topology?

[fluffy]

I hope you don't mind some outside input!

I know its a bit early, but do you have a rough map in your mind(s)? I get the impression it would look a bit like switzerland, vaguely circular, but with mountains around the edge, rather than in the middle.

It occurs to me you might want to have two types of map: fixed province location and shape (corresponding to boardgame version), and a random arrangement, which allows
a range of neighbours and settlement locations - this would stop the development of strategy becoming too fixed, relying on specific configurations of resources.

It would be an interesting algorithm to draw such a map automatically, similar to that used for civ-type maps, but with an output more like EU.

[FrustratedPoet]

Outside input is what this forum is for. Welcome!

Yes, there is a map for the game .... Cyclotron7 has a link to it in his signature ... he used to anyway, try and find a post of his and have a look. (he's not an artist so it doesn't look pretty, but it is a good piece of work. )

It does look a great deal like Switzerland. I hadn't thought of it in those terms, but you are quite correct.

It is very much our intention to have a a random map generator as a part of the game at some point. However, at the moment it is a low priority.

[FrustratedPoet]

I found if for you ...

this is the link to the Candle'Bre concept maps

The images on that page are quite large, I'm afraid.

[JMarks]

ooh, ooh, maps. I love maps. I'd love to work on maps if Cyclotron doesn't mind.

Plus, isn't there a way to color code or hue elevation in some 3d program so you can just paint what you want via color coded elevation and get the proper corresponding elevations?

Ok, I didn't say that very efficiantly, but I hope you guys know what I'm talking about 'cause that would be VERY helpful, not to mention cool.

Plus I like the idea of a random county generator. We could have it go go along potential areas like rivers, inner mountain ranges, etc. You get the picture, I hope.

[moomin]

JMarks: I've already campaigned for a RMG here. Current wisdom it that it's out, at least for the free version.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
I found if for you ...

this is the link to the Candle'Bre concept maps

The images on that page are quite large, I'm afraid.

Very cool. Hadn't seen this before.
I love maps too.

What do all of the markers indicate? The green dots seem to occupy provinces denoted as forested so that seems pretty obvious - What about the black and grey dots? Mountains/foothills?
Blue lines = rivers?
Black vertical bars near blue lines and the blue puddle (which I figured for a lake even before reading the annotation at the bottom - a feat of which I am very proud ) = swampy stuff?

Its quite amazing just how much a simple map seems to really flesh things out, so to speak.
Very good job.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by moominparatrooper
I've already campaigned for a RMG here. Current wisdom it that it's out, at least for the free version.

Current wisdom is that the vital priority (in coding terms) is to get the game to work ... at all ... so we can play it.
From this point of view an RMG is non-essential and is therefore not being done ... if and when our coding team has time to work on it then we would all love to see an RMG in the game. When such a time will be is impossible to predict.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by ravagon
What about the black and grey dots? Mountains/foothills?
Blue lines = rivers?

yes green = forest and black = mountain.

the blue lines must be rivers. It seems logical that the water would run in rivers down the mountains and collect in the lowest place in the country (the lake )

I'm not sure about the yellow and grey (maybe plains and foothills???) dots, but i think the brown lines are supposed to be swamps.

Cyclo is in Japan right now ... I'm sure he'll put us straight on this issue when he gets back.

[Velociryx]

Here's the color key for map terrains:

Large Blue Puddle = Lake! (Right on, Rav!)

Green = Forest

Yellow = Excellent farmland (fields)

White = Marginal farmland (plains - good grazeland tho)

Gray = Hill country

Black = Mountains

Vertical Stick-thingys = Marsh

Blue squiggleys = Major rivers

All other squigleys = province borders

-=Vel=-

[FrustratedPoet]

/me hangs his head in shame

not only does our great leader cross-post with me, he also gives a much better answer than me ....

he just would ... wouldn't he?

[Velociryx]

Nahhhhh.....no shame, Brother Stoo! Your answer was a good one! LOL...but you and I really *do* seem to cross post a lot!

