Ranked is coming some time soon, and I’ll probably jump back and play the game on the reg a bit more. But 1v1 QM in this game sometimes ruins the game experience. Imbalance aside, one thing that really breaks my experience is map design. Here’s a quick wishlist:
Remove French pass. Remove Mountain Pass from ranked pool.
- Not only do these maps heavily favor certain civs, they take too long. Average game length should be 25 minutes across the board, both map and civ. There will be outliers that take 40+, but they are tolerable.
More hybrid maps
- Don’t introduce them until you fix water balance. But water raids should be a common occurrence.
- Amphibious raids should be a common occurrence also.
Speaking of… Rethink Confluence.
- It’s a really bad map design when it comes to hybrid maps, really. The “water rush distance” in the middle is too short.
Varied map sizes
- Why are all maps square? The overall playable area should be the same. Some maps should be narrow and long. I really wish that maps like Mongolian Heights is a bit narrower but longer so that width of the river in the middle is wider. Right now, it’s a really bad map.
Reduce map randomness.
- Some randomness is cool. But game-determining things SHOULD NEVER BE. Whose brilliant idea was it to make relic distribution random AND make a civ completely reliant on them? How many HRE matches are literally determined by relic placements on the map? How many games has HRE lost/won from the beginning without us every knowing? Make it so that 4 relics spawn evenly distributed along an axis of the map. Have 1 spawn along the center line of the map. The walkable (note the emphasis) distance between 3 relics and players’ first TC should be exactly the same for both players.