This map was for game SW-Z1257, my first all email game.  It was my first attempted to draw using the computer and I used colored numbers instead of rectangles to show ownership.  Someone suggested the rectangles and a lot of other stuff, and the maps have evolved from there.

This map was originally developing similar to the "working map" in SW-1064, only much uglier. It was a simple brick with the 3-connectors as the corners. The map is a 7x7x5 cube, with the extra 10 worlds as 1-connector "moons" off of the HWs.  When I found the dimensions of the map and found that there were 10 moons, we then knew how many people were in the game (Flying Buffalo had said there was a less than normal amount of players in this game, and allowed us to choose an end score up to 12000 instead of 10000).  Since there are interior worlds, mapping was going to be very confusing (see the pattern map).  So I set up each level separately to avoid congestion and put on a co-ordinate system to make inter-level movement easier to see.

The Empires map is color-coded for ownership and shows the final world disposition.  The Pattern map is color coded for rows of connectors.  Notice that Level 1/Level 2 is a copy of Level 5/Level 4, only turned 180 deg.  HW/black hole placement is essentially the same on both ends of the map.  Everything is symmetrical except the missing connection on Level 1, between grid co-ordinates F3 & F4.  I have no idea why FBI deleted this connection, but it bothered me all game trying to figure it out, because there was no missing connector on the other side of the map.

Our alliance was numbered in white, while the opposition was numbered in black (except for unowned or busted worlds).  You can see that we did quite well, even though Pavo and Zanseth both lost their HWs.  And, in fact, our alliance took the top 5 spots with Pavo winning.

Joe

Pattern map

Empires Map