Avalon - Map Making Tutorial Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Greetings fellow Dominioneers,

Isle of Avalon is a three player blitz-style map. It has 53 land provinces and 3 water provinces.

Download here...

The map is part of a tutorial on map making and uploaded to YouTube...

Dominions 4 Map Making Tutorial Video Part 1

Dominions 4 Map making Tutorial Video Part 2

Here is the thumbnail of the final map.

The map is designed for three players and hopefully the combatants will need to make a choice of either going for the central regions or trying to take the enemy out by delving underground.

I'll upload the files in a couple of days once the province names have been placed. I'm asking my viewers to make suggestions for the provinces.

Edited by: Das123

Fantastic looking map

Saw the first 30minutes of your video and i have some suggestion. You say you want the main battleground to be in the middle, but the left and righ player has no way of reaching each other (over the middle), secondly the left and top player has to cross a mountain pass to get to each other, so if one of them is a cold 3 nation that will be impossible. In fact, if the left player is a cold nation and the right player is a heat nation then no player will be able to reach any of the others without aquatic/flying troops. in other words, the only reliable place to fight will be the linear underground tunnels.

I'm a fairly new player, but i've noticed that maps with too many premade chokepoints leads to some very pre-programmed games (and some long stalemates), and personally i prefer more open maps, with a but more rooms for maneuvering and surprises. plopping down a caslte in your 2 border provinces and defending those just seem a bit boring.

Anyways, feel absolutely free to disregard everything i just said

Edited by: sapientum

Haven't looked at the video yet, but the map looks amazing, looking forward to playing on it!

Edit: Tempted to suggest an additional, 4-player version. Add a mini-city/something to the bottom cave and make it a starting location. Of course, as of now only Agartha is a cave nation, but it could be fun...

Edited by: TheZonk

It's nice to provide a video tutorial, however the map is not wrap-around and my experience in map-making is that making a wrap-around map is about the hardest thing to do as you have to make sure that the top/bottom and/or left/right borders stick together. If I showed how I did, it would be a pain, I'm sure there are easier ways than pasting a bit of the left side of the image, pasting it to the right and then working left from the right part....

Regarding the map itself, I think mountain passes and river borders should be thought of as absolute barriers for most nations. They simply cannot be crossed. They also mess up the initial nations placement and generally are a pain to balance.

I've already said this on the video itself but your artistic skill humbles and awes me, Das. You must have Awe +5 and a bit of a forge bonus as well .

Thanks for the feedback and comments.

I'll have another look at how (in)accessible the central ring is for players to get to each other. In my mind this was where the victory thrones would all be but there isn't really much point if it's too hard to move through there.

The map is a vertical wraparound but not horizontal. It is actually quite easy to create the wrap using Photoshop. It's in the video but hard to see. All you need to do is use Filter --> Other --> Offset and make the amount half the height or width. When you're done with the seam you just apply the same filter again and it's back to normal.

Map has been finished and is now uploaded into the first post. I took on board what was said about accessibility and have made it easier to move around the centre more easily. King Arthur has been added the the Isle of Avalon and Merlin has been added to the Crystal Cave below the island.

Edited by: Das123

Where are all you cool map making dudes coming from? That looks great.

Nice-looking map. Also, I looked at the first 20 minutes of the video and would say that you did a great job on that too. Would love to see an expanded version of the first 12 minutes and learn in more detail about how you use layers, color offsets, etc... and learn any specific hints you might have about how to illustrate maps.

Found an issue!
Ran into the Merlin province and some units there were STARVING. Likely because you put bonus units there, but it's a cave so...not exactly high on supplies.
Perhaps reduce the units there or put a +supply site there(if it works for indies?)

Edited by: TheZonk

The art here is magnificent. It's great to see line-drawn maps like this which really evoke a fairy tale / fantasy feel.
Only aesthetic thing I notice is some of the edges of terrain are kind of abrupt.