[WIP] Valanis Inspired Large Map Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

That amazing piece of beauty has inspired me to create something of my own. I always perferred large maps, and thats the plan for this one. Its roughly 40% larger than his, so with some effort I expect to put in 250-300 provinces and gear it towards a 3 or 4 team disciple game.

Its rough, I literally just started, but I think I see how he did it. Ive done spirtes since Doom, but im a bit rusty. This may take a month or two to complete, and another few months to test it, though im sure ill find people willing to help me out

Going to just update the main picture whenever I reach a stopping point for the day. More of the SE lands done. Moai statues, and Fortress of Cthulhu done.

This is mostly for my own good at this point, as project document.

To do

* Land masses - 100%
* Sprite templet - 100%
* province divy
* special locations -1%
* geography (rivers mountains marshes fields) - 12%
* map flair - 25%
* finishing touches
* balance
* playtest - 2%
* flair provinces if needed

One of the middle floating land masses im using for sizing/testing, just a preview. Clearly inspired by the other map. I cant think of a better way to pay homage. Not happy with the lava rift, but itll do for now.

Another little preview, working on the lower right land mass.

Along the top there I have farmland, marsh, forest, wastes, hills, mountains, and forested hills. What am I missing...plains...and?

And im looking for suggestions for some neat special sites/provinces. I definitely want to do the Tree of Life/World Tree, the feet of the colossus, atlantis, shangri la, and the Angkor Wat. What other thematic and lore related things could I include?

The Oracle of Delphi would be neat. Hrmmm. Perhaps some obelisks.

I actually think im going to get in alot more provinces than I expected.

Edited by: Krafty

wow i can see this looking good. all i can say is, let your imagination run wild and go wherever inspires you. dont forget about the little details and doodads that give it character.

Definitely!

I know theres plenty of mapping tutorials out there, but someone might find it useful to see this stage of the mapping process and inspire someone else.

Ignore the horribly drawn borders, im just throwing them in for testing purposes to make sure scaling is working and provinces wont be too small or too large to include castles and troops.

Looks very good, I hope you'll get finising this map Do you have an idea how you can travel from island to island? It reminds me of the world of Arianus (Death gate books)

Yeah ive thought about a variety of ways, ive been looking through the map commands and seeing if theres anything neat I can do, but not sure what I can accomplish in that regard. Artistically speaking im thinking percarious bridges, magical links, and I thought about a fantastic stable ala Masters of Magic where unicorns or giant rocs could fly you across the gaps, but im not sure how thatll work out just yet. In retrospect I would have liked to have done one of the world discs on the back of a giant turtle, like the old Minoan myth goes. Im sure as things develop ill come up with something. I have more links than on the Valanis map so ill have to come up with some new ideas at some point!

This is looking very nice. It kind of gives me an idea for making a map based off of The Black Company series. I probably won't do it. I'll just end up daydreaming about it.

What software/hardware are you using?

Just my laptop and Paint.net.

I am learning a lot about GIMP right now, how do you go about drawing the little details with a mouse? I read a good tutorial on how to do mountains with layers, but man... making a forest sound difficult.

Layers are super important. I have a background layer, landmass layer, detail layer, and border layer. Basically for trees, I draw the trees with a mouse, a little circle or two, and a trunk, then shade it a tad, use the fill tool to fill it with a color, then on the landscape layer, I paint coloration for the ground, and the shadows. Its all really easy.

Same thing with a rock, I draw the outline of the rock, a little shading, then on the landscape layer, I color it. It makes it alot easier when you can draw "under" the details.

Mountains are the same way. I use a large brush to do the color, under the outlines.

Edited by: Krafty

carltonbauheimer wrote: This is looking very nice. It kind of gives me an idea for making a map based off of The Black Company series. I probably won't do it. I'll just end up daydreaming about it.

I have daydreamed a lot about it too. (Recently re-re-read the series.) That would be extremely cool as a tournament concept too:
[spoiler warning: The Black Company by Glen Cook -go read it!]
Each of the 16 worlds could be used for the qualifying turns, with like 3 to 5 nations. Basically it's 16 times the same small map. Next step: the winner of each map becomes a pretender for the big game, and he can pick 2 disciples among the nations he defeated (or convinced to submit).
Then it's a new disciple game on a very large map. There should be a mechanic to deal with the plain of stones at the middle, the passageway to each of the 16 worlds.

carltonbauheimer wrote: This is looking very nice. It kind of gives me an idea for making a map based off of The Black Company series ---

Black Company!? Yesss! Yesss! YESSSS! The Lady and the Limper and the Stormbringer and... oh dogs above. Now I have to buy the rest of the books, screw the budget, screw it all the way!

If you want it to be a large map then dont add too many special provinces
Large is 20 provs per player. 4 teams of 3? would be 12 so 240 provinces.
Special provinces would be non-starts.

I dont know about Dom4 yet but Dom3 would have a hard time if the nations tried to max out the locations. Sometimes the later nation would be one that needed to start in a swamp or a wasteland, and the game couldnt find any left. Tight fit of teams asking for clustered starts might be worse.

But it IS a great map. Thanks for working on it.

Is this map still being worked on?
Because we are searching for a big map for a disciple game with 17 players and we would like anything big enough and at least somewhat balanced

S0ny_B1ack wrote: Is this map still being worked on?
Because we are searching for a big map for a disciple game with 17 players and we would like anything big enough and at least somewhat balanced

Hasn't seen a post from the creator since September, so I'm guessing no. Damn shame too, it was shaping up to be pretty as hell.

Krafty
Jan 7 2014, 5:18pm said: