Long time listener, first time caller.

I really like the options of the numbers of neutrals but I don't understand them.  On another site I used to design and play on neutrals were treated as another player when territories were being placed and most times they ended up hurting the set up more than helping it.  I think the main reasons for having neutrals are to balance out maps with odd numbers of territories, preventing initial bonuses at start up and for unique starting scenarios.  It would be helpful if we could understand how the neutrals are placed at start up and if there is some sort of math involved with the difference between light, medium and heavy.

Thank you and I'll hang up and listen for my answer.

hi Risky

It's pretty straightforward - Neutrals are randomly placed on the board in numbers according to the rule setting %

None: 0% of the board territories are neutrals
Low: 25% ""
Medium: 50% ""
High: 75% ""

Also you can combine Scenario and Random placement modes (as Yertle did in his Planet Yertle board) so there are some fixed neutral and the rest random.

Holy Neutrals Batman! I just figured out/understood that 28 of the 57 territories of Cumber's Resident WarGear map start out neutral, that's quite different from the WF version. That's nearly 3-4 times the amount of neutrals on WF. A 5 player game on WF had 12 neutrals, 6 player had 9 neutrals. The Low setting here currently would have 14.

I propose and highly suggest a similar neutral distribution that WF has since it is more fluid with the number of players.
Low: Like 1 additional player that is a neutral. For example in a 5 player game of Resident WarGear everyone (including the Neutral) get's ~9 territories.
Medium: Like 2 additional players that are Neutral. In the 5 player game of Resident WarGear, the Players get 8, Neutrals have 17 (even that seems high to me).
High: Like 3 additional players that are Neutral. In the 5 player game of Resident WarGear, the Players get 7, Neutrals have 22.

I dunno, maybe Cumber planned it with more Neutrals and the current settings do work better, but Ouch, that setting seems to hard set.

I actually had no idea how the neutrals on WF worked so just thought up a reasonable system for here. I'll update the neutral count calculation as suggested :)

So the calculation should be:

num_neutrals = territory_count * multiplier / (num_players + 1)

Where multiplier = 0 for None, 1 for Low, 2 for Medium and 3 for High?

Lots of typos in my last post :P

Ya that seems better, although it seems the Low setting would be most equivocal to what WF had (at least that's what my understanding is), which would therefore be my suggested "default" since Medium seems higher.

Hmmmm, maybe it really could be dropped more...
Low: num_neutrals = (territory_count / 2) / (num_players + 1)
Medium: num_neutrals = territory_count / (num_players + 1)
High: num_neutrals = territory_count * 2 / (num_players + 1)

I think this would make the Medium more like what I'm used to at least (which is fine to attempt to blow away), and be "default like". I would really not rely just on me though, would like other's feedback to and/or what they expect (and someone with better math skills!).

The major complaint I had about the Warfish system was that it treated neutrals as another player at the territory distribution stage. If you have a 74 territory map and 6 players it would treat the neutrals as a 7th player therefor 4 players would have 11 territories at start and 3 players would have 10 but have more armies in a few of them (depending on initial unit counts).
What I would want is 12 territories each for the 6 players and 2 neutrals to balance out starting set-up and have the neutrals placed in the 2 territories first with the minimum start up units. That should be the default neutral set up and if you want neutrals to be something other than just set up filler you choose medium or heavy or use a Scenario in the map creation process.
I hate neutral bashing in games most of the time but they are important but should be just there to make the start balanced, not become the entire map.

Neutrals are sometimes the very best ally though. I would think that your idea Risky would be a completely new setting, although I guess that could be considered "Low", but it would be possible it is also "None".
A "Balance" setting could be something along the lines of num_neutrals = territory_count - ((territory_count / num_players, round down) * num_players).

Ya, that's probably a bad dumb equation, but it's what I mean :P