[Abandoned] Alamo

[generalhead]

Lessened the insignia
Moved legend items around
made the targets smaller
realigned some of the insignia

Click image to enlarge.

Please comment on whether the ladders should be one way attacks into the Alamo or two way attacks.
please comment on neutral amounts for the cannons.
please comment on whether the targets should be even smaller.
Should I make Santa Anna have gray/ white hair so he looks older?
I might have to move some of the items in the territories to fit the numbers.
Is the game play in the legend understandable?
some of my targets look different sizes.
How do the generals look as far as graphics?

[koontz1973]

Please comment on whether the ladders should be one way attacks into the Alamo or two way attacks.

As per my previous request, without the two way, the Alamo is going to become a bottle next. The left/top Mexican army has only two ways in and out of the Alamo.

please comment on neutral amounts for the cannons.

As before, they are now very powerful so need to be high.
With the ladders and the neutrals, I would agree to a smaller neutral (5) if they could not attack the generals. You still have the ability to destroy every bonus and eliminate a player with them but the attacking of the generals seems to much if you lower the neutrals.

please comment on whether the targets should be even smaller.

targets are good. now leave.

Should I make Santa Anna have gray/ white hair so he looks older?

leave alone.

Is the game play in the legend understandable?

Yes, but you need to explain the other stars now. Why have 3,2,1 stars if you are not going to explain them.

some of my targets look different sizes.

When ever you redo an element like them, work of one only. You need to delete all of hte others and then redo glows. This will mean each is the same.

[tkr4lf]

Please comment on whether the ladders should be one way attacks into the Alamo or two way attacks.

As per my previous request, without the two way, the Alamo is going to become a bottle next. The left/top Mexican army has only two ways in and out of the Alamo.

In my opinion, it should be a bottleneck. It's a fort. Forts are meant to only have a couple/few ways in and out, that's what makes them so easy to defend, and that is their purpose. I understand gameplay trumps reality, but bottlenecks are not necessarily a bad thing in gameplay. If you look at the map, the northern Mexican army has 2 ways into the Alamo, the Eastern part has 2 ways in, and the South/SouthEast part has 2 ways in. That seems fair to me.

Yes, it will make it harder to get out of the alamo as the Texians, but it should be that way. The Mexican army should have some sort of advantage over the Texian army, otherwise it destroys the theme of this map. If they are both even in forces, then it may make for slightly better gameplay, but it will completely distort the reality of the situation.

In my opinion, we can have our cake and eat it too. Gameplay will still be good I think the way it is, with the ladders being one way attacks and only having a few ways out of the Alamo, and it will still be realistic.

My 2 cents.

please comment on neutral amounts for the cannons.

As before, they are now very powerful so need to be high.
With the ladders and the neutrals, I would agree to a smaller neutral (5) if they could not attack the generals. You still have the ability to destroy every bonus and eliminate a player with them but the attacking of the generals seems to much if you lower the neutrals.

This seems like a reasonable compromise if the cannons are now bombarding the whole region that there target is in. I was under the impression that they still only bombed the territ that the target was in, not the entire region. If they do bomb the entire region, then a higher neutral is necessary, but 10 is still too high I think. If they can bomb the entire region except the commander, then maybe a 5 would work.

If gh goes back to having just 1 or 2 terits that each cannon can bombard with a target denoting the bombable terit (which in my opinion is the preferable solution), then I would think a neutral 2 would work just fine.





On a separate note, has it been discussed what the generals will start out as? I know they start neutral, but what number? Two, five? Somewhere in between?

[koontz1973]

The generals IMO should be 4 or 5 neutrals at least. Low enough for someone to grab early in a game but not so low as they can be taken round 1 and held. This was a problem with RD. First person in a 1v1 game that got one, won the game. You will have the same problem with this map.

About the Alamo ladders, I understand tks thoughts on the theme and that it should in a sense be an advantage to the Mexicans but the problem is random drops. If someone drops most troops in the Mexican army, they have the advantage to win the game. This must be eliminated.
But I will leave the final word on this to nole or ian.

[tkr4lf]

Perhaps something could be done to minimize the chance of that happening?

Or perhaps random drops could be eliminated altogether? I don't think this was the plan, and I don't know how it would work out, but there are 8 commanders...what if everybody was randomly assigned one of the commanders and that was it? Balancing would have to be done, otherwise there would be a massive disadvantage to starting in the Alamo, but maybe it could be cool? I dunno. I'm not advocating this, just throwing the idea out there.

Surely something can be done to prevent people from gaining an unfair advantage gameplay wise while still maintaining the theme.

[tkr4lf]

Perhaps something could be done to minimize the chance of that happening?

