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[Crowd-Sourced] Trade Route Map


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Hi everyone! :hi:

I have no ideas where this would lead to but I fancy to make some sort of crowd-sourced map in which everyone can bring up design ideas, gameplay elements etc. and which could be discussed about or voted at by means of polls.

Now what I initially had in mind is a Trade route map in which a trade route would desperate the teams. This trade route has some markets (that can be captured with the new mechanism in svn) (probably surrounded with a small village to make it fancy). The traders would be owned by a trigger-controlled computer player and spawn regularly.

When a player captures a market he gets a share of the trading income. The trade income should probably be doubled or tripled to make it worth it.

The only technical issue that should be solved in this is to let the trader walk along all markets and a proper mechanism to divide the trade income.

What do you think of it?

Even though the design decisions would be taken by the crowd I would prefer to have a small team that actually develops the map according to those decisions (and of course share the progress of their work+change according to feedback). So if you would like to participate, feel free to leave a comment! :) (I think 1~2 JS coders for triggers and 1~2 map designers would be appropriate)

The map would be developed at SVN due to the capturing mechanism found there and the changed map format so that should be a requirement to participate in the actual development. Check this for information on how to set it up: http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions#Windows

Current poll decisions:

Map size: Normal

Teams: 2v2

Amount of markets: 5

Biomes: Multiple

Map layout:

post-13954-0-86767500-1433709219.png

Name: Silk Road

Edited by niektb
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Lovely idea and could give some nice new gameplay, I voted 2vs2 but i think it sould be both 1vs1 and 2vs2 plus both a medium and large map so you have to look for the trade routes with market towns/villages and that its not any near a starting location.

Maybe i can also make a map for it but thats maybe because i don't have mutch free time.

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Just letting traders walk back and forth between random markets would be easier. As you can just use the regular trading command in that case.

The only thing I'm concerned about is ownership. I assume the traders would belong to gaia, and I'm not sure that gaia traders can trade with player-owned markets. So you probably need to modify something there.

To depend more on the traders, I think you should disable the farm field. When you place only a few fields on the map, even food becomes scarce, and you need trade to get some resources.

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Just letting traders walk back and forth between random markets would be easier. As you can just use the regular trading command in that case.

[...]

Absolutely, but ideally one trader should walk to all markets (a bit like AOEIII)

[...]

The only thing I'm concerned about is ownership. I assume the traders would belong to gaia, and I'm not sure that gaia traders can trade with player-owned markets. So you probably need to modify something there.

[...]

The traders would be owned by a trigger-controlled computer player and spawn regularly.

But is it possible to trade with gaia-owned markets?

[...]

To depend more on the traders, I think you should disable the farm field. When you place only a few fields on the map, even food becomes scarce, and you need trade to get some resources.

That would be nice for a poll question, unfortunately I'm somehow limited to 3 questions in the poll... :(

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  • 2 weeks later...

It seems a good idea to me to draw some conclusions from the poll:

Map size: Normal

Teams: 2v2

Amount of markets: 5

The Biome has a draw between Multiple biomes and Desert. What should we do with that?

Edited by niektb
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  • 2 weeks later...

I would like you all to think about the map layout so that we can collect a number of map layouts and vote on it. I've attached an empty grid and an map-layout I made myself.

post-15513-0-71652000-1433502378_thumb.p

In my layout I used red and yellow to mark the starting positions of the teams.

Orange is the trade route.

Dark blue is impassable water and I made it light blue on the shallow (passable) places.

The green spots are the markets.

Brown are mountains.

The idea behind my map layout is that you have two focus points: the trade route on one side, the enemies on the other side.

So actually you have a soft choice between attacking your enemies directly or trying to capture the markets.

Here is the empty grid:

post-15513-0-27465900-1433502399_thumb.p

Edited by niektb
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Slight variations of the layout niektb proposed.

The black area could be a small (defended) mining town with two markets (or one that yields some more gain).

The trade route is changed to be more arc-like (ok, not that much in my drawings, but well that is just a rough layout), also having two ports.

Maybe having the two halves be a bit less symmetric (eg using one of the two versions below and niektb's version in some combination) would be nice.

Giving the mountain/delta area some use (eg metal/stone mines) would make that area another battle ground.

Regarding shieldwolf23's suggestion the map layout (by replacing the mountains with rivers or similar) could be changed to reflect Mesopotamia.

post-13954-0-68220800-1433709146_thumb.p

post-13954-0-86767500-1433709219_thumb.p

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Seemingly there are no other proposals and therefore I added the currently existing to the poll. (I'm afraid you have to copy over the link). Please vote everyone! :)

Mesopotamia

Silk Road: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=19860&p=307676

niektb's lay-out: http://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads//monthly_06_2015/post-15513-0-71652000-1433502378.png

leper's lay-out (1): http://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads//monthly_06_2015/post-13954-0-68220800-1433709146.png

leper's lay-out (2): http://wildfiregames.com/forum/uploads//monthly_06_2015/post-13954-0-86767500-1433709219.png

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  • 2 weeks later...

Seems like we got ourselves a winner!

post-13954-0-86767500-1433709219.png

I figured I could go ahead as well and draw a concept. So here is a quickly drawn and ugly concept version of the map.

post-15513-0-19360000-1435420007_thumb.p

I thought about the following biome distribution: the river delta and the coast line mediterranean, the center of the map and the mountains tropic / savannah a-like and the area where the players start desert.

Edited by niektb
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