I'm looking to be unemployed tomorrow, so I'm catching up. The colors look great. An amazing job yet again.

do you mean you lost your job, or is this some saying i don't know

I've finetunes the shades a little bit more.

Now the west colors come a little bit closer to the originals. As close as possible. A change I think everyone will approve.


I've also tested the colors in CMYK conversions and now I can finally say it OK.

This is the NEW and FINAL color scheme:




Hatti: C0-M76-Y52-K0
Hellas: C6-M0-Y97-K0
Assyria: C66-M49-Y0-K0
Minoa: C60-M0-Y100-K0
Rome: C18-M61-Y0-K0
Carthage: C0-M44-Y83-K0
Egypt: C0-M16-Y29-K0
Celt: C33-M0-Y20-K0
Iberia: C25-M20-Y20-K0

Maurya: C17-M100-Y100-K8
Parthia: C39-M24-Y100-K2
Dravidia: C100-M98-Y14-K17
Indus: C87-M24-Y100-K13
Persia: C60-M100-Y14-K3
Saba: C6-M80-Y100-K1
Kushan: C39-M75-Y100-K49
Nubia: C82-M22-Y42-K1
Babylon: C55-M47-Y46-K12

Pirate: C100-M100-Y100-K100
Barbarian: C100-M100-Y100-K100


All west tokens use a full black image over its colored background
All east tokens use a full white image over its colored background
All pirate and barbarian tokens use a full white image over full black background.

OK, so now the new colors are def, I started to work on the actual counters.

Before I really work on the images, I'm trying to make an overviwe of what has to be done.




Now, when I am at step one of the process, I immediately came to some stuff I'd like to share.




I changed the colors for the assyrian tokens to the name color, using the 2005-06-24 psd-file.

I see the images are no better than faxes or newspaper photos of the originals:



But espcially I see the backs of the printsheets contain less possibilities than available.

There is no reason for leaving the back of the ships and the back of the cities blank except for the need to stay close to the original Avalon Hill game you are used to. Since we have taken a step off from this anyway, why keep sticking to that.

I propose to add a somewhat inversed image of the frontside image to the backside of the cities and ships for each nation, containing the same color as the frontside background. Just like the tokens have.

Whenever you have to flip ships, cities or tokens, you now can see to which civilization they belong.



Take a look a my preview images:

Current with just new color


My proposal:


Close up of that:






Another thing I realized. Its a very good thing we chose to make both pirates and barbarians BLACK instead of WHITE.
Since the backsides of tokens are white. you can always see, which are pirates and barbarians at a quick glance.

Like described above,

I created the sets of player tokens, based on the old images of 2006.

For the first time, you now can see how the colors look next to eachother. Like I was saying, it's not the map being colored but the tokens only. Combined with an image, all tokens look very distinct.




This is just a preview of the new colors, and the way the tokens might look.


Please regard, that all illustrations will be renewed.


WEST:










BARBARIAN & PIRATES


EAST:










BARBARIAN & PIRATES


If you have any ideas on what should be changed, please tell me as soon as possible. It's gonna take some time to find images and draw them, i'd rather not have to change things afterwards.


Things I've noticed already:


- The tokens for Dravidia, for example, show a very thin outlined illustration. That doesn't look that good. A litlle thicker inkline should do the trick.


- The tokens for Parthia, for example show too little details in the illustration. These things should be fixed like described in the beginning of this topic.




- The barbarian tokens and pirate cities will never be flipped upside down, for they can not be selected by any rule. Therefore, we'd better print them equally both sides.

- I placed b&p at both Eats and West, for there should be one set for both east and west. (one game requires more tokens than the other.)

- Though fun, there is no need for b&p ships. Also no AST and Census markers.

- As you can see, though the east tokens use white illustrations, I've still used black illustrations for their backsides. I think all backsides should show white backgrounds, (not black to justify white illustrations). In those rare cases when for example Saba and Carthage tokens are both flipped while adjacent, the colors may look alike, but the image should do the trick in keeping them distinct.

Looking forward to your updates!

Let's put the most identical colors next to eachother. Actually there is no need to enlarge the images by clicking on them here.
The illustrations are changing anyway and this order is only for comparing purpose:

Then:
Let's go for the right illustrations.


There are some thing to regard:

- Not all civilizations historically made use of ships. So, we decided to use ships of neighbour civilizations for those.

- The original Avalon Hill Civilization used a mix of items on the cities and tokens: ART - SCULPTURE - WARRIORS - ANIMALS - LEADERS - ...


For example:
Italy (rome) used an image of the Pantheon for city and Ceasar for token.









