Hello :) I have just finished my map of The American Civil War, which you can find here:

https://www.warlight.net/Play?PreviewMap=46733

As of Now, It's ready for testing IMO and I'll need some volunteers! That doesn't mean This is the final version though; If you have some suggestions, let me know.

mememememememememe

I wouldn't mind giving this a shot :)

Edited 12/19/2015 05:22:28

Not really an issue, but typically the Confederacy is depicted in red, while the Union is depicted in blue.

I would love to help test! It looks awesome!

Could I make a suggestion? The desert areas: Keep the bonus value the same, but add more territories in so there are similar numbers to everywhere else, the problem otherwise is you can travel extra fast through those areas, like teleportation, I've seen it on other maps, and honestly, it's a terrible design feature, and technically it's against the map-design guidelines too...

"Minimize long connections or drastically uneven territory size"

The example it gives:



"B is much closer to A than C is, even though it appears further away"

To relate it to your map, look how fast you can get from say: Seminole in Texas to Kittson in Minnesota. You can attack from one to the other in just 7 turns. So it will become "The battle for the desert" which just doesn't make much sense historically, and isn't much fun to play, imo, anyway. You'll always find someone to disagree with me however... ;)

I'll help test, but I agree with fleece's point about territory sizes

Here's an example of a map where this is a problem:

https://www.warlight.net/Map/18383-Orbis-Veteribus-Notus

You can move half way across the map in just a few turns in some places, which just makes the deserts more important to hold, which is generally the opposite intention.

(I did tell the creator about it but they never responded, imo all the deserts should just be greyed out non-territory...)

I am more than happy to help you alter it to remove this problem, your map looks great even as it is though :)

^ I've played quite a few games on Orbis, and I find it a really good map, when people add artificial wastelands in the deserts. Granted, it's a huge pain to play in a proper FFA, where there aren't artificial wastelands in the deserts, and in diplos that haven't added that feature, but people have found a way to make it more realistic. Putting, say a 50 stack in the large, desert-like territories, makes it more realistic, because the deserts would've been a lot harder to gain control of, and it disincentivises people to take the deserts, as they would generally lose more than they'd gain.

Me! I wanna test!

THIS IS SO RACIST!! YOU INCLUDED THE CONFEDERATE FLAG! STOP TRYING TO BRING BACK HISTORY AND OPPRESS PEOPLE YOU WHITE IMPERIALIST!!

/sarc

Good map though, not to much I can complain about. Keep it up.

Yeah, that's exactly what I do as well Ox, then it works great :) I guess it's like the idea of "road-building" which is cool, but in standard set ups it can kind of make it a bit skewed...

And yeah, I thought the flag might cause some controversy ;)

To be honest, I'm just not really sure what to do with the territories; I initially planned to not include them at all since they weren't states, but some form of getting to California and Oregon is necessary.

Dividing the territories up at the level of everything else isn't really an option since at the time, there weren't any county-level divisions, which was probably since there was basically nobody/nothing there:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6e/1862_Johnson_Map_of_California%2C_Nevada%2C_Utah%2C_Colorado%2C_New_Mexico_and_Arizona_-_Geographicus_-_CANMUT-johnson-1862.jpg

Bringing Orbis back into my mind actually gave me an idea; Just make the territories gray blocks, like mexico and canada, but divided into seperate territories like they are now and each with it's own nonentity label. And instead of having the territories to allow travel between east and west, I'll just have various roads to connect the gap.

I'll try out this idea later on when I get on inkscape, and you guys can let me know what you think. If you have any other ideas, be sure to let me know too, as I'm not entirely happy with the Territories right now either.

Not really an issue, but typically the Confederacy is depicted in red, while the Union is depicted in blue.

I actually addressed this in the description of the map :P

If you're from the south like I am, you'll notice that blue is a yankee color, so wtf is up with me making the CSA blue on this map? Well yes, blue is a yankee color, but this is a mostly political map, as it was a mostly political war, so I decided it would be appropriate to color the countries based on the parties that were running them. Democrats were mostly running things in the south, so That's Blue, and up north there were mostly republicans, so it's colored red.

Although this is only telling half the story, I actually did it the other way around; I started doing the union in Red, and then had to come up with a logical reason for doing it that way since I had already finished New England, New York, & Pennsylvania when I realized my mistake.

Why the red/blue color scheme in the first place you may ask? Well, it's because I was actually doing this map as a second in a series of maps, the first being here:

https://www.warlight.net/Map/20287-Iron-Curtain-20

Edited 12/19/2015 15:46:21

I really like the iron curtain map, didn't realise that was your's too! :)

I think the idea of using roads (maybe rail too) is a great one, that should fix it and also add some nice asthetics :)

And about the flag, I'm not really sure how It could possibly cause controversy since It's not the Virginia battle flag, which is the flag that pops into most people's heads when they think "Confederate flag".

I think a few things could be changed/added:

1. Make the north blue and Confederates grey. The Natives can be brown or red or whatever you'd like.
2. Maybe make some "objective bonuses" (Certain battle site and the nation's capital as a bonus)
3. Again, the desert stuff. Maybe make a few passages, or leave it as impassable. Maybe even give a negative bonus in some parts.
4. Why is West Virginia green?

1. As I stated above, The biggest reason it is how it is is that It's going to be a huge pain in the butt to change it. However, There is an argument to be made for the Union Red/Confederate blue which I have already made earlier in the thread.

2. I'll consider adding this

3. Negative bonuses are definitely another possibility, but IMO I'd have to give each territory it's own negative bonus.

4. West Virginia Is green since It's a sort of special case as far as Union/Confederates go. It started out as the western counties of virginia, but then seceded back to the Union in the middle of the war. This map is based at the beginning of the war, but I felt that I needed to acknowledge that It existed in some way. If you'll notice, I've included the area of west virginia in the Virginia superbonus.

Edited 12/19/2015 18:27:13

I'm glad you used the Stars and bars instead of the Battle Flag/Naval Jack

Also spelling error for North New Mexico Territory, it's missing the N in North.

You should use desert roads, like in "Strategic World"

https://www.warlight.net/Map/20850-Strategic-World-Land-Ocean

Yeah, I'll test it.