So i’ve intermittently posted on here about bad maps, but I’ve been thinking the devs should put more effort into making the ranked maps more fair for both players. I’m all for randomly generated terrain and neutral res to some extent, but when there’s already discrepancies and bad civ match ups, getting a bad map on top of all of that just makes things stupid.
Fix the effing sheep. Reduce the max spawn distance. This doesnt even need to be explained, its just stupid.
Balance the forward resources. If 1 player has everything forward then the other MUST have everything forward, none of this garbage where 1 player has everything back while the other has almost everything forward. In the following map, 1 player has everything forward, with an open base. While the opponent not only gets an ez wall, they get all the resources at the back (even the MOFO DEER!!!), I won this because it was korea v eth. But anything else would have been a disaster.
Neutrals, never put all the neutrals within a specific % of the map. It’s simply retarded when turks get a map where all the neutrals are in 25% of the map on the opponent’s side, and the opponent is a power house like franks. In the following screenshot… All neutrals in that tiny portion of the map except 1 stone… Like wtf?
moving sheep closer just means people will steal boars sooner, which is the actual biggest balance problem on these shallow farming-economy maps. 650-700 extra meat (3 boars vs 1 boar) and having to make 3-4 fewer farms (~200 wood!) as a result is an enormous disadvantage
mirroring resource safety is not good because then you don’t have to scout your opponent’s base at all before committing to a plan. the unknown information is the key part of the game
the better approach is to let people play on maps where we get to do something more interesting than just figuring out where to wall. that way having a harder-to-wall map doesn’t swing the game that much
the two options that have actually worked well are:
neither player can fully wall, so the resource position asymmetry doesn’t decide too much
the player who doesn’t wall can spend those resources on something important (like map control to take advantage of something like food in exposed areas of the map or investing into water). that way difficulty enclosing all the resources with walls is just a reduction in options instead of a reduction in power
I think instead of trying to fix one map. It would be better to encourage players to adopt more map diversity. Given that Arabia is well… mostly empty space, it’ll be hard to keep the map looking random while also keeping it fair.
Lel. Ok go ahead. Somehow “let” people play on other maps see how much of a difference it makes. When arabia is still the most balanced map wrt to civ options. As opposed to having specific abusable civs
Lel omfg there’s a happy medium between a predefined map and randomly but fairly spaced resources that’s not my fault if you don’t realise that. Cliffs, hills and forests still make a huge difference
Omfg. Even when i dont wall. If i have double back gold and back deer(ez safer mill) . It means the opponent HAS to walk around SOMETHING to get to those resources to Idle my vils. If i have front deer firstly i either have to push deer or its too risky to drop a forward mil or i lose the deer.
Forward gold or stone? Either my opponent can easily Idle the vils or i have to put stuff in the way. As opposed to the back resources where my entire base / forests are inherently in the way.
Omf. Again either lack of imagination or experience.
Many MANY times i get close sheep or my opponent does.
That’s why i said reduce the MAXIMUM. I didn’t say make all sheep close always.
As it stands sometimes one player actually does get an easier time laming because their sheep are close while the opponents sheep are on the sun OR EVEN BETTER. The opponents sheep are closer to your base than their own base.
Or even cooler. One mofo gets double front boar while the other get 1 back 1 front.
I didn’t think something this obvious would need explaining…
That’s a very subjective opinion. It heavily favours early aggro, so civs that can go aggressive early do better than they would do on closed maps. Not to mention how often they keep/kept tweaking this map for various events and it sometimes still ended up just sucking so bad.
Am I supposed to take this seriously? The more random you try and make something, the less control you have over the resulting outcome. If you want more balanced maps, you’ll have to accept less variety.
LoL is this supposed to be an unfair map? I barely understand what player shoud be supposed to have an advantage, expecially without knowing the elevations on the map.
TBH is quite silly to talk about bad maps when main gold, stone and berries always spawn at max 10-12 tiles from the TC and are almost always securable and wallable, with hills that are generally far enough from the base to not be too concerning. Secondary gold can be pretty bad sometimes, but you always have enough time to secure them if you adjust your strategy according to the map (which is what having random maps is about).
I think this sounds too harsh. The devs are putting tons of effort into that in my opinion. Every update we are having tweaks to map generation, some for balance, some for meta changes. I definitely have the feeling, that this is a priority they are putting a significant amount of effort into. It’s just that random generated maps are hard to balance, and there always will be some issues.
It’s good to point out these issues, so the devs know and can work on specific problems, but I think they are putting enough effort into it.
there is a concept called information leak. what might look like a simple harmless balance improvement (“if i have forward deer, my opponent should have forward deer”) has other effects
one side effect is that you’ve added this extra rule to the game. now the people who memorize all these linked spawn rules patterns have an advantage over the ones who don’t
so i scout my base as normal. i have forward deer. i didn’t scout my opponent’s base at all, but now i know something about it. i can make a militia or two and go kill their deer. and not every civ can do this fast enough, so it’s not really “fair” for everyone despite the map seeming like it’s fairer
arabia will be a difficult map to balance as long as boar-stealing exists in the game. every time you leak more information about the opponent’s map (without actually having to scout the opponent), then they have more reasons to steal boars
with respect to sheep distance, the last time i looked at the code, the command was the same for all players. like when you have very far sheep, opponents also have very far sheep. is that not occurring? i do think the extremely far spawns (and the cow spawns) should be removed because it makes stealing a bigger problem, but anything to make sheep easier to find should also make boars harder to steal (or else the game gets ruined even more by lamers)
see how much of a difference it makes. When arabia is still the most balanced map wrt to civ options. As opposed to having specific abusable civs