I am working on an earth-based map with over 800 cities.  Before putting the final touches on it I thought I might ask everybody's opinion.  I was thinking about using the D20 but this would increase the chances for the attacker.  But with over 800 locations - that may be a good thing?  Should this be an attack heavy map?  Also, should card turn in scale to infinity or be restrained? Plus, feel free to include any other suggestions you have for a large map with lots of locations.  OK - let me hear what you got.

How are the borders laid out? ..continents? set up (neutral count? neutral wall? How many players do you envision playing the map?

In short, I think most people that could help you here would need to see it.  20D v 20D has many inherent drawbacks because of the 3v2 game standard.  If you want to speed up the process by making it an "attacker's" map, there may be better ways to do it. 

Could you post the designer board #? It's in the URL when you open the designer.

Here is the link to view it etc.

http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/3065

I havent finished creating the island paths yet.  Plus I am still working on some of the city border colors. It looks OK on the monitor at work but a little off at home.

Wow! Very ambitious. Certainly it will be tricky for many who won't be able to get but a fraction of the map on their screens at a time, but I guess that's their problem.

Well, let's see; you have an 'Epik' map, but you don't want an 'Epik'ly long game. Unfortunately, I've gotta tell you I believe they go hand in hand.  Consider that if you change the dice at all, there are a number of players who will pass just because they know and trust their beloved cubes.  That said, if I was determined to consider "out of the box" solutions like dice mods, I would likely pair them with some creative uses of set-up, factories, individual border mods, and possibly even unit caps in specific places. I notice that you don't play, so though it may be presumptuous of me, my concern is that you might not have much of a player's feel for how these things can affect game-play.  But that's what Dev testers are for, right?

Anyways, If I was trying to speed up this as a standard board, I think I would start by ramping the cards steeply.  Maybe start at 4 and add 3 or 4 per set.  Make the territorial bonuses a little heavy as well. Unfortunately, you're going to need to be stingy about your standard bonus allocation.  1/3 is going to give the first players to move a significant advantage on a board like this.. 1/5 or even 1/6 might be a good place to start.  You're going to have another dilemma on your hands fixing the first player advantage problem.  Higher neutral ratio at startup will help, but at the expense of slowing down the game.

If this was my board - I'm pretty sure I'd have scenarios for different numbers of players because of the inherent problems with fair play at this scale.

That's my 2 cents..

Yeah, I have a lot of scenarios planned that limit the troops on certain locations.  I also plan on implementing capitals and factories extensively.  The basic board layout is for the hardcore guys that like the normal type board of course.

I pretty much agree with everything you listed. One thing I didnt take into account that you just mentioned however is games with less than 16 players. I think your right with different scenarios for lower number of players. 

Thanks for the input!

I agree with  M57s suggestion regarding putting the territory bonus at 1/6 (or even greater).  As for 1st move advantage, you can set 1st round bonuses in the designer, and I would definitely consider doing so.  Having 2 or more scenarios based upon # of players is probably a very good idea, as it will give you more flexibility as you tweak things.  Maybe 2-6, 7-12, and 13-16.

You probably need to have at least medium fog.  Otherwise it is too easy for other players to see that someone is getting a lead and begin to focus on them.  And on a big board you build your lead slowly, so others have plenty of time to knock the leader back down.  It might be possible to work around this, but if you have less than medium fog, you really need to think about how a player will be able to hold & grow their advantage.

If you don't like the complete fogginess of medium fog, you can think about adding some view-only borders to mitigate.  Maybe have some territories that are watch towers, or a satellite, or some way to gain a better view of the world.

I think having dice with larger # of sides is a good idea, because it does give a slightly larger advantage to attacker so it encourages attacking.

As for cards, I would let players hold more than 5 cards.  This helps in two ways.  1st - if players can turn in two sets (or more) at a time they can get a big boost of units at once to help that take others out, and make big moves.  2nd - When you take someone out, it is more likely you will capture more cards.

Another possibility is to include capitals.   It's pretty obvious how that helps make it easier to eliminate people, and if you have unit assimilation on it makes it even more worthwhile to eliminate someone.  Of course you have to make the capitals pretty tempting or no one will ever want to take them.  Maybe give them the view-only borders I mentioned above, or a defensive bonus, or have them double nearby continent bonuses or something.

Thanks Ozyman, I'm loving your suggestions!  I'm getting a lot of great ideas here.  I had never thought to include for and view only in this map.  I think thats a great idea.

With 16 players every player starts with like 50 locations but some of those will need to be neutrals of course so I am inclined to go for 1 army per 5 locs.  I had thought of no territory bonus and relying only on factories per continent.  I think players enjoy that dynamic bonus though.

Keep em coming gentlemen! I need all the help I can get. :)

Wow!

You might look at some of the settings on http://www.wargear.net/boards/view/Civil+War.

When Viper was developing this one he went through a lot of the same questions.

One design note; your territory names use a mix of cities, states and countries.  I think it would be cool if you used just cities.  For example Denver instead of Colorado. 

Just hope that you don't get Toaster on your review board as this is basically a "circle map".

Does anyone else have the issue where the map will not thumbnail on the About tab?  I can't see it unless I go the Board Explorer tab.

Hey, there are little cities inside those circles!  I was afraid it would be too hard to see after reducing the transparency on that layer... Perhaps I should go back to my more square city icons I had originally planned.

Yeah I cant see the thumbnail either.  I think I broke it by reloading it so many times.  My bad!

Severene, I'd like to be on the play-test when you have this ready to test.

Raptor wrote:

Does anyone else have the issue where the map will not thumbnail on the About tab?  I can't see it unless I go the Board Explorer tab.

I have found that the "Original" map doesn't necessarily thumbnail if there are scenarios.  Depending on which page you are viewing the thumbnail from.