So Educational is the theme of the next set of maps due for competition.  'Educational' just means a map where the player could learn something of an academic nature from playing the map. 

I put together a huge list of rough themes, in case anyone is having trouble coming up with ideas.  I'm not doing any of these, I already have my idea that I'm working on that is not on this list.   If you're still having trouble coming up with an idea, post what your areas of expertise are in real life, and the rest of us can help turn it into a wargear map.

Music

Show two octaves on a keyboard, and/or the first 7 frets on a guitar.  Continents are musical constructs like chords or scales or something.  If there are too many different continents, maybe have a selector on the side, where each player gets to choose which key they are in, and only get unit bonuses for chords/scales/notes in that key.

History

Historical Battles:
Thermopylae, etc?
Gettysburg
Battle of Kursk


Historical Locations:
Map of Pompeii
Map of Native American Tribes prior to European Arrival
Map of Versailles

Biology

DNA?
Cells?   mitochondria, Golgi apparatus?

Anatomical structures ->
 parts of the brain
 major bones
 bones of the hand or foot?

Space

Something with the solar system - planets & satellites are territories, etc.
Structure of the sun or earth (crust, mantle, core, etc.)

Design

Color Wheel

Could do something with a board where border modifiers depend on distance between two colors.

Environmental

Big trash heap of territories.  Players have to sort trash into recyclables, compostables, hazardous, etc.  Collector bonus + bonus for having proper receptical.

Food

Cuts of beef, pork & chicken.

Chemistry

Territories are sub atomic particles. Elements require players to take each particle.  Small elements are easier to take, but worth less.

Periodic Table - Continents are things like Noble Gases, and other groupings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periodic_table#Grouping_methods)
Maybe border modifiers based upon ionization energy or Electronegativity

Various chemicals with their Structural Formulas:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_formula
Each element is a territory.  Border modifiers due to the type of bond or angle or something.  Maybe the compounds are all in the same class, or there are multiple scenarios each with their own set of chemicals. 

Public Transit

Maybe a map of NYC metros?  Or a NYC map, with limited fortifies, where taking the metro allows you to move across the map more quickly.

Evolution

Maybe each player has a tree that they can evolve down.  First to get to homo sapiens wins.

Or each tip of the tree allows you to place or creates units below on the battlefield for you. You have to decide whether to spend your energy evolving or fight as a lower life form.

Math

Something based on the fibonacci sequence, pascal's triangle, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pisano_period
cellular autonama - maybe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_30

nice list!

Thanks!  The cuts of meat and the composition of the sun I remember seeing on warfish.  The composition of the sun one was created by students at a university, and I remember thinking it was cool that someone would take their passion, make a wargear/fish map about it, and at the same time maybe others would learn something from it.

There are a couple on there I have been thinking about for years, and if no one ends up doing them, I may get to it eventually.  I really think this theme has a lot of potential, so I'm hoping we get a lot of entrees.

i definitely want to do something on this one. just don't know what and i'm swamped ATM. my last couple submissions were kinda mediocre i think (legotaurus, fun idea just didn't know a better way to implement - and the kensington circles is pretty simple, yet i hope deviously so)

How about relationships or differences between men and women.  =D

Or...

United Nations:

  Security Council on Military Intervention

  General Assembly (passing a resolution)

  Parliamentary Procedure

Economics:

  Competing Business

  Hostile Takeover

  Stock Exchange

  Farming (like Agricola or The Farming Game)

  Bankruptcy (Like whoever comes out of it first)

  Credit Debt or Banking

Art:

  Colors

  Art Elements (Line, Shape, texture, etc.)

  Competing Artists/Genres

Law/Government:

  Court Trial

  Civil Rights (Could be historical)

  American Prison System

  Supreme Court

  Passing a Law

  Something like one of the www.icivics.org games

Some good ideas there.  I'd love to see some law/government ones.  

I had an idea for a election map, but didn't have time to pull it off before the POTUS election.  Every player starts as a real politician, and you auto factory earn points towards winning your primary.  Set up states so that winner-take-all states you have to have the whole thing, but other states you can have part of and still get some primary votes.  Then which ever player can take out the Republican/Democratic party territory first wins the primary & gets some bonus. Players can compete to try and get the nomination from their party and all the benefits that entails, or ignore the primary battle & effectively run as a third party.  

