Madagascar [Quenched]

[t-o-m]

i never understand much about gameplay, so i printed it off and played 3 games, two of them 1v1.


The 1v1 is quite drop orientated, theres a lot of squabling around the north and people using the orange cont as a passage-way.
i would have thought that people would try to holf orange but no, just used to break the top cont. i did try for it at the end, but with the middle blue continent, it felt hard to hold for some reason. as for the blue cont, that was never held, noone tried, just a passageway or somewhere to get across the map - but i think we all knew that anyway.
as you can probably see after getting the top continent you move into sofia - that covers both of your boarders, then gradually try to take green. if you keep getting broken at the top - obviously move into yellow - but you're always drawn to denfend the top continent and move into green.
the yellow continent was basically just left alone-used to break pink and things.
pink was quite good, it felt a fair bonus. quite easy to defend because yellow wasnt used much.

the 1v1v1 was nearly the same, it was fairer drop as you can imagine.
i think the immpassables in the north blocking easy access from top cont into orange felt good, and stopped a lot on the advantage.
but there is a small bottlenecking problem in the north - sofia bring so large and blocking it off, and the mountains make it feel enclosed. they force you to expand out but with constant breaks over a measly +1 makes it not feel worth it.

so need to think about moutain's postions

[max is gr8]

These bonuses don't make sense, 2 for holding the orange with 2 borders, 1 for holding purple with 2 borders. The extra territory doesn't warrant that much of a bonus.

Why don't you enlarge one of the smaller islands and make that a territory, or add a few ports to link and to be territories as a part of the continent. Are there any roads in Madagascar you could add those as a bypass instead of mountains.

[t-o-m]

These bonuses don't make sense, 2 for holding the orange with 2 borders, 1 for holding purple with 2 borders. The extra territory doesn't warrant that much of a bonus.

so you think that 2 terits with 2 boarders is worth 2?

or 3 terits with 2 boarders with 4 ajacent terits and 3 ajacent continents is worth 1 also?

[t-o-m]

have to bump myself i bet oak's busy...need to know about gp!

[AndyDufresne]

Hm, making Orange a bonus of 2 may be uneeded, considering it has a unique strategic value (the one way pass...which I dislike but that's for another discussion!) I'd be in favor of making it a 1. One then could make the argument that blue could be reduced to 2 (which may or may not be smart).


--Andy

[ZeakCytho]

Personally, I think you should put the mountains between A-M and Betsiboka back, then get rid of the 1 way attack. Make the orange continent +1. You might want to consider bumping the yellow one from +4 to +5, since you need to defend every single territory on it. I've never really liked 1-way attacks.

You also might want to consider extending the southern mountain range to make the border between Betafo and Atsinanana impassable.

[t-o-m]

Personally, I think you should put the mountains between A-M and Betsiboka back, then get rid of the 1 way attack. Make the orange continent +1. You might want to consider bumping the yellow one from +4 to +5, since you need to defend every single territory on it. I've never really liked 1-way attacks.

You also might want to consider extending the southern mountain range to make the border between Betafo and Atsinanana impassable.

i think ide rather make yellow easier than up the bonus, the 1-way-attack is there to help the bottle neck problem,
(i also dont really like 1-way attacks)

Hm, making Orange a bonus of 2 may be uneeded, considering it has a unique strategic value (the one way pass...which I dislike but that's for another discussion!)

yes, i dont really like that attack, maybe if i remove the mountains from orange to the pink cont then make orange +1?

One then could make the argument that blue could be reduced to 2 (which may or may not be smart).

why? (i think im missing something)

[Kemmler]

yellow should be 6... anyway you need to bump up the continent bonuses, not down, considering you need to hold every terit to make it worthwhile

[t-o-m]

yellow should be 6... anyway you need to bump up the continent bonuses, not down, considering you need to hold every terit to make it worthwhile

no - i dont think its worth that much.

its a small map so +6 would be way too much, and someone holding that would just rampage to map

[hulmey]

yellow should be 6... anyway you need to bump up the continent bonuses, not down, considering you need to hold every terit to make it worthwhile

no - i dont think its worth that much.

its a small map so +6 would be way too much, and someone holding that would just rampage to map

but would they be able to hold. it has over 5 borders!

[t-o-m]

yellow should be 6... anyway you need to bump up the continent bonuses, not down, considering you need to hold every terit to make it worthwhile

no - i dont think its worth that much.

its a small map so +6 would be way too much, and someone holding that would just rampage to map

but would they be able to hold. it has over 5 borders!

there are quite a few smaller bonuses on the map, i dont think that someone would try to hold yellow without holding another cont aswel would they?

[t-o-m]

i dont know what else i can do until oak comes 'round or more comments about gameplay?

i'm stumped.

