I also would like to NOT have the destinations and duration of trails or
wilderness be marked on the turn report, this should only be found out by
travelling them. It is logical for roads to be so marked as people always
seem to put up road markers ("This way to Drassa, 5 leagues"), but trails
and wilderness are usually only known to those who have explored and
privately mapped them. If the players choose to share this information, that
is up to them.
There should also not be specific "wilderness" routes marked. Anything not
labelled as a 'Trail', 'river' or 'Road' (all obvious and easily found), or
an 'Ocean' route (also easily marked as it has a harbour at the end of it)
should be considered wilderness and allow travel at a slow rate.
I prefer the ability to move in a direction or to a specific location if
you know it. However, until you know the location at the end of a specific
direction, you will have to navigate via travelling in directions, e.g from
Drassa [201], 'move N' until you find that Pactra [218] is to the North of
Drassa, at which point you can accurately start using 'move 218'.
This will allow anyone to move in any direction from any province. In many
cases, these early explorers will meet a barrier of some sort (rivers,
mountains, gorges, coastline etc) which blocks further travel in that
direction, otherwise they may well find that, while wanting to travel to
Pactra from Drassa, it is possible to avoid the obvious river route and move
to the same location just by heading into the wilderness to the "N" or "NW".
It may take longer, but you may also be able to establish a trail or alternate
route. And also, once a mechanism for controlling the known roads, trails
and rivers is established, it still allows for smuggers to continue moving
to and fro across borders. These wilderness routes should be MUCH slower
than noraml road/trail/river travel, but should also be almost impossible
to intercept.
Of course, it makes the data structure more complex and increases the work
for coders, but after all, it's the players that matter here, right ??
:-)
Rob McNeur
rob@ccc.govt.nz