Maps for Fall of Empires & Lawrence of Arabia

[joe_oppenheimer]

I'm reading the latest Gold Club update and I was struck by this:

The bottleneck for both Fall of Empires and Lawrence of Arabia has been map art – an enormous amount of map art. Fourteen maps’ worth. So we’re going to work around that:

Fall of Empires and Fire in the Steppe take place in the same region; some of the scenarios take place over the same ground. We’re going to re-print six Fire in the Steppe maps for Fall of Empires, and that will be the map set. The maps are so similar that it was already a foolish notion to make new ones.

 
Lawrence of Arabia and Sword of Israel also take place in the same region, with some scenarios taking place over the same ground.

How can the scenarios for these two games possibly have been playtested if the maps weren't yet ready? It seems like they either playtested them on a completely different set of maps than what they'll release with, or they haven't actually played any of the scenarios.

I understand the economics of not creating new maps, but these games have been in progress for years and I just don't see how they can now switch out the maps.

[plloyd1010]

While I don't know the specifics of the situation, I can say that you don't need pretty maps for playtesting. The only requirement for a playtest map is that it be technically accurate. Imagine a sketch map looking like the old SPI maps. Not much color, but accurate. I would expect that APL uses something like Hexdraw, or does a quick paste over(under) with CS2.

As to what kept them from release, I have no idea.

[joe_oppenheimer]

While I don't know the specifics of the situation, I can say that you don't need pretty maps for playtesting. The only requirement for a playtest map is that it be technically accurate. Imagine a sketch map looking like the old SPI maps. Not much color, but accurate. I would expect that APL uses something like Hexdraw, or does a quick paste over(under) with CS2.

As to what kept them from release, I have no idea.

Right, you can certainly playtest on a crude hand drawn map as long as it indicates the terrain you intend to use. But the post about deciding to reuse existing maps suggests that wasn't the original plan, so I'm wondering about any scenario design that was done up to this point.

I know people rag on Avalanche for lack of playtesting and I try to not be one of those people, but these games have been in development for years and it's clear from the post that they didn't intend to use these particular maps until recently.

[Hugmenot]

While I don't know the specifics of the situation, I can say that you don't need pretty maps for playtesting. The only requirement for a playtest map is that it be technically accurate. Imagine a sketch map looking like the old SPI maps. Not much color, but accurate. I would expect that APL uses something like Hexdraw, or does a quick paste over(under) with CS2.

As to what kept them from release, I have no idea.

Our (PG) playtest maps were either drawn by hand or in HexDraw. Some designers provided maps, others did not and I drew those based on the designer notes.

Guy did a masterful job converting my maps into final product. The final maps were generally slightly different than those we provided (say a handful of hexes different out of 187)  but I suspect all the changes were made to make certain features feel more natural. In my opinion, none of his changes affect gameplay significantly.

We were not involved with IA so I have no clue what was playtested (or not) and what maps they used for playtesting.

[plloyd1010]

I guessed right! Proof that even a blind squirrel can find a nut. Actually not that hard, it is what I do when I do one-off scenarios and such. I think someone once posted a screen shot of a PG playtest map on Consim a few years back.

[Shad]

I think Joe and the rest of you are talking about two different things.


Joe's point has nothing to do with the quality of the artwork, and is about the structure of the map itself - terrain type, elevation, etc. The scenarios should be playtested on a discrete layout and AP throwing their hands in the air and using old maps suggests:

• no meaningful on-map testing was done, OR
  
• the terrain has no meaningful effect on the scenario, OR
  
• AP doesn't care about final playability and product quality enough
  

   

(video link if you've never seen the original)

[Hugmenot]

I knew that Shad but with so little information about the IA development cycle, it's impossible to know what the developer used as maps for playtesting.

The number of town hexes have an effect on the victory conditions for many scenarios so I think your second option would be true only of the playtest maps were similar enough to the Fire in the Steppe maps.

Guy never changed the number of town hexes, nor their locations, on the final maps. His changes were more akin to adding an hex to a hill (or river) so its contour looks more natural.

[Hugmenot]

In case anyone is interested, here is a partial image of the Board 112 we used to test Counter Attack.

   

The map was drawn quickly in HexDraw; I got good enough that I could paint a map like the attached in one or two hours top. Printing the maps was not bad, $9 for a set of 6. I rarely had to print maps more than once after an early mistake. 

Printing the scenarios was more expensive, typically $12 each time I printed them. I printed the original submission, and two or three additional times during the development / final edits process. 

I also had to do counters at times - and thanks Peter for the great playtest counters you did for Maple Leaf Brigade - but in general I just used counters from other PG games if there were any with the same values as needed. I sort my counters by nations so that was not a big deal for me. Leaders were more problematic because I sometimes had to pull some from multiple games and can't say I sorted them correctly afterwards.  I've been using the PG-Q leader selection tool for some time to avoid me having to sort my leaders.

[larry marak]

I'm more disappointed in the change of color palette.  The 12 maps of Imperial Grenadier, which was the single game
August and Empires were carved out of, use lush greens.  Fire in the Steppes maps are completely at odds with August 1914.  As for the scenarios the games has been redesigned at least twice....they might well work with appropriate generic panels.

[Matt W]

I'm far more concerned with the effect on scenario balance. Unless the objectives are very similar and the layout of approach to the objectives of similar length and with similar cover (or lack thereof) any previous playtesting is relatively worthless.

I know that most of the work that Daniel and I have put into the scenarios that we have developed has been focused on playing the scenarios with the OOB and maps as relative givens but trying to come up with victory conditions that provide both players with a reason to play. That does not mean that we wouldn't fuss with the maps or with the OOB if necessary but simply that the bulk of the work has involved crafting victory conditions that make the players feel that they still have a decent chance at least 3/4 of the way through the play.

If one is particularly used to the process it is relatively easy to see how certain objectives may be impossible and others incredibly easy. With PG and the number of plays that Daniel and I have had we typically could come to a conclusion about a scenario within a few turns of initial contact. That was helped by having hundreds of different scenarios under our belts and also by the fact that Daniel and I are temperamentally very different. Daniel is a patient, thoughtful and careful player whereas I tend to be more impulsive and aggressive. This gives us the ability to consider a wide variety of options for both sides quickly and to determine if a scenario has a fair chance of keeping both players' interest.

I am not sure that anyone has the benefit of that kind of experience for either IA or PG Modern. A change of this magnitude in combination with the change in the artillery rules may lead to some less competitive scenarios. This, of course, was an issue with the earlier products within the PG line as well. I expect that the newer IA products will still be fun to play and given the ease of playing the games solitaire (and the artillery change will help that), a lack of balance will be less of an issue.