New Map: Shogun (MFG)

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SunTzu
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New Map: Shogun (MFG)

Post by SunTzu » Mon Nov 27, 2006 11:40 pm

Shogun: The Conquest of Japan

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7 Continents, 6 Cities, 42 Countries

Here's your chance to become a powerful daimyo in fuedal Japan. Do you have what it takes to conquer all enemies and become Shogun?
Last edited by SunTzu on Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Drifter
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Post by Drifter » Tue Nov 28, 2006 12:42 am

You never cease to impress.

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Kartofile
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Post by Kartofile » Tue Nov 28, 2006 1:02 am

Wow, this map looks great. It reminds me of a map I once did... except it's better. :wink:

I do have one question for you but it's kind of technical so I'll send it in a PM.

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Post by Sir Holo » Tue Nov 28, 2006 4:56 pm

Kartofile wrote:I do have one question for you but it's kind of technical so I'll send it in a PM.
Share it here, please, so we all can learn the finer points.

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SunTzu
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Post by SunTzu » Thu Nov 30, 2006 12:04 pm

Sir Holo wrote:
Kartofile wrote:I do have one question for you but it's kind of technical so I'll send it in a PM.
Share it here, please, so we all can learn the finer points.
He just pointed out to me that I had used incorrect Japanese characters in the logo.

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Post by Mike » Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:23 pm

Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that Sun's avatar is always of the map he is currently working on. Great map btw Sun!

BTW, this view of Japan reminds me of Shogun, Total War!.... Was it an inspiration?

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SunTzu
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Post by SunTzu » Thu Nov 30, 2006 1:39 pm

Mike wrote:Is it just me, or does anyone else notice that Sun's avatar is always of the map he is currently working on.
You noticed, eh?

The avatar I have now will be my default avatar from now on whenever I'm not working on a map.

Unfortunately, I'm not going to have much time to put towards making maps for awhile, so The Dark Ages has been put on hold for the time-being. :?

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SunTzu
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Post by SunTzu » Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:02 pm

MFG reviews requested, but not required since this map was released before the formation of MFG.

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octobclrnts
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Post by octobclrnts » Mon Feb 12, 2007 4:31 pm

One of those great SunTzu maps. I think it was very well balanced. I was able to win from the east, the west and the center (which made me happy). I had to remember to watch out for those pesky ship crossings (which I forgot to and that pesky red bot...but I showed him :) ) The graphics have that simple elegance (the white cont lines, the black speckled coastal edges) that makes it look clean. Overall, I'd say it's a good map. The only criticism I had was that when it first loaded, it looked like the right side was off of the screen because it is such a straight cut line. But that might just bother me. Overall, great job.

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Post by blackj3sus » Mon Feb 12, 2007 6:21 pm

great map
what i'd change:
nothing :D

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Re: New Map: Shogun (MFG)

Post by Kartofile » Mon Feb 12, 2007 9:57 pm

SunTzu wrote:Do you have what it takes to conquer all enemies and become Shogun?
Only if the other daimyos are all moronic robots. ;)

Seriously though, I think that this map, like all your maps, is great. It's clear, it looks nice, it plays well, etc. There are a few country names that appear to have a zero instead of the letter "o" (Shim0sa, T0tomi, ...) but aside from fixing those (and the Japanese characters) it's hard to suggest anything.

Of course, there are a few spots where a psychotic Japanese geographer or historian, hellbent on total accuracy, might quibble about a minor detail, but that's true of every map in Luxdom, and the rest of us don't care. It's an excellent map. :D

Anything beyond that is really personal preference...

Personally I prefer maps with more "eye candy," more stuff to look at while you're playing. I'm actually reluctant to say so, because I don't want to influence the clean, elegant style you've established, a style that you're really good at and that many players appreciate. But personally I like maps that have more mountains, trees, buildings, photos, artwork, etc. More stuff to immerse me in the time and place and story. Just my preference.

