Ancient Empires: 222 BC
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I'm almost done with the coastlines. So since I was led to take designing the map more seriously and take my time, I'm considering to add things I intended to skip, like canals and navigable rivers. Any additional gameplay considerations related to those, keeping in mind the large map size, territory count, often extensive river length etc?
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@Name Canals? Isn't the only canal the Suez canal (to use modern naming)?
I thought sometimes adding the Suez Canal to 270BC, since it was made shortly before, but that's really too unimportant.
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@Name I think we've mentioned the ones I can think of. The biggest thing to understand is that you can adjust lots of things visually in relief tiles or from a gameplay perspective in the XML but the base tiles determine the "clickable area" and lead to area you have for placements so those 2 things are difficult to update once you've started building your map on top of it. So making sure things are large enough to easily click on for movement and have enough space for the proper amount of placements tends to be the key, most other things there are ways to adjust without having to change base tiles.
The only other thing is as you start thinking about drawing the territories, is try to generally avoid corners of territories coming together as it often makes it unclear if they are connected.
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@Cernel I mean canal attachments, wouldn't that be the best way to do things like Dardanelles/Bosporus? I think something similar to Suez was active during a part of the Ptolemaic reign in Egypt, connecting Red Sea to the Nile, and through it to the Mediterranean. I'll search for details.
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@Name If you are considering having sea canals, like Suez, for the Dardanelles/Bosporus, I believe that makes no sense. Only in late medieval, with very big cannons, was possible partially to do something like that. On the other hand, if you are planning making rivers, then maybe those might be closed, but probably not the very big ones. Practically, it needs to be small enough for a boom.
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@Cernel I haven't looked much into their function yet, but aren't canal attachments the way to have units cross a territory only under conditions? I also thought you were suggesting that for the Dardanelles/Bosporus in a previous post, but might have misunderstood you.
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@Name No I meant walking over the sea, since those straits are about as wide as a big river, at their narrowest points, since you said that all rivers would be walkable.
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@Cernel Ok. I'm actually currently testing related things, and from an aesthetics point of view navigable/non-crossable rivers might be a bad idea.
Check the Nile delta. I need at least this thickness for gameplay reasons, but I don't think I'll like the looks.
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@Name Yeah full sized rivers can be a challenge to fit into a map. Especially from an aesthetic standpoint.
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@Name In my map Dragon War map rivers were just un-passable borders, some of them with decorative bridges that made them passable (had connections). They were not actual territories, just borders between territories drawn with a distinct blue color. But the system is kind of strange when air units show up, as they also have to cross by bridges.
It’s perhaps possible to make crossing connections with limited and customized access, where only air units can cross, but I have not explored this possibility.
I imagine that your map could also make similar use of this option, like if big heavy units (Elephants? War wagons?) could not cross a river, but the lightest infantry had no problem getting over.
Does this option exist? Could someone find and maybe copy/paste an example code into this thread?
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@Frostion said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:
@Name In my map Dragon War map rivers were just un-passable borders, some of them with decorative bridges that made them passable (had connections). They were not actual territories, just borders between territories drawn with a distinct blue color. But the system is kind of strange when air units show up, as they also have to cross by bridges.
It’s perhaps possible to make crossing connections with limited and customized access, where only air units can cross, but I have not explored this possibility.
I imagine that your map could also make similar use of this option, like if big heavy units (Elephants? War wagons?) could not cross a river, but the lightest infantry had no problem getting over.
Does this option exist? Could someone find and maybe copy/paste an example code into this thread?
You can do it with canals. If you are interested adding to your Dragon War map the ability for all air units to move through rivers, I can just paste here the full code, that, then, you'll have to paste into your game.
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@Frostion Look here for an example of a list of connections that can be used by air only, as long as the "Unit List" territory is Neutral owned:
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/74/dragon-war-official-thread/60?page=3 -
@Frostion I'm not using air units, so this case is different. It's whether to use rivers just as borders (and/or decoration), or have (some of) them as full territories, acting like seas.
In my current mindset, I tend towards the first option, plus canals for sea straights (you'll need either ships or allied control of both sides to cross - I think that's doable, right?).
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@Name If you have, say, the control of both land sides of the Dardanelles, how are you going to stop me from rowing or sailing my way through the straits? You don't have guns to fire at my ships.
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@Cernel It shouldn't prevent you from landing from ships. It would just allow you to cross without a fleet if you have uncontested control of both sides. Maybe a trigger could block the canal/straits if enemy fleets are present, so you can't cross even if controlling both sides in that case.
But it's still just brainstorming. I don't even remember if you can land transported units - by default or with some property - through a sea ter with enemy ships present.
@Hepps So I would need the canal attachments and some triggers with appropriate conditions (like alliedOwnershipTerritories / enemyPresenceTerritories)?
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@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:
In my current mindset, I tend towards the first option, plus canals for sea straights (you'll need either ships or allied control of both sides to cross - I think that's doable, right?).
I believe this would be possible... you'd likely have to create a series of conditions and triggers to enforce the behavior.
You could just add territorial connections across any straits where you wanted there to be a connection... then add checks for any of the conditions which would then block movement.
I am not a trigger guy... they confuse the hell out of me. But others would be far more adept at walking you through the process.
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@Hepps said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:
You could just add territorial connections across any straits where you wanted there to be a connection... then add checks for any of the conditions which would then block movement.
I guess this might be better than canals. Could even prevent crossing without a fleet even if you control both sides and enemy fleet is present. Or just make it like:
- No enemy fleet present = you can cross sea straights as if there's a land connection.
- Enemy fleet present = you can't.
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@Name Yes a series of "directPressence" checks should allow you to make very detailed set of movement rules
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