I wonder what the biggest released map is, in terms of borders, continents, etc.  XML file size might be a good metric.

What are the simplest design elements that would allow you designers to reduce the complexity of maps significantly? With huge numbers of continents floating around player performance is going to be impacted.

New win conditions (e.g. x territories held / x% territories held) are pretty easy to implement for example. M57 had that list for victory conditions which I have a copy of.

tom wrote:

New win conditions (e.g. x territories held / x% territories held) are pretty easy to implement for example. M57 had that list for victory conditions which I have a copy of.

 

New win conditions seems to be what designers are trying to navigate around (at least in my opinion that's what it looks like).  Hold 'X' Number Territories and hold this Set (ie Continent) of 'X' Territories would be my guess as the two main ones.

tom wrote:

M57 had that list for victory conditions which I have a copy of.

Can you/someone remind me/us what those were.  I couldn't find them in a search.

Two relatively simple changes that I would like to see:

minimum units per territory (Some things require units going to zero, but you don't want that for the whole board)

Unassigned capitals (or some other way to have adjunct territories that are not on the main board and don't have to be cleared to eliminate someone).

Amidon37 wrote:

tom wrote:

M57 had that list for victory conditions which I have a copy of.

Can you/someone remind me/us what those were.  I couldn't find them in a search.

Here's'one link with my first stab at the suggestion..

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/2024/Dropdown_for_Combinations_in_Designer

Basically it would be nice if there were a few places in the designer where combinatorics could be invoked.  Not only for victory conditions, but also for continental bonuses.

Ozyman wrote:

Two relatively simple changes that I would like to see:

minimum units per territory (Some things require units going to zero, but you don't want that for the whole board)

Unassigned capitals (or some other way to have adjunct territories that are not on the main board and don't have to be cleared to eliminate someone).

Both of these things are pretty important to me...  As far as win conditions go... holding a continent for victory is already quite easily achieved.  Holding a number of territories is a little more difficult, but still achievable.  

Minimum units per territory (even if just 0 and 1) is a huge change that would open many doors.

Unassigned capitals also are quite useful.  Essentially the option to be able to assign a territory as a capital even if you don't assign it to a player.  That way you can randomize capitals and such.

I wouldn't mind seeing designating areas of the board with special attributes, but this is complicated and likely difficult to implement.  

I would like to see generals (units that carry their attributes with them as they go.  Essentially a traveling territory.  You give the general rules such as +1 dice or make it a traveling factory.  This would require you to make a decision when attacking with a general if you wish to move him or not.  I imagine if you get the benefit of the attack dice, you would be forced to move him.  I'm not sure if the system would be able to understand rules like "has artillery borders for up to 2 connecting borders away" and so forth.  But this could be interesting.  It could also be a traveling capital city.

Edward Nygma wrote:

I would like to see generals (units that carry their attributes with them as they go.  Essentially a traveling territory.  You give the general rules such as +1 dice or make it a traveling factory.  This would require you to make a decision when attacking with a general if you wish to move him or not.  I imagine if you get the benefit of the attack dice, you would be forced to move him.  I'm not sure if the system would be able to understand rules like "has artillery borders for up to 2 connecting borders away" and so forth.  But this could be interesting.  It could also be a traveling capital city.

More useful to me (but utilizing the traveling attribute paradigm) is Unit Range or (Movement Count).  In addition to the basic ability to limit movement count, the feature would facilitate the creation of terrain features and all but eliminate the need for the neutral wall. Starting at post #22..

http://www.wargear.net/forum/showthread/1443p2/Enhancement_Requests

I'm for movement count, but I think it is programatically more difficult than territory minimums and unassigned factories.  Generals also seems quite complicated.

Min units per territory is something that is much easier to do with the new Player. Once it is in Live use it makes changes like these a LOT easier to deploy.

Unit range I think will be quite challenging both from a coding and a representational perspective (i.e. how do you show this effectively in the Player?).

With a general you can just have a little token that sits in the territory.  For unit range...  I guess you could have a second number that counts down the the unit has moved? 

It would be cool to have territories that limit mobility or expand it.  Fast terrain says you can move up to 3 borders in any direction as 1 attack.  Medium is 2 and slow would be normal.

tom wrote:

Unit range I think will be quite challenging both from a coding and a representational perspective (i.e. how do you show this effectively in the Player?).

This was covered in the forum thread on Unit Range with the best solution at the time being the use of a dot similar to those used in simulgear - but now that the new player is being phased in, is it possible to have subscripted and or superscripted numbers?  This would easily accommodate URange, and it would open up all kinds of other possibilities -- Hint hint.. not just generals, but colonels, etc.

So we could have stratego?

Edward Nygma wrote:

 For unit range...  I guess you could have a second number that counts down the the unit has moved? 

It would be cool to have territories that limit mobility or expand it.  Fast terrain says you can move up to 3 borders in any direction as 1 attack.  Medium is 2 and slow would be normal.

The mechanics of how the above could work are documented in the the thread linked to in my previous post. It lasts for 20 or 30 posts.  I think you were working on Pong at the time so I'l bet you were preoccupied.

If sub and superscripts were possible (or even commas), then any number of characteristic can potentially "follow" the units around the board. This type of "changing territory" functionality starts to approach something that's more and more like a playing piece.  Things like Dice Mods, Unit Count, could follow the unit(s) around the board.  Potentially, designers could assign dedicated functionality to the sub or superscript for each game.