Hi all,
in the recent patch, there has been a change seems to have been hardly noticed by anyone:
“Archipelago, Islands, Migration, Team Islands, Fortress maps are now enlarged on all map sizes except Ludicrous instead of only on Giant. On the map sizes smaller than Giant these maps now have the dimensions of the next map size (for example Tiny map size on these maps will have the dimensions of Small map size). The same enlargement now applies to Budapest, Pacific Islands, and Sandbank maps as well.”
I dislike this change a lot, as it dramatically changes the nature of water maps. I’m mainly talking about 1v1 here, so it is a change from tiny to small, which has quite a big impact on the gameplay.
Problems:
(1) Scouting: Water maps always have this aspect of surprise. You cannot immediately see what your opponent is doing: Full water or a landing? You need to be aware what’s going on. This was possible in the past. If you were active with your scout, with a possible addition of 1+2 outposts, you had a good chance to spot a landing early on and react accordingly.
With the enlarged map sizes, however, the surface area of the Islands gets much bigger, so that scouting a landing becomes a matter of sheer luck. In the end, you have to just guess what the opponent is doing. This is especially true for Team Islands in 1v1. I tested it yesterday multiple times. Even without pushing deer and full focus on scouting, the time window where landings happen is so short that you can’t watch the entire island in the critical minutes anymore.
(2) Related to the previous point: If it gets too hard to reliably detect a landing, the only logical conclusion is to always land yourself, as it is the only strategy that never loses you the game outright. This however, turns water maps basically into hybrid maps, where water control is primarily an economy issue. But in that case, why not playing hybrid maps in the first place?
(3) End game: This may be a bit subjective, but I think it should be possible to win on pure water maps by winning water once and for all. That’s what water maps are all about.
This seems to be not the case anymore. Due to the larger coastline and the larger center of the island, it becomes tricky to truly finish off an opponent simply due to pop space limitations.
Please, devs, reconsider this recent change. I am aware that water maps aren’t among the most popular ones, so I do understand the incentive for a change. However, it doubt that making water maps more land-oriented will suddenly turn the Arabia players into fans of them.