TheKoopa wrote:Plasma_Wolf wrote:That's all just the details in the design. The map itself with the island and mex placement is really great

Hope my criticism isn't too off-putting.

Sorry but point of reach doesn't do ocean heightmapping well and looks bad in that regard
Better to look at sentons, it has by far the best ocean heightmapping out of all other maps
I agree. Setons is very good in heightmap. And did you check the earlier versions of PoR? The water is completely flat there

Also, there are plenty of islands or island groups where the initial area around it has a long and smooth descend.
@Morax, putting in the mountains as natural barriers is of course a very good idea.
When I look at maps, I mostly look at "what do I like, why does this look good, or why not?" I'm less concerned with how the gameplay is going to be, so when I comment about a map, it's mostly about how it looks. When I made Point of Reach for example, I just wanted an island map for team games. I also wanted the natural barriers and as a result it's got ridiculously high mountains (which would like to keep btw, but if I were to make the map now, I'd have done something differently).
Aestethics are important in a map too. The main reason for me to not like the sand and the ground under the water was because it's highly distracting, and it makes it rather difficult to keep track of what you're doing (in term of building factories, moving ships about, getting your mex spots etc.). These are all very small things but they all added up to me feeling out of place on the map all the time. That point started with the build space btw.
So that's the main gameplay-related thing to the map for me: I had very little build space.
Then there's the hydro thing but you pointed that out yourself.
As I said, the mex placement is great, the islands placement is great too. I think you've got got a good map for naval gameplay all over the place, the land gameplay in the middle and of course it's big enough for any sort of transport drop. At no point did I think "this should really be different" or "why is it forcing us to play like this?"
Maybe because we played only one game, but I felt there was enough room for a variety of actions.