Artic Warfare 4p

[Leeuwgie]

Hello kaM fans,

While the new release is still been tested I've decided to do another map for the community:


And one with more detail (top-right player):


* Prebuild of stonemason/woodcutter
* 25 tiles sight from start (16 is common)
* Size 176 by 176 tiles (same as Wilderness)
* Enough resources: at least 4 goldmines / 5 ironmines possible per player and lots of coal/stone
* Hilly landscape but you can build everywhere (no annoying red crosses).
* Open map (no small entrances to the bases)
* Resources not all available in just one screen (would be too easy)
* Implented lots of detail on the map
* 6 serfs and 4 builders to start with
* Starting resources: 80 stone, 60 wood, 50 gold, 50 wine, 40 fish, 30 loaves (bread) and 20 sausages.
* Fair locations
* Complete with description.

Downloadlink: http://www.mediafire.com/?bopn19jn0phwdjn

If you have any suggestions let me know please,
To

[bucek100]

This is not a bad map, but it is too big for 4 players. more hills. It would also wanted more gold in the beginning, some players have much gold, and coal.

[Krom]

And I would also complain about preview images being in PNG format and ridiculously high resolutions
600x600 JPG would be just fine for preview.

[Leeuwgie]

This is not a bad map, but it is too big for 4 players. more hills. It would also wanted more gold in the beginning, some players have much gold, and coal.

I've started on this map with a 160x160 size but it turned out to small I don't want players to encouter each other while still building (Which I've seen happen a few times during peacetime). So the size is fine by me. I've never heard players complain about the size of Wilderness. About the gold/coal: why want more from the start? With 50 to start with you can train as many as 30 serfs and 20 builders total before running out of your starting gold. Inpired by level 20 TSK (remember playing it over and over 15 years ago ) I've begun building this map and mine is actually more hilly then that maps tbh and like I said I don't want red x's ingame.

And I would also complain about preview images being in PNG format and ridiculously high resolutions
600x600 JPG would be just fine for preview.

I did resize it a little (otherwise I needed to go pro on Mediashack ) but I understand your point so I'll take that into account for next time...

One other thing I thought about, I gave players some fishes but there isn't water around on this map. If you read the discription you noticed they just past the river Wolga (I guess they didn't had time for fishing ). So should I remove the fish from the stock?

And thanks for your comments sofar, I really appreciate it,
To

[Leeuwgie]

Ok, I've decided to work on the heights on this map after all. I've redone the whole map again (mountains excluded) And after 7 more hours of hard labor today (using mostly brush size 3) I came to the following results.

Startlocation player 1:


Startlocation player 3:


The large snowdune in the middle:


Some pine trees in the northern section:


Startlocation player 2:


I also checked if the mines were still working and used passability 3 for the ground to be suitable for the placement of buildings (mostly around the bases and coal fields). I placed some wolves on the map too.

If you want to see the map in progress, here is a new downloadlink: http://www.mediafire.com/?7437hzf9wpwg4az

[Leeuwgie]

Done some more detail, so a new link: http://www.mediafire.com/?v1hpnb6cc3d0qeh

[Florek]

Really good map, It's easy to see you are inspired a lot by Wilderness (my favourite map, it's + of course!:P). I'm afraid about start of location 2, stone is really too far away and it's placed south from starting position, so player 2 could have double stone fail. I see each player have 5 iron mines - much, but it's ok.

Keep up doing good work and think about loc 2 please.

[Lewin]

Florek just pointed out to me that you've spelt Arctic incorrectly. I've changed it, I just wanted to check there wasn't a reason why you spelt it without the c

[Leeuwgie]

Florek just pointed out to me that you've spelt Arctic incorrectly. I've changed it, I just wanted to check there wasn't a reason why you spelt it without the c

Hmm strange, but you were right it was my mistake. Did I need 35 years to find out that AntarCtica was the right spelling?

I thought about loc 2 and even played it yesterday. In the screen you can see I could do a very fast woodcutter/sawmill here while building towards the stone. I consider that to be a bonus:


And I had the opportunity to go for 3 goldmines fast. That can't be done by player 3 who has stone more close but coal is further away for instance:


To give you an idea how a base could look like:


End of the test, 1 goldmine was depleted, the 2 ironmines were still producing:


I noticed the following about the balance when looking at the map:

Player 1:
Has stone and iron + coal close but gold further away and has the most open base.

