More map analysis

In my last post, I mentioned that my draft map has a lot of "dot towns". I wondered how this, and other aspects of the map, compared with existing games. So one evening I wrote a table that compared certain values for 1825, 1830, 1856, 1861, 1812, 1889, 18EU and Steam Over Holland.

Starting with towns and cities, I found that the ratio of town hexes to total hexes varies from 10% (1861) to 23% (18EU). My draft map was on 38%; as I thought, it was clearly higher. For cities, the ratio in existing games varies from 15% (1861 again) to 33% (1825 Unit 2). Here my draft map was closer, with 33% equalling the highest existing game. Although it has more "big cities", which is a category that (depending on the game) includes "OO" cities named cities with higher values than the norm. Conversely, the ratio of plain hexes was far lower than the norm at 30%, compared with the 50%-75% found in existing games.

I also compared the number of town and city hexes per company in the game. Here my draft map is well within the norm, reflecting the fact that the game has more companies than many others.

I also looked at terrain. Britain Under Steam doesn't have the usual mountain and river hexes; it's more like Steam Over Holland in that it has mountain hexsides. So for both of these games, I counted the number of hexes adjacent to a mountain or river hexside and used that value. The result is 29% of the total hexes, which is squarely within the "expected" range.

Finally, I counted the number of "plain" hexes, by which I mean playable hexes that don't contain any terrain, towns or cities. At 16%, the score for my draft map is very low, matched only by the terrain-heavy (and smaller) maps for 1889 and 1825 Unit 2.

Based on this information, I plan to review each town on the map to see whether it would work better as a plain hex. Some of them represent genuinely important towns that it would not make sense to remove. Others may need to remain towns so that the tile upgrade path is appropriate for that location. But there should be some that I can remove.

To complicate matters, I may also be downgrading some of the cities, which will of course increase the number of towns again! I may well end up with more populated hexes than the average game. I don't see that as necessarily a problem, provided that they are all justified (and that the game plays well, of course!).