Crazy Europe: House of Habsburg

[prastle]

@hepps that requires a drive to boonie land :0

[Cernel]

@hepps It always is... it always is...

The map looks very nice, and demostrates that you don't even need relief to have a very good looking map, except that I'm not getting why the Dardanelles are so much wider than the Bosphorous. I know that in some games you have a canal in the Bosphorous and not in the Dardanelles, and also at this time you have some Turkish forts more in there, with some big cannons pointed at the sea, but I think that, whatever the rules, the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus should go the same way, because they are geographically about the same deal.
They used to be called the Straits of Saint George, in medieval times, at least in Venice, but I don't know if the name stuck until this age.

[Hepps]

@cernel Purely has to do with placements Cernel.

Also there is nothing to prevent setting both Sea connections up as canals or straits. CG designed the map in such a way that both are possible. I am trying to keep the overall structure of the map consistent with the original and trying to keep unit placement quantities in mind while making revisions. Having adequate placements per Terr. or S.Z. is of greater importance than exact geographical representation.

[Hepps]

Central parts of Europe are certainly more spacious with the reduction in the line widths.

[Hepps]

Closing in on the finish line.... maybe 10% of the map left to do.

Here's another teaser....

[General_Zod]

@hepps Will it be ready for play tonight? Would be worth waiting for.

[Hepps]

@general_zod Well given that Crazy G is going to have to redo all the placements and polygons.... I wouldn't hold my breath.

[General_Zod]

@hepps What... you mean your not full service

[General_Zod]

@general_zod I could do the polygons if you get the files to me in time. But no rush. I don't wanna chase open pixel if I rush ya.

[Hepps]

@general_zod I'm full of something.

[CrazyG]

I think I can re-use centers then auto fill polygons and place (I can do a better place at a later date). After that I can reuse most of the XML, I only need to add or delete a few options.

Its also possible I'll scrap the whole thing and spend all night angrily recreating it.

[Hepps]

@crazyg Yup. That should work for almost the entire map... I think between us we Have only changed and added a couple of territories. Should be a pretty quick process once I done.

[Frostion]

It looks great. I really hope there will be a tiny bit of texture mixed into the colored territories, just like in the test picture.

I think there are some borders in the Spain section of the map that could be moved a bit to make the movement possibilities more obvious. It could maybe prevent “surprise” attacks that players could not predict at first glance, but that the AI and veteran players know of. I have marked new borders with red.

PS: I have one or two borders in the Iron War map that I would really like to be different. But as the graphically work is so time consuming and troublesome I will probably never fix it. So just a heads-up before you move on to other map focuses

[CrazyG]

@frostion
Fair point. I approve both of those suggestions.

If anyone else spots things like this, please point them out now while the map files are already in flux.

[Cernel]

@frostion Those are good catches, because, while they are good enough as is, it restricts what you can do with the relief tiles.

[Hepps]

@crazyg @Frostion Changes done.

[Hepps]

The map is more or less done now. I am just running through the detail tests to ensure there are no stray pixels and that all lines are fully connected.

Should be ready for you @CrazyG by tomorrow night. Have been super sick so I haven't been doing much of anything as I could not even sit up straight.

Here's a look...

@CrazyG You will notice I made some slight alterations to St. Petersburg and surrounds including adding Lake Peipus just to create some interest in that area with the lake blocking several territory connections.

Let me know what you think.

[CrazyG]

Change is fine by me, I'm looking forward to starting

[Hepps]

@crazyg Well if you like that then hopefully you will like what I've done in Scandinavia as well.

Added Lakes Vanern and Vattern.

Should create some interesting situations between the Sweds and Marks.

[Hepps]

I also added 2 other island groups to a separate layer. Since they were not in the map and I had no idea whether it would interest you or not.

The Channel Islands. (While this is probably insignificant to this MOD, I thought it might be more significant to a different MOD... I don't know... say a.... umm just to take a guess.... a WWI MOD).

I also have the Aland Islands.... while pretty insignificant from a production point of view... could be of some use to create more give and take as well as potentially being used to create a Strait connection to limit movement as well as creating more back and fourth opportunities.

Let me know what you think and I will either include or exclude them from the final draft.