Maybe i will give out a homework for the players of our
Christmas/NewYearsEve Round. We will draw civilizations
by random, and everybody has to bring a small set of
pictures for this civilization. For each picture that meets
the prerequisites they may start with an additional token
(with a maximum of three for city,ship,art).

I think everybody will bring something

/end of fun..

let's see what I can do...

That would be cool!

Ialready have quite some ideas and reference images, but mre input is always best.

To create the best option for a color scheme for 18 nations requires several things to think about.


First is to loose the thought that a certain nation should have a certain color because you are used to it or because it's your own personal asociation with it. Myself I tend to do that too. This works when you creat a game with only 9 civs or only the west map or only the east map.
Better is to look at the best positions on the map.
Now we have to take up the game as a whole. and that means 18 colors.

So I created a colorscheme without looking at the nations involved.

This is my first proposal for the new color scheme:
Please take avery good look on the system behind it.
It's not just 18 random colors.



NOTE: screen colors are never print colors. When you use a CMYK print press or single colored print press, colors may look even more different.
Most of the time, colors will appear a slight bit lighter and less bright when printed.



The key is:

1. The West set strictly uses black images/text on mainly lighter colors.
2. The East set striclty uses white images/text on mainly darker colors.

This is one way to distinguis West from East. Whenver for some reason two colors that look alike come close to eachtother, it's easier to tell them apart by just looking at the color of the images/text.

Next:

3. In the West set only, the 9 different colors are as far apart from eachother as possible, and mainly a lighter tint. I used 3 primary colors (red, yellow and blue) and 3 secondary colors (green, purple and orange) the 7th color is a mix of all 3 primary colors (brown) the 8th color is the color nicest to look at (blue for most people) and the 9th color is a shade of grey.

4. In the East set only, the 9 different colors are as far apart from eachother as possible. But now a darker tint. I used 3 primary colors (red, yellow and blue) and 3 secondary colors (green, purple and orange) the 7th color is a mix of all 3 primary colors (brown) the 8th color is the color nicest to look at (blue for most people) and the 9th color is a shade of grey.


5. In each set there are some colors that might look a little alike. (which is impossible to avoid). But the key is to place the starting base of these colors away from eachother.
(01 and 05) (03 and 09) (06 and 07) for West
(11 and 13) (10 and 15) for East

Using a map like this to do that:



6. Next up is to copy the starting position of each row from West to East.
That means, if Red (01) is most west on the West Map, than red (10) should be put most west on the East map.

7. Finally there might still be some colors in the same range that are place next to eachother. It could be nescesary to excahnge two color to get an even better result.


I use black and white for the barbarians. These should be different from any other tokens. A jolly roger is easy to tell apart anyway.





In my opinion this the only and best way to make 18 different players tell their own tokens apart from their neighbours.[/i]

I can confirm almost everything,with just a few comments:



I would prefer the Eastern Part even with a slightly darker tint.



Add also mirroring to this process. So top left position in West should
be down left in eastern for maximum separation.



Maybe not the only one, but still a very good one!

Just some more ideas/questions:
- Separation of West and East Trade Cards by using White and Black Text on it.
- How do you want to separate the East and West mapboard? There
will be some dual used areas and never a straight line between this
two parts.
- New Scenario: East/West or Black/White against each other.

Some pictures will be given to you as Xmas present
as far as I can see the near future...

I'm afraid that might work in theory only. When all colors are darker, they get to look alike even more. (they all go to dark grey). I tried to get the best balance between color and dark grey.

otherwise it would be: I'm playing purple grey, You're playing brown grey.



ok, that's x-axis only otherwise you would get the same colros next to eachother at the border between east and west.



ok you're right



There is a 'W' or 'E' on the left top corner. This ahs been developped to get the best balance between 'nice looking cards' and 'usability'



That's something my cousin Geart is working on. there are some ideas for that.



nice idea


great

I've spend a lot of time moving and changing and came up with this final result for the new color division.

Unless someone comes up with any good complaints, this the new division we are going to use for our new seperated west/east mapboard option.



CURRENT COLORS:


NEW COLORS:



the color may appear very light on the west side and dark on the east side, but remember, it's not THE MAP tha's going to be colored, but the tokens.
Besides, the bright colors are getting black images, and the dark colors are getting white images, this will make the look more euqally yet still distinct.




The first thing that can be noticed looking at the west part, is that Celts Rome, and Carthage use new colors, but the rest of West is closely linked to Advanced Civilization as well as the current expansion colors.

I've removed 'darkgreen' 'darkbrown' and 'red' because these ar edark colors, and as I've explained in my previous post, I made a division of bright and dark colors for west and east. SO these three dark colors have moved to the east map.

Babylon isn't the bright blue color that player may have been used to for over 25 years anymore. This is one of the main reasons to change the colros after all. It didn;t make real sense that Assyria and Babylon next to eachother had simlar colors.

I also removed the three pink shades on the India part.

A noticable change as well is to remove black and white as playing colors (even yellow-white).

As you can see in my color scheme, the 9 colors for west are linked to the nine colors for east, so there are two shades of red, blue, yellow, purple, green, orange, brown and grey and in addtion two shades of blue.
I just tried to keep these 4 blue colors as far from each other as possible.

Overall I approve (though the pastel colors will take a bit to get used to...)

I'd leave the pirate cities white to match the barbarian tokens. Though they have different names I consider them to all belong to the same force.

So do I. Both black with white artwork or white with black.
Thy should be seperated by different pictures and different shape (square and round). But unlike Velusion I prefer white on black, similar to the Jolly Roger (which I have seen mainly as white on black).

SO the new color scheme for the player tokens is definetive!
(unless anyone comes up with a better proposal including motivation)

Conceirning the barbarian/pirate colors:

that's not such a big deal.

I'd create the following:

a set of

pirates black on white, barbarians black on white
pirates white on black, barbarians white on black
pirates black on white, barbarians black on white
pirates white on black, barbarians black on white

Then it's up to whoever to pick the best option and that will be included in our game. The artwork for both barbarians and pirates is ready yet. Changing colors is easy.


Getting used to the bright colors: That's true. Just play the game several times, and you are easily used to it. As long as the division is a better option (and I really think it is) you get more easily used to it.

These are the four options for Pirates and Barbarians:

Please make a choice.

I prefer option 4 or otherwise option 1.



A jolly roger is a white skull on a black flag. Let's keep it that way!

Agreed!!!

Could you please give one more try for option 4 with a black
background for the barbarian tokens?

- background black
- shield white
- axe black

I changed it with paint, it doesn't look that bad..
Maybe there should be a white and black border to separate
shield and background.

I am just not able to upload the pictures... so Flo: could you
please give the idea a try??

Greets
Merlok

Thanks Flo for the PM, here comes my proposal:
(sorry for not changing the option number to 5)



As the Pirate City Markers will be city markers, they should by cutted circular.
So they will be all black.
I think the barbarian tokens should be all black too, as there is no black
player color anymore, but still some light ones (Egypt/Iberia).
So all non-player tokens would be the same color (black)
and easily be distinguishable from player tokens.

well it's not so bad after all ( )

I think I can agree with you in this.


Ofcourse the cities should be die-cutted circular, just like all cities.

Ok, let's go for all black this way!

This has my seal of approval! Looks good.

While I was looking on the internet, I came to this site.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Kushan-Empire

might be useful