Yes, map balancing is definitely not right. My bad that I was not saving map seeds and stuff, but I was in a couple of very awkward situations
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Thanks, all! Heard! Balance changes coming in the future.
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I have seen that sometimes stone can be lacking on you starting island,
Last game I had this:
Actually both stone and gold were lacking, note also that my opponent has 3 gold mines ???
Seed : 0898cb19
Thank you @hitagi7959! We appreciate the report, and the map seedāwhich is super helpful.
Teammate and I separated from enemies, market, and sacred site by a wall of trees. Map seed: 3d561c61.
woah thats a pretty nice natural fortification >.>
I just watched a Viper vs TaToH mongol mirror casted by Drongo on an altai map seed that had interesting terrain generation. One of the relics was placed in the middle of a mountain, forming a strip of walkable land on it that tapered towards the peak. It would be cool to see more of such formations, and on other maps with mountains too, maybe with a guaranteed relic at the end of the āpathā to the top the mountain. It would make for a proper pilgrimage feeling when a monk goes for that relic. On maps like mountain pass, you could perhaps build an outpost at the very end of the path, being able to gain vision of the other side, or maybe even harass enemies passing by.
Maybe this could be a separate random map type of its own, that generates multiple such sites across the map. Iām sure things like this are not a priority right now, but I just wanted to throw this idea out there.
Hello guys! Some of you might know me. Iām Lord Patito, the admin from EGCās Genesis.
I ran more than 700 generations in order to cherrypick the seeds for the main event (yes, some mistakes were made, and I am sorry for that)
That experience let me with a good chunk of information about the map generation. So hereās my feedback:
Iām taking several factors into account:
- Amount of gold and stone piles near the TC
- Amount of woods
- Distance to the edge of the map and neutral markets
- Relic disposition
- Amount of bushes nearby/hunt groups
- Emplacement of the resources
In general, speaking about open land maps (Arabia, Lipany, High view) the main issue seems to be the disposition of gold veins. Sometimes a player might get 2 veins in the back of their base, while the other player might get only one vein, forward, having the second vein really far from the base.
Big veins seem to be randomly placed, resulting sometimes in one player having 3 vains (2 small + 1 big) at disposal, while other player having only 1 small.
Relics spawning seems to be an issue as well. The main issue here, in my opinion, is that sometimes relics appears really close to other relics, giving this a situation where up to 3 relics can be in a quarter of the map (and, therefore, considerably closer to one player than to the other )
In adition, in Lipany, players might start closer than intended. this seems to be solved if Team together options is active (while being a 1v1 match)
In Altai, the gold generation seems to be more balanced, but relic problems increases here. sometimes a player might get 2 relics near his base, while the other 3 relics usually spawn behind the mountains.
Hill and Dale has one major problem, and itās that, while both players usually have 3 gold veins near their TC, some of those veins might be outside the hill, and thus, far more exposed. This irregularity might provoque map seeds where one player have 4k gold in base while the other have 16k gold.
Another issue that might appear is that sometimes a forest block the access to the middle for one player, while the other player will find a direct way to reach the center.
Boulder bay has almost no issues with map generation, but two that are fairly common. fair spawn of Gold vines, relics, stone, and even distance to the water/ neutral dock. sometimes a player might be slightly closer to the extra gold vines and/or some relics than the other player, but the advantage is minimal.
On the other hand, deep-fish generation is super irregular. In addition, wood generation can be really weird, and in certain maps can block the route to the neutral market (look Viper - The mista game 4, for the Genesis tournament final)
Mongolian Heights the cliffs sometimes might generate as a natural perfect wall for one player, while being almost non existent for the other. In addition, the gold position in relation to the river is not equitative for both players, resulting in one playerās gold vein being exposed to maritimal attacks.
In additon, the amount of veins at each side of the river is highly inconsistent, to the point that some generation have 6 small veins at one side of the river, while having only 1 at the other (big veins, though, seems to be generally 1 at each side).
Relics also seem to have an unfair spawning. itās not odd to have 4 relics at one side of the river and only 1 at the other. I would suggest to reduce the number of relics to 4, or increase it to 6. same with small gold veins. he standard number seems to be 7 small veins, while either 6 or 8 would make more sense.
all in all, I feel Mongolian heights is the map with most unfair generations Iāve experienced.
Mountain Pass the mountains do not generate in the middle on the map, resulting of one playing having consistently the 60% of the map, while the other 40%. One player is sometimes enclosed by mountains.
Also, sometimes 3 gold veins can spawn at one side of the mountains, while the other, lonely one, at the other side.
Last, seeds like 374a03d0 can fail to generate the second neutral market in the map
Danube river presents the same problem than Mountain Pass: the river generation might give 50 % of the land to one player and 25% to the other (leaving the other quarter map surounded by a delta). Other possible issue is the map generating only one straight river that divides the land in 70%-30%, with the resources spawning accordingly to the size of the land: this means that the player get not only more land, but gold and relics.
also, one player might get the market in his side of the river, while the other market might appear in neutral land
In addition, sometimes players spawn in the same side of the river (although this might be intentional)
King of the hill has the main issue of access differences to the hill. Some player might have an incredible cliff forcing him to do a huge turn in order to get on top of the hill, while the other might get a big gold vein almost next to his TC.
All the seeds were generated in taiga summer, random position.
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Thanks for the effort to organize the tournament, I hope that the constructive criticism of the maps will translate into a better generation of the terrain.
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Iām sorry, probably others here know, but what does this mean? Does that mean you started 700 games to test map generation? And how did that help you pick the seeds? Does āseedsā here mean tournament seeds?
Yes.
Every game you start has a seed code for the current generated map that can be seen when pressing escape.
Using that code in the custom match lobby will generate the exact same map for you.
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No, itās the seed used for a software random number generator.
Computers donāt generate random numbers, they generate a deterministic sequence using a starting value; the seed.
A decent generator will give you a close to random spread of values, and without knowing the seed value and all the steps used to generate the sequence they are functionally random.
By using the same starting value against the same algorithm, you will end up with the same sequence of numbers. In the newer XCom games it means missing a 95% chance to hit will miss even if you reload the game and here it means the map will generate the same.
For something like a tournament itās pretty useful to be able to ensure you donāt get really poorly balanced maps from the generator.
A seed (a number or a code) allows you to recreate a certain randomization. If you feed a randomizer the same seed, it should produce the same result, unless changes have been made to the algorithm in the mean time.
Thanks for doing an amazing job!!!
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Ok gotcha, itās a seed for the map generator. That makes sense. I didnāt realize that existed or you could use it in a custom map to rebuild the same map. Thank you.
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Hi, i just wanna know, Lipany map is named after Lipany battlefield from Hussite wars in Bohemia of 15. century?
What is the reason for excluding other hybrid water/land maps? Such as Nagari, Confluence. I personally find them very imbalanced but curious if you agree.
Well, we decided to have a limited mappool, and cutting the water maps seemed to be a good idea. Plus, the generation on those is sometimes unbalanced
I understand that for the SteelSeries you will be one of the organizers, i hope that u do better than the previous one and little by little perfecting the small errors.
You poor soul. For science! I guessā¦
Thanks for all the work surrounding the tournament <3
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