No Rough Maps...

[76mm]

I've been trying to play some historical, but kind of unbalanced MP battles, like Macedonian vs Illyrians and Thracians and Slaves vs Romans. I figured these would be good match-ups if the maps were something other than an open field, so I've tried selecting hilly, wooded, and mountain maps, but out of ten such maps, probably only one has had something like rough terrain--all of the others were basically huge open fields with some hills, woods, or mountains scattered here and there on the edges of the map--not really enough to affect the battle in any meaningful ways.

Is there any way to "dial up" the maps' roughness, or have these last ten maps or so been unusually flat and boring?

[rbodleyscott]

They sound as if they are more open than average. Hilly is probably best for rough terrain.

[76mm]

Yeah, I've had a couple of really interesting hilly maps in the past, but the last three or four have had a couple of little bumps, a few patches of rough terrain, and lots of wide, flat, open fields.

No way to make things "hillier" in the text files I guess?

[rbodleyscott]

Yeah, I've had a couple of really interesting hilly maps in the past, but the last three or four have had a couple of little bumps, a few patches of rough terrain, and lots of wide, flat, open fields.

No way to make things "hillier" in the text files I guess?

Not in text files, only by modding scripts.

[76mm]

Not in text files, only by modding scripts.

OK, maybe someday I'll figure that stuff out.

[the_iron_duke]

From what I've seen, there doesn't seem to be that much predictability in the maps in terms of the amount of rough terrain.

I've seen open Agricultural maps, and another that had lots of rough terrain and a difficult hill right in the middle. Also, I've seen hilly Mountain terrain and another Mountain map that, apart from impassable mountains at the periphery, was completely flat.

This is different than FoG I, which sorted maps from Very Open to Very Crowded terrain. It's probably a good thing that the maps are more varied now as one cannot really say that one type of map will favour one type of army or another, and it depends very much on the individual map that is conjured up.

[76mm]

It's probably a good thing that the maps are more varied now as one cannot really say that one type of map will favour one type of army or another, and it depends very much on the individual map that is conjured up.

Yeah but generally I don't want so much to depend on which individual map is conjured up...if I request a hilly map, I want a map with hills! If I request a wooded map, I want a map with forests! If I want an open map, I will choose one!

In my experience certain types of battles are completely lopsided with flat open maps but are much more interesting with hills/woods. I recently played a Macedonian vs Illyrian battle, requesting a hilly map. Instead the map was almost totally flat and the battle was over in about four turns--the Illyrian units basically disintegrated on contact with the Macedonian phalanx.

[rbodleyscott]

The maps are designed to produce maps that are appropriate for an agricultural province, a hilly province, a mountainous province etc. That does not necessarily mean that the location of a battlefield won't be in one of the open valleys in the province. (And this is historically likely anyway- few battles were fought in dense terrain). The maps are generated randomly, with the terrain mix weighted towards the specified type, they are not forced to mostly consist of the specified type.

[Kaede11]

Maybe in the future you could create a "advanced map creation" thing with a slider to set up the amount of "specific map type characteristics" to low / standar / high?

[Bombax]

Maybe in the future you could create a "advanced map creation" thing with a slider to set up the amount of "specific map type characteristics" to low / standar / high?

That's a very good idea. I think I've seen this in much older games. Suspect it's down to how easy it will be to implement with this particular game engine?