Map development thread

[Solo]

Our map is a mix of satellite elevation data and vector drawn layers. The global elevation was tweaked to bring low and medium altitude more in line with gameplay while keeping reasonably realistic proportions. Some areas, like the four alps pass, still had to be arranged more in detail to fit gameplay.

I. Vector concept maps

a. Political map

http://perso.orange.fr/solo.mt/II_political_1.5_small.jpg (http://perso.orange.fr/solo.mt/II_political_1.5.jpg)

This one is probably the most important since it shows both settlements/region borders and current starting positions for all of our factions.

II. The ingame map

Since what matters is what you get ingame, I'm also bringing some light to our current ingame map. Note that these screens may not match the political map everywhere, simply because the descr_strat file isnt fully updated here. Of course I still have some work to do on the textures and some tweaking to do to the landscape in some areas but Rome wasnt built in one day.
While its not a complete tour, it should give you a fairly good idea of the landscape.

https://img406.imageshack.us/img406/6443/00122vm9.jpg

https://img406.imageshack.us/img406/8610/0013ri1.jpg

https://img229.imageshack.us/img229/2168/0015xw3.jpg

https://img229.imageshack.us/img229/4195/0017wy9.jpg

https://img509.imageshack.us/img509/7813/0020yd5.jpg

https://img509.imageshack.us/img509/4971/0021fe0.jpg

https://img229.imageshack.us/img229/4561/0022dt0.jpg

[Solo]

Although I havent made any real progress this week (since I was mostly busy with skinning), i felt it may not be a waste of time to take a break and spend 10 mins making some ingame screenshots (not sure people actually do bother downloading the mod in its unplayable current form hehe).
Of course my aim here is also to get some criticism (harsh or not, I only care about making things better) about any aspect even if a lot of stuff is still in its beta form which makes partial (or even total) changes likely to happen in every departement (and more precisely to textures, specially farming ones, overall forest/snow cover, anything concerning the interface, or the winter/summer cycle textures).
I may post screens on a more regular basis if this turns to be postive, so just ask if you'd like to see a particular area without having to download (or update) the whole project.

https://img143.imageshack.us/img143/6492/sc01gz4.th.jpg (https://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc01gz4.jpg)https://img143.imageshack.us/img143/3518/sc02ra5.th.jpg (https://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc02ra5.jpg)https://img143.imageshack.us/img143/1066/sc03jt4.th.jpg (https://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc03jt4.jpg)
https://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2531/sc04ap2.th.jpg (https://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc04ap2.jpg)https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/6712/sc05fx8.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc05fx8.jpg)https://img132.imageshack.us/img132/7826/sc06cd0.th.jpg (https://img132.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc06cd0.jpg)
https://img143.imageshack.us/img143/142/sc07lk5.th.jpg (https://img143.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc07lk5.jpg)https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/8596/sc08oi4.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc08oi4.jpg)https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/2259/sc10er2.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc10er2.jpg)
https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/5010/sc11qg5.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc11qg5.jpg)https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/4430/sc12yp4.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=sc12yp4.jpg)https://img530.imageshack.us/img530/8912/0061hs9.th.jpg (https://img530.imageshack.us/my.php?image=0061hs9.jpg)

[bovi]

Well, there is the lack of resources of course, but I'm sure you're just not that far yet. I also notice that many cities are quite close to one another. Could this turn into siege total war?

[Solo]

True, we havent defined the ressource list yet (we had some talks about the concepts though, which could be rather different from vanilla, but we still have to implement them), so theres not a single one right now.

The space between settlements is all about gameplay vs historical accuracy. We chose to go 100% historical since we wont keep anything from vanilla gameplay anyway. Not including Amalfi, Vienne, Avignon, Ulm or Asti just because theres another important city rather close would be making the same mistake as vanilla imo.
In fact, the average distance between settlements isnt that far from vanilla because both maps are rather close in size (a little more than 96% of vanilla map surface) and the number of settlements dont differ that much (122 instead of 112). 10% shouldnt be that much, at least not enough to prevent us from arranging gameplay to it and ending in the siege tw category.

[bovi]

Would it be possible to stretch the map further, to maintain historical spacing yet have the possibility of meeting an army on the open field in most places? I would think it is quite a bit of work to do so though, now that the map is defined.

[Solo]

Probably would have to start from scratch to do so. Anyway alpaca didnt want to work with anything larger than vanilla scale (& I think he's got a very good point about game speed) so we kinda have the best compromise possible here. That doesnt mean we wont have open field battles just because there are a few clusters like Venise-Treviso, Amalfi-Salerno or Vienne-Lyon. Plus larger scale maps also have their own problems.

[alpaca]

Yes I am pretty much against these huge maps. They slow down the game speed a lot because of a much more complex pathfinding, and they create other problems like if you scale movement with them you can't have properly immobile characters.
In addition, if we had a larger map people would ask for more regions so the effect would be annihilated again.

The most important point is however that the "siegefest"-effect doesn't only (not even primarily) depend on the distance between two settlements, but on the questions whether you can attack them in the same turn and whether there's a defensive army inside the settlement.
If you can't just assault them because you don't have spies/cats and/or the garrison is too large for that, you will have to actually siege them which is in fact the wanted behaviour because it leaves you open to counter-attacks and allows your opponent to send relief forces. The question is how good the AI copes with that, but right now there are good reasons to assume a smaller map works as well or better than a larger map in that regard.

[bovi]

From what I've seen in The Long Road, the AI does not seem to react very well to sieges, it will attack the besieger with an inferior army, then follow up with another inferior army when that fails, repeating until it's out of troops. With Kingdoms it seems to be a bit better, as it will mass its forces before attacking. Both observations are with not very much playtime though, I've been doing EB (RTW) mostly.

I agree that cities should not be moved from their historical positions, of course. This map is probably the best compromise between the issues of small/big.

[SigniferOne]

I have to say, the first in-game screenshot looks just amazing. Very good job Solo, looks like the map progress for your guys mod is proceeding very well.