Slitherine

A couple more. The terrain for the River Ulcea confrontation between the Ostrogoths and Gepids in 488AD. This would be "Very Crowded" terrain, I think . . .



And this is from the Battle of Soissons in 486AD, the last stand of Syagrius and his Gallo-Roman enclave against the Franks. This would probably be "Mixed Terrain" . . .



Do people like this style of map?

They look good to me. A lot more natural than some in the game.

The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

deeter wrote:The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

From everything that has been said I would advocate for Deeter's idea. It is a realistic modification to the system and something I wanted long ago. The invader chooses the map and deploys second. The defender chooses side and deploys first. This simple fact would reduce map selection with one side heavily advantaged.

Yes, I like deeter's idea too.

deeter wrote:The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

Great improvement indeed.

deeter wrote:The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

Very sensible! It gets my vote.

deeter wrote:The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

Would the player who chose the map also get to move first? Or would the player choosing their side do so?

Chris

batesmotel wrote:

deeter wrote:The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

Would the player who chose the map also get to move first? Or would the player choosing their side do so?

Chris

I think the player with initiative would move first. The defender chooses their side then deploys knowing that the player with initiative will move first. So they will take those factors into consideration with deployment while equally the winner of initiative will want to pick a map that doesn't favour either side but rather has terrain in the centre (if any) that they may be able to reach first.

pantherboy wrote:

batesmotel wrote:

deeter wrote:The easiest reform would be to create a set of sane maps of which several would be presented to the winner of initiative for selection. He would then send this to his opponent who would then choose which side of the map to deploy on. He would send this back to player one and play would commence as usual.

Deeter

Would the player who chose the map also get to move first? Or would the player choosing their side do so?

Chris

I think the player with initiative would move first. The defender chooses their side then deploys knowing that the player with initiative will move first. So they will take those factors into consideration with deployment while equally the winner of initiative will want to pick a map that doesn't favour either side but rather has terrain in the centre (if any) that they may be able to reach first.

Thinking about it some more, if this is the case I think it may well give the player that wins the initiative more advantage than winning the initiative now does. It does avoid the problem of maps where the terrain on one base edge is much better than the other but this gives the player winning the intiative both the ability to choose what sort of overall terrain they want to fight in (out of the choices offered) as well as the chance to then grab more space and terrain over their opponent. For an army that will mostly just sit and defend, then the ability to choose their side and move second may be fine but otherwise this new scheme sounds like it favors the winner of the intiative too much. I think it would deifnitely work better to still require the player winning the initiative to deploy first and move second. Letting the defender choose which side they wish to defend while still deploying second and moving first would take a bit of the advantage away from winning initiative without majorly changing things. This would also be closer to the TT deployment rules in spirit. (The beta version of FoG does not show you the location of your opponents camp when deploying second so with that change there really is no advantage to deploying first or second compared to the minor advantage of knowing where your opponent's camp is in the current version.)

Chris

I agree with Chris. Also, having initiative dosen't automatically make one side the attacker and the other the defender.

I should add that decent maps are a requirement. By this I mean a lot less fantastic and a lot less busy even in very closed terrain. How many games have you played where a one-hex terrain feature proved critical?

Deeter

deeter wrote:I agree with Chris. Also, having initiative dosen't automatically make one side the attacker and the other the defender.

I should add that decent maps are a requirement. By this I mean a lot less fantastic and a lot less busy even in very closed terrain. How many games have you played where a one-hex terrain feature proved critical?

Deeter

I think realistics hills and countour lines are important. Many maps have these wierd "fingers" of hills and elevations, crests etc jutting all over a map which makes many battles a race to control such points , ofetn at right angles to ones original deployment . Certainly encourges mastery of game mechanics but doesnt lend well to realistic deployment etc

deeter wrote:I should add that decent maps are a requirement. By this I mean a lot less fantastic and a lot less busy even in very closed terrain. How many games have you played where a one-hex terrain feature proved critical?

deeter, how do you feel about my two maps at the top of this page? The top one would probably be "Very crowded", the second one probably "Mixed". Are they too busy, as you put it? Or are they OK?