-=Vel=-

[JMarks]

Ok, now that THAT issue is solved, another question comes to mind. Will one be able to have more than one town/city in a province, or will it be like EU where you only have one, at least in name. Just wondering, cause as an artist, I'd like to see diffenent villages within a province, and eventually mabey overlapping each other when you get a metropolis which covers the whole province. Of course such a city would require tons of grain from all over your realm, or imports that cost some nice cash. But now I'm rambling.

FP, nice avy! Forgot about that one.

[fluffy]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Large Blue Puddle = Lake! (Right on, Rav!)
...

Blue squiggleys = Major rivers

I can see one reason to have a land-locked country: you don't need to think about sea-based units.

This seems to be undermined slightly by lakes and major rivers - are these simply barriers between provinces, or are you planning units that can use these features?

[BigRich]

Originally posted by JMarks
Ok, now that THAT issue is solved, another question comes to mind. Will one be able to have more than one town/city in a province, or will it be like EU where you only have one, at least in name. Just wondering, cause as an artist, I'd like to see diffenent villages within a province, and eventually mabey overlapping each other when you get a metropolis which covers the whole province. *snip*

- that would be cool!

Just a quick thought - how about allowing one major settlement in a Province, starting at Town level (see Societal Model - the original thread). Villages can be added to the Province as Province improvements are added. So if you build a barracks say, you get a Fortified Village. Add a market and you get a Market Hamlet.
All purely cosmetic of course and probably the build queue should still list them as Barracks, or Market to avoid confusion.

Rich.

[FrustratedPoet]

Originally posted by fluffy


I can see one reason to have a land-locked country: you don't need to think about sea-based units.

This seems to be undermined slightly by lakes and major rivers - are these simply barriers between provinces, or are you planning units that can use these features?

I think we're only going to have 'naval units' in an abstracted sense.
There was talk amongst us earlier about introducing a 'Harbour' improvement for the lake-bordering provinces that they could build to increase trade ... and I guess we could also allow them to quickly transport units to other provinces that border the lake.

Other than that, I don't think we really want to deal with naval units ... almost all games seem to handle it very badly, mostly because very few people really care about it ...

Naval units are only good for four things in TBS games:

1) Exploration - this is largely irrelevant for Candle'Bre ...

2) Transport - again, not a huge issue if the only body of water is a lake, but this could be included quite easily in an abstracted sense (a bit like the Caravans in HOMM4 if you've played it), there is no need for visible, movable units.

3) Trade - can be easily abstracted, both this and Transport would be good additions to the game IMHO.

4) Combat - well ... we could include this I suppose, but I really don't think the effort it would take it implement and balance would make it an efficient use of our time, since naval combat would be a very tiny part of the overall game experience. Best to leave it out for now IMHO.

(The rivers also come into play during Combat ... in a similar way to Civ3, if you attack a unit that is on the other side of a river to you, then the defenders receive a bonus)

[JMarks]

Originally posted by BigRich


- that would be cool!

Just a quick thought - how about allowing one major settlement in a Province, starting at Town level (see Societal Model - the original thread). Villages can be added to the Province as Province improvements are added. So if you build a barracks say, you get a Fortified Village. Add a market and you get a Market Hamlet.
All purely cosmetic of course and probably the build queue should still list them as Barracks, or Market to avoid confusion.

Rich.

Hmmm, we could go for just aethetics, but then it wouldn't be as much fun. Or detailed. What I'm thinking is that there are two types of cities/villages. State sponsered, and peasant formed. All your starting villages will be the latter and they do their own thing. Of course you can come in and tell them what to do. The other is one founded by you yourself, usually for a government seat, or to take advantage of some resource that requires manufacturing. Anyway, what I'm getting at is there should be advantages of having different cities/villages in one's province. Otherwise you have a EU style, which is ok, but hey, go for the gusto. Farming communities (many, small, spread out) will help farming, same with forestry, and mining. But for commerce you'd want to have a large city. Am I making sense, or am I flailing again?

[TCO]

The lake is an inland sea? No outflow?