This map does bring up two issues that aren't criticisms of the map, but rather questions that I've been thinking about generally:
  • One: how can we deal with the issues that arise when the countries in a map are spread out in a line? Players who establish themselves at either end of the line have a 2:1 advantage, in that they fight on only one front, as opposed to all the others who fight on two. A couple of my maps have faced this problem and I've tried dealing with it in several ways similar to this map: making the bonuses at the ends smaller, adding sea connections to make the ends less isolated, etc. But the advantage, at least in my mind, still seems to remain. Any other ideas for dealing with this?

    Two: how can we address the problems that can occur when several continents contain only one country? I clicked "Replay Map" a few times on Shogun and tracked the starting distribution of bonus cities among the six players... and in nearly half the games, a single player started out with 3/6 city bonuses. Of course, facing various advantages and disadvantages is part of the fun of random startup, but even on a well-crafted map such as this one, single-country continents will often give one player three times the starting income of the others (9 vs. 3) which can suck if you're not that person. Any thoughts?
Again, those aren't criticisms of "Shogun"... They're just general questions that this map happens to raise. I think it's a great map and really can't suggest anything! Thanks so much for all your maps, Sun! :D

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Post by blackj3sus » Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:38 pm

the issues u bring up kart aren't really issues at all...
it's up to all the other players to make sure one player doesn't become dominant.
if one player starts getting too big, it's up to the others to knock him down a notch or two... it's part of the game

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Re: New Map: Shogun (MFG)

Post by SunTzu » Mon Feb 12, 2007 11:57 pm

Kartofile wrote:There are a few country names that appear to have a zero instead of the letter "o" (Shim0sa, T0tomi, ...)
Thanks Kartofile. When I first made this map, I tried to use the original Japanese spelling, but the special characters weren't working for me so I went back to change them. Some of them got a ) instead of o. I've now gone back to update the map, and was finally able to get the ō character working.
Kartofile wrote:Of course, there are a few spots where a psychotic Japanese geographer or historian, hellbent on total accuracy, might quibble about a minor detail, but that's true of every map in Luxdom, and the rest of us don't care.
I know what you mean. .. I've gotten a couple of complaints on my maps before (including this one) on correct names and how "strong" certain areas should be. For this map, I used the old province names of Japan rather than the current ones.
Kartofile wrote:Personally I prefer maps with more "eye candy," more stuff to look at while you're playing. I'm actually reluctant to say so, because I don't want to influence the clean, elegant style you've established, a style that you're really good at and that many players appreciate. But personally I like maps that have more mountains, trees, buildings, photos, artwork, etc. More stuff to immerse me in the time and place and story. Just my preference.
I can understand where you're coming from. I personally like maps that are less cluttered, hence my simplistic style. I am, however, going to eventually create a map with mountains, trees, etc. just to see what I can experiment with.
Kartofile wrote:... how can we deal with the issues that arise when the countries in a map are spread out in a line? Players who establish themselves at either end of the line have a 2:1 advantage, in that they fight on only one front, as opposed to all the others who fight on two. A couple of my maps have faced this problem and I've tried dealing with it in several ways similar to this map: making the bonuses at the ends smaller, adding sea connections to make the ends less isolated, etc. But the advantage, at least in my mind, still seems to remain. Any other ideas for dealing with this?
I think you've answered your own question! Originally, this map didn't have the connecting sea routes, so the map was very linear. The sea routes made a dramatic difference
Kartofile wrote:... how can we address the problems that can occur when several continents contain only one country? I clicked "Replay Map" a few times on Shogun and tracked the starting distribution of bonus cities among the six players... and in nearly half the games, a single player started out with 3/6 city bonuses.
Right now there isn't really a way to alleviate that, unless you remove 1-country continents. This could be fixed with a feature request: letting the map specify certain countries as always belonging to certain players during the random country selection.

FYI - I've updated this map to include the real Japanese names and use the ultra-cool Ancient Oriental Armies.

