Please don't take any offense at my previous posts, I certainly do not take any to yours. Apparently there are only 4 of us here.

Player Mats - You may want to start a new thread on this but here's my post anyway.

With people constantly ordering parts off my website I have to keep at this day and night (night mostly) I don't have the luxury of a 2 week holiday to Crete, etc. (HAHAHAN)

I have created a new player mat file at 600dpi with new art and had some observations/questions. The original mats had no civilization assigned to them. The ones this site has do, not a big problem, that is taken care of easily enough. I have incorporated the mats into the counter file (sorry you Euro-Types call them Tokens)

I'm going to use what ever color scheme you have for the civs at 100% with overlays of art and shadow masks in 33% greyscale. That looks pretty good. I have all the Phases from 2.09 on the mats.

Here's my question -

The mats you have show a ship, city, and population marker for that particular civ in the stock area.

My first question is - are they necessary? I mean with counter image changes that requires a change to the mats as well. I would prefer to not have those images. But after looking a them I see they might have some benefit for a novice player. If included, I would suggest that they be aligned from upper right along the right side of the card (currently the boat is in the middle) So I would put the Boats (fewest counters), Cities, then the Population, at about the level as the STOCK text so that the massive pile 'at start' would spill into the larger open area to the lower left.

To me it makes more sense not to have the images at all, for a couple good reasons, but they may have a purpose if put in the right place in the right order.

What do you think?

Well I finished the player mat addition to the counter template and I'm uploading it now. You might take a look at it. I did include the counter images on the page after all.

I have made players mats myself a while ago. One generic mat for all players. I've created em in grayscale, so ther is no color attached and it's the cheapest to produce.

I've done this because we play on the original advanced Civ board using the original tokens.

I didn't want to create 18+9 players mats for this.

This is something to consider whe wanting to lower the costs for your users.

Yes, that was my initial impression also, the original game mats were generic for any player. And you can do the same with the mats I put on the template, just turn off the Civ folder and they are then generic for all players.

They look nice tho, and I've already sold a set. I sell all 20 player mats for $10 plus freight.

Hi Craig and everyone here.

I've finally found the time to start working on the tokens like I was asked weeks ago.

What I'm trying to do is:

- Take Craig's tokens and improve the to gain a general look for all 18 nations.
- This means all black/white or all grayscale, and in this case I prefer all Black/white.
- I will replace some images for newer
- I will change some colors

After I'm done, and while I'm busy there's enough room for suggestions or discussion.

In general, I believe either the city, ship or population marker should show the typical culture.



I've just started with the first one.

Asyrian city

I removed all white and added some shadows and details like in the arc



It's all layered, so it's easy to add and remove things

Now for the population marker. The nimrod-bull is centainly the best option. Not because its population, but it marks some of the assyrian culture.
I just took another image and styled it like here:





I added som black in the two legs in the back (do you know the original has 5 legs)

also added some shadows and a base (cause its a sculpture, not a live one)


Then the ships
I just dind't like the previous ship. too simple


I looked up another image and styled it to this:






let me know what you think

When i was looking through the files Craig send me, i came by two different token-art files

Which one was meant to be final?








For example Hellas has differnet units on the sheets.


I like the grey one, sometimes, but someserious work should be done to straighten things out: like this example I've made:

I think the art looks great, but I fear that much of the detail will get lost when placed on half inch pieces (or whatever they are)

Well, just take a regural piece of the origianl AH civ and you see how much detaisl stays on

remember you're all sticking your noses on the table when playing.
It's not meant to put on the wall

The removal of the white from the Assyrian pieces is OK, but now you have black on blue and very similar to the Babylonian pieces. I put the white on the counters to differentiate that. Not a big deal. Your shadow on the building is good, but the sun's position in everything I've ever done has always been in the upper left corner (so the shadow should be reversed)

Your boat is nice, but is Egyptian, and that same design is used on the Nubian counters, just a bit different. If you want to use it I suggest replacing the Nubian ship with it.

Your bull image for the Assyrians is from a completely different original sketch. The sketch I used was from the 1800's and the copyright had expired.

The gray images were from the original game and were to be avoided. (Perhaps thats why you like them so well?) The instructions I received was to make new original art pieces, thats why they were not used. I was replacing the images on that page with the new ones but never finished.

I was most interested in your work on Carthage, Rome, Iberia, and maybe Hellas, etc. Those black silhouettes still need some work and I'm printing these up every week for people. I need those right away.

Ok, so I'll work on the images in the printfiles.

I'm taking up this job as a whole. So, I won't be finishing one set of tokens before another. I'm only finifhing 18 sets of tokesn at a time.

This is because changing one will affect the other sometimes and my first goal is to create a general look of all tokens. What I put up here is not DEF until I say so.

SO my tokens for asyria are in black and I will draw them all in black. When I'm finished with the images, I will look at the colors. I will not use more than one single color on a background.

I thought I had the right ship, but I will have to do more research. thanks about that.

I've styled the population and city of babylon
they weren't totally monochrome

Craig, I like your version of the ziggurat very much. inspired me for the new minoan palace. Except it wasn't monochrome.








I've drawn a new boat using your image and taking the sail of the boat drawn yesterday. It might not be the exact right sail, but imo it's better than a sqaure white box.




Regarding Assyrian winged bull. I see no problems there. I've redrawn it, and changed enough.





Looking again at your option I also prefer it looking to the right. I've remove some black from its back

OK, Hammurabi looks better. The Ziggurat looks better (missing the wall reinforcements that didn't show up very well, but thats OK) There is supposed to be a hemispherical dome on the very top, but the lines washed out in my image and it didn't condense well. Can you add a dome to the top and call it a day?

Your boat is OK, I think the oars are a bit squashed. The original silver artifact was buried in dirt for 4000 years, so I would expect those oars to be mangled. Mine are a bit too straight. In the end, it just doesn't matter. We need some detail to separate the Assyrian boat from the Babylonian boat. Are you going to keep the square sail for one of them?

I kind of like the flat hat and short wing of my bull on the left, but it really doesn't matter.

The printing problem with these counters is that Hammurabi is too tall and skinny, sometimes the bottom of the chair gets clipped in the cutting process. Maybe we should make him short and fat?

There are similar problems with many of the soldier images with spears, etc. But I can resize them if needed.

No comments on that email about where the source material came from? Your dislike of the Persian Dragon Tooth city marker I thought might be resolved with that info.

I really like my Minoan temple city marker, what does yours look like?

My mistake. No dome on top. Here is the original Zugurat image in greyscale:

Apart from any illustration I find the Ziggurat very fascinating. Do you know the story of the Tower of Babel is based on this building.

The same goes for the Minoan Palace of Knossos. I've been there just two weeks ago and it got me by the balls. Once I've seen that it just cannot be left from the city tokens. It's as fascinating, big and important as the ziggurat and the piramids.

I'll impress you with a drawing.