@Name said in Ancient Empires: 222 BC:
On the border issue, I dislike them as well. But since I still can't do much in Gimp (though such a change should be easy) and most of the map is at an earlier state than what you see here, it's something for later I think.
Is this something fixible by just making the borders a few pixels wider so they would look "smoother"?
I thought it was rather odd that their was no discord for TripleA considering discords ease of use, popularity etc. I wonder if its a generational/age thing since I imagine alot of of people playing axis&allies are not teens or young adults.
Another point is North Dale, which is just obnoxiously important. Just connects everywhere up north really hard to attack Erebor and Lake Town because u literally need to conquer all around otherwise you will get slaughtered.
Agreed I think this is the most obnoxious zone in the map and its existence means evil cant really get anything meaningful done up north.
Wow nice, would love to take a look in that if I may that is
Ive sent you details in a pm.
What are your thoughts on maybe allowing evil to build some sort of encampments that boost the allowed number of troops to be deployed in a certain castle. They could be somewhat cheap(3 bucks to boost 1 is fair?) and whenever the territory is conquered by good they all vanish(0|0|0).
I havent played this map in awhile so I cant exactly remember the details, but I think only 3 evil races had issues with this needing more production slots. Orcs for deploying goblin spam in Moria and the South/North Caves, and Haradrim and Khand down south since they cant get any high PU territory to capture and start reinforcing Mordor easier and closer from.
Rather then just affecting a Castle that already produces units, I think it could work better as being a factory itself but has a limit of producing 1 unit. I think maybe also giving it a defense of 1 so that you get alittle more incentive to use them, and also allow them to be made same turn the territory is conquered as a benefit of only being able to make 1 unit. Would also help Haradrim naval landings since they can reinforce on the second turn instead of the third.
@Lothorn said in middle earth:
I mean, I have a few thoughts about it, dont know if u agree, but the ranger unit from the elves is too strong, thats why one of my main focus as evil is to suffocate the elves as quick as possible.
I identified this as being the main problem for evil as well so Im glad someone else agrees. The stats for the cost is it makes it extremely strong and the elves end up spamming it and this almost always caused me to lose the game with evil.
The other problem I identified was the discrepancy in strength between Gondors units and Mordors unit. Gondors units have more stats then the southern evil factions for the same cost. The southern evil factions also typically have stats heavily skewed towards offense like 2/1 or 3/1, whereas since Gondor have more stats theyre 2/2 or 2/3. This last bit is important since it makes evil almost certainly lose when theyre on the defense.
The last "problem" I guess so to speak, is that the rivers on the map are pretty useless. Theyre not used to strategically seperate areas since every zone can connect to another one across the river. One part this affects is that Isengard cant expand west because theirs to many places to defend from across the river and with the 2 movement units of good in the area.
How my games typically played out were as follows:
I did end up making a small mod that changed alot of unit stats and connections between zones but I didnt document the changes and I dont think it played better.
No default terrain? I guess so since it seems those terrains are omnicomprensive. If so, I don't think there is much of a point not having a non default terrain. For easy of use, the most common type of terrain may be taken as default. You can still define it as a terrain, if you want, leaving it without any actual impact (in this case, it would be better if it is not offered in the battlecalculator).
Im not much of a fan of default terrain because even in the most common type (likely something like a open field or a plain) their are advantages and disadvantages to different units, e.g. cavarly can move easier and flying units can spot enemy units easier but conversely theyre spotted easy in a open sky as well.
And then if that terrain is taken as a base, all the other terrain have values relative to that one and then it gets a bit awkard deciding "how much better is x at attacking in a mountain instead of a plain?"
Also, forest or woodland? Woodland would be technically the better term from traditional British usage, where forest just means wildland, and may be not wooded at all. Theorically, deserts are forests, but I'm under the impression this is not the current usage. I personally like forest better than woodland as a term, if they would be currently synonym (are they?). This is what wikipedia says:
After thinking about it more, I agree forest is a better term. When I was thinking of what to call it, I was thinking of the areas with trees in WoW Classic and due to scaling issues most of them arnt really forests.
This doesn't seem an easy system to understand, and playing with anything is always much harder than understanding it, so I would suggest to try to do what feasible to simplify it, but it is totally your choice, and I'm not against complexity, in principle, if it serves the purpose of being truer to the setting (if I would actually play a map that I feel I cannot even try to optimize strategically that is a totally different matter, but we do have a few people that are undaunted by complexity and may gladly take all the complexity you are willingly to throw at them).