If I'm still making maps in 4 years maybe I'll give it a shot then.

I had a decent native American map in Warfish. Maybe I can dig up the original file and post here. I just joined this site after years of warfish, so I am not familiar with how the design works yet.

>I just joined this site after years of warfish, so I am not familiar with how the design works yet.

You should definitely check it out.  Designing maps here is 10x less frustrating the on warfish (IMO).  Lots of good tools for designers.

Also, FYI - you can only 'release' one map as a standard member.  But if you place in the contest you can always use the prize money to buy premium membership.

Good to know, thanks for the tip.  It has been fun to contrast the two sites.  This one has great gameplay features, though I'm still not quite used to it.  The downside thus far is that it isn't as responsive in iOS.

This would make a good educational map:

http://www.bestinfographics.co/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/circles-of-hell-dantes-inferno-infographic.jpg

  Probably a challenging one to make, but each person could be a territory.  Maybe each level has their own rules about borders, modifiers, factories, etc.

It's too big as is.  Maybe trim some off the top & then reduce the size by 60% or so.

I had worked quite a bit on graphics for Dante's Inferno a long while ago back for TOS, could be interesting to pick up again...

Here is a weird idea from computer science.  Illustrate a merge sort.

Start with the numbers 1-8 in a random order.  Like, oh, 5 2 4 3 8 6 1 7.  That is the top level, no connections.

The next level down groups into sorted pairs.  Like 2,5 3,4 6,8 1,7.  Each group is connected with itself, and the number at the top.

The next level down groups into sorted 4s.  In this case 2,3,4,5 1,6,7,8.  Same connections.

The final level sorts everything.  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.  Same connections.

Make your continents be each sorted subgroups of size > 1, and also each of the 8 vertical threads with the same number.  I have no idea what bonuses to assign.

That would be a board with 32 territories.  If you want a larger board,  sort 16 numbers.  For instance start with 1 5 12 13 15 14 11 7 10 2 6 9 16 8 4.  That would give you an 80 territory map.  Either way the board would show merge sort visually, and would have a really weird geometry.

Sounds cool.  Even better would be have different scenarios for different sort algorithms.

Ozyman wrote:

Sounds cool.  Even better would be have different scenarios for different sort algorithms.

I had thought of it for quicksort first.  But for small n, quick sort tends to have one branch that goes surprisingly deep, which might not result in good game play.

A board for bogo-sort would be rather large. :-)

Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it too much.  Inefficient, etc. sorts might require smaller sets to sort, or some other type of translation to wargear map.

btilly wrote:

Here is a weird idea from computer science.  Illustrate a merge sort.

Start with the numbers 1-8 in a random order.  Like, oh, 5 2 4 3 8 6 1 7.  That is the top level, no connections.

The next level down groups into sorted pairs.  Like 2,5 3,4 6,8 1,7.  Each group is connected with itself, and the number at the top.

The next level down groups into sorted 4s.  In this case 2,3,4,5 1,6,7,8.  Same connections.

The final level sorts everything.  1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8.  Same connections.

Make your continents be each sorted subgroups of size > 1, and also each of the 8 vertical threads with the same number.  I have no idea what bonuses to assign.

That would be a board with 32 territories.  If you want a larger board,  sort 16 numbers.  For instance start with 1 5 12 13 15 14 11 7 10 2 6 9 16 8 4.  That would give you an 80 territory map.  Either way the board would show merge sort visually, and would have a really weird geometry.

I built this and released it in dev.

The board is at http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/4667 and I have tried to start a game at http://www.wargear.net/games/join/246884.  Feedback is requested.

I have unfortunately not been able to set the cards that I want yet.

Yertle wrote:

I had worked quite a bit on graphics for Dante's Inferno a long while ago back for TOS, could be interesting to pick up again...

If I could roll a 6 for every time I've started and dropped a Dante's Inferno map attempt, I'd never lose.