Cloth Map Improvements

1. Probably won't be in the default game (ever) but very easily modded in, and if someone doesn't do it within a week of release I will.
2. Great idea. No knowlegde of whether it'll be in or not, but it would REALLY be helpful.
3. Going to be implimented. 99% sure.
4. Not quite sure what you mean here.... I've resented the "cartoony" outlines and style of the cloth icons for monts.

What I thought of was to add some names to regions like mountain ranges, rivers, forests bays...etc...

Yah i think they should add names to maybe create in game regions with made up names that are customizable or you can make your own like you could set out an area called the province of Ariliya and when something inside happened you could get a notification and just adding names to the map gives it a more roleplay kind of feel i think thats an awesome idea

I sooo agree with this. Have been playing the beta, and comparing the look with old faves MoM and Heroes of Might&Magic 3 - those games had colourful overall maps that were real aesthetically   pleasing.

The cloth map look still needs 1) More detail/features to add interest and/or 2) A dash of colour to make it easy on the eye, to get upsides with these.

With that in mind, my money's worth:

1) Would be good to have some mini-pictures (1st person perspective) on the map - when was there ever an ancient map without some interesting first-hand scribbles on it? I mean like the faded sepia picture of King-Kong's head or the giant gate on Skull Island. - what about using some vaguely sketched B/W versions of the Fallen concept art on undiscovered regions of the map?

2) Cloth Map does not necessarily exclude colour. Old documents are uniformly off-white 'cos the colour has faded - many were originally colourfully painted (Bayeux Tapestry, anyone?) - same goes for lots of medieval stone statues/monuments, were often gaudily/colourfully painted when built - they are only stone overall now because paint faded with time. - So the cloth map could have some dabs of colour, even basically applied - perhaps just a shading of green on grassland, blue in the oceans, charcoal on volcanic barrens, &c....

Being able to designate zones would be awesome. In civ4 when the little messanger pops up and says "A new source of TVs has bee found outside Muguglopo". And its a pain in the butt to figure out where it happened. If it said "A new source of fried chiken has been found outside Muguglopo, district 4" That would be great.

Districts not needing actual gameplay effects, but it would also be cool if we could zone our nation off into little states or provinces. You could kinda fake it in civ4 with Versailles and the forbidden palace, but it really didn't feel that provincy.

Yah i totally agree with the colour deal it just seems bland. Needs a little spicing up with a bit splash of colour. I dont know how hard it would be to work the zoning feature in though perhaps it would be done by using each square as one area of the region and then in a seperate Region view mode on the map you could paint certain squares say red and section that off as say alvania and do so elsewhere. That would leave up to grabs though if borders would then be implemented and if the ai would also make there own regions for territories. I dont know if id want to go that far id just like it for myself to add a little roleplay sense into my game for myself.

There will be much more color and detail when you zoom in past the cloth map to whatever they're going to call that level (near-tactical, tactical?). The beta won't include that level for quite a while yet.

The cloth map needs to stay visually simple in comparison so that it is effective for players who like the largest maps, which will be very large indeed if Stardock can work out reasonable licensing for 64-bit support for the Havok stuff they are using. Color needs to carry information as often as possible, as do texture variations. On the cloth map, pretty is good, but meaningful is necessary.

I would like the cloth map... well... to feel more magical. For example if i want to name something a feather should appear and write on the map. I want here there be dragons pictures on the not revealed regions. I want small 2D animations of forests, water and shards, i want to see clouds, i want to feel i am looking at an enchanted map of a powerful magician and not  a map drawn with a pencil.

 A really outstanding work with the "drawn" aspect was made by "Okami" and while i do not expect this from the cloth map i think small 2d animations of terrain features would go a long way to put the magic in the cloth map. Then the "create mountain" spell could feel awesome, even on the cloth map.

Although its not done yet, and I am waiting to join the Beta 2, I agree with the idea of this. Don't go overboard with it, I love HoMM 3 and Age of Wonders Shadow Magic maps, but especially with user made maps they become cluttered with so much sparkly stuff its too much.

Maybe the occasional wheat blowing in the wind, birds startled from trees as your army moves through. A dolphin leaping from the water. Nothing huge, they don't trigger all the time, but they add just that little bit more. I guess with 2D sprites, even with the zoom factor, it shouldn't be very memory intensive to do this? (ie, even a sluggish netbook could handle it?).

I'd love it if the 'plays OK on a netbook' thing could mean some simple animations on the cloth map. If I end up playing Elemental like I do GalCiv2, I'll spend almost all my time zoomed out above the 3D level, and pretty 2D is nice. But I wouldn't for a second prefer the eye candy to the deep support for humble hardware.

Wasn't cloth map the "safe mode" for less powerful hardware? It could use some improvements but not too many.

And MoM didn't have cloth map...

I do not think that anything should be held back jsut so it can run on a netbook the game should push the limits on all aspects of the game including the netbook it should never be held back by hardware the envelope should be pushed not well pulled on i guess haha.

If it is a problem to run on a netbook why not just make settings to turn off the options like the 2d sprites and other graphic like things going on if you want to run it on your netbook you should be able to simply uncheck a couple of settings and it should run find as it was suppost to.

Id be really disapointed if the game was developed "less" simply so it could run better on a netbook.

GC2 doesn't have as well-established a term as "cloth map," but it does have a 2D-3D boundary that you can cross by zooming in and out. The 2D level functions both as a sort of safe mode for low-end boxes and as a 'normal' view for folks who play very long games on very large maps. MoM didn't need a split-level zoom like that because the maps were smaller and user expectations for graphics were humbler.

No, and this isn't MoM and this game has had a cloth map in it pretty much from the beginning.

Personally, the idea to name regions during gameplay is freaking BRILLIANT!!  First to discover gets to name the area, or you can only name areas of regions you control.  Then, if there is an ability to trade maps between players, the areas are revealed with names.  What a beautiful concept that would add TONS of immersion.

If there are alerts at all, it would be much more meaningful to have "The Swordtooth Mountains have been breached" rather than "So and So has entered your territory."