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[SquashMonster]

I noticed a few things that could be improved about the location selection interface at the start of a game.  So here they are.

1) Sometimes, desirable features straddle the line between two tiles on the regional map.  This prevents you from settling somewhere that has both of these features.  Perhaps moving the settlement area on the local map to the edge of the map can scroll the regional map by a partial region?  Moving the regional map the normal way would realign it to the grid, so you don't get lost by the world shifting.

2) Sometimes, you find a really good location that isn't quite what you're looking for at the moment.  Perhaps you want to make a glass fortress but you find a region with magma, water, and trees but no sand.  It would be nice to be able to mark such locations.  Press a key, enter a description.  Press another key, you get a list of the areas you've marked off and can scroll through them.  As an added bonus, if the saved areas are stored in a separate file, players can share their lists for given seeds.

3) It seems that the world map tiles are each based on a single tile of the regional map.  This leads to lots of regions that are predominantly one tile but show as a different one on the world map.  A simple fix would be to take a sampling of the region tiles and make the world map tile be the most common one.

[qalnor]

quote:Originally posted by SquashMonster:
<STRONG>1) Sometimes, desirable features straddle the line between two tiles on the regional map.  This prevents you from settling somewhere that has both of these features.  Perhaps moving the settlement area on the local map to the edge of the map can scroll the regional map by a partial region?  Moving the regional map the normal way would realign it to the grid, so you don't get lost by the world shifting.
</STRONG>

Part of me agrees with this, and part of me disagrees. On the face, it seems like a perfectly reasonable and sensible idea.

But the part of me which disagrees thinks there is already quite a lot of min-maxing when it comes to region selection and this I think would make it even worse.

Despite popular belief, not every area needs to have a volcano, a chasm, an underground river, an underground lake, adamantium, marble, obsidian, lots of iron ores, sand and a mysterious lair.

Don't get me wrong, I'm guilty of some of this as well, I spend way too much time in region selection. I'd just be concerned about now making it that much easier to capture the perfect region, when that sort of thing isn't really what should be being encouraged in the first place.

That having been said, I still do like the idea at least in principle.

[Karlito]

quote:Originally posted by qalnor:
<STRONG>
Despite popular belief, not every area needs to have a volcano, a chasm, an underground river, an underground lake, adamantium, marble, obsidian, lots of iron ores, sand and a mysterious lair. </STRONG>

This being a single player game I really have no problem at all with these suggestions.  In fact, I'm in favor of anything that gives the player more versatility when options in game.  It should be up to individual players to decide how they want to play the game.

In regards to number 2,
I think this would be good.  I remember a discussion a while back, where there was a suggestion that we could do the same thing in adventure mode.  I like this very much.

[darknight]

I like the second suggestion too. Several times now, while looking for one kind of area, I found a spot that would be good to develop at a later time. But at present there is no way to mark these, or make notes.

Instead, I have taken to sending a "play now" party to these places, and then abandoning them before they even start. This makes them available in reclaim mode at least. Then I can just scroll thru the list of reclaim sites to find a site to try. Not the best way of doing things, but it works for now.

[Red Jackard]

i remember doing that in an much earlier version, and was surprised to discover that the vegetation changed when i tried to reclaim. Does this still happen?

[penguinofhonor]

.