I wanted to make it similar to the Battle for Arda: Middle Earth map, with different terrain types and special attacks, but that map is much more asymmetric and alot of factions dont have e.g. a unit with "flanking" that can attack archers and so I wanted to make it more symmetric but yeah I think I can simplify it in some areas and I have some ideas on how to do that now.
I have a working, almost finished map of the east plaguelands now, its just missing: flags, map decorations to show which zones in the city are adjacent to zones outside the city, custom unit placement in each territory and most importantly notes.
After playing it for abit I have some ideas how to give each unit a better identity and simplify things.
These are the unit models for each faction, the images are taken from blizzards warcraft 3 or various free custom models:
And this is the current map for Lordaeron.
I still need to finish some territories, and redraw and add in Ghost Lands + Quel'Thalas. It comes in at 210~ territories, 10~ are impassable small bits of river or lakes and such. At the end that would be 250-260~ without any sea zones.
Since thats alot im worried atm that the whole Eastern Kingdoms + all the sea zones will be way to large but Khaz Modan and Azeroth are both smaller then Lordaeron, with 6 zones + 7 zones vs Lordaerons 9 zones and theyre all pretty big ones. Khaz Modan also has tons of mountains. Even if it gets too big I can see lots of territories to cut and make bigger so I dont think it will be that much of an issue.
I wanted to make a post regarding the direction units and combat etc will go. I was inspired by LotR Battle for Arda's system of various supports and territory effects so this map will use something similar.
PS im bad at presenting information like this.
Units will have a unit type(s) governing what support they receive:
Battle support
Units will have a movement type that effects the support they recieve from terrain
They will mostly be paired to unit type (e.g. Front units are Infantry).
The following terrain types are those that will be present in the test map (a couple more like snow will be present elsewhere)
My initial draft with how they interact with each other is below. (Attack/Defense)
Their are 7 base units and 3 (or 4 if made by another unit) extra units per player.
The base units will mostly be the same with some differences.
The extra units will be player specific and they will differeniate each player from one another. I have conceptualised them but not properly drafted them yet.
The die value is going to be 10.
The base unit statline that all players will have is below: (I dont know how to convey this any better so I apologise if its hard to follow)
As a text example:
For different players, I intend for their to be 3 stats that are weaker (red on the graphs) and 7 that are boosted (green on the graph)
Base units for the Scourge:
As a text example for whats different for the Scourge:
Base units for the Scarlet Crusade
Looking at these it can be seen that Scourge Cavarly and Caster units work abit different, and Scarlet Heavy infantry and Casters are stronger then their counterparts.
I expected the base values to chance as I test them since this is only a first draft.
That was abit long winded but I think that sets the tone for the direction I want to take units and battles on the map.
@Zaroph Looks cool. I'm guessing you've already talked to Frostion given that you are making a related map and seem to be adopting a similar graphic style.
Thank you and I havent but this map style is done with combing all the in-game maps in 1 big continous strip so I think its the most straightforward thing to use.
@Zaroph Very exciting! I welcome any parallel development of another Warcraft map. This can really motivate me in regards to speeding up the development of my own map
I really like this map's contrast to my map in development, as my map is “zoomed out” to the biggest scale possible of the Warcraft world. My map will actually be a bit thin in regards to regional differences, story and lore. It will have a lot of randomness and will be a big scale 4 vs 4 player map. Its seems that Warcraft: Lordaeron Wars could be a good counterpart. It seems much more zoomed in on an area of the world and the factions and races that actually resides there. Plus there could be some “real” lore and history represented in Lordaeron Wars. If this works out well, there will be a potential more similar maps
Thank you im glad to hear it could help motivate you. I think any events will be the last thing I focus so that theirs a playable map without them. I also saw the code in Greyhawk Wars being much more full with event related code so that would slow down making the actual map first.
In regard to lore and such, I would like to do some passive events such as if the Scourge hold Scholomance the necromancy school, their is a chance for them to get Necromancers that spawn there representing a batch of students graduating.
Since Warcraft lore is full of noteworthy and powerful individual characters I would also like to represent them with bigger events. They would give the player something to work towards as a mini-objective (like PU objectives but for units), and for the ai it could be chance based so that they would get a power boost and be more threatening to the player.
I would really like to have shown you a playable version of my map, so that you could get ideas and stuff. But my map still needs tweaking and some features are not done yet. Very many errors still keeps popping up. But then again, I would also like to see what you come up with by your own so that maybe I can get inspired
There wont be anything as intricate as your hero, item and back pack system since thats beyond my capability to code and I dont think the rest would really inspire you
Unless I could get a flying Naxxramas unit with territories out of bounds on the map to work.
