TY for including some high skill maps like Budapest and Megarandom that reward aggression and APM.
Never thought I would be missing 4 lakes, but after the last map rotation with “City of lakes” and “Hill fort” I surely did 11.
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Which one is city of lake
the one where you fish boom and stone wall with like 10 tiles of stone total and fight in Imp with Onagers and BBCs, rly boring map makes BF look like a blast in comparison.
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I will miss City of Lakes. One of the best maps imo. It has more wood for long games than Islands, the fish boom is more protected, and land aggression is possible but not op.
Hill fort is a terrible map imo, there is not much space to place buildings and lumberjacks randomly walk out of the fort when there are no more trees inside anymore. Really unfun. Who likes this map? There are much better closed maps like Black Forest or Fortress.
Budapest is interessting, but a bit to much turbo gameplay imo. You get to 100 that it takes something away from the game imo.
Archipelago is a bit inconsistent. I think I would like it more if the crossing was always 2-6 tiles wide and not sometimes 15 tiles wide and sometimes inexistent.
I used to think it’s a good map until I queued vs a clown (apparently clowns ban Arabia, so since I ban Arena the choice is Hill Fort) and he went something like, Castle spam with a UU + Monk civ. Might have been Burgundians. But the point is that it’s a clown map (surprisingly). Fairly sure the meta is Monks + Castles (like Arena).
after having played it a few times, I concluded that the meta is something like full Feudal Scouts (due to 2 TC you can afford that and also having a fast Castle Age). In Castle age, you boom + wall the sides (I generally find stone walling a bit toxic but on this map I think it’s almost needed to stone wall the sides) and make Castles in key areas. In Imp you just fight. Basically this map plays out like BF except for Feudal. Still not a bad map but not as amazing as I initially thought.
didn’t know there is a crossing 11, water maps are an insta-ban for me alongside Arena.
I used to think it’s a good map until I queued vs a clown (apparently clowns ban Arabia, so since I ban Arena the choice is Hill Fort) and he went something like, Castle spam with a UU + Monk civ. Might have been Burgundians. But the point is that it’s a clown map (surprisingly). Fairly sure the meta is Monks + Castles (like Arena).
What worked for me on the map in the past is UU spam. Why? I don’t know.
after having played it a few times, I concluded that the meta is something like full Feudal Scouts (due to 2 TC you can afford that and also having a fast Castle Age). In Castle age, you boom + wall the sides (I generally find stone walling a bit toxic but on this map I think it’s almost needed to stone wall the sides) and make Castles in key areas. In Imp you just fight. Basically this map plays out like BF except for Feudal. Still not a bad map but not as amazing as I initially thought.
Stategy-wise it is a bit confusing. Budapest is like controlling two players with the exceptions
- that you have to research every technology only once
- that you have a Population limit of 200 and not 400
- and you only have the starting ressources of only one player
So researching technologies and ages is op on the map, but booming in general is easy because of the two TCs and the possibility of docks. Booming does not really require additional TCs in castel age. So I think going for two docks in dark age makes sense, and booming in dark and feudal age. Maybe farms are not necessarily required on the map, since there is a lot of hunt and fish. Food is costly in the early game, and because you don’t need as much food later in the game for villagers and technologies, farms might be unneccesary, unless you go for food-heavy military units. But my current though is that archers might be better suited for the map. If you have a lot villagers on wood for fishing ships, it is probably not worth to transition them to farms, if you can just make archers instead. What I will try next is Mayans on the map, to really spam archers in feudal and castle age.
But on the other hand since the pop space is somehow limited in relation to the two starting TCs, population efficient units might be best for castle and imperial age. Maybe something like War Elephants are doable on the map and op.
Regarding walling: I personally hate it. It makes myself play passive, makes me not to expand my town, makes my have a false sense of security. I personally much perfer to have military presense to fight incoming atacks with military. Even on City of Lakes I didn’t wall in the end anymore. I don’t know. Late game wise Towers are good against raids.
didn’t know there is a crossing 11, water maps are an insta-ban for me alongside Arena.
Like 70% of the time there is a crossing on Archipelago. Otherwise it is not different than Islands. I think the 2 neutral Islands can be merged too sometimes.
because all resources are on the hill, you can easily wall the sides because the map is somewhat narrow, and basically force the fights to happen under your Castles.
I think you can do anything. The best food per second is from Fish Traps, but really, 1v1 games don’t come down to this sort of efficiency. I generally tend to not add extra TCs, in Castle age I stay on 2 TCs because the macro plays a bit like Feudal Cumans 2 TC boom where you naturally find yourself with a lot of resources for Imp and not bad pop so adding TCs makes no sense because you can add them in Imp too. Regarding Archers or Knights, you normally don’t decide based on map, but map + civ is what influences the decision. Archers aren’t a fully meta unit anymore, most Archer civs go Halbs in late game now while Cavalry civs go Cavalier/Hussar/Halb/HC/Siege.
there are too many entry points on the map to play open. You can justify playing open on Arabia, because even there you can wall the 2-3 spots where you REALLY don’t want the enemy to come from. But on this map, BOTH your starting TCs are in a plain and very exposed. You don’t have something like a TC attached to a woodline like you would in Arabia. This is the big difference and why walling is required, it’s not worth to micro every attack coming to 2 exposed TCs.
The goal of walls anyway is to funnel the enemy into a spot where you are willing to fight. I normally leave part of the center open for this goal.
But really if you are an Archer civ, playing past like 1400 is impossible if you don’t wall at least to some degree vs a Knight civ, mobility is very strong atm.
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I’m really missing some kind of Nomad this time. Imho it should be standard on every rotation like Arabia, Megarandom and Arena.
