As the title said, I'm a first time map maker. I'm hoping to do more maps in the future, so I'm looking to try to get started the right way. I've finished my first map, the islands of Malta. It's pretty small (70 territories), but then so is Malta in real life. I've tested the map fairly well by myself and it isn't missing any connections and seems to have a reasonable balance for a small map.

So my question is this: What's the next step? Do I just mark the map as released, or is there an accepted way to beta test the map?

Edit: I probably should have included a link to the map, so here it is:

http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer?PreviewMap=33909

Edited 6/18/2014 23:49:32

The next step is making the map playable.
You put enough effort in it to make it look nice, now it has to be a map that will not be send right to the maps graveyard.
That means you have to split the bonuses in to areas of 3 to 5 maximum territories.
Each bonus needs a certain bonus value to territory number. For example 2 armies for a bonus of 3 territories, 3 armies for 4, etc. Check out Europe map as a reference.

Also the island in the north needs at least one other connection to the main island.

Yeah, that sound like good advice. You could even keep the bonuses that you have and use them as "superbonuses." Just add some smaller ones. Example: Create 3-5 small bonuses in the Gozo and Comino superbonus. The map looks very nice by the way.

What's next?

World Domination, of course.

^duh

You also should have lines connecting the territories that connect over the oceans.

Thank you all for the feedback. I've added some smaller bonuses and made the water links more obvious. I didn't add any new water links for two reasons. 1) I like the occasional chokepoint and 2) those are the only actual ferry lines in Malta. (It's really annoying since almost everybody lives in Valetta or the mid part of Malta island. Getting to the tip of Malta to take the ferry is a pain.)

With that said, I'm willing to change it if people think it will impact gameplay too much. I'm trying to learn the balance between what I like and what's a good map.

Thanks again to everyone who looked at the map and commented. I'll probably mark it for public release sometime tomorrow. Do I need to create distribution modes or anything like that?

Why is the "t" in "Northern District" ame bonus yellow? xD

And to answer you, no, it's not necesary to create distribution modes nor anythig like that, but it should be interesting to do.

The map is much improved now, can't wait to play it!

Your mega/super bonuses (the ones in upper right) are above your other bonuses. You need to unassign the territories to those, then re-assign them. This way the smaller bonuses will color the territories.

And I think you are required to at least have cities and warlords distributions. Not any others.

Chris, all maps have those by standard, you don't have to create them yourself.

Right, but you need to assign territories to those distributions.

Thanks again to everyone for the comments and suggestions. I've submitted the map for release. If you see anything wrong with it, I'd appreciate posting it here instead of rating it down.

Now to figure out what to do next.

So I apparently suck at finding missing territory links. Anybody interested in a test game to see where I've got bugs? I'm open to general gameplay suggestions as well. (I lowered some of the superbonus values because it was a little too easy to get Gozo island and then swarm into Malta for the quick win.)

I checked and I saw no missing connections, but what you should do is to "combine" that tiny island near Comino and St. Paul's bay, and make them part of this territory. I use Inkskape in Spanish so I'm not sure how it would say in other languages, but you have to select both territories (you can click in one of them, and then pressing shift, press in the other one), you press "paths" and then "combine", or something like that.

Luka and Qormi have missing connections.