Thread: March 2011 entry: Pax Italia

Well, borders and cities are in, though they need to be pretty-fied. The solid lines are national borders - what each country starts the game claiming as its provinces, and the dotted lines are provincial borders. Big stars are capitals, giving their provinces added bonuses, small stars are other cities, giving their provinces smaller bonuses.

One more update for tonight. I'm not sure I'm liking the direction this is going, but I'm going to push through and see what it looks like farther on. I figure if it's crap, I've got almost the whole month to start over.

So, colored areas are going to be Playable Nations (I think there will be around six). Then there are nations which cannot be players, but can be moved into by the Players, like Piombino. Next are non-movable areas, which will be France, Switzerland, Austria, and the Ottomans. Last are Sea Zones.

What I'm trying to do now is work out a balance that will allow anyone to have a chance at winning; I decided to make the smaller nations NPCs because they're just not going to have enough oomph to start out with. An exception might be Malta - I'm kind of wanting it to be a Templar Magocracy. Even though they start out tiny, they're going to have a kick-ass military to start out.

Then I have to factor in the players that want to be Condottiere - should they start out in another player's territory, allied to them for the first turn? That's kind of what I'm leaning towards.

looking really good - I like the colors (the leather could use a little texturing ) ... and game balance is always hard - In diplomacy Italy often loose (although I have managed to win with Italy) and Austria-Hungary is also in a hard position to begin with, but the game is well balanced.
In Britania the game is definitly best played with exactly 4 players, whereas the 3 and 5 player versions are a little off.

Looks very good. The only thing which seems 'odd' to me is the design of the capital symbols. I can't tell what it is, really, but something doesn't work for my eyes. Btw, independent Styria - blasphemy !!!

@Tilt: yeah, I think I'm going to get rid of the large leather box. The more I look at it, it's just distracting and ugly. The pattern I used doesn't really work at a larger size like that.

@Sap: The capitals have a bevel/emboss on them, where the other cities don't; I'll reduce it a bit and see how that looks.

Diamond, you could try to make the bevel/emboss less smooth. Maybe that will change the look.

Gotta ask though what IS the leather box for? perhaps i missed the description in an earlier post?

Originally Posted by lapada

Gotta ask though what IS the leather box for? perhaps i missed the description in an earlier post?

It's gone now. It was going to be a game info box with various descriptions of stuff on it - a key, game info, etc. I opted for a much simpler box though.

Originally Posted by Diamond

It's gone now. It was going to be a game info box with various descriptions of stuff on it - a key, game info, etc. I opted for a much simpler box though.

haha oh ok , And yes perhaps it was for the best -- it dose draw alot of attention from the vary nice mapping job ^^