Editor Notes

An Article by Talon Thorn

Talon Thorn’s editor notes for enhancing terrain beauty. Try them out! Discuss this article with him on his thread in the AOW2 Scenario Design forum.

1. Don’t Want A Shoreline?

Use Swamp tiles on the edge of your Grass tiles where they meet the water and there will be no sandy shoreline like there is with Grass.

I have done this along “rivers” and it looks great.

Fig. 1a
Fig. 1b

Figure 1a shows ‘before’ with grass shoreline which has a sandy appearance; Fig 1b shows the “after” when swamp tiles are used.

2. Awesome Nodes

Use the Special tiles under the “Places” Tab to enhance a node and make it look really neat.

Use Storm and Strong Currents (under the “Places” Tab) around a water node. Add extra Fire (“Places” Tab) to the Fire Node, then add Lava Transition and Lava Burst tiles (under the “Wastelands” Tab).

Fig. 2a
Fig. 2b

3. The “Replaceable Terrain Ex.” (“Wastelands” Tab)

This is nice for adding steam, extra smoke, or even blowing- snow-off-the-mountains effects. The more times you add it to one hex, the more full the plume becomes. Add some around a Magic Catalyst to make it look even more awesome. Fig. 3 below shows a combined image of “Replaceable Terrain Ex.” with increasing number of overlays (top) with enlarged pic of magic catalyst below.

Fig. 3

4. Ice Tiles For A “Stone Pavement” Appearance

Ice makes an interesting stone formation if you are looking for a “pavement” appearance. This might be a little out of character, but it does make a nice looking pavement.

Fig. 4

5. Getting The Same Variation For A Replaceable Tile

Use copy-n-paste to duplicate the tile. I added a row of “single” Trees to my “pavement” in #4 to create a treerow border along a “stone” road/path.

6. Special Effects For Mountains.

If you want to add some extra snow to mountains for most any terrain, you can use the white flowers for the snow terrain. (See Fig. 5, arrow (1))

Fig. 5

Fig. 5 shows (1) pointing to “snow flowers” in mountains, (2) pointing to “Storm” tiles (Places Tab) and “Replaceable Terrain Ex.” tiles (Wasteland Tab).

Using the wasteland “steam” tile, you make it look like snow is blowing off of the mountains. Again, you have to be careful in placing the tile.

One caveat: Be careful when adding Snow or Waste tiles to grass-based mountains (or other terrain). The Snow/Wasteland tiles can overwrite the Mountain tiles without the map maker knowing it, and this is not evident until you reload the map.

Fig. 6a
Fig. 6b

Fig. 6a and Fig 6b – “Before” and “After” shots: Fig 6a shows how it looks just after adding the “Replaceable Terrain Ex.” tile (plumes showing, mountains ok). The “After” shot (Fig 6b) shows the same map after Save/Close and reloading the map – some mountains got nerfed!]

7. Enhancing The Map With Strong Current and Storm tiles (“Places” Tab)

Strong Current and Storm tiles (“Places” Tab) have many uses for enhancing the map.

Add Storm tiles to mountains to add a “blowing snow” effect. The sparkles don’t look too good, so add the Storm tile to the “peak” hex of the mountain to hide them from view.

Add Storm tiles to Swamp, and use Strong Current tiles for any water along the Swamp. The sparkes look like insects, making for a very nice looking haunted (or stagnent) Swamp. Add some Poison Clouds to complete the effect.

Fig. 7

Author: Talon Thorn
(Editor: Bluecollarheaven)

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