Re: Map development thread
Re: Map development thread
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?
Re: Map development thread
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.
Re: Map development thread
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.
Re: Map development thread
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.
Re: Map development thread
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.
Re: Map development thread
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.
Re: Map development thread
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.
