Where are the Coasts?

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Eric Larsen
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Where are the Coasts?

Post by Eric Larsen »

I'm getting ready to do an amphib invasion in the World scenario of South America at Belem. I noticed with satisfaction that there are coast hexes right where I want to invade. I decided to check some other continents and could not find any more coastal hexes. Why is South America the only continent with coast hexes? Shouldn't there be more coastal hexes on other continents? Especially Southern California.

I got a big laugh out of Long Beach Ca being labeled as Desert/Hills. It certainly has hills but is nowhere near a desert. I lived there for a few years and it's anything but a desert. Should be a coastal/hills hex.

The other big laugh I got was Salinas, Ca. It's listed as plains when it should be agricultural. In fact I got a big laugh out of the daily harvesting of crops until I thought about where I live, in Salinas CA the Lettuce Capital of the World in the Salinas Valley which is the Salad Bowl of the World nearby Castroville which is the Artichoke Capital of the World. In fact here in Salinas agriculture works all year long, they even plant and harvest daily in the dead of winter. Big hint to the lead designer to fix Salinas CA as a major agricultural area and not some idiotic consumer goods factory. While the San Joaquin Valley produces major agriculture it has such big production because it is The Big Valley. Lots of fruits and nuts grown there that only grow once a year as they are seasonal crops. In the Salinas Valley a wide variety of crops are grown year round and farmers plant and harvest many times each year. Hex for hex the Salinas Valley smokes the San Joaquin Valley for agricultural production and I hope the lead designer wakes up to this salient fact.
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Eric Larsen
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Balthagor
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Re: Where are the Coasts?

Post by Balthagor »

Remember that the name of a hex tile is intended to give the player an idea of what is there but really is just another label for a set of values. Each tile has terrain output values, movement modifiers and population levels. If a hex is not really a desert but has all the characteristics we assign to a desert tile, we may well use desert. We did not have clear standards for map editing during development but did try and use logical tile placement. I’m sure we could do a post mortem on the development and discuss the fact that all games should have clear standards set for every design area before beginning the work, but as I remember it we re-wrote the design for the maps at least 3 times during development. I lost count of how many times I had to go back and rebalance Australia…
Eric Larsen wrote:… I decided to check some other continents and could not find any more coastal hexes…
I assume you’re on the world map. In most cases we didn’t use “coast” types because the features we originally set for a coast tile should not extend 35km in land. In some areas (such as SA) it seemed acceptable, but with the density of population and infrastructure in the US, I’m not surprised that we did not use coast.

Again, the use of plains vs. agri is sometimes less of a design decision than a balance need. There is one overall multiplier for hex production for a given map. Once this was set at the world level we had to use tiles that did not “overload” production in a given region. We also could not just decrease the value or some regions would need plains tiles with farm upgrades everywhere to reach their true capacity. If you ever try you’re hand at some mapeditor work you’ll find this to be a common issue that must be overcome.

Also, there are many times that facilities such as consumer goods plants where placed in “less than desired” spots in an attempt to consolidate facilities from a lower map that offered much more area from a lower km/hex size. We always tried to keep things in the same general area.

No matter the current state of California today, we do model the world in 2010. Having not done the terrain myself, it is quite possible that as part of the balance changes to account for the world economic troubles, that this was one of the areas “hit” with a decreased capacity.

Nonetheless, this is good information, and we will keep it in mind if we create any new maps covering that geographic area.
Chris Latour
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Eric Larsen
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Re: Where are the Coasts?

Post by Eric Larsen »

Balthagor wrote:No matter the current state of California today, we do model the world in 2010. Having not done the terrain myself, it is quite possible that as part of the balance changes to account for the world economic troubles, that this was one of the areas “hit” with a decreased capacity.

Nonetheless, this is good information, and we will keep it in mind if we create any new maps covering that geographic area.
Chris,
Please don't stoop to sad excuses. Salinas, CA is a major agricultural center and it will remain that way for a long time, regardless of any hypothetical alternative histories. It has some very great soil and weather conditions that allow year-round agriculture. Acre for acre it is far more productive than the Big Valley. I would hope you'd take my corrections seriously since I happen to live here and know what's what in my home hex tile. I also went to college in the Big Valley so I'm rather familiar with the conditions there as well. I certainly do hope the lead scenario designer will get this terrain info so he can improve the maps. I know it's impossible to get everything correct as there's just so much to model and one can't be everywhere to know what each hex should be like.

I was just wondering why there's coast hexes in South America only. It seems strange that only there would there be such hexes when there should be coastal hexes around the globe.

I know for sure that Long Beach CA is not a desert hex, that sand in Long Beach is beach sand and it has some really fine beaches to have some sun and fun on. It has hills and even has oil wells. It has them on the hills and out along the coast.
Thanks,

Eric Larsen
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Legend
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Post by Legend »

Are you talking about one hex?

