I've decided to use the Switzerland map, it has a good variety of terrain and at 771x459 it's bigger than the previous map but still a server-friendly size. Am deviating a little from my original plan, am exploring the idea of setting things out in vaguely realistic fashion, meaning:
- urban centres on flat land
- resources concentrated geographically and maybe even sensibly
- building end-consumption factories in urban centres in proportion to their population
I realise that the game will build things anywhere so the map will become increasingly random as time passes, but I'm interested to see how we go trying to play from that starting point. It may lead us to a scenario where some players take responsibility for distributing within urban centres and establish public distribution centres to which other players deliver products from the countryside. Either that or we establish public stops at end-consumers and converge upon them with our various products. Having resources concentrated geographically also means that "development of an industry chain" and "development of a region" are almost the same thing, and should stop everyone trying to build over the top of each other, at least for the first hundred years or so.
Will post drafts of the map as I go along, in fact the first of these can be downloaded
here (being 10Kb too large to attach to this post). For now ignore any actual industries on the map, these were auto-generated. I have scattered some signs around the map where I intend to place various resources and factories, still working on that, suggestions welcome. Seeking feedback on the following:
- Suitability of the base map
- Suitability of current city locations and sizes
Any estimates on how many end-consumption factories we need at startup?
Nominations for city names most welcome.
I don't have any need to monopolise this process either, if someone else wants to run with this, grab it and do so. I want to work collaboratively rather than in competitive isolation though.
Thanks for the checklist Timothy.