Map: Abstract Sky Tower: A Symmetrical CVP Map for 14

[Verjigorm]

14 Players recommended (2 water nations).

200 Provinces, 168 Land, 42 Water.

General Description:

The Abstract Sky Tower map is designed to provide more symmetrical border establishment between nations, unique expansion, and increasing resource availability for secondary castles. It is set up to be ideal for a cumulative victory point game, with 14 victory points placed on the light green land squares(12 VPs) and light blue sea squares (2 vps) in the sky tower (upper portion). If water nations are present, it is recommended there be at least 2. The optimal number of players for this map is either 12 land nations or 12 land nations and 2 water nations.

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5/30/2010 1PM CST: A slight color change modification was made to the TGA file to make some of the colors in the lower disc less obtrusive.


Features:

Lesser Discs:

Each of the small colored discs contains 20 land provinces with the exception of the blue disc which contains 20 water provinces. All of the basic province details for each disc are identical and all but 6 of the provinces in each small disc can be a start location. Each smaller disc has bilateral symmetry with respect to an axis that follows the river.

Sky Tower:

The tower connections are color coded for convenience. Each tower connects to the smaller disc of the same color as the province it stands in. The Sky Tower can be divided into 4 general and semi-symmetrical regions and the sea region which encircles the land disc. Each of the four regions is separated by a river. Each river has two bridges, and each region contains 3 Golden Towers and 3 Victory Point provinces. The Victory Point provinces are lighter in color than the other provinces so they can be easily seen as the crowns tend to appear in ambiguous or misleading locations. Provinces in the Sky Tower tend to have larger numbers of neighbors than provinces on the lower discs.

Golden and Blue Towers:

The Golden Towers form bridges between the smaller lower discs and the Sky Tower (The large upper disc). Use of the Show Neighbors filter ('8' Key) is recommended. The towers connecting between water provinces are blue. Magic Sites are more common in any province containing a golden tower.

Rivers:

The rivers are impassible except at the bridges.

Starting provinces:

All starting provinces are on the lower discs. Each lower disc contains 2 starting provinces with 4 neighbors and 12 starting provinces with 3 neighbors.

Terrain features:

Forests are represented by tree icons. Mountain provinces have mountain icons. The least obvious marker is the swamp marker which is an elongated whitish gray blob.

Notes, Suggestions, and Other Items:

• The 4-Neighbor Starts setting restricts starting points to the 14 provinces with 4-Neighbors in each of the 7 discs and creates the greatest symmetry possible on this map.
• I wonder how the map would change if the starting points were on the large disc and the VPs were on the small discs?
• The original and overly ambitious plan for this map was to create an asymmetrical image for a symmetrical map tree. I abandoned this idea after a few minutes of frustration, but it is quite possible to creatively design such a map. It may also be possible to rearrange the structure so that it doesn't involve teleportation towers and that the current asymmetry presented by the difference between the inner ring Golden Tower provinces and the 3rd ring Golden Tower provinces. If you feel up to the challenge, the only structure that needs to be preserved is the node tree (in the map file). Everything else can change. Optimally, the maps would be more cosmetically interesting and would look more like proper cartography as opposed to the rather sparse and oddly colored version I made.

[Verjigorm]

Adjusted the map to include a correct default standard victory condition. 14 provinces, 50 cumulative VPs required. You will probably want to adjust this down to something smaller for most games, I think.

What do you guys think would be a good Standard Cumulative Victory Point Goal given 14 nations and 14 VP Provinces? Fifty seems like way too many.

[Makinus]

Would not a Fixed Victory Points victory condition be better for this map? with 14 victory points (i´m assuming the 14 are the starting provinces) a 6 victory point condition would be enough as if a player already controls 6 capitals he is pratically unbeatable from that point onwards....

[Verjigorm]

The VPs are in the Sky Tower, none of them are on the capitols. A Control 6 VP condition would be too easy to fulfill since only capture is required. The reason that Cumulative VPs are used for this map is to show solid control of the tower. Capitol VPs was an alternate scenario I was exploring for the map, but it changes the dynamic and moves the fight onto the small discs rather than having it primarily in the sky tower.

When one enters the tower, there will always be one VP province adjacent and then two more within two steps, but those two will be adjacent to other players' towers. If someone enters the sky tower while, per se, the other nearby players (sky tower relative not colored disc) are held up in their respective discs fighting with their nearest neighbor, he could fairly easily blitz and grab 6 provinces to claim victory early in the game. 9 would be a stretch, though. If there were a way to say that one must capture and hold 6 VPs for a certain length of time that would be the best, but the closest thing we have to that is Cumulative VPs since you need to hold on to a province through the summer in order to claim the VP.

I was thinking that 25 Cumulative VPs would be adequate to constitute a win.

[Fantomen]

Very cool.