After the total fail of the last Arabia Patch. I’d like to make a proposal how I would approach the whole thing to make a balanced active map type that still has a lot of versatility.
The Basic concept is to make a green version of Arabia but with some tweaks to emphatise a more “active” Playstyle. This doesn’t means it favors agression over playing a more greedy approach, just more ways to get a lead by actively playing the map.
What I would keep from the old arabia:
- Amount of Woodlines in Total, Size of Woodlines. Distributed evenly over the available map
- 5 Relics
- No Water (except maybe a small “river” in between the playes (Eisbach) with a lot of paths and bridges over it - but not nevessarily or in every game.
- Amount of free food and distance to the starting position
How the starting ressources spawn:
- 3 Woodlines in an esosceles Triangle around the TC (same distance as in Arabia) - perfect number, perfect distribution so that there can always be at least 1 “safe” woodline and 2 “hittable”.
- 2 Starting Gold with 6 and 4 Piles. 4 Piles a bit further away and must be closer to the TC than to the 6 Piles. That way they can’t be hit both in a single rush.
- 1 Starting stone with 4 tiles. Never closer to the enemy TC than your own TC.
- 1 4-tile gold and 1 3-tile stone, one on the right and one on the left side of the starting location, about 1/3 of the sidelength of the map away.
- 3 neutral Gold with 5 piles, one right in between the 2 players the other ones in an angle of about 30 degrees. One is equally distanced to both players the other two prefer one player over the other one a bit.
- 2 neutral Stone with 3 piles. Placed in between the neutral golds or outside on the edges.
- 2 landmarks: “Chinese Tower” and “Monopteros” that benefit the controller with a trickle of stone and Gold - explained below. Placed in an angle of about 45 degrees to the connection line of the two players half way to the edge of the map (each player is closer to one of them and they are on the opposite side of the connection line each.
- Random small to medium hills placed everywhere on the map (but not closer than the woodlines to the tcs).
The whole concept of the map is to give some early agression potential, but also some defensive agency with the 3 woodlines around the starting TCs. So it shall be possible to play defensive without losing vills early. But if you decide to, you basically give up all map control and the opponent the opportunity to take control over both landmarks, the neutral ressources and potentially important hills.
In the midgame there is a lot of different strategies possible like all-ins, taking map control, forwarding but also booming and expanding. But if you take no risk with your expansion and try to include a landmark and/or neutral ressources you will have problems in the lategame. So total boom is for sure a nogo in this map. But some greed might be viable (as it should be).
The Landmarks: Provide a trickle of 45 G / 15 S per minute. Each Landmark has a conversion threshold points that starts at 60 and grows by 1 every 4 seconds it is controlled of a player. (Both landmarks start neutral). Are there more units of the opponent inside the influence area of a landmark than the controlling player has there, each unit converts the landmark at a speed of 1/3 points per second (the first unit at a speed of 1 per second). Once the threshold is exceeded, the landmark changes to the side of the converting player. The stone and gold trickle doesn’t starts instantly, but 2 minutes after the conversion instead. This is for balancing reasons (as there are civs with very strong feudal eco that shouldn’t be buffed even more with that mechanic). Monks can reduce the already applied conversion points by 1 / second (healing) or apply 20 conversion points instantly by using their “monk juice”. Just to make monks a bit more viable cause this map heavily disfavors monk play otherwise.
Have I missed any important part of Map creation? Please tell me, I never created any custom maps.