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Re: New Map: Shogun (MFG)

Post by dustin » Tue Feb 13, 2007 1:06 am

Kartofile wrote:One: how can we deal with the issues that arise when the countries in a map are spread out in a line? Players who establish themselves at either end of the line have a 2:1 advantage, in that they fight on only one front, as opposed to all the others who fight on two. A couple of my maps have faced this problem and I've tried dealing with it in several ways similar to this map: making the bonuses at the ends smaller, adding sea connections to make the ends less isolated, etc. But the advantage, at least in my mind, still seems to remain. Any other ideas for dealing with this?
Classic solves this issue by having a wrap-around connection between the right and left sides of the map. It effectively turns a linear line into a circle. This might not be appropriate for all maps (it would be kind of weird in Shogun), but when it does make sense I think it's a good solution.

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Re: New Map: Shogun (MFG)

Post by kerouacesque » Tue Feb 13, 2007 4:28 am

SunTzu wrote: ... how can we address the problems that can occur when several continents contain only one country? I clicked "Replay Map" a few times on Shogun and tracked the starting distribution of bonus cities among the six players... and in nearly half the games, a single player started out with 3/6 city bonuses.

Right now there isn't really a way to alleviate that, unless you remove 1-country continents. This could be fixed with a feature request: letting the map specify certain countries as always belonging to certain players during the random country selection.
Could add an option to weight the random selection process by the relative continent bonuses (with negative continent bonuses acting in some way to still produce a positive weight). For instance, each country in Australia would receive a weight of 1/2, and each country in Asia would received a weight of 1/7.

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Post by mbauer » Tue Feb 13, 2007 9:48 am

This is a small linear style map, which is good for quick games and online play with people willing to step outside the bounds of Classic. It feels very similar to Classic in it's strategy, with a slight twist in that it has 1 country continents that serve as each players "bases." For me however, it doesn't replicate the kind of strategy I enjoy. There doesn't seem to be much variety to the play, so it ends up being pretty much the same game everytime you play it. Having the boats be their own countries and freeing them of their restriction to only attack 2 countries might help open up the map a little more and provide more movement and expansive possibilities. If you have boats, why can't you take a boat from one side of the island to the other? The graphics are nice, clean and simple, a look SunTzu has perfected. Which is a refreshing look from those of us who sometimes overdue it with the graphics. Overall it's obviously a great map because SunTzu made it, but if your looking for a large map with lots of possibilities, then this map might not be for you. On the other hand, if you enjoy classic, but are a little sick of it and are daunted by the huge maps then this map is right up your alley.

MB

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Re: New Map: Shogun (MFG)

Post by Kartofile » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:06 pm

kerouacesque wrote: Could add an option to weight the random selection process by the relative continent bonuses (with negative continent bonuses acting in some way to still produce a positive weight). For instance, each country in Australia would receive a weight of 1/2, and each country in Asia would received a weight of 1/7.
Wow... this would be really interesting to try!
dustin wrote:Classic solves this issue by having a wrap-around connection between the right and left sides of the map. It effectively turns a linear line into a circle. This might not be appropriate for all maps (it would be kind of weird in Shogun), but when it does make sense I think it's a good solution.
Hm, I forgot about Classic. That's a good idea.

Another solution I've used is airports, though they'd also be kind of weird in Shogun...!

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Post by blackj3sus » Tue Feb 13, 2007 2:16 pm

not airports... DRAGONS! the oriental kind.

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Post by Sylocat » Tue Feb 13, 2007 11:36 pm

Nice simple graphics, nice simple map. 'Nuff said.

Seriously though, it's a nice quick map, although I agree with mbauer that it plays a little samey. However, with variants of strategy you can work out a nice line and have some fun. I like the distribution of the one-country continents as well.

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Post by dustin » Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:00 am

We played this a bunch of times in the map retro weekend since it's pretty small and can get fast games on it. It's a good map. Having lots of single country continents can distort random starts, but it's still fun.

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how do i get dat map

Post by raghsthebest444 » Thu Oct 08, 2009 2:04 am

how do i get dat map?

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dustin
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Post by dustin » Thu Oct 08, 2009 3:40 am

It's part of Lux Delux. You can get it from the Plugin Manager inside Lux.

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