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Parched Valley

Parched Valley is the second map in my series (two makes a series, right?) of maps depicting the Finnish countryside. A river and its tributary crossing the map's namesake valley have dried up due to the sweltering heat of the Finnish summer. The valley is surrounded by steep hills on both sides, offering vantage points and firing positions for eagle-eyed soldiers. Large forest areas encircle the hills and create areas of respite from the fighting. The southern portion of the map is dominated by a road connecting two towns. There are a lot of small bushes, thickets, and of course, farmyards along the way to make inching along the road even harder for one on the attack.

Initial Release contains 1v1, 2v2, and 4v4 Conquest scenarios and a 4v4 Destruction scenario.

The map is based on an area between the towns of Nummi and Saukkola in southern Finland. You can check the area yourself via the below link.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/gjmD7zcmH8F8KUdL7


After my last map “Somero”, I decided to embark upon a new project now that I had some experience with the editor. Some of the issues I ran into with that map were related to size, so this one is a lot smaller. I thought it would take a lot less time to make this one, but I think this only took like ~20 hours less than Somero.

I wanted a central hotspot for the map and found the area one day while browsing Google Maps. While developing the map, I decided on two objectives: to hone on the visuals and to make it more playable than Somero was. A third objective came via the central three-way river that splits the map in three.

I had some issues with the river in Somero, as the WARNO engine can’t really handle narrow rivers. There are tesselation issues on high zoom levels, which aren’t visually aesthetic. Thus, I decided that the river was going to be dried up as that made things easier on my end. I had some more thoughts crisscrossing through my mind while developing and decided to make the dried-up river a central motif of the map. I found a nice lighting setup (the default) to complement and enhance the dried-up look and so Parched Valley was born. It is a more catchy name than the working name “Saukkola” (my apologies to people living near on in Saukkola).

So that takes care of issues #1 and #3, but how about making the map more playable? The road network has additional connections to make moving your troops around palatable. I haven’t added a lot of them, just the bare necessities. I had a lot of feedback from Somero that the road network was awful, but as that was a pure recreation of an area, I didn’t budge.

I have also altered the sizes of some forests and hewn down the heightmap after a friend said that the map was a “LOS HELL” after the first playtest. It turns out that there was a boatload of unnecessary bumps and elevation in areas of the map that didn’t quite require it.

All in all, the map is still very realistic and should offer the same sort of gameplay challenges that my previous map did.


National Land Survey of Finland - Heightmap data used with CC4.0 license

As before, thank you to all the people in the official Eugen Discord channel #map-editor-feedback for encouragement, feedback, and company.

Batto, Jazzka & ogo for playtesting and providing valuable feedback.