Explore Map function: Income, reinforcement and country cost

So with the myriad of new maps coming out it would be nice to have some sort of way to explore the maps, out of game, kinda like the tutorial did for vanilla, but with more bells and whistles.

I suggest a map explorer that can be used by both map creators and anyone else to see how a map looks/feels in terms of income, reinforcements and country cost. This will help map creators balance their maps more easily, and can cut the "learning curve" for a given map for those trying a map for the first time.

So you could load a map in a kinda tutorial mode where all the countries are automatically colour coded for income, reinforcements and cost. The top 10% in terms of income would be dark green for example, the bottom 10% dark red, with shades of green and red in between. The same could be done for reinforcement (blue to red?) and country cost at start (red to, i dunno, yellow?). You could switch between the three display modes with a button under the minimap or something.

In addition you could add information directly to the "country name" (turn it on, even in game, with a toggle or somesuch). Underneath "Germany" it would read "+$844, +19 troops, $8370 cost" (much like it is at country selection), allowing all that information to be readily viewable all the time without going into the country dropbox and doing math.

And if I could throw out another cool feature it would be that the same information could be displayed for the cities in a country when you hover over it "Oslo, +$191, +4 troops" (much like the city names pop up when you hover over a country now).

My last item for a wishlist would be a boxes with lists of all countries and all cities, ranked in terms of income and reinforcements (maybe even with an indicator in game letting me know if it is occupied or not). If the map explorer stuff can't be done or is hard to implement then this would at least make some of that overview available to people.


tl;dr: Map explorer with shades of green-red indicating country income, same for reinforcements and cost. Display same information about countries and cities in the map in text (toggle on/off). Lists with countries and cities, rankable for income and reinforcements.

I think the colour coding would be enormously cool, and save everybody new a lot of time when trying to figure out if Rwanda really is a good starting location

Edit: Oh, and my first post

I suggest a map explorer that can be used by both map creators and anyone else to see how a map looks/feels in terms of income, reinforcements and country cost. This will help map creators balance their maps more easily, and can cut the "learning curve" for a given map for those trying a map for the first time.

well, you can play it on private and look at the income.

In addition you could add information directly to the "country name" (turn it on, even in game, with a toggle or somesuch). Underneath "Germany" it would read "+$844, +19 troops, $8370 cost" (much like it is at country selection), allowing all that information to be readily viewable all the time without going into the country dropbox and doing math.

the game already does that, but you can click on germany and it tells you the income, and for reinforcements you can see a ring around the city when you can recruit.

My last item for a wishlist would be a boxes with lists of all countries and all cities, ranked in terms of income and reinforcements (maybe even with an indicator in game letting me know if it is occupied or not). If the map explorer stuff can't be done or is hard to implement then this would at least make some of that overview available to people.

this is already in the game, just click in cities.

I think the colour coding would be enormously cool, and save everybody new a lot of time when trying to figure out if Rwanda really is a good starting location.

dude, the incomes are based in real life, if you think that a african country has better income than usa, then you should go and see a doctor to check if you do not have brain damage.

Wr1tt3n by Tundy, 24.10.2012 at 17:41

...?

I don't think you get it.

This is meant to be a visualisation of stats, to get a broad and instant overview of custom maps, so that's it's easier to spot where a custom map's poor "Africa" is and where that custom map's wealthy "USA East" or "Western Europe" are. We all know which areas are good in the Default World Map, but that's not true for the myriad of custom maps that are coming.

And yes, you could click each country to get these numbers (or view them for 30 seconds at game start), but a visualisation would be far superior, not to mention quicker, and more interactive and more fun, particularly when constructing tactics etc. I mean, we have maps with borders and countries, why not use that to convey relevant information... especially when it's a map you may never have seen before.

Wr1tt3n by Tundy, 24.10.2012 at 17:41

well, you can play it on private and look at the income.

Not everyone has access to private. Plus the whole point was not having to view (or click, while in game) every single country individually, but rather have an interactive overview.

Wr1tt3n by Tundy, 24.10.2012 at 17:41

ansible: My last item for a wishlist would be a boxes with lists of all countries and all cities, ranked in terms of income and reinforcements (maybe even with an indicator in game letting me know if it is occupied or not). If the map explorer stuff can't be done or is hard to implement then this would at least make some of that overview available to people.

this is already in the game, just click in cities.

No, it isn't (afaik, could be wrong). You can see your own cities or countries, not all of them in the world, plus you can't see any of the information that i was referencing, you know, in the bit you were quoting...


I would just like a mod or dev to chime in to say if what I mentioned in the first post is even possible. If it is, great, maybe we'll see it later on. If it isn't, then no worries, or maybe something limited like the boxes with lists etc.