# Mapmaking Discussion & Philosophy (WIP/Critique) > Board Game Mapping >  I bought Risk Europe. Now what?

## The Lazy One

Well, I finally gave in and bought Risk Europe. 
I profoundly dislike many aspects of risk, but apparently the Europe verision has nothing to do with it, but the name. The game appears to follow modern design principles and it really seems the perfect candidate for custom maps. 
You can see from the components and structure that the whole game looks more like a 2010's "dudes on the map" type of game.



In fact, the main reason for the purchase was to have a good system to draw maps for. 

Does anyone have had experiences with it? Was that a smart move?

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## Falconius

Don't know about it.  The best alternative to Risk for me was always a game my friend really liked, Axis and Allies, and there a huge amount of game balance occurs through the map.  This map in the picture is not what I imagined it would be, it looks limited to me, but I don't know the rules and never played the game, and likely making a more detailed map would probably extend the game time to little practical effect.

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## DanielHasenbos

I think it's very possible to make custom maps and use Risk Europe's rules and components. I don't own the game, but I took the rules from the internet and used a map of my own world to play it on. I made some slight changes to the rules to account for my personal world setting, but other than that, it worked very well.

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## The Lazy One

> Don't know about it.  The best alternative to Risk for me was always a game my friend really liked, Axis and Allies, and there a huge amount of game balance occurs through the map.  This map in the picture is not what I imagined it would be, it looks limited to me, but I don't know the rules and never played the game, and likely making a more detailed map would probably extend the game time to little practical effect.


A&A is an excellent game, but hardly "elastic". the dynamics of the game are deeply embedded in the history and the events of these years, and while enjoy a game of it it would be hard to "mod" it with custom maps.
The "granularity" of the map regions really change with the timespan desired for the game I guess, I'd definitely love to experiment these Europe rules with a larger map too.

My hope is to have now a system where with little tweaking (defining the cities and centers, and possibly the factions' starting points) any map could be adapted to play with it. Looks there's enough "juice" to enjoy even an unbalanced game.

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## The Lazy One

> I think it's very possible to make custom maps and use Risk Europe's rules and components. I don't own the game, but I took the rules from the internet and used a map of my own world to play it on. I made some slight changes to the rules to account for my personal world setting, but other than that, it worked very well.


Very interesting! What kind of changes did you adopt? How much did you have to add in terms of rules for the new cities and factions? or did you use the standard cities rules, just renaming them?

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## DanielHasenbos

Well, since then my game has undergone enormous changes, and very little of the Risk Europe rules still remain. I'm not exactly sure what I did and didn't use from the original game, but I believe I scrapped the city bonuses, and added God-Kings as an extra unit, which could only be recruited and defeated under certain circumstances. 

Since then I have:
 • Changed the combat system
 • Changed victory conditions (play 6-8 rounds and then count victory points)
 • Added different kinds of resources (Gold & Prayers)
 • Added different kinds of buildings (Capitals, cities, castles and temples)
 • Added nation bonuses (Reduced building cost, combat bonuses etc.)
 • Added diplomacy (At war, At Peace, Allies, each with their own pros and cons)

And probably a lot more that I can't think of right now  :Razz:

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## The Lazy One

> Well, since then my game has undergone enormous changes, and very little of the Risk Europe rules still remain. I'm not exactly sure what I did and didn't use from the original game, but I believe I scrapped the city bonuses, and added God-Kings as an extra unit, which could only be recruited and defeated under certain circumstances. 
> 
> Since then I have:
>  • Changed the combat system
>  • Changed victory conditions (play 6-8 rounds and then count victory points)
>  • Added different kinds of resources (Gold & Prayers)
>  • Added different kinds of buildings (Capitals, cities, castles and temples)
>  • Added nation bonuses (Reduced building cost, combat bonuses etc.)
>  • Added diplomacy (At war, At Peace, Allies, each with their own pros and cons)
> ...


Makes sense to me! 
The feeling reading the rules is that adding mechanics isn't overly complicated. 
Did you print your own version too?

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## The Lazy One

Little update here: 

I did play my first game, and I was pleasantly supripsed. The game runs smoothly and it's easily moddable with slight changes to better fit the players' tastes. 
Also, the map look is mediocre at best: different line widths, lazy photoshop brushes for trees and a couple of sea monsters clearly copy-pasted from google. 
The game is BEGGING for a better map. I wonder whether i should do a map of europe first, or directly go for something entirely different.

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## Falconius

I'd go with something completely different, since even if it is mediocre you already have a Europe map  :Smile: 
And you can work on a mod the same time to work with the map too.

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## The Lazy One

> I'd go with something completely different, since even if it is mediocre you already have a Europe map 
> And you can work on a mod the same time to work with the map too.


Another option was to "extend" europe with a few extra cities, for 6 players rather than 4! The true players limit there is due to the map size, afterall.

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## Chris1474

How will you go about making your own map?

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