At the turn of the sixteenth century, the Aztec Empire had conquered all it could conquer.
Those states that remained - the scrambled states of Tlaxcala, mountainous Teotitlan, Yopitzinco of the Tlapanecs, the Mixtec state of Tututepec, Metztitlan, the Zapotec kingdom of Tehuantepec, and others - managed to weather the Aztec onslaught.
Failing direct conquest, the Aztecs surrounded their remaining enemies, besieging them nation-wide. They harried these survivors with ritualistic mock battles - not to defeat, but to harvest captives for sacrifice and prestige.
Much more bloody than their name suggests, these were the Flower Wars.


For other areas of Mesoamerica these were also exciting times. In the West, the Purépecha were busy building the first true nation state of the region in Tzintzuntzan. In the East, the Itza were building a trade empire on the burned remains of the League of Mayapan. And far beyond the ocean, the Spanish threat was growing rapidly.
Whatever happens next is up to you.

Hello all!
I'm almost done with my new Flower Wars map, so I would like to invite everyone to take a look and give me all the feedback you can give: https://www.warzone.com/SinglePlayer?PreviewMap=74823
I'm especially interested in balance issues. I'm not that much of a strategic player myself, so I really need help making the map suitable for strategic games. Do some bonuses need more territories, or less? Different values? More bottlenecks by rivers and mountains, or more river/mountain passes? All help is appreciated.

Another question: I've left the bottom left corner of the map mostly empty. I could fill it in, but those would all be 1-territory 1-income bonuses. Would that add anything to the map, or just be useless clutter?


Thanks in advance.

Edited 9/17/2018 08:31:49

I recommend lower bonus values except for the important areas, they always play more strategically. Bonus values should be lower than the number of territories in the bonus.

Yeah, I know n-1 (so the bigger the bonus, the more income per territory approaches 1) is normally the baseline for bonus values, but that gets problematic with bonuses of only one territory, so I opted for n*2-1 (the bigger the bonus, the more income per territory approaches 2).
I assumed that wouldn't make a difference, as long as it is consistent. What is it that makes "less income than territories" so much better?
(Not disagreeing with you, just interested)

Some more strategic players could answer this better than me, but lower b/t ratios present the strategic question of putting armies towards expansion or sending the into battle. High b/t ratios lead to an expansion fest where there really is not much penalty in expanding instead of fighting.

That makes sense.
In-game, this could be solved by higher neutrals, but since that can't be done at map level, I guess you are right.
Lower bonus values it is!

(I'll have to think about what to do with the 1 territory-bonuses: group them together or give them a bonus value of 0. Most of them are near the corners, which are stronger anyway, so a value of 0 could be the right choice.)