DiM wrote:more thoughts on the map.
mainly i'm gonna relate to the texan spirit.
i'm far far away from texas and i may be completely wrong about this but here goes.
i always envisioned texas to have wide open spaces large herds of cattle, mustangs saloons cowboys chew tobacco sheriffs and of course mexicans with big hats and big mustaches.
now when i look at this map i see none of that. i see a bright and colorful map with trees and mountains and a silly goofy cowboy. i want clint eastwood type of cowboy, i want to see a cow skull on the map. i want to see a cactus and a rolling bush and dust loads of dust.
i think that's the theme that best fits texas.
perhaps a place where you have a vast open space with important places like small towns mines railroads and stuff like that.
and you can get bonuses for holding the robbers' den and the railroad station or for holding a town and the cattle ranch and stuff like that.
i think that would make it a better map but that would mean a total redesign of both the map and the gameplay.
I agree with DiM here (although it would actually be more of a John Wayne style cowboy, Clint was the star of Italian Spaghetti Westerns).
1) I don't really know my Texas geography but I didn't know there were any mountains in the state.
2) I'm not sure when oil was discovered - but that was a pretty big industry (maybe have a few oil field terrs).
3) I'm sure there are trees in Texas, but I'm also sure there are cacti and tumbleweeds.
4) Making the map background look "dusty" might be an interesting take.
As for the map itself, it looks pretty good.
1) The barb wire has to be updated. If not for the double barb between Seguin and Austin, people might think they are bridges across the impassible object (as there is one barb perfectly placed on every impassible border).
2) There are some terrs that might have problems with Army placement (San Antonio, Pleasanton, and Brenham - maybe Zapata and Nacogdoches)
3) You might want to move Padre Island up a few pixels (not entirely geographically correct) to allow the Brownsville label to be in the Gulf and point back to land