a but large in terms of territories. While I understand the importance of German speakers in a map like this, I think something along the lines of hold 4 territories for 4 men would work better because if I were plying this map, my focus wouldn't be on German speakers as it stands. I would go for one of the smaller bonuses.
The A2 highway where it turns into dots... I think this ought to be just a green line. Not sure why you did it like that, but its slightly confusing.
I do like the idea of using the nation's flag to inspire the map and i think you've done it nicely, though I would favor some desaturation of the red.
I also think it would be nice to throw in some borders of the foreign states, nothing too distinctive or flashy though. perhaps a slightly darker red or a gray.
I do like the history lesson as I think one of the cool things about maps is ho they teach us about the area we're playing on. Keep it for sure, though some future graphical overhaul would be good.
On Bienne/Biel... is there are specific reason why its two names? I mean, if it stands for two towns or are two language versions of one town then I'd say pick one and run with it.

no I don't think Italian speakers bonus should be higher
it is only 2 territories and in a very protected area
I added foreign cities to emphasis the crossroad of Europe situation of Switzerland
this is also the reason you have the highway bonuses
German speakers bonus was +5 for 7 before but thenobodies80 said he prefer it like this
if it is an issue for you I'll make a poll about it
A2 highway is doted while their is one of the longest tunnel in the world here
the Gothard road tunnel is 17 km long plus we are now building the longest high-speed train tunnel 47 km long !!!
graphic changes aren't my biggest preoccupation now but I take note of your suggestions
Bienne/Biel and Fribourg/Freiburg are the two bilingual cities which do count for each bonus
so their name is in the 2 language plus this is a very touchy theme which better not argue too much about

[thenobodies80]

I'm agree that the german bonus isn't an easy objective, but hopefully math isn't a subjective thing.
In a 1vs1 game each player will start with 6 to 9 german regions, so i don't think that take 5-2 german regions is an impossible target, we can say hard but not impossible.
With the current gameplay, the only way not to have a player that start with the higher bonus is to code 10 or 11 regions as required. (Boring explanation)
The german bonus is like the asia on classic. It will not cashed in all games, but if you can hold it you're able to take an easy victory in few rounds.

[thenobodies80]

Without considering the german bonus, that could be fixed/improved during the next step (if necessary), are we all happy about this map as it is now?

[RjBeals]

i can't see any images... what gives?

[pamoa]

very strange because everything seems normal to me

[RjBeals]

ahh... http://www.fileden.com/ is blocked from work. They have blocked tons of sites recently - who knows, cc may be next

[captainwalrus]

This is really good, I like how, unlike Berlin 1961, 2 people can hold the bonus for one region.
Maybe more interesting text could add some more flavor to it.

[thenobodies80]

No suggestions or critics?

I think that the map is very well developed and i don't see big problems, it's time to focus on gameplay...

[pamoa]

Poll results
should the 22 German speakers cities be divided by 2 or 3 to determine the bonus ?
+7 each set of 11 - 6 votes / 50%
+5 each set of 7 - 6 votes / 50%

As it is 50/50 then its my opinion who takes the decision
it will be +5 each set of 7

and thanks for the stamp thenobodies80

[pamoa]

SWITZERLAND v04 new features : German cities bonus +5, red bg less bright, signature
any more gameplay comments?

Click image to enlarge.