[fluffy]

Originally posted by JMarks
What I'm thinking is that there are two types of cities/villages. State sponsered, and peasant formed. All your starting villages will be the latter and they do their own thing. Of course you can come in and tell them what to do. The other is one founded by you yourself, usually for a government seat, or to take advantage of some resource that requires manufacturing. Anyway, what I'm getting at is there should be advantages of having different cities/villages in one's province. Otherwise you have a EU style, which is ok, but hey, go for the gusto. Farming communities (many, small, spread out) will help farming, same with forestry, and mining. But for commerce you'd want to have a large city.

If you want more settlement complexity than EU, you will need some type of 'zoom-in' view for each province, showing smaller areas of land, each potentially with a settlement. Perhaps the zoom graphics would have a grid format, looking like civ?

[moomin]

Originally posted by FrustratedPoet
Current wisdom is that the vital priority (in coding terms) is to get the game to work ... at all ... so we can play it.
From this point of view an RMG is non-essential and is therefore not being done ... if and when our coding team has time to work on it then we would all love to see an RMG in the game. When such a time will be is impossible to predict.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say. Still, the problem is that even if you don't plan to ship an RMG right now, in order for one to be possible - or, well, at least doable within reasonable allotments of time and effort eventually - you need to build up the game around this goal from scratch.

AoW2 failed here recently. They were all set to provide a RGM, but it wasn't a coding priority. Eventually they found out the game they'd designed was very difficult to do a decent RMG for, so they dropped it althougheter. Now we hear some vague mumbling about "maybe in the exp", but I'm not holding my breath.

[Spaced Cowboy]

Originally posted by JMarks


Hmmm, we could go for just aethetics, but then it wouldn't be as much fun. Or detailed. What I'm thinking is that there are two types of cities/villages. State sponsered, and peasant formed. All your starting villages will be the latter and they do their own thing. Of course you can come in and tell them what to do. The other is one founded by you yourself, usually for a government seat, or to take advantage of some resource that requires manufacturing. Anyway, what I'm getting at is there should be advantages of having different cities/villages in one's province. Otherwise you have a EU style, which is ok, but hey, go for the gusto. Farming communities (many, small, spread out) will help farming, same with forestry, and mining. But for commerce you'd want to have a large city. Am I making sense, or am I flailing again?

I think that we were limiting it to one. For now territories are only one "square" Until we figure out how that will work differently, (like LOTR), then we are stuck with one city per. I would say that it is a map limitation at the moment.

[JMarks]

Well then heres an idea!

Have each province divided into counties! This way one can have multiple villages (which doesn't mean giant cities in each one near the end of the game cause they have to eat and farming must be prioritized in most anyway) per province, and the border of a province can move. Most orders for building will be given in Province level, or something. Anway, my mind is racing so fast I can't even think out a thought fully. But I hope you get my initial drift. More tocome when I calm down.

Thoughts?

[Cyclotron]

Well, I'm glad my map was deciphered... As stated, I am not an artist, and my maps were simply an attempt to aid the artists by putting Vel's province descriptions together with his political map. Feel free to do whatever you want with the map... I just put two of Vel's components together. It is simply a guide.

GP: The lake is the lowest point in Candle'bre, and is the basin of the entire region's watershed. All rivers lead towards it. The lake itself is presumed to drain by evaporation, although it is possible the lake also drains into the caverns supposedly created by the cataclysm's uplift...

Essentially, the water system of Candle'bre has two cycles. Although most clouds lose their moisture on the outside of the mountains, some rain does make it into the Candle'Bre basin from over the mountains. This is especially true of the west, where the mountains are not so high as those of the cataclysmic ranges. Thus, the first cycle is atmospheric: rain evaporates from the lake and rivers, and combined with rain from over the mountains, falls back down upon the land and drains to the lake. The other cycle is the underground cycle; water drains from the lake to the caverns below, and a small amount of this is returned through surface springs.

In general, the atmospheric cycle gains water, and the underground loses it... so our world is in balance.

I would love for naval units to be a part of Candle'Bre, but not quite yet.

[Kuciwalker]

I think that we should assign province tiles a population value, and people tend to concentrate either near important landmarks (like rivers) or around preexisting population concentrations. Cities do not exist in the formal sense. Also, urban improvements (like factories) tend to be built in high-population concentrations, whereas farms in rural tiles.