First of all, I'd like to point out that the historical accuracy should be second to an enjoyable map.
Regarding the maps functionality: It's fine, it works as intended with a few flaws (elaboration coming.)
The looks are fine, nothing outright heinous (except some model sizes being too large for them to look good but that's a model/skin issue more than Kogors fault. I'm looking at you Elephants!)
There's a few niggling annoyances that are almost unavoidable with these sorts of maps.
Spacing, the empires you choose, alliances and town density.
I've played this game several times, and I've gone into single player to simply look at the map. Apart from some cute Easter eggs most of the map is used for towns and empires to expand into.
Let us now look into one of the flaws with the maps functionality:
Alliances.
First up; Alliances. These maps always struggle with finding the right balance of allies, some people say 1, some say 2, some say none. All is fair in love and war however and none should be excluded.
Strangely enough, the Arabian factions tend to win the game due to favourable allies (meaning they usually have powerful allies as they can both expand in whatever direction and generally do fine.)
Compared to the European countries which struggle with getting a foothold in most cases. Many of the factions have wars coming in from multiple angles and it's hard to defend, allying your neighbour does good for a bit - but it results in less income and you, and, your ally becomes weaker as a result. France, Spain, Germany and Bulgaria, are all exceptionally close to each other. But more on that later.
Also the beginning alliances should just stop. There is no reason for this as most alliances in the start either break or are not useful.
Spacing.
Looking at the map. Russias position is very favourable, with a lot of spacing inbetween the towns. Spacing means the conquest of the towns is harder. This is a double edged sword in most cases, but since there is no one else to really challenge the area from the start, Russia can safely expand into areas that are going to be difficult to attack simply due to spacing. You might say it's hard to defend, but not really.
The spacing is so vast that you can easily simply follow your enemy 1 town behind with a smaller force and surround them with a larger force after a bit of recruitment.
Compare this to the spacing of main-land Europe. I find it hard to see why Bulgaria is even a faction, it clumps up the already faction heavy area. Germany, France and Bulgaria (and the Byzantine Empire) are practically neighbours.
Town Density.
For the most part I enjoy the town placements by Kogor, I've said my case about Russia itself and main-land Europe so I will skip those two.
In my opinion however, there are too many towns up in the Northern Realms, bordering Russia. The Arabian nations (granted I have not yet personally played them so I can't speak from personal experience) seem to have an alright density, though the Indian peninsula seems a bit town-heavy for the amount of factions there.
The Empires.
As I mentioned, Bulgaria is not necessary in Europe as it just adds yet another player that will either succeed or leave the game due to the pressure from other players. Move Germany more east, remove Bulgaria.
The Arabian empires might need a bit more relocating away from each other, as I've seen many players leave due to being rushed by one and the other. India though interesting and certainly fun, seem a bit strong with Cavalry already being powerful and Elephants being (in this game) beefier Cavalry. I also hosted this map once and had an (apparent) experienced player come in and say "Close teal (Northern Realms), they're not necessary and are over-powered." Translated of course, but you get the gist. If a faction "is not necessary", it should not be in the game. Of course this is one players opinion and though I have seen players bash out and become ruthless as some crazy viking powerhouse, I can't say they're over-powered.
Lastly, some minor points.
Can the "unique units" be in the Help screen with more elaboration? It simply states their name and replacement, but not what makes them better/different. Their unique upgrades could possibly be there too.
The caravan/market/goldmines seem strange, why are they there? What is the purpose for certain players to get an upper-hand for a small amount of time? Surely there should be more of these to compensate or make market units invulnerable with no vision so everyone can benefit from them, perhaps even make them go through trees and walls.
The map ends near some factions, meaning they have an entire angle of attack they don't have to worry about. The cities with no "real" approachable angle should give less gold, I am unsure if this is the point I'm afraid as I've yet to win a game on my own.
Thanks.
-Kingdra.
Hey, thanks for the well thought out feedback.
I'm just going to give you my reasoning behind some of your points and talk about my opinion on some of it as well.
Alliances: I understand where you're coming from, and you are right, Arabian factions tend to be favored on this map with the current experience people have playing the game. While I know it can be normal to set a cap on the amount of allies you have, I chose not to do that because I want it to be up to the players. If the majority of the players in the game want to ally and you do not enjoy that type of gameplay, it could be imperative to not play games with them further OR to remember what they did in a previous game, and target them in future games in order to play around it. I also try to keep historical ties, and it is interesting to me to watch players of various power levels group up for various reasons. For example, a player has 40 cities (somehow) and has taken out two players prior, and the remaining 3 players have around 7-11 cities each. Realistically no two of them are going to match his manpower, the 40 city player is simply too strong and has played very well throughout the game. But the three of them certainly have a fighting chance, and so without a cap on alliances, they can take that opportunity. It also just becomes fun when players randomly decide to launch a crusade, or a jihad, and they take sides in that regard, and I don't want to force players to give up on the 9 city guy they allied with from the start who they've stuck with thick and thin, for the 30 city guy, just because they have no choice but to choose. I will admit now, my logic is not entirely sound, these are mostly just my own opinions towards it and it is basically summed up to this: Fun. Most games you won't have to deal with mega teams who ruin it for you, most games it comes down to two players allying who win the game together, honestly. You do come across the 3v3's and 4v2's sometimes though, where the 4 are small and the 2 are large, but that is much more rare in my experience.
