Ancient Empires: 222 BC

[Hepps]

@Name I like using either a 1 pixel by 1 pixel or 2 pixels by 2 pixels to draw my base map.

Now as far as lines... I spend an enormous ammount of time removing hard angles and adding a lot of shaping. That is really tedious... but I think it adds to the map in the end.

As far as finishing I would have to run you through a step by step process. But often it involves creating many layers of images.

[Captain Crunch]

good stuff Lafayette

[Cernel]

@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

@Hepps I'm troubled because say 10% of the territories that might get loaded are smaller (often half or less size than sparta).

Also a new map will allow me to better define borders, if I ever get to find a way to draw them more smoothly. How did you do the ones in GD? What tool/settings and about how many pixels wide?

Edit: Here's progress so far (my old playable territories are ready). Drawing my own borders seems faster, I wonder how good they're going to look. Any feedback before I try remaking the XML?

That is why I think you should double up (meaning 4 times the area and space) on the dimensions you have shown. That going up from 75% to 100% (36 to 48) will mean that you have just about enough placement spots everywhere, as you will have about 2 times as much. So, my suggestion, go for that, directly, if you can, doubling with excel all you obtain, if you cannot.

[Name]

@Hepps I did this with 2x2. Seems to create smoother shapes than 1x1. I was thinking if there's some trick to skip most of the tedious part but I guess that's how it has to be. I'll ask for more advice when I'm about to create relief tiles.

@Cernel I'll try further multiplying the size to x6 instead of x5. I don't want to risk too much lag or mess with the excel method, and size should be mostly fine, since the new map will be roughly 27x13k instead of 19x9k.

[Hepps]

@Name So the other option to you is also to distort the size and scale of certain regions of a map where you need more space for territories.

I have done this when drawing many maps... where I expand certain areas relative to the surrounding geography but keep it accurate to its original shape and detail as best as possible. Remember much of this is about gaining just enough space for your plans... so a 10-15% increase in a regions size will often be more than enough to achieve your goals. From there you can often maximize placements by massaging the borders you had initially drawn between the bigger and smaller territories.

Just a suggestion as a way to keep the map size manageable while still getting the desired effect.

BTW this was just a quick rendering as an example. So the detail is not what it could be.

[Cernel]

@Hepps Yeah. The problem with many maps (a particularly extreme case may be World At War, but there are many) is that the part of the map that it is the most important is usually more detailed, that means tendentially split into smaller territories than the rest of the map, and, playing, it is usually also the busiest part of the map. The consequence of this is that, in actually most maps, you have less space where you need it the most and more space where you need it the least.

Since the time is close, 270BC comes to mind, where you have a busy, important, but very small, "Athens" territory, while the most spacious territory on the map is the near-to-pointless "Sarai", on the far north-east.

I can understand the desire of keeping close to real geography, for flavour, but playability is generally more important.

[Name]

The first version of the complete map is ready. I'll continue with improving details and enlarging some territories before re-implementing to reach the previously playable set up.

[Cernel]

@Name As I expected, I see there is an enormous territory size difference between some areas (especially Greece) with very small territories and some other zones with way bigger territories. Just a warning this is going badly to impact on playability, because, then, you will have too few placement spots where the small territories are or you will have a very hard time looking around, for possible movements, where the big territories are (very few zones on the screen), or a combination of these two issues, unless you keep zooming in and out, that is not really something you want to keep doing, I tend to think, and anyways it is limited by the need of distinguishing the units.

Anyways, this is a board game, where you can zoom, so I'm not saying you cannot go with such enormous territory size differences (and I still prefer them over cut-outs, like the Eastern Front of Civil War).

Also, I believe the mountainous territories in Italy are strangely located and north Africa is lacking the two major choke points (El Alamein and Gabes, using current names).

[redrum]

@Name Looks cool. You might want to consider doing what Hepps showed and enlarge Greece a bit. You'll also want to be careful with some of the really large N.Africa territories as it could mean units can move very long distances across what is mostly desert.

[Name]

So I tried to load the new map. Found out several good, mixed and bad things, including some mentioned by @Cernel @redrum

• 27x13.5k is too much for the utilities even with 10 GB ram allowed. Had to revert to 24x12k to work without terrible lag.
• My borders look ugly in game, will need a lot of work.
• Large regions are an issue. Needs at least 75% zoom to be playable. I found 56% and 66% the best compromise between map view and unit readability. Reducing the large regions in size to help with that would result in too many regions. Still, it's anoying to move the screen around a region to check what's in each neighbouring one.
• This size still won't allow for enough placements everywhere. Might need to enlarge Greece and further enlarge some islands. However a mix of placements (each region can hold almost 10 at least) and lines seems doable. The added map size leaves space for not overlapping lines even at the most crowded locations. Not sure what I'll do yet.
• The minimap looks awesome being in an exactly scaled down ratio.
• Light teal sea helps with minimap, but not map aesthetics.

I'm not worried so much about balance and realism at this point. However, North Africa was more fertile back then, so not sure desert chokepoints are that needed. Huge regions like the biggest one in Africa (Garamantia) will be poor and full of large tribal armies, so rarely worth invading. Still, I'll consider both suggestions.

75% zoom, 100% unit size (default)

56%

[redrum]

@Name Seems like a pretty good size and I think at least in greece placements would be decent at that size. The borders are definitely pretty rough looking. One thing that I noticed is that it doesn't look like the bottom 10-20% of the map has very many territories. Could consider cutting some of that off to reduce overall size a bit.

[Cernel]

@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

• The minimap looks awesome being in an exactly scaled down ratio.

Correct, but that minimap is making the right side bar taking an absurdly large amount of board view. If the map is 24,000 wide, is suggest going with a 240 or 200 pixels wide minimap.

[Hepps]

@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:

• My borders look ugly in game, will need a lot of work.

If you want to post just a small portion of the actual base map... say just the area you keep using for your example pictures. I could probably show you how to clean it up.

Because in looking at your examples it looks like your border lines are 6 pixels wide.

[Name]

@redrum I cut some of the bottom. No big deal losing some neutrals bellow Egypt.

@Cernel Since it's ment to be played using zoom anyway, not sure it's a big deal. Will see about it though.

@Hepps Yeah I started with a smaller image and did borders 2x2. Then surprise, in the enlarged it was 10x10! I'm trying to fix this with a combination of shrink, grow border etc to avoid extreme finetuning, but can't get desired results so far. Here's the part:

[Hepps]

@Name Yeah this is not going to be an easy fix. At least for any method I am aware of.

[Name]

@Hepps Maybe I should just redo the borders (keeping those in another layer as guidance), in some advisable size and style?

[Hepps]

@Name So here is the best result I could manage with the least amount of work...

The issue is that regardless of being able to reduce the line thickness... because of how blocky the border lines look, they appear really unnatural to me. But look at what I did quickly. At the end of the day the quality is what you want it to be. I can show you how to do this (relatively) quickly over the entire map.

[Cernel]

@Hepps Since he still has the original (this is a no-interpolation 500% scaled version of), wouldn't it be better starting from those?

[Hepps]

@Cernel I have never found a good way to create a detailed map from a small original. The problem really comes down to as you attempt to enlarge the scale... what looked good small always becomes blocky. Unfortunately the only way I have ever been able to get any reasonable kind of definition is to find the largest original I can find and then draw the map with as much detail as I want at the scale I intend to use.

So in this case because the original is so much smaller than the finished size... every line ends up just being huge 90 degree angles.

[Name]

@Hepps I'm interested, but before/instead of doing that, I'm also interested in:

• How long did it take you for that? Is there a way to apply it at once to the whole map, I guess not?
• If I restart with a 20% sized version could stroke with 1x1 produce any good results (also considering the x5 scaling later). Answered to @Cernel
• If I restart from the full version, what should I consider for a relatively easy decent look? I could finetune later.