I made my first map. I have tested it in 3 games with friends and the only issues were some territories that weren't connected right. That was fixed and I did lots of clicking to test all connections again. I think the bonus values seem appropriate. Here is the map (in testing phase):

http://warlight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=9405


I have a couple questions:

1) This was traced from a real board game (Succession Was - 3025). The only real change was that I added a 'city' for each capital in the original game to give them additional significance. Don't know if anybody has played that, but it was a lot of fun when I used to play it. My question is about copyright issues. Can it be made public? Do I need to site the source, etc? If not, what can I change to make it public?

It was based off this map:
http://boardgamegeek.com/image/671957/the-succession-wars

Which is some sort of reproduction from someone else because the original map is shown here:
http://spaceship.brainiac.com/Fasa/succession-wars.jpg

So I am confused on copyright issues for it.

2) Is there anybody willing to play some games on it to test it out? It was pretty fun when we played it (kind of chaotic without any natural choke points). I'm looking to make sure it works, not whether regions or territories should be changed since they are based on the real game and I didn't make them up.

3) Can someone create a game/test it with a manual distribution by color? The original game is played by 2-5 players with each taking a color ("House") as you can see on the graphics I linked to. With less than 5 players, people take more than one "House" or nation. I'd like to see how it plays with actually assigning these areas to a player rather than random distribution (I am not a member) or picking a few to start. I wasn't sure if another person can actually start a game with a non public map.

4) One change I just thought of would be to add additional bonuses for the "House" areas/colors. I got this idea from the Ireland map on here. I think I will definitely add that in.

Any feedback would be great, thanks!

1. the black gaps between territories dont look great.

2. your bonus values are a little off. there are numerous bonuses of one and two territories which are worth one and two armies respectively, while larger bonuses worth 5 or 6 armies have more than 6 territories, making them more difficult to take and hold with less reward.

Well, the gaps are there on the original, I think to help distinguish the regions. I simply did a trace in Adobe Illustrator (there were a few lines that had to be added back in that the trace didn't catch). I can tighten up some areas though...are there some specific ones that look bad?

I'd like to keep the middle as worth 1 (even though it is only 1 territory), since it is Terra/earth and was very significant in the game. Maybe I should change the chain of ones in the SW to a combined 3 instead of separate? What other areas should I bump up?

Also, I had a suggestion from a friend that instead of doing regions as inner, outer (with some 1, 2, 3) as doing NW, NE, etc. What do you think? I did inner and outer since the map is based on a sphere of systems around earth/Terra. I thought inner and outer gave it the feeling of distance from the center, but wasn't sure if his idea was better.

Thanks for the feedback.

I do see some gaps that seem bad though. I will have to tighten those up. It just seems very tedious in Inkscape. Any tips for getting those to align easy?

Inner/Outer is fine. Cardinal directions just sound weird to my ears when used in space.
As for the many +1s: why not also combine the houses' home systems and terra all into one bonus giving +5? You could combine Taurian & Outworlds into one bonus as well - and maybe link them to each other. They should give +1 if you ask me, same goes for all the other 2-territory-bonuses.

i think matma rex has said something about it, search the forums. its fine if theyre meant to be that way, but some look a lot wider than others.

I like it, it looks very nice.

Some of the bonuses need tweaking but otherwise it's great.

"Draconis Combine", "House Steiner"? Is this from the same universe as the old BattleTech cartoons and MechWarrior computer games?

### Bonus values

|> I'd like to keep the middle as worth 1 (even though it is only 1 territory), since it is Terra/earth and was very significant in the game. Maybe I should change the chain of ones in the SW to a combined 3 instead of separate? What other areas should I bump up?

Maybe it's not about further bumping up some bonuses. Another approach could be to lower other bonuses. I won't argue with you about the Earth bonus (I see your point), but in general, bonuses are worth fewer armies than the number of territories which make them up. Just like a lot of real world maps, this one has no choke points at all, making it hard to defend a bonus (with the notable exception of the Bandit's Kingdom!), so a relatively high bonus value makes some sense. But a two-territory bonus worth two reinforcements seems "very generous".
Remember Australia on the old Risk map? It's four territories, defensible by holding a single choke point and worth two armies. So, I suggest reducing the Bandit's Kingdom value to 2, then reconsider all other bonuses worth 2: if they're easier to obtain than BK, reduce them to 1. Then reconsider all bonuses worth 3: any of them which are pretty comparable to BK could be reduced to 2. Now you should have a nice baseline to compare other bonuses to.

### Territory borders

Within bonuses, you have them almost-touching, with small slivers of background shining through. I think it would look much better when they're actually touching (like the featured maps do).

Between bonuses, some look really nice, such as those between *Outer Lyron Commonwealth 1* and its neighbours. Some others look kinda sloppy, such as the one between *Outer Lyron Commonwealth 2* and *Central Free Worlds League*. It would look much better if they were either touching (like inter-bonus borders on featured maps) or, if you prefer the gap, if they are touching an imaginary line (of constant width) running between them (in other words, if they have the same shape, at a fixed distance from each other, the *Central Free Worlds League* territory *Bella* is one of the worst offenders).

Please note, this is just about making it look nice. That's a nice feature to have, but by no means critical (also, not everyone will agree on what "looks best"!).

I cleaned up some borders/gaps. How does it look now? I think it is ready to go public now:

http://WarLight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=9405

Thanks

I was also thinking of making the larger bonuses (for all of yellow, for example), a different symbol for the bonus link. Maybe a star or something.

Looks pretty, some suggestions:

create a none-territory circle surrounding what you have, connecting to the Taurian Concordat and following its border, so it doesn´t look like it´s just jutting off the edge of the map.

The Draconis combine colours are too similar, the black spaces between them make it look messy in this way. I think you should make those colours contrast more.

donno if it was already said but i think that green zone is very very much better to start respect from other zones, maybe u should enlarge it or make join the 3 little bonuses in a larger one

Yeah, I was having a hard time with the reds because it also borders the yellow (don't want to go too orange). How do the colors look now:

http://WarLight.net/SinglePlayer.aspx?PreviewMap=9405

"donno if it was already said but i think that green zone is very very much better to start respect from other zones, maybe u should enlarge it or make join the 3 little bonuses in a larger one"

-well, I won't change the shape/amount of territories for any of them because then it doesn't follow the lore of the original game.

I actually already combined Liao and Tikonov that aren't really in the original to make it better:

http://cf.geekdo-images.com/images/pic669360_lg.jpg

Also consider that while that might be the best spot to start, that also makes it the most chosen in manual distribution (similar to Australia). So you have to weigh picking there, or getting free run of the rest of the map. All depends on number of people you play with, whether you have teams, etc.

Much better :)