Page: History.Page1 - Last Modified : Fri, 27 Sep 13 - 1784 Visits

Well the most important part of the game is the map which has evolved in many different ways. There are not that much rules tied with the design of the map. Most changes were done to make connections actually more interesting. I'll pass through every map design and explain the flaws of each of them.

First map: Tiles connected by roads

The first map I designed was made really fast a few weeks after playing Britania. Since that game used territories connected to each other, I decided to use the same model. Now I wanted to create a modular map and I needed to make sure that each map could connect to each other what ever was the configuration. So I made roads that connected territories from a map tile to another.

The problem with that map design was actually the roads. It reduced the amount of connections between one tile to another. So players most of the time kept their kingdom into the same tile. So it did not feel like a whole map, it feel like multiple maps connected by worm holes.

Modular map

Since the beginning, I always wanted to make a modular map. I used a design than consisted in splitting each side of the map in 2 part. Each part can either be water or land, land connects to land and water to water. This pattern has been carried over all my maps and I even carried the same concept to my homemade Vinci.

Another important element designed since the beginning is the number of average cities/territories each players should have. I already decided that I wanted 6 cities per player and that maps tile would each have either 3, 6, 9 or 12 cities/territories. So even if the map changed, there were a few thing that were designed right at the start.

Second map: Territories and Frame

The second map I designed also consisted in connected territories, but now the map was completely modular. The territories were designed so that even if they touched the border, they would still connect correctly with each other. I also added mountains and lake that separated territories from each other which reduced the amount of connections some territories had.

This map was working relatively well and I might use it's design for another game. The primary problem was the amount of connection. Each territory had an average of 4-5 connections to other territories. The problem is that it makes the player open to get attacked from many different territory which makes it harder to defend. For example, it is hard to get a territory totally isolated from the enemy. So the people were playing more defensively. So I wanted to reduce the number of connection so that players could isolate cities and push their luck further by attacking.

Third Map: Cities and Resources

For the third map, I decided to inspire my self on Romance of the 3 kingdoms. I decided to make cities connected by roads. Each city would have a maximum of 4 connections and an average of 3 connections. I also added resources circles on roads which gave the map a second level. The idea was that you would have been able to place a bingo token on each road which would have indicated what kind of ressources got traded by this road. By the way, in one of the rule version, I tried placing resources using the second map. The chips were placed directly in the territories. When I upgraded the map, I had no place for there resources in the city, so I added them on the roads.

Some resources circles had a diamond in it, this was the origins of the resources. From these sources, player would be able to expand their trading routes. The idea is that I wanted to have a chain reaction effect after some conquest. I thought that players could capture the resource origin which would have destroyed all the trade routes related to it making players lose access to these resources. There was also ports where players could place their resources to indicate that it is for trade and other players who owns a port could pick it up to indicate that they are buying it.

The problem with this map is that it was very confusing to have cities and trade routes. Also it felt like it was too much for a conquest game, it would have fit better in a semi-abstract game where there are no war. So the resources simply changed the focus of the game so they had to be removed. Still I kept the idea of having cities connected by roads.

Fourth Map: Cities and Navigation routes

The last map was similar to the third map. First the roads were plain simple roads with no resources on them. Second, there was now navigation routes that connected ports with each other. Finding a way to connect ports has always been a problem. I tried many things like adjacent sea areas for example. It became more complicated to manage tile to tile sea movement. Now with the navigation routes, it is pretty clear which port is connected to which port.

The third addition was fixed special resources on each city. This resources system was much easier to use since it was not variable and since it was on a city instead of a road. The resources system was used in many different ways, you should take a look at the production system history.

Map grid

During my early play tests, I always used a 3x1 map. One of my friend did not like it because a player could actually get stuck in an area. Be even at that time the goal was to make a 2x2 map. Then later came the idea that players could optionally have a 2x3 map. Near the end of the design, when I decided that players should invade using adjacent invasion paths, I needed more invasion path when playing with more players, else I would have got in a situation were there were not enough invasion path. So I decided that 5-6 player games should use 2x3 maps to get 4 additional invasions paths.

Frame

Starting with the second map, I decided to add a frame around the map. Each part of the frame would indicate where the player could invade from. There were 3 types of frame: Forest, Hills and sea. Each faction would have indication on where it could invade according to terrain type and if it was the northern or southern sea area. The Frame also had a number that indicated the amount of reinforcement each territory got on the next turn. Invading from corners makes you invade less territories but the reinforcements was better than attacking from sides. Attacking from the sea also game more attack options which reduced the reinforcement level.

While game game evolved, I removed the frame around the board. The goal was to make the board easier to assemble and give more flexibility on invasion location. One of the problem when I had with road maps is that a corner invasion could all target the same city, so if a player invaded using the corner, he ended up conquering 1 city. Later, I removed the idea of reinforcement so the number on the borders were now becoming useless.

Additional Details

In the second revision, I added some details on the map and changed a few things. First, a player suggested to give name to cities to reinforce the theme, so I did a bit of research about viking and scandinavian city names and added them to the new layout. Another detail is that cities are now connected to ports through a road. This was to reinforce the new mechanic in the second edition where units moved to the port first and then to the city.

To reduce the amount of work for me and the people who printed the game, I reduced the number of maps from 12 to 8. Instead of having 6 double sided maps, there are now 8 single sided map. I removed maps with small islands since they seem to create a bad experience in the game while making sea connections very odd. I also removed the 12 city tiles because in the early design, you could only play with 4 tiles even at 5-6 players, so the 12 city tile was essential. But since you can now play on a 3x2 map, the tile is not essential anymore.

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