[jako]

its way better than the last time i checked. looks like u finally got those mountains and trees looking good.

im not very good with gameplay so not much help there.

keep up the good work.

[oaktown]

i dont know what else i can do until oak comes 'round or more comments about gameplay?

I'm glad everybody has such confidence in me, but I'm as stumped with this one as everybody else. Each change seems to solve one problem and open up another.

What's good about the latest version:
• you can't go from the 2 territory, easy +1 region to another easy region.
• green has another border, making it less attractive to start at the north and work down.
• stripping away some of the central mountains makes the map more open.

What I'm hearing is bad about the latest version:
• you can move from the 3 territory, easy +2 region to an even easier region.
• +2 may be too high for the orange region.
• you can still hold the two northernmost regions with just two borders and net a +4.
• any southern start sucks.

I'm starting to think that the solution may just be to scrap the idea of keeping the bonuses in line with each other and give an overly-generous bonus to anybody who starts in the south. You should provide some real incentive to starting down there... let's see...

For starters, I think I'd lose the one-way mountain attack. I think you want to keep the little regions apart. Other than that I think the impassables are in pretty good spots right now - no bottlenecks, and every route north-south can be by-passed by another route.

Purple + green = 7 territories with 2 borders. Combined they should give the same bonus as pink alone, which has five territories with three borders but doesn't have the advantage of giving a quick +1 while you're working on it. So either make pink a +4 or dial green down to +2. This sets players up for a good northern start and a good southern start. If I started with two or three pink territories, I would be thrilled to expand down their into a +4 while my opponent slogged through five green territories for the same bonus.

Orange is obviously the third good starting location. If you're going to bump pink up to +4 I think you can leave it at +2, but if you'd rather go the other way and drop green to +2 I think you knock orange down to +1. Because orange/blue or orange/yellow will both be damned hard to hold, and combined should be worth one more than either pink alone or purple/green.

[t-o-m]

ill address this tomorrow and probably an update

[t-o-m]

no update for the next few days, exams and that.
i will update this asap but busyness has taken over me
so just letting you know that this isnt forgotten

[Blitzaholic]

how many total areas of land is on this map? was it 22? seems a little small, but I like the idea if it was a little bigger.


you want to challenge players to have at least 2 good options for starting points, if not, all will want to start from the best point on your map every time, this will lose favor over time. options, or 2 or more good starting points will be more favorable and players more than likely would be it longer and would not fizzle out as much.

[cairnswk]

T-o-m....i know there is gameplay discussion happening at present.....
but would you indulge me and offer up a version shortly where you've changed the colour of the legend from yellow to something else.
I'd like to see if you can find another colour for the legend...yellow isn't doing anything for me.

[t-o-m]

T-o-m....i know there is gameplay discussion happening at present.....
but would you indulge me and offer up a version shortly where you've changed the colour of the legend from yellow to something else.
I'd like to see if you can find another colour for the legend...yellow isn't doing anything for me.

sure

just a little bust at the moment, i have some exams sadly and ive failed one already (missed out 8 pages out of 10) so i need to focus on my rest for now
so i will update it soon, when i have time

[cairnswk]

T-o-m....i know there is gameplay discussion happening at present.....
but would you indulge me and offer up a version shortly where you've changed the colour of the legend from yellow to something else.
I'd like to see if you can find another colour for the legend...yellow isn't doing anything for me.

sure

just a little bust at the moment, i have some exams sadly and ive failed one already (missed out 8 pages out of 10) so i need to focus on my rest for now
so i will update it soon, when i have time

T-0-m...exams come first....sorry to sound like a parent, but please do put your exams first.
Look forward to hearing from you that you've achieved better results. Maps can wait. Good luck.!

[t-o-m]

T-0-m...exams come first....sorry to sound like a parent, but please do put your exams first.
Look forward to hearing from you that you've achieved better results. Maps can wait. Good luck.!

lol dont worry - exams will be fine, the last ones are soon, but still got to finished off coursework.
when i get a break i will update this - one thing that has slowed this down is that i had PS CS3 trial on my laptop, and CS2 on my main computer, the trial ran out on my laptop which was where i did my very quick and easy updates.
since my main computer is slow at loading PS i dont have the time.

so things will be better soon, also - other problems including having my phone stolen whilst in the exam havnt helped things as ive been on the phone to the police a lot.
(but thats a different story)

anyway, thanks for your concern cairns

[Sychamore]

so when do we get to play??

[Satisfaction007]

its alright nothing spectacular it will be one of those not so oftenly played maps

[t-o-m]

its alright nothing spectacular it will be one of those not so oftenly played maps

thanks mr satisfaction,

im just reading oak's comments while i update this - finally i have the PSD open and begining work!

[gimil]

0The quicker you update the quicker I can critisize