That's ok, cause it represents a famous building in a city (rome) and a warrior as well as leader as well as famous person.

But this rule cannot always be applied.

For example:
Egypt was using an image of the piramids. Not an image that specifically represent a city.


Minoa (Crete) was using a famous fresco representing a sport/tradition called bull-leaping for its tokens.
This is not a warrrior, not a leader, and not a famous person.








So what rule do we stick to when looking for images?

I think, for every civilization we have to look for

- City: a famous building ascociated with this civilization.

- Ship: either a warship or a merhcant ship ascociated with this civilization, or one of its neighbouring civilization

- Token: a famous piece of art ascociated with this civilization. This may be a male figure like a leader or warrior, but not nescisarily. Rather some wellknown sculpture.


Why using buildings for cities?
I think for cities, we all agree to make use of a famous building. We could use a map of a city (like my illustration fo 'Urbanism'), but I think these are hard to distinct from eachother, and hard to tell which city is represented. I'd rather go for all buildings.

Why using either warships or merchant ships for ship?
Not all civilizations historically made use of ships. So, we decided to use ships of neighbour civilizations for those. Not all civilizations that did make use of ships actually made use of warships. No matter how long you search, you will never find a right image for it. You could make use of a neighbour's warship, but that makes no sense to me. In addition in our game, we use ships for moving population in the first place.

Why using famous art for tokens?
We cannot simply stick to 'a warrior' for player tokens. Not all civilizations had a typical warrior that is distint from its neighbours. Besides when you are talking about clothing, textiles, jewelry, and details like these, it very hard to make this visible on these little tokens. Another thing is, we don't use our tokens for war only, but also for farming, settlers, citizens.

We can regard our tokens to represent the culture of the civilizations. Most of the times this is visible through its art. This can be clay figure, a statue a painting, a sculpture.

I'd rather use things like these, because bringing tokens to another civilization may be seen as 'attacking' but also as 'spreading the culture'. And that is what our game is all about.

I agree with all your guidelines for art selection. I do think that for some of the eastern civs it might be harder than the west. Overall lets try to stick with the guidelines as much as possible and just be prepared to make some exceptions.

I totally agree.

Though you first need guidelines in order to make exceptions, rather than 'whatever I can find'. That's why I tried to write this down.

While I was researching on all 18 civilization to come up with ideas for cities, tokens and ships I saw this connection, I'd like to share with you.

It don't hold much, but I found this very obvious:

The Nubian culture contained this sculpture, a ring-shaped carved out piece.
Some-one drew a picture of the carvings.

I saw some links to both Assyrian culture and Sabaean culture.
This image of Assyrian king Hammurabi shows him sitting on a 'throne' and this is almost equal to these architectural carving of the Nubian sculptrue.

The ruins of the sun temple at Ma'rib (Saba) shows some similar structure as the Nubian sculpture shows.


All coincedence, I guess, but strange enough.

After quite some research, I reconsider my counter-definitions:

- City: a famous building ascociated with this civilization.

- Ship: a merhcant or transport ship ascociated with this civilization, or one of its neighbouring civilization but no warship.

- Token: a famous piece of art ascociated with this civilization. This may be a male figure like a leader or warrior, but not nescisarily. Rather some wellknown sculpture.

I've seen many ships of many eras but only a few procent of them are warships. I started reconsidering this and realized that actually all civilizations in our game make use of normals ships. Only at the point of developing 'Naval Warfare' they make use of warships.

Actually you can regard your images of merchant or transport ships as warships as soon as you develop this advance.

So I'm not using images of warships on the player pieces.

I've done most of my research on the player tokens. I've found almost everything I need and I'm starting to draw today.

There were some things I did not find, and maybe someone can help me out in this.

- A 3d reconstruction of the temple an Ma-rib (i've found ruins)
- A Celtic ship
- An Iberian ship

I did find enough ships of any later age, but none of the era in which we play.

If I cannot find anything, I'm using roman ships for those.

(oh yeah, I'm not using warships, only if they were also used for transport)

http://www.ioz.unibe.ch/lenya/iop/live/1jt/marib.html
and
http://www.ioz.unibe.ch/lenya/iop/live/ ... 98_222.jpg

That's the Bar'an Temple 3km away from Marib.
I think you mean this...

Thanks for searching and your quick reply.

It's the temple I mean, And this is actually an image i did not see before.
But still it's not the full temple (cause the roof is missing)

For now I will try to reconstruct it myself, maybe you can find some more.

(I think, it's just a flat roof like the back corner.)

http://www.ioz.unibe.ch/lenya/iop/live/ ... 98_222.jpg