Or perhaps random drops could be eliminated altogether? I don't think this was the plan, and I don't know how it would work out, but there are 8 commanders...what if everybody was randomly assigned one of the commanders and that was it? Balancing would have to be done, otherwise there would be a massive disadvantage to starting in the Alamo, but maybe it could be cool? I dunno. I'm not advocating this, just throwing the idea out there.

Surely something can be done to prevent people from gaining an unfair advantage gameplay wise while still maintaining the theme.

Yeah, after thinking about that more, that's a horrible idea. Disregard that. But like I said, something can be done to balance the gameplay and realism aspects. Just need to figure out what that is. Starting positions, maybe?

[koontz1973]

Perhaps something could be done to minimize the chance of that happening?

Or perhaps random drops could be eliminated altogether? I don't think this was the plan, and I don't know how it would work out, but there are 8 commanders...what if everybody was randomly assigned one of the commanders and that was it? Balancing would have to be done, otherwise there would be a massive disadvantage to starting in the Alamo, but maybe it could be cool? I dunno. I'm not advocating this, just throwing the idea out there.

Surely something can be done to prevent people from gaining an unfair advantage gameplay wise while still maintaining the theme.

Yeah, after thinking about that more, that's a horrible idea. Disregard that. But like I said, something can be done to balance the gameplay and realism aspects. Just need to figure out what that is. Starting positions, maybe?

Been thinking about this as well. Starting positions will work. Give every player 1 territ from each of the 3 areas. When you decide on which ones, make sure the territs by the generals and entrances are given out equally. So no territ next to a general and ladder or bridge can go together.

[tkr4lf]

Perhaps something could be done to minimize the chance of that happening?

Or perhaps random drops could be eliminated altogether? I don't think this was the plan, and I don't know how it would work out, but there are 8 commanders...what if everybody was randomly assigned one of the commanders and that was it? Balancing would have to be done, otherwise there would be a massive disadvantage to starting in the Alamo, but maybe it could be cool? I dunno. I'm not advocating this, just throwing the idea out there.

Surely something can be done to prevent people from gaining an unfair advantage gameplay wise while still maintaining the theme.

Yeah, after thinking about that more, that's a horrible idea. Disregard that. But like I said, something can be done to balance the gameplay and realism aspects. Just need to figure out what that is. Starting positions, maybe?

Been thinking about this as well. Starting positions will work. Give every player 1 territ from each of the 3 areas. When you decide on which ones, make sure the territs by the generals and entrances are given out equally. So no territ next to a general and ladder or bridge can go together.

I don't know that would work so well. If the three areas you mean are the Western Mexican Army, the Alamo, and the South/Southeastern Mexican armies, well...the south/southeastern section only has 7 terits that aren't generals/cannons. The other two would work out ok though. Maybe the 8th position for the south/southeast Mexican area could be just inside the Alamo, say Bell or Banks.

What are your thoughts on the positions, koontz?

[koontz1973]

You would only need say 4 positions to work it all out nice. Remember, most games are small. Over 5, a random drop would be less likely to produce bad drops. A player may not have an army in a region (the 3 you mentioned) but they will have other opponents keeping them in check. Only later in the game will it close down but that will happen for all games.

[tkr4lf]

Anything new gh?

[generalhead]

I am done with the updates I just need to move some of the lettering and graphics within the terts to make room for the army numbers. I was also trying to read through what you and Koontz were writing to each other to figure out you you guys came up with a solution for the one way ladders. I do like the one way ladders as the Mexican army was coming into the Alamo with the ladders. but the Texan army wouldn't have been exiting on the ladders. I thought that is why we made the cannons attack those areas to counter balance the one ways. Maybe a solution would be to make those two cannons lower Neutrals.

Sorry I haven't posted a picture recently I had a few tournaments come up that I had to make games for. I still have one more to make games for. I should finish moving stuff around and post a picture by Friday. I don't work on Friday so that is when I should post.

I appreciate You and Koontz trying to figure out the game play. I am not too adept in that area so this has been a great help.
I appreciate you keeping it as accurate as you can too. you are awesome.

Let me know you think about making those neutrals smaller for those two cannons?

[tkr4lf]

I definitely still think the ladders should be one-way attacks into the Alamo. And yes, I agree about having those two cannons able to bombard the ladder territories as a balance.

As for the neutrals, I'm still of the opinion that they should be relatively low neutrals, especially if they only have 1-2 territories that they can bombard. If they can bombard an entire region, then having a higher neutral makes more sense.

So to answer your question about making those neutrals smaller for those two cannons...in my opinion, they should all be small neutrals and each cannon should only be able to bombard one or two different territories. However, if each cannon can bomb an entire region (or even an entire region minus the commander) then the neutrals for all of them should be high, even the two that face the ladders.

That's just my opinion though, so let's see what Koontz and some of the gameplay mods think about it.

[generalhead]

fixed targets
changed ladders back to one way attack until resolved
Installed the officer insignia in the legend

Click image to enlarge.

