Study needed- greatest practical city size

[Zubareva]

The one time we've tried, the Super Scenario, is very playable. Correction: the EFZI scenario was also a City-terrain scenario and it worked well enough to get the Mod of the Decade award. I've had a peek at Vuldacon's almost-finished EFZI sequel; it's unbelievable.



I wouldn't worry about that: most historic war mods start with large numbers of units to move, including the WWII in the Pacific conquest scenario that comes with C3C (and sets the AI -the Japanese - to attack on the first turn!). Don't forget that some guys were moving little metal units around on tabletop battlegrounds long before computer games came along.

Such a "battle" scenario, done carefully and accurately (with great graphics!) could be fascinating and educational to make, and interesting to play, I'm sure. It could be a good multi-player scenario, too.

Thats so funny you should talk about the little metal units. Jeffery has such like you talk about. (He's very careful about anyone touching the map ) Hundreds of little painted metal soldiers, on a huge map of Europe. Every unit must be perfect placed, and the funny part is that if you move a unit, he knows its been moved!!! Yes, i think that i understand what you mean. Hmmmm, well maybe youre right.

In such a mod, your larger city would be very handy indeed, because cities would occupy several hexes.

 

[Balthasar]

In such a mod, your larger city would be very handy indeed, because cities would occupy several hexes.

They would occupy several tiles you mean: we, of course, use an isometric map, which is important because that provides us an opportunity, too - if you want a larger structure on a pre-placed map - say, the Acropolis - but don't want to assign a city graphic to it (because a city graphic has to repeat), you can also make a multi-tile graphic, such as I did with the stadium on the Manhattan & Super Scenario maps (4 tiles), or my favorite, the Mons Olympus Volcano on my Barsoom Map (9 tiles).

You can also play with height: a regular tile is 128x64 pixels, 64 pixels being the height. The mountain tiles are taller: 84 pixels. The difference looks like a lot on the map. A 4th-era radar (in the "x_airfields and detect" pcx file) is 128 pixels high! The height of the Victory point pcx can be adjusted taller or wider just like a city file, but will 'disappear' randomly if it's too high or wide.

I'm not saying that wider (or taller) cities aren't useful, I'm only saying that, because they repeat, they probably shouldn't be used as landmarks. I've even thought of a scenario in which the 'city' graphic looks like a command tent, or military encampment, while the nearby city or town is actually a fortress or barrier graphic made to look like a city or town. Civinator had a variation on this, using resource tiles as cities & towns. In my experiments, I prefer to use resources to give character to a city: as the Eiffel tower, or Statue of Liberty, for instance.

 

[Zubareva]

yes i was considering that very point that you make about the repeating graphics, v cities.

I suppose one way would be, such as a Stalingrad battle mod...

That the terrain would recreate the city scape of the day, and "Cities" could be for one example be Factories, which generate units. As the german army captures the cities, the factories would fall under control.

I mean about your cities more as flavor and scale in the context of that post.



I think Napoleon's battle of 1813 in central Germany would be a great mod in this context. Many countries and armies fighting to corner Napoleon in Germany.