Player 2:
Has stone further away but coal close and has the second most open base.

Player 3:
Has stone close and iron close but without coal and gold further away (although only 1 mine for early gold acces). Also the most closed spot of all 4.

Player 4:
Has stone further away but gold (at least 2 mines close). The iron is further away but if you go through the little forrest you have enough wood to start with. Also a more closed spot. The alternative build is to go straight up through the coal to the 3 ironmines in the north and build the one goldmine you pass by.

[Da Revolution]

The map looks good. The base you've build looks promising for a good fight. But how many troops could u make after about 65 minutes?

[Leeuwgie]

The map looks good. The base you've build looks promising for a good fight. But how many troops could u make after about 65 minutes?

Depends on in how concentrated I am (this was just a singleplay test fooling around) and if I go for horses or not. I think the most troops I had after 1 hour peacetime on Wilderness was around 40 bows, 12 xbows, 20 militia, 12 pikes AND 12 knights (almost 100 total in a nice mix of 5 different units). But I don't know if I can repeat that. For fun purposes I made one time 61 xbows and 63 militia after about 65 mins peacetime. But I did no food at all (only trading for food). But that's a do or die strat I don't like personally...

[The Dark Lord]

The map looks good although the terrain might be a bit too sharp. Perhaps you should try to use the unequalize function or the single dot less.

[Leeuwgie]

The map looks good although the terrain might be a bit too sharp. Perhaps you should try to use the unequalize function or the single dot less.

Thanks, I like your opinion because you are like the pefectionist in mapbuilding. Did I understand correctly you adviced me to use LESS detail on the heights of this map? On all my maps I only used the Remake editor for heights so I'm not familiar with the unequalize function. I use brushsize 3 (and speed 6) 90% on the maps regarding the heights.

For all the flat terrain (mountains included) in Krom's editor I first use the biggest brush and then the smallest brush to make the terrain look natural, I don't like straight lines.

I do have one question for you. I noticed you like to build large maps. Many others decide to do smaller maps even for 4 v 4 or 3 v 3. How do you determine what size is best for your maps like for instance your Warfare in the wilderness (192x144) map?

[The Dark Lord]

The map looks good although the terrain might be a bit too sharp. Perhaps you should try to use the unequalize function or the single dot less.

Thanks, I like your opinion because you are like the pefectionist in mapbuilding. Did I understand correctly you adviced me to use LESS detail on the heights of this map? On all my maps I only used the Remake editor for heights so I'm not familiar with the unequalize function. I use brushsize 3 (and speed 6) 90% on the maps regarding the heights.

Less detail is never good (although you can overdo things too), so that was not really what I meant. I'm not familiar with the brush sizes and speed in the Remake's editor because I use Krom's. What I meant was that the terrain looks too 'pointy'. The edges are too sharp.

For all the flat terrain (mountains included) in Krom's editor I first use the biggest brush and then the smallest brush to make the terrain look natural, I don't like straight lines.

I'm confused now because you just said you only used the Remake's editor for heights. Personally I use the second smallest brush for ALL heights and then I use the smallest ('single dot') to make it look better. So I recommend using the second smallest brush more and using the smallest brush less. You have to play a little with the speed too; for mountains I use higher speed than for normal terrain (especially the speed for the single dot should be set VERY slow if you use it for normal terrain).
Maybe you should ask koczis12 too, because I think his terrain is better than mine here and there. Maybe I can learn something from him too...

I do have one question for you. I noticed you like to build large maps. Many others decide to do smaller maps even for 4 v 4 or 3 v 3. How do you determine what size is best for your maps like for instance your Warfare in the wilderness (192x144) map?

Interesting question. To be honest I dislike making huge maps because it's a lot of work. Yet I like much building space so that's why I choose for large maps. To determine the best size for your map, you have to plan ahead. What kind of map will you make? 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, free for all? Allies are mostly grouped close together, so you have to think how to make the players who are in one team be closer to each other than the enemy is to them. I chose for an elongated map with two players on each side, but you could also make a square map (176x176 for example) with mountains or water to seperate the teams.
What also helps is to make a quick sketch. You have to make sure that every team has about the same amount of resources and buildings space. I did that with WitW too; I created a blank 160x128 map, put four storehouses on it where I wanted the players to be, made some mountains (only the tiles) and resources and realised it was too small for it's purpose and wouldn't turn out as I wanted it to.
And even if you have already completed, let's say, 25% of your map and you're like 'damn, it's too smal after all...', you can just copy the terrain in Krom's map editor, create a new map and paste it.