I also just want to address why Arabian nations seem to have the upperhand. There is a large density of cities in Europe specifically for two reasons, 1. It's realistic to the place and, 2. There are the majority of factions in Europe, so that in order to even attempt to encourage diplomacy, there need to be enough cities to make people happy. The problem is people keep jumping into the map one time, maybe up to a few, and they assume they know every single thing about it, that there is no grand strategy, that anything they did or figured out was automatically the best way to play and if they were beat it was the games lack of balance and not their own lack of skill that caused it. This has caused headaches for me on multiple levels as the map designer, having to listen to things like that is tiresome at times. But this ties into the next point to address:
Spacing and Town Density: The first sentence of your bit on Spacing is actually the best part to me because you comment on Russia favorably, but it was just last night that yet another person was screaming at me for the game not having enough "choke points" and Russia being impossible to defend. Realistically, Russia has multiple very tight choke points on their southern border and their Western border, and if you're somehow letting people escape into Siberia to perform a Guerilla War against you, you did something wrong. People have this tendency to just play offense the entire game and then get pissed when someone actually attacks them, they say "Why can people build there, why are people allowed to do this, attack my city there and run, kill my cottage and leave...etc." Meanwhile I noticed they built no walls that game, they don't use watch towers, they don't defend their land. All they do is spam a random assortment of whatever units they deemed "the best" with no regards for counters, and just shoot them all over the world. This is a diplo map, and that doesn't cut it, and players WILL take advantage of you if you have that basic mindset. I bring this up because it shows that everyone really does look at the game differently. With that being said, the Spacing was done with a map and done to the best of my ability given the scale, and I have a love for history and two degrees in it that show I clearly don't care about succeeding in life, but I do care about history. I enjoy the realism. Russia is spread out because it literally just is. Europe is tight-knit because...it is and that is it's hallmark, lots of people on a small continent. Arabia feels relatively well spaced out because it literally just is in real life, they have a fair amount of cities along the majority of the coasts in the Middle East and the rest of the population density is seen in places like the Nile River Valley or modern day Iran.
What I did try to do, and why I included Town Density in this, is because Spacing and Town Density really are one and the same here. It's the way it is because I'm trying to be as realistic as I can, but it's also a balance thing, and it leads to my next point:
Why Bulgaria?: Well first of all before this map decided to hone in on the year 1000 A.D., it used the Ottomans/Turks instead of Bulgaria. The problem with this was redundancy, and a lack of towns causing someone to have to die with no real option of diplomacy in the middle east, but at some point a European power would overwhelm the numerous small city empires in the Middle East. Aside from the times when Egypt was OP, this was clearly what happened and it was never "fun". Not only that, but the Turks make very little sense from a historical point of view and I had to deal with constantly explaining why they were included to various trolls on the internet, which gets tiresome. So I chose Bulgaria for a number of reasons,
1. The map became larger and well proportioned, leaving Bulgaria (or another Civ, like an Italian civ/Romanian/Polish/etc) would cause a influx of cities in East Europe that were now easy pickings. The problem with this is that now they just freely go to whoever has the least amount of conflict in Europe, which in this case would most likely have been the Byzantines. Not only is this not historically relevant, but then I would get a post telling me the Byzantines are overpowered and why isn't there another civilization somewhere in Europe to counterbalance the Byzantines, or possibly even Germany, from taking far more cities right off the bat than would ever make logical sense, and that would put them far above their other European counterparts.
2. The first Empire of Bulgaria existed literally exactly at around 1000 A.D. and was a major player against the Byzantine Empire at the time. Thematically and historically speaking, it makes sense. It puts the Byzantines in check, causes European powers to vie for control of the Italian city states, and then putts the Europeans at odds with each other. Not only is this historically accurate, but it serves as a balancing factor for the European states. With that being said, there are plenty of choke points, and walls have been brought down in cost enough to where you should be using this as they were intended to be used, and siege weapons to counter that. But nobody plays defensively or takes their captured land seriously, as I've noticed most players just go straight offense the entire game with little to no respect for anyone else, or even their own lands.
3. The options are few and far between. The major players during this time are on this map, currently, and that is something that I really enjoy. Aside from Bulgaria, I could perhaps put some kind of Italian City State, or the Church, as an option, but that would create a balance problem as well because then Spain and France cannot get out without Allying someone, and the Byzantines inevitably end up with 10+ more cities than every other European player. Similarly, I could include a lesser civilization (for the time) in the Middle East. The problem with this is city density wasn't realistic for something like that even historically speaking, but certainly not for this map, and I've already had to stretch some of the city's just to give players enough capturable towns, but I can't start literally making cities up.
Lastly, you mention the unique units comment for the Help! screen. I think you have a great idea with that and I will definitely be adding their strengths and weaknesses, in fact, everything like that which I can include in a place to give players more of an idea of how to play or what's good/bad, is what I want to include, and I had never thought of going into more detail in that place specifically, so that is something I will definitely do in future builds.
But I just want to close with this,
Why was the game remade?
The old map was complained about en masse for 3 threes specifically and they are, 1. Bad Terrain, 2. Turks existing, 3. No defined timeline
So the new map has a defined timeline, kept as close to it as realistically possible despite model and historical constraints. The terrain was height mapped in order to get perfect proportions, and then colored in using topographical maps from each area of the world to the best of my ability, and the Turks were not relevant enough in 1000 A.D. specifically, so I chose the next most relevant civ for the time, with the ideas of balance in mind.
So I hope this answers your questions and doesn't seem like I'm fighting you, I just wanted to address your points in detail because you took the time to give me a well thought out post that seemed like you cared enough to give proper feedback, so I wanted to show I also care enough to give a proper reply.
Thanks again