As some already know, for the last three days or so, I have been trying to draw my very first map.

My main goal was to make an alternative Europe Map, especially for 3v3 gameplay, but encouraging different strategies than the famous Troll's Eur. For this i have empowered southeast region by dividing france and spain to smaller boni, introduced many standalone +1 boni and harbors, which make long distance movement a tad faster. Later, during testing I will try to determine best bonus shapes and values, and i will most likely place some barriers where the high mountains are (for example carpatia and alps) to create safe spots, and tight passage hotspots.

Secondary goal was to make a map that would simply look good. btw, In my opinion most Warlight's mapmakers seem to underestimate the importance of how the map looks. After all even the best strategic maps may discourage players if they look badly, and not less important - with better looking maps, mapmakers directly make Warlight a better looking game, since it's looks are dominated by maps, not interface. (in other words - even with the perfectly designed beautiful interface, warlight would not look great without good looking maps)

I know it might have ended up badly, but i decided to make this thread after i finish the core of the map, not before I even start - like most people do.. It was partly because I didn't know if I would succeed and not leave it after a few takes, and partly because I just don't like showing people scratches and shapeless stuff. I wanted the map to be properly sketched before asking you for any opinions. I was worried since i have never before used inkscape, but the program turned out to be indeed very intuitive and simple.

At the moment the map has most of the teritorries, I still am not sure how much of Russia will be included - I will either go with it for full coverage, or 1/2 teritorry-wide crossborder area and some eye candy on the rest of the continent. Most of the boni shapes are (pre)defined, but the bonus values are practically random, and will be thought of later on.

Once again - I remind - this is just something i believe to be a "proper sketch" - which means - territory shapes, divisions, names, bonusses and bonus values, as well as fancy graphics and not even mentioning bug fixes (especially those annoying artifacts on territory borders when zooming) are subject to change and/or are not yet included.

Here's the map:
http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=19346

Thx in advance for any suggestions and opinions.

North Ireland should be Northern Ireland.

Looks pretty!

Maybe make those 1 bonuses stick out more like on the Imperum Romanum map?

I'll be happy to test it. Looks very interesting, the idea with Capital's worth 1 is interesting, but may backfire a bit. Possibly introduce a distribution that'd be full distribution - capitals.

I think could became a great map! :)
I like idea of capital's worth 1.

You named the territory Istanbul as stambul and Sardinia should be part of the italy bonus.

Yugoslavia bonus is completely wrong, Albania was never part of Yugoslavia, maybe you could rename it to South-eastern Europe or Balkans.

And what's with the Kingdom of Sardinia? :D Last time I checked those territories were part of Italy and this map looks like modern Europe.

x: corrected.

frank: thx, I corrected them a little, and will be tweaking bonus colors etc later on during testing. I think not only +1s, but all bonus are not as visible as i would like them to..

gnu: not exactly just capitals, but yes, that was meant to be one of the key features.

sze: I will be more than happy to invite you to testing games, and yes, that is exactly what i intended to make as a main distribution.

Ironheart: thx, corrected. The reason of this misspell was translation (Istambul in polish is spelled without "i")

VozdKaradjordje: thx, Albania of course was not meant to be a part of yugoslavia bonus. It's corrected and now it is standalone +1 as I intended in the first place - I've no idea why did i include it in that bonus. Actually it made no sense at all and it was a misclick ;) And to be honest the whole mess in the balkans is because i changed from other concept regarding bonus divisions in that area, and i forgot to rename them properly - for the time being i renamed "Dalmatia" to "Western Yugoslavia", and yugo to "Eastern Yugoslavia" (of course excluding Albania)

Vozd2: Kingdom of Sardinia and Papal states, are there, because it's not meant to be modern europe as-is. It's meant to be fun to play mostly, and i needed that small bonus there - btw there was such country in the 19th century, so i felt it was a good name for the bonus. FYI though not every terr of KoS bonus is currently part of Italy - corsica is a French territory.

I have a problem with city boni colors - i have no idea why some of them are displayed in their color (like paris, madrid), and some are displayed in color of their superbonus (like Praha, Lisbon, Odessa or Crimea).. does somebody know how to fix this?

I guess the colour of the 1s has to do with which bonus you created last: the 1 or the superbonus. (Just a guess, i'm not a mapmaker :( )

it's based on the last bonus value you changed. click on lisbon. take it out of the superbonus. then make it part of portugal again. now the primary bonus will be lisbon and the secondary bonus will be portugal.

each time you change bonus values it will change the cities' colors too. it's an annoying part of the program.

Looks really nice!

some border over-lapping around Venice that could be fixed.

Maybe give a different colour to the smaller bonuses within a country, such as in France. As it is now, it's hard to see which territories are part of a bonus.

Can i be invited to text game and gui the colour change is not permanent for example if you do nothing and open it again the city colour will not be the same as the bonus colour.

Gui - thx. It helped.

Chaos - I will be addressing those issues later today (venice is definitely not the only one but thanks for the tip). As for smaller boni within countries - i will make them perfectly readable, and i have an idea how to do that, but i want to do it after testing, because since it's probably not the final shape of the boni, otherwise i would make the same corrections and revert from them a thousand times before the public version is made..

Ironheart - 1) As for now, the change of color seems pretty permanent, and works on different computers i checked, so gui's advice seems legit to me. Can you describe better when does the color randomly change? maybe you forgot to click "save"? 2) If by text you meant test then sure, i can invite you, but i think it'll be in about a week..

Any progress with the map?

Bonus values I'll probably use for games I make on the map:
- Benelux 2
- Northern Ireland 0
- Norway (it's spelled Norwey on the map) 3 or 4
- Sweden 4 or 5
- Finland 3 or 4
- Austria 3
- Italy 3
- Eastern Yugoslavia 3
- Turkey 2 or 3 (it's touching 3 1 bonuses)
- Ukraine 4 (it's touching 4 1 bonuses)
- Poland 3 (touching 2 1 bonuses)
- Germany 3 or 4 (it has 2 1 bonuses)

You called a zone Denmark inside the bonus Denmark. I suggest calling it Funen instead. Or South Jutland.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funen

The map looks very good graphically.

This is one of the prettiest maps I've ever seen.
Here are a few name corrections though:

• The territory of Denmark within Denmark should be cald Syddanmark, as that is the name of the actual region of Denmark that exactly covers that area.
  
• Zeeland in Denmark should be called Sjælland for the same reason. (You make an æ by pressing ALT+Z)
  
• Baden-Wuettemberg in Germany should be called Baden-Württemberg.
  
• Istambul is Istanbul, with an N.
  
• Epire in Greece should be called Epirus.
  
• Peloponez in Greece should be called Peloponnese.
  
• Eire should probably be called Republic of Ireland, unless you want every region in the map be called in the native tongue, which would require lots and lots of name changes.
  
• The Papal States also covered Rome.
  
• Walachia in Romania should be called Wallachia.
  
• Rhone Alps in France should be called Rhône-Alps.
  

That were all the incorrect names I could find so far. I must say this is very good for a first map, and I'm looking forward to what you'll make next.

Will test this if you want.

This map is very good aesthetically speaking (haven't looked at bonuses and so on) - I would never have guess it was a first attempt at a map.