[Leeuwgie]

The map looks good although the terrain might be a bit too sharp. Perhaps you should try to use the unequalize function or the single dot less.

Thanks, I like your opinion because you are like the pefectionist in mapbuilding. Did I understand correctly you adviced me to use LESS detail on the heights of this map? On all my maps I only used the Remake editor for heights so I'm not familiar with the unequalize function. I use brushsize 3 (and speed 6) 90% on the maps regarding the heights.

Less detail is never good (although you can overdo things too), so that was not really what I meant. I'm not familiar with the brush sizes and speed in the Remake's editor because I use Krom's. What I meant was that the terrain looks too 'pointy'. The edges are too sharp.

For all the flat terrain (mountains included) in Krom's editor I first use the biggest brush and then the smallest brush to make the terrain look natural, I don't like straight lines.

I'm confused now because you just said you only used the Remake's editor for heights. Personally I use the second smallest brush for ALL heights and then I use the smallest ('single dot') to make it look better. So I recommend using the second smallest brush more and using the smallest brush less. You have to play a little with the speed too; for mountains I use higher speed than for normal terrain (especially the speed for the single dot should be set VERY slow if you use it for normal terrain).
Maybe you should ask koczis12 too, because I think his terrain is better than mine here and there. Maybe I can learn something from him too...

I do have one question for you. I noticed you like to build large maps. Many others decide to do smaller maps even for 4 v 4 or 3 v 3. How do you determine what size is best for your maps like for instance your Warfare in the wilderness (192x144) map?

Interesting question. To be honest I dislike making huge maps because it's a lot of work. Yet I like much building space so that's why I choose for large maps. To determine the best size for your map, you have to plan ahead. What kind of map will you make? 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, free for all? Allies are mostly grouped close together, so you have to think how to make the players who are in one team be closer to each other than the enemy is to them. I chose for an elongated map with two players on each side, but you could also make a square map (176x176 for example) with mountains or water to seperate the teams.
What also helps is to make a quick sketch. You have to make sure that every team has about the same amount of resources and buildings space. I did that with WitW too; I created a blank 160x128 map, put four storehouses on it where I wanted the players to be, made some mountains (only the tiles) and resources and realised it was too small for it's purpose and wouldn't turn out as I wanted it to.
And even if you have already completed, let's say, 25% of your map and you're like 'damn, it's too smal after all...', you can just copy the terrain in Krom's map editor, create a new map and paste it.

Interesting indeed, I do mostly the same. Like placing 4 storehouses first and then work from there. I do however like the idea of playing random. I see WitW is not made for it but I like to let players play top vs bottom and left vs right and even crosswise (which makes it more difficult).

About me using the editors, it's very simple to explain:
I always start in Kroms editor and do ALL (flat) terrain there. Then I close Kroms editor (don't forget to save however) and open the remake editor and do ALL heights there. Heights take most time (it makes or breakes a map). Mountains are the most time consuming of all imo so usually that's the 1st thing I work on in the Remake editor. On this particular map (when zoomed out) some look more like intestines then mountains but I like 'em nonetheless. I disagree that all maps must be copies of Wilderness in terms of the roughness of mountains, terrain etc. Because I think that map is exactly what it says it is, a barren wilderness. I very nice feature in the remake editor (can't remember from Kroms editor when I made maps some years ago) is the passability function. I like to set it on 3 to show if you can place buildings. Very usefull, I recommend it to every map maker. I did played WitW twice and that's only because I saw way to many red crosses ingame, I can't build where I want and that's annoying imo. I heard some others say the same so I don't know if you're planning to fix it in the near future, it would be nice because I like the looks of that map and the fact you don't have all resources in one screen. Btw, I remembered one more minor thing. The stone can't be cut to the edge of the screen. Maybe you've already fixed these 2 things for the new release, if not I'm willing to do it for you. I think it can be fixed in less then 1 hour time.