Everything I comment on is from the screen shot, so apologies if I miss some stuff.(i should of put that in my last post)
As you mentioned later on, it could be very campy for pub play. There's the town, the fort, the hill on the wooded side, the little Spanish village, all of them are places I would expect pubs to camp on. I wouldn't expect any pub server to use it unless there was a large number of players.
Minimum pop I would say is at least about 30 people on each team. The reason for the number of people is that the size of the map is wasted if players don't make use of all 3 "lanes;" if players only use 2 of the "lanes" then the 3rd one might as well be removed. File size is 386.38 KB, that's compared to 323 KB for Arabian Harbour. So it's going to take a little bit longer to download than Arbian Harbour; not as massive as you might think given all the terrain in the center.
Looking at the whole map, it seems like it would be best played with 120+ at the very least. If you made it smaller, then less amount of people would be required to fill it out. Looking at the picture though, it just seems to enticing for one team or both to camp their ends and wait it out.(pub play)
French farm is about 500kb(idk why it is that large, probably mostly all in terrain) and it takes about a minute to download. Arabian harbor takes about 35 seconds to download. So you can do the math and figure out how long it would take for people to download it. Now at events, I would say having 150+ waiting say 45 seconds to download is a long time, and who knows how the server will handle it. Usually at events, custom maps are acceptable, so having to wait to dl one isn't that big of a deal. It is also a long time to wait for a pub map, where admins would have to reset the map, and with 150+ pubs, that is a long dl for a map that may take a long time depending on the game mode.
First contact for cavalry could be extremely quick. I'm not sure if you're able to tell but those tunnels through the mountain go straight for each other, both sides could have cavalry in the center hall very quickly, and infantry not long after that. The wooded area, having good cover only for team 1 (the one furthest from the large town) would logically force team 2 to attempt to push through on that flank, or hold back far from the hill (pubs do not think logically, though, so this wouldn't hold up on a public server, but it should in an LB).
Now I can't see those tunnels in the hills, so those may help out. on the downside, they could be potentially isolating. meaning that people wont know people are there unless they go in, and due to the line of sight, may make it hard to find the last people.(the hill also effects this)
The spawns are facing the mountain.
The point about testing is a good idea, I'll try that.
The spawns could be moved, if I had to move them, I would put Team 1's spawn (the one near the Spanish village) closer to said Spanish village, this would have the somewhat negative effect of putting them even closer to the wooden fort in which they already had an advantage in reaching. Team 2's spawn I would move towards the heavily wooded corner nearest to them, if the Spanish village (Team 1) is Northwest I would put Team 2 far southwest.
I can't tell where map edge is, but you could just slide them in(east or west) a certain amount so that everyone spawns on the map, and maybe a little extra space. You shouldn't have to slide them north or south towards or away from the villages. The one on the left seems to be far enough in, but testing would have to confirm that. the one on the right would definitely need to be moved.
If your main issue with it is dl space, as I said, the map is only a little bit bigger than Arabian harbour. If the main issue is aesthetic, the hill could be made smaller.
See my point above.
Yeah, that's probably right. For pub play I would imagine that Team 1 would camp the wooden fort and Team 2 would camp the town, although Team 1 probably has the advantage in that situation because although Team 2 also has a cannon in their little stockade Team 2's cannon has a large height advantage. For LBs, there's another issue- who is going to get to the center hall in the mountain? The halls are narrow (which could be changed in 10-20 minutes) and only allow for about 3 men standing side by side comfortably. This means there would sort of be a race to line up inside the center hall, because if you're coming out of the tunnel when your enemies are already lined up you're at a huge disadvantage. I also expect that the center hall would devolve into a melee fight rather quickly. This means that this map would tend to favor regiments that are best at melee. I could imagine another issue: the center hall might be the deciding factor in any given match. What I mean is that the side with the Spanish village/large town lends itself to camping, the heavily wooded area (probably too heavily wooded for an LB) wouldn't devolve into melee as quickly, so basically I imagine that the center hall might decide the victor via melee early on, said victor would continue on to flank the enemy team. If one side wants to avoid melee in the center hall, they could just camp the end of their tunnel which should be significantly easier to defend the center hall.
Another point I might add is that it would be possible to make the mountain small enough to be traversed without eliminating the tunnel in the center. Although, I think I'd have to remove the wooden fort if I did that.
Yea, you raised some possible issues. I guess I would say, make the map to fit what you want. If you want a pub map, then you should make the map pub friendly. If you are going to make it for LBs, then you want to make it LB friendly. There are not many maps that suit both groups. and it is easier to get it to fit one category or another, than both.(this could also include different game modes)
i make all my maps to fit pub play. as such i don't have to worry about other game modes or different game types in the same mode(like lbs)
You could make 2 maps, by modifying the one you have into 2 different versions. Allowing you to have a map in both categories.(just be sure to write down a way to tell the difference in the saves)
i did something similar with one of my new maps. Made a small and large version. The large one will be used when the population is high enough while the small one is being used currently.
