Camelot – complete new map available 30/11/12

[CivLord]

Double post

[CivLord]

A very strange problem indeed!
I just tried it on my laptop and it works just fine.

I set up a game with just two opponents, to get a feel of tthe map. After this, I'll try a more crowded game.
I'll post feedback when I have something usefull

Maybe Kroah can shed some light on this problem. Why does my PC have problems with this map, while it plays other maps just fine (I was playing the Elora map on it, just a moment ago)? Both computers have 64-bit Windows 7 and CoCoNet 1.0.2.

[CivLord]

Wow!

I just finished playing a few games. This map plays very well!

I started my first game with just two opponents to get the feel of the map. That feel was great, so the next games were with all opponents.
Conflict starts very early, because there are very few neutral counties to be conquered. This was a bit of an adjustment for me, because normally I like to build a small empire without provoking other major players, before going to war big time.
I felt that playing with all opponents was actually easier than with just two. Until the end-stage, nobody is at war with everybody else, but most have a serious war with one or two other players. This keeps the battles relatively small.
With just two opponents, every player can consolidate and build big armies, which have to be ground down in multiple turns.

Playing the Vikings is a nice challenge. You start at an island, with fucking expensive men. You have to grab as much high-income countries and islands as quick as possible, to generate enough cash to buy men. Loose too many men in unsuccessful invasions to get some cash-generating neutral territory in the first year and it is essentially 'Game over'.
Because all men have to be transported by boat, expansion is slower than with one of the factions on the main land-mass. (You just ca'nt buy and send enough men to compete with the other players early in the game.) It took me almost double the time to finish a game (conquered all) by playing with the Vikings compared with playing with another faction.
Note my remark nice challenge. This is not a draw-back, this is fun!

This map feels nicely balanced and is fun to play. Although the AI is the same, I haven't seen as much stupid or questionable moves by the computer players as usual. So it seems a well balanced map forces (or allows) the AI to behave smarter.

Kudo's to Cr1x for this map!

[cr1x]

Hey nice feedback CivLord, very much appreciated.

I am glad you enjoyed the map; what difficulty level did you set the computer players to? All my testing had them at level 5.

Crix

[CivLord]

Hello Cr1x,

I started with two computer players at level 5 (standard setting). After that, my first game was with all computer players at level 4, just to ease in to it. (I was afraid that all players would attack me as soon as our borders met, but that wasn't the case.) After that, I played a few games at level 5 and just now, I finished a game at level 6.

If there is any difference between levels, it is marginal. It felt a bit more like 'work', but it took 50 turns to conquer all, about the same as the other games I played. (Except when I played the Vikings, that took about 90 turns.)
I expect one could finish quicker, with a more aggressive play-style. A higher difficulty level would probably be more unforgiving with a more aggressive and risky play-style.

I can't think of many improvements.
Maybe some more territory, e.g. Ireland and the Channel Islands, but that's not really necessary. The balance between factions and countries is good as it is, but Ireland with its own faction would add to the playtime.
I have the feeling that the income can do with a bit more tweaking. As it is now, it is nice to have a relatively high income from just a few occupied countries at the start of the game, but later in the game it is too easy to buy huge armies. Maybe the income per county can be reduced a little. This could be compensated for the start of the game by reducing the cost of fortifications. But I can see that it would make the beginning very difficult when the trade-off isn't done just right.
These are not really important points. but I tried to think of any possible improvements, and this is all I came up with. (For now.)

Greetings, CivLord

[cr1x]

In response to feedback from CivLord and following my own testing I have made a number of improvements to this map.

For game balancing reasons I have added four additional islands (bringing the total number of areas to 41) and removed the Vikings as a playable faction (due to limitations of the AI). I have also severely reduced the income across the map; as well as other cosmetic improvements.

Version 1.1 is attached and I would appreciate your feedback.

Crix

[Christine]

Its nice to play and untypical short for Colonial Conquest. I missed a map like this in the last months!

[cr1x]

Hi Christine, thanks for giving the map a go and I'm glad you like it.

If anyone who has tried the map can suggest any improvements, I'd love to hear them.

Crix

[Christine]

For any unknown reasons, dead players have still some points.

[Kroah]

Loading the map in CoCoNet takes a lot of time (more than the loading of the Elora map, which is much bigger). And every following step to set-up the game (starting server, choosing factions, adding computer players) takes a lot of time, while it takes no time at all in other maps I have played, including Struggle for Elora.
All the while, the map view is just a rectangle in one colour, with the flags on it. No countries and no outlines. That's the same map as I get when I can finally start the game: all the play-field is one colour (red, green, blue, etc., the colour of the last faction chosen bij de game for a computer player).

I'm glad to tell you this bug is fixed in the upcoming release.
The map is not faulty, it works great.

Very few people were concerned by this bug because it happens only when the DPI setting of Windows is not set to the default.
The default is 96 DPI, but when you want to have bigger text, you can for example set it to 125% which gives 120 DPI.
This causes many (many) bugs, but making an application "DPI aware" is really painful.

The best i could do was to force CoCoNet to use a DPI of 96.
I know this is against the "let the user changes the DPI" consensus. Some people will not be able to read a 96 DPI text, but it requires too much work to allow a custom DPI in CoCoNet.

cr1x: thanks for the map, thumbs up!