I will gladly help you out with some of the map making stuff if you need it (and if I have time, as I am often occupied buy real life stuff for many days in a row). In regards to stuff like graphical style, sounds and music, it would be cool if like the Warcraft maps would share some resemblance and players could feel some consistency, even though the maps have totally different focuses. If you are very into the lore of Warcraft, then you can probably help me out with some soon needed flavor and lore texts for my map, when I need to implement it?
Thank you for the offer. Im following the structure of other map xml's and the example xml so I think I am fine in that regard and anything basic since theirs examples of every little thing in them for me to look at. If anything comes up that I struggle with I'll be sure to post and ask thanks.
In regards to the sounds, I've always played with sounds off so I've never really thought about them.
In regards to graphics, the resource that I was going to use was wowheads model viewer for a clean image of units e.g. a ghoul, and then stick it in a border with a letter representing its role. The inspiration for that came from your dragon wars since its a nice visual cue to tell what it was.
Since I havent started the graphics and I wasnt going to do sound since I completely forgot about it, I wouldnt be opposed to collaborating to make them more consistent with each other for the reason you said.
I would love to help you with any lore stuff but im most familar with pre-cataclysm lore from playing wow and almost all the relevant maps I play on warcraft 3 that bombard me with lore are pre-cata as well, so if thats relevant I would like to help.
I am currently in the process of making a test map for the Western Plaguelands, which will serve as a mostly 1v1 area for the Scourge and Scarlet Crusade which will help be get a better idea on balancing the game.
This is the current map I am using for the Western Plaguelands:
Due to the importance of Stratholme (and also Blackrock Mountain furthur down the line) I wished to create a seperate connected zone for it.
In my initial making of the Eastern Kingdom map, I intended to use a road system where the map roads would provide access to large swaths of each region but I found that this just bloated the number of territories in each region with the road themselves and furthur bloated each region by having to divide up the map in such a way that made both the location features (e.g. towns and towers) and the roads meaningful, hence I abandoned doing this.
Their are currently 15 territories in Stratholme and 28 passable territories in the plagueland. Although this single region comes in at a huge 43 territories, from my initial border making this was easily the largest singular region on the whole map, and it also includes the city of Stratholme in it which will be 2 of a kind with blackrock mountain. Hence although I have yet to make a finalised version of the full Eastern Kingdoms map, I am not particularly worried at this time that the playable area will be to huge.
I would like to announce the beginning of this project that I have been working on the past few days, Warcraft: Lordaeron Wars.
It was inspired by both my love for the large macro rts maps in Warcraft 3 which use various warcraft continents and time periods as their base, and the joy that I've had recently playing against the TripleA ai on the various fantasy maps here.
The setting will be some amalgamation of the Eastern Kingdoms during and after the Third War, before the setting of WoW happens.
Initially I wanted to do a full map similar to what Frostion is currently working on and including Northrend, but while I found I could do the Eastern Kingdoms in a reasonable number of territories, their were only several territories for each wow region whereas I wanted to do much more. The other reason I chose to focus on just 1 continent was that both of the other two continents are rather bland when compared with the Eastern Kingdoms in terms of race diversity, settlements and conflicts.
The final playable map I hope will include the whole Eastern Kingdoms using their pre-cataclysm states.
Their will be territory effects but some these will do the same thing, just renamed for flavour (Snow, marsh, beach)
The following 12 races are those that I intend to place in the final map:
All factions will use mostly the same unit roster, with some various differences and some unique units for flavour.
For example, the Scarlet Crusade infantry will have higher attack then average, flavour wise this is due to their fanatasim; and the Scourge caster will provide a penalty to enemy infantry, flavour wise this is a banshee using a curse spell.
In terms of unique units, the idea I have for the Scourge is a necromancer that after a battle involving it is concluded, it takes the TUV of enemy units defeated and divides the number to convert it into very bad but free skeleton units.
Although I have envisioned some events regarding units or territories being captured, I am not sure on how large a scope I should do these yet.
Due to this being my first mod, I wish to first make a small test map of the Western Plaguelands for my use and then move on to complete the Lordaeron area before doing the rest of the Eastern Kingdoms. This would let me get a handle on things and to also at the minimum release a playable map of the Lordaeron area. Hence I have decided to split this project into 3 phases:
Phase 1
Phase 2
Phase 3