Which map is this hex in?
Eric Larsen
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Maps

Post by Eric Larsen »

Legend wrote:Are you talking about one hex?

Which map is this hex in?
Legend,
Salinas, CA and the Salinas Valley are wrong on all the maps I've seen. Salinas, CA is a major agricultural area, and I mean major. No matter what type of storyline says a depression changes lots of stuff it won't change prime farmland. Although we have a local saying "that as Salinas grows our farmland goes" there's still lots of prime farmland around that Salinas won't chew up and spit out as a concrete jungle.

I would hope that as people give you some good info on their local area that you would incorporate those pieces of info into the game. It only makes the game better if you take advantage of such intel. Right now I was talking about the World scenario map, but every map with central CA is rather suspect.

One of these days I'll have to put the California scenario map through the map editor to give you a correct idea of what central California is supposed to look like. Someone really muffed it on central CA. There's no Burbank adjacently south of San Jose and there's no town named Claribel, much less two of them near Modesto. Where the heck is Santa Cruz? You listed a little joke of a town named San Grigoreo but not Santa Cruz.
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Eric Larsen
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Legend
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Post by Legend »

8_
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Post by Draken »

Komifornians....



:D :D :D

Just kidding Eric ...Just kidding
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Post by Il Duce »

Returning to my theme of...
"What is the best use of the dev's time?"

While I appreciate that attention to detail is an admirable personal and professional characteristic, I have to wonder why you would want map accuracy to be a priority of the limited resources at the goats' disposal?

It's just a game - it's not an econ sim, it's not a lifestyle. It wouldn't matter to me if each state had a random number of towns named "town-1, town-2, ...." I know and understand the geophysical forces tht put jungles and deserts and mountains where they are in the real world, but then, what does it matter? Do you want SR2010 to also model the greenhouse effect and include the expansion of the sahara into the african scenario? [not a bad idea actually, but not in scope.] The association of each hex to a resource type is just an approximation of its value in game context. The idea wasn't to map the world in exquisite detail or accuracy - just to provide the space in which the game takes place. It's not like the game was designed to network targeting info with the real world defense networks. I know damn well where burbank is, and frankly I'm happy to see it relocated a few hundred miles north.

Sheesh.
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Post by Legend »

:-)
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bergsjaeger
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Post by bergsjaeger »

there's alot of things i like to see in the game but I could live without them. For one thing I like to see the Weiss Dam in the game because i live close to it but I can always build a dam and name it that. And of course calling Bogan Mt. a hill. :lol: its no hill. Takes me nearly a hour to get to the top. But i think elevation is looked at when the devs decided whats a hill or mt.
In war destroy everything even the livestock.
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bergsjaeger
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Post by bergsjaeger »

I take that back they called the area where Bogan mt is plains. :lol: it might be in some areas but its mostly hills and valleys as well as forest. Then there's the Bogan mt range. oh well.
In war destroy everything even the livestock.
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Post by Baloogan »

Hex X:085 Y:045 on the world map REALLY makes me steamed! I almost can't play the world map because of it. It stares at me and mocks me as I play.
Missiles!! Nukes!
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Post by Squigbunny »

Salinas, CA sounds like a really nice place to live. I shall take especial care now that I'm playing the world as the mighty Africans not to bomb it to bits or nuke it! :D

BTW - Off topic - About 2/3 of my relations are Americans quite a few of which live in the San Diego area. Is that near Salinas?
Eric Larsen
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A Nice Place to Live

Post by Eric Larsen »

Squigbunny wrote:Salinas, CA sounds like a really nice place to live. I shall take especial care now that I'm playing the world as the mighty Africans not to bomb it to bits or nuke it! :D

BTW - Off topic - About 2/3 of my relations are Americans quite a few of which live in the San Diego area. Is that near Salinas?
Squigbunny,
Salinas, CA is a nice place to live - if you have money. Our summer weather has just arrived, a day after summer started and my family left from visiting. Now we've got our nice morning fog which will clear around 11AM and since it's Friday the fog bank will roll back in in the late afternoon. We have a nice natural air conditioner - the Alaska Current - that keeps us cool during those long hot summer months. Makes for excellent growing of many agricultural products like iceberg lettuce and strawberries.

San Diego is about 475 miles south of Salinas, not exactly close and the weather is definitely different. Make sure your invading troops are well armored or they'll get shot to pieces by the gangs in Salinas. :o
Thanks,

Eric Larsen
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Post by Squigbunny »

To Eric L

Heh, heh, heh we're on our way ... and I'm investing heavily in law enforcement!! :lol:

Best wishes

The Squig :D
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