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[E. Albright]

Valanis is a nice map. No question there. And it meets pretty much all my terrain and size "wants". I'd be okay with it, personally. However, it's not wraparound, so there are "edge" provinces and you can be required to slog from one side of the map to another. Which I think some of our players might find objectionable. I'd say it's certainly worth including for consideration, though.

[Frumple]

I personally prefer non-wrap maps to wrap, m'self, heh. Wraparound gives me a lil'bit of a headache. Left is right, up is down, etc., etc.

Re: Map settings: I'd also be throwing in for higher than base site frequency ('cause that makes things more interesting) and common events (ditto). In the event of a catastrophic early event, maybe there'd be room for one or two mulligan chances -- basically, if someone gets event wrecked on turn three, we restart or roll back a turn (if that's possible and changes event RNG).

I'd kinda' vote for score graphs on, given the amount of beginners we have... it'd take a little pressure off micromanaging scouting and whatnot. On the other tentacle, low-experience folks have a harder time meaningfully interpreting the graph info, so it might be just as much of a boon to leave 'em off. Big advantage for team two, though, in that case... recruitable flying scouts are glorious.

Definitely 10 or 15 hall of fame slots and limited artifact forging. Not really an opinion on anything else. So long as renaming is on by default for something like this, heh.

Map wise, I wouldn't exactly mind Valanis, though sweet zeus would that put the tentacled dudes in a position. Though, can I make the request any non-default maps recommended come with a link, so we can look at it? Search can find it fairly quickly, but it saves a little time.

[Karlito]

Valanis is a nice map. No question there. And it meets pretty much all my terrain and size "wants". I'd be okay with it, personally. However, it's not wraparound, so there are "edge" provinces and you can be required to slog from one side of the map to another. Which I think some of our players might find objectionable. I'd say it's certainly worth including for consideration, though.

My objection to non-wrap around maps is that someone inevitably gets stuck in the middle, which is maybe less of a consideration if we're going to define starting locations and cluster teams together. Anyway, I do prefer ones that wrap around in just one direction, as opposed to both, which makes me favorably inclined toward Leaking Land.

EDIT: We could always use a randomly generated map. They aren't too bad in dominions 4.

[E. Albright]

Fantomagoria
Leaking Land
Peliwyr

[lavenders2]

Leaking land sounds good.
Second preference is Peliwyr (the artwork on that map is fantastic)

[Shadowlord]

At least some of the adjacent provinces on leaking land don't seem to be connected properly. It's very bizarre. (Up north) I was testing some stuff when I noticed it - I didn't expand very far so I don't know how extensive the problem is.

Just plain green provinces adjacent to each other that should be connected by all appearances, but there's no way to move between them.

[E. Albright]

I suppose I should just post a poll for the map. Current contenders are Valanis, Peliwyr, Leaking Lands, Fantomagoria, or a random map [Edit: Or the dark horse mentioned in the next paragraph]. Any I'm missing? 

I'll add that if people wanted a slightly larger wrap-around map that's reasonably aesthetically pleasing and also has an underworld, I had recently started adding some caves into the mountain ranges of Urraparand; it's notably larger at 155+35, with 10 of that 155 being the new caves, but it is an option. It's a somewhat painful WIP, because there's no easy way to add provinces to an existing map (the Map Editor LIES!), but if there was interest I could twist my arm and finish the wretched thing...

Edit: Behold, the thing itself. Cave provinces span the regions enclosed by the grey-brown borders; all but one are centered on a mountain range, and all have visible entrances on the map.

Spoiler: Urraparand, with caves (click to show/hide)

[E. Albright]

Soooo... the map poll has been up for over a day and we're sitting at three votes and no comments...

[gman8181]

Meh, I like the larger size of Valanis but I want a wraparound of which Leaking Lands has the only vote so far. I was kind of waiting to see if any other wraparounds got votes to make my decision.

I guess regardless, I'll try and make a decision sometime later today.

[Culise]

My inclination is to go for larger sizes as well, but with only one underwater nation, it might not be the best idea.  I voted for Urraparand with caves, but it is worth noting that 155+35 outputs 35 provinces for R'yleh and 14 and a bit for the land-dwellers.  As such, I would have no objection to a tweaked random map or Valanis as well, but we can only vote for one map, so Urraparand is it. ^_^

[Karlito]

I think I'll try to generate up some example maps tomorrow. They aren't the prettiest, but the control we can get over province numbers is a strong plus.

[E. Albright]

The way Urraparand is laid out, if you wanted to pick a sort of map where a lonely UW nation was not going to "get" all the oceans just by virtue of being UW, that would be it. There's 35 sea provinces but of them, not a single one isn't coastal. Most border one or two sea provinces, so if there's a hard-to-clear indy province, expansion can slow to a crawl. Additionally, while the sea wraps NS, it doesn't wrap EW. This combined with ritual ranges make for an ocean which is not easy for a sea nation to hold for itself - moving from one end of the ocean to the other would take at least 16 turns if there was no portaging performed. The UW nation still can turtle, but most of the sea provinces are bordered by four or more land provinces, so turtling invites being preached into oblivion - though that's less of a threat in a disciple game. I've played this map as Atlantis for MP - 35 UW provinces are a lot for a game with a single UW nation, but it's hardly 35 reserved for them, and it's a lot more precarious for them to hold than a lot of maps' oceans...

[E. Albright]

So, um, we're still at 7/12 voted. I went for the current leader, Urraparand w/caves, but I'm not strictly wed to it - and not just because us using it means I have to finish checking neighbor connections for 190 provinces. Do we have any further input, or votes from those who haven't weighed in?

[Shadowlord]

I voted for it. It looked good (and I wanted to vote against leakinglands).

The round one (Valanis?) looked pretty but it looked like the water was basically all connected and divided the center of the map, which could have been bad strategically since there is only one water nation.

[E. Albright]

The water splits the map, but there are three fords that landlubbers can use to go to/from the north from/to the south. Still, in Round 401, there has been a pretty sharp strategic divide into "affairs of the north" and "affairs of the south"...