Seeking good MP maps.

[IndyPendant]

Hi all.

The modified Lonely Mermaid map is just about my favourite for MP games, for a number of reasons:

1) Map size: 100 - 150 total provinces.

2) Mildly limited routes: Lots of choke points, using mountain and/or river barriers, etc. (Doesn't have to be a single-path maze, but neither can it be a wide-open map. The Mermaid map is at just about the perfect balance for what I'm looking for.)

3) Water provinces: either 0 provinces, or roughly 10% of the map in one concentrated area, with *maybe* 1 or 2 additional water provinces off by themselves.

4) Wraparound, to even the playing field as much as possible.

Does anyone know of any other maps out there that fit these criteria? Please let me know if so! (The Map List sticky doesn't show anything suitable for me, unfortunately.)

Thanks,

IndyPendant.

[IndyPendant]

*sigh*

Ah well, I hadn't thought so. I hadn't found anything suitable in my own searching, but it couldn't hurt to ask.

I must admit that I had hoped for more than 25 people to even be *looking* at this post, though!

[Gandalf Parker]

I would have recommended some of mine except for the "mp" part. Wraparound is considered a plus in MP but chokepoints tend to be considered adding to random unfairness. Plus very few of my maps are that small.

Here are some wraps
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Small_Wrapped/
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/Tiny_Wrapped/

I like chokepoints. I could run you a batch of Dom3 maps. I use selected colors and settings. They tend to look like this.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/MegaMap.jpg

[Lingchih]

Gandalf Parker said:
I like chokepoints. I could run you a batch of Dom3 maps. I use selected colors and settings. They tend to look like this.
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/MegaMap.jpg

Well, that's a huge freaking map. It looks nice, but I prefer some deserts and swamps mixed in. This one looks like all forests and border mountains.

[Gandalf Parker]

No they are in there. I just like green. Only the dark green ones are forest.
The deserts are kindof tan colored like the upper left province. And the swamps are bluish-green.

But the colors can be adjusted for anyones tastes. The map generator in Dom3 does allow it altho you have to run it by command switches to get it.

[Xietor]

Fallacy has a map linked near the last post in the game thread by Hadrian. While not a wrap, that is a good mp map as it is divided into 2 continents.

Kingmaker is a wrap, but the map file is not being released until we hit turn 40 in the game. That will be 2-3 more weeks.
Huge map(900)though anyway. Really only good for mega age games.

[Gandalf Parker]

This is part of one of my map-generating scripts. It uses Dom3 to make maps and makes use of some of the features that are not available in the menu of Dom3.
Code:

---

GCOL1=" 50 100 50 250 "

SCOL1=" 20 50 80 220 "

BCOL1="  111 194 21 50 "

SBCOL1=" 36 119 202 29 "

# win ver SBCOL 11 54 121 125

# good colors 36 119 202 29, 111 194 21 104

OTHR=' --mountpart 50 --farmpart 20 --mapnoise 110 '





for x in `seq 1 9`

do

  uptime >>$LOG

  dom3 -T --makemap $MAPNAME_0$x --mapsize 2400 3200 --mapprov $SZ \

    --mapaa \

     $OTHR \

    --mapgcol  $GCOL1   \

    --mapscol  $SCOL1   \

    --mapbcol  36 119 202 29 \

    --mapsbcol 111 194 21 104

---

After MUCH experimentation I find the size (2400x3200) comfortable on the screen. Not too detailed as to make it a huge file, but not too blurry by trying to put too much into a small file. Of course, I am trying to fit 1500 provinces into it so for smaller maps that is highly flexible.

With even more experimentation I find the colors pleasing (to me at least). I feel that the terrains are visible in play mode, but closer in color so that they tend to blend more when going from one terrain to another. The border lines have been tweaked the same way. Visible in the game but not so obvious in large view, a light semi-transparent green for land and a light semi-transparent blue for water. (those border colors mess up the auto-finder in Dom3 map maker so for people trying to generate just a base for a map to do extensive work on, red borders are recommended)

The amount of desert, swamp, and water in the defaults is generally fine (10, 10, 30). But I add --mountpart 50 --farmpart 20 --mapnoise 110. I like more slightly more farms (the default is 15). And much more mapnoise than the default of 15 (instead of just green, the amount of scattered greens. Instead of just brown, lots of little dots of brown. Texture)

The mountain 50 gives me an almost maze-like map with many chokepoints and fewer startpoints. Not much fun for MP play since it generates complaints of unfair positioning (I only use game defaults when generating the random maps on the blitz server) but for solo play I like lots of chokes and more spreadout starts.

But Im really picky about the general look of the map. How many continents, how many oceans, neither so small that someone might be trapped but not so large as to let someone get too big too fast. So I tend to run batches of maps then pick one. The script is easy to modify to change how many, what size, colors, parameters. I make them on my web server and the srpt automatically creates a webdirectory to put the files and the jpg it makes of each map for easy online viewing. For re-occuring requests I also generate a webpage.

Usually I generate 30 at time in batches of 10. That allows for a slight variation such as 10 with standard dom3 colors, 10 with mine, and 10 maps with another generator such as DomMap or Harbringers wraparounds. Ive often been asked to generate a batch for someone to shop when they are starting a new game. It used to take 3 hours to run a batch of big maps but I havent tried it yet since I got the main server back with 3x the memory it had.

[IndyPendant]

Wow, Gandalf! That's a lot of small wraps! And now I finally have some time to look at them.

Thank you very much for this. *runs off to play with the purdy maps*

[Bwaha]

World of Warhammer is the best map I've seen to date. It is really pretty and really cool. So finely crafted it defies a proper description... It has fixed starting locations so the races should be specified before a start. Type DnD in the search mode and you will find it.