TheGrayMouser wrote:I think realistics hills and countour lines are important. Many maps have these wierd "fingers" of hills and elevations, crests etc jutting all over a map which makes many battles a race to control such points , ofetn at right angles to ones original deployment . Certainly encourges mastery of game mechanics but doesnt lend well to realistic deployment etc

Do you mean maps like this, TGM?

I think those are a geat improvement, Pete. Maybe I too slavish in following the TT rules, but with everyting landing on the table there might be ten terrain features total and some might double up -- i.e. a forest on top of a hill. So the majority of PC maps look nothing like a TT battlefield. Also, terrain selection is restricted to the types available to the player with initiative -- i.e. Mongels would select from the steppe terrain list, so mostly open and gentle.

Early on, I argued for Hexwar to give us the same system with a blank map and choice of terrain features that could placed as camps are. Kieth thought the terrrain placement procedure would take too long, so we got the map selection routine we have no. He is probably right, but the map we got were mostly insane.

Deeter

deeter wrote:I think those are a geat improvement, Pete. Maybe I too slavish in following the TT rules, but with everyting landing on the table there might be ten terrain features total and some might double up -- i.e. a forest on top of a hill. So the majority of PC maps look nothing like a TT battlefield. Also, terrain selection is restricted to the types available to the player with initiative -- i.e. Mongels would select from the steppe terrain list, so mostly open and gentle.

Early on, I argued for Hexwar to give us the same system with a blank map and choice of terrain features that could placed as camps are. Kieth thought the terrrain placement procedure would take too long, so we got the map selection routine we have no. He is probably right, but the map we got were mostly insane.

Deeter

Yes, I think Keith was probably right too. Players just like to get on with the game most of the time so 3 or 4 turns each placing terrain before a battle might become a real chore. I know it is very sad and all that ( ) but if you pick yourself a DAG horse army (e.g. Huns) and give yourself an "inspired" leader so you get 4 initiative points; and then using the AI, challenge the Swiss or somebody so you get the choice of maps most of the time, you will quickly realise how dreadful very many of the maps are. Just look at that one just above that I have posted in reply to TGM's point - what on earth is the point of a map like that? And there are dozens and dozens just as daft and many of them repeatedly come up as one of the four when you win the initiative. It must be the case that someone sat down and knocked out a load of maps one afternoon without giving it much thought at all - and we have been stuck with them ever since. Probably the best thing that could happen now is for all the old ones to be chucked out when the new version comes out and we start afresh - and maybe a small group of us could submit extra maps when requested by Slitherine/NewRoSoft.

stockwellpete wrote:

TheGrayMouser wrote:I think realistics hills and countour lines are important. Many maps have these wierd "fingers" of hills and elevations, crests etc jutting all over a map which makes many battles a race to control such points , ofetn at right angles to ones original deployment . Certainly encourges mastery of game mechanics but doesnt lend well to realistic deployment etc

Do you mean maps like this, TGM?

I'd have to see the rest of it but no , that one isnt bad at all. (although you could argie, why di dth earmies deploy so the hils aare at an ngle to the deploment ha ha) When I mean "fingers" , there are literally a lot of dag maps that have 1 hex elevation "hills" that are like 3-4 (or more) hexes long . Not only are they unnatural looking they cause odd game play. I think you know what I mean , If I can Ill get some actual dag maps posted

TheGrayMouser wrote: I'd have to see the rest of it but no , that one isnt bad at all. (although you could argie, why di dth earmies deploy so the hils aare at an ngle to the deploment ha ha) When I mean "fingers" , there are literally a lot of dag maps that have 1 hex elevation "hills" that are like 3-4 (or more) hexes long . Not only are they unnatural looking they cause odd game play. I think you know what I mean , If I can Ill get some actual dag maps posted

That is virtually the whole map, TGM, there are no other terrain features on it. Ah, you mean the "molehills", don't you?

Here is a real "molehill" shocker! I wonder who is responsible for it?

stockwellpete wrote:Here is a real "molehill" shocker! I wonder who is responsible for it?

Now I would make an exception if my opponent chose that map for a battle, but in general, those are the "fingers" I refer too