Should I be doing something else, installing the 8's for the neutrals and starting positions
or doing a color blind test
or is it still too early for those things.
More comments on graphics and game play as needed
I will have time tomorrow Saturday and Sunday to work on whatever is needed

[koontz1973]

gh, I am sort of happy with the game play now. No need for anything else just yet on that side. A bit of admin for you to do now. Make a map with the neutral territories on.

Use these numbers.
Secondly, you need to count your territs and work out how many territs get given for each game type. So a two player game is 57 territs, minus 8 neutrals divided by 3 players equals ???.
And you need to do this for 2,3,4,5,6,7,8 player games.
Post this info like this:
2 players - 19 territs
3 players - 19 territs
2 and 3 player games start the same as a neutral player is used in 2 player games.

So you need the neutral map and starting numbers in a spoiler named game play in the first post.

As for graphics, lets deal with one thing at a time so as not to give you too much until game play is sorted out and you have that stamp.

Legend
Both legends need a lot of work. First top right.
This needs to be moved up to get rid of the top, leave the rope in though. Get rid of the glows for the title. Change the titles layer mode to burn and lower the opacity. This will make it look like it is burned into he wood. In fact, you can do this for all text. Increase the size of text to fill out the legend more.
Bottom left. Text the same. If you are not going to give the different level of stars different bonuses, only have one type. So get rid of all 3 and 2 stars, make the one star. Wording - Generals (4 stars) and every soldier (star) under his command +1.
Chapel and hospital, get rid of the glows for the words. Do the glows beside them.

[koontz1973]

Knock Knock. Come on gh, where is the next draft?

[generalhead]

Who's there.
upon further review there was no mote around the Alamo, changed the mote to a dirt channel
The only river was near San Antonio de Bexar which was a good ways away from the Alamo
and the real battle started after the Mexican army crossed over the river.
The old rope was bad looking, wanted to try a different rope
wanted to try wood as a background for the legends instead of parchment
added some tumbleweeds for flare, but if not liked they can easily be removed
changed the star insignia
changed the alamo title, but don't know if I did it correctly
moved the glow for the bonus beside the names
added the starting terts to the front page

Click image to enlarge.

I might need to darken the rope, it is a little too light
If I keep them tumbleweeds have too much white around them
You mentioned about making the letters bigger in the legend but will I have room?
Is my lettering legible, in the bottom legend it looks choppy for some reason?
might need to redo the shadowing on the rope

[koontz1973]

Remove the tumble weed. Really, I was having high hopes for this when I saw the new legends , and then I spotted them. Just tone the legends down a bit in contrast.
Remove the dots from the legend, put a nice filigree their. something from here would work better. http://www.dafont.com/ornaments-labels-and-frames.font
Legend and territ text. What font are you using?
Bring the water back, a dirt channel does not speak impassable to me. It may be correct and it may be accurate, but it is not impassable.
Neutral 3, get rid of them as you need to take a general to use the ladders. Allow them in the drop.
Will have a better look later to see about the next graphics thing for you.

[generalhead]

10-4 the tumbleweeds will be gone.

They were fun installing them in there though.
bye bye tumbleweeds

[generalhead]

I am using duality font. on the board it looks good, but in the legend it looks choppy to me.
does it look that way to you too?
I took out the tumbleweeds as to not distract you.

Click image to enlarge.

I found a few good picture that had the water ditch around the alamo
the last one probably shows the best picture of the water ditch that I have seen

show

show

show

[koontz1973]

Yep, it does look choppy in the legend and will look worse when you do the small map. time for a change I think. When you go and look at dafont, put the settings to tiny so you can see what the text will look like when it is small.

[nolefan5311]

I honestly don't see any glaring issues with GP. Everything looks pretty well balanced. The only issue I'm having, as a colorblind person, is determining which cannons bombard which regions, and where certain regions end. Is there anything you can do about the border lines between those regions (maybe make them dashed lines, make them slightly broader, etc) to more clearly distinguish them?

Also, do you plan to make this game different for 1v1 games, where one player defends the alamo and the other is attacking it?

[tkr4lf]

Also, do you plan to make this game different for 1v1 games, where one player defends the alamo and the other is attacking it?

That would be pretty cool.

[generalhead]

Also, do you plan to make this game different for 1v1 games, where one player defends the alamo and the other is attacking it?

That would be pretty cool.

Agreed, that is an Awesome idea!

[generalhead]

Sorry it took me so long to get this one out. With my last saved copy half of the layers were erased and I don't know how it happened.
I had to go back to a previous version and re-update.
Font used Amperzand

Click image to enlarge.

need to move the star from under Santiago
Duque can be moved up. Sanchez can be moved to the right.
Gonzalez or star can be moved.
I might try a different variation to the between border lines. I might make it just black an a little thicker.

[generalhead]

Click image to enlarge.