{"id":2632,"date":"2010-09-28T11:06:11","date_gmt":"2010-09-28T16:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/?p=2632"},"modified":"2010-09-28T11:06:11","modified_gmt":"2010-09-28T16:06:11","slug":"november-pc-gamer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/2010\/09\/28\/november-pc-gamer\/","title":{"rendered":"November PC Gamer"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month, just my Tactical Advantage column and I spend 600 words on stylized maps like the ones you find in Ancient Trader, Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War and the global zoom in Victoria 2.<\/p>\n

I’ve already spent a lot of time on this blog talking about maps. I did a long series last year on maps<\/a> and game design and we did a podcast about them too<\/a>. You’ll find lots of smaller posts, too, I’m sure.<\/p>\n

I didn’t get into this in the column, but the thing I like most about stylized maps is that you get an eye into how the developers see the period they are dealing with. The pastel national colors in Victoria 2 (and in EU3 once the Divine Wind expansion comes out) speak to old atlases, of which I have too many, and that almost evokes the idea of history as artifact – the past is an heirloom as much as it is something that has molded the present. The tile art in Hannibal is beautiful, but also foreign – the map almost puts us at a distance from the subject matter.<\/p>\n

Games with battlefield maps are another matter altogether, and I wonder if we could ever have a battlefield map that was useful and accurate and evocative. Board wargames have done that<\/a> – can anyone think of a computer game that uses stylized battle maps to convey an era or attitude beyond accuracy?<\/p>\n

This month’s PCG also has reviews of Starcraft 2, Civ 5, Making History 2 and Armada 2526.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month, just my Tactical Advantage column and I spend 600 words on stylized maps like the ones you find in Ancient Trader, Hannibal: Rome and Carthage in the Second Punic War and the global zoom in Victoria 2. I’ve already spent a lot of time on this blog talking about maps. I did a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5GFeQ-Gs","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2633,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions\/2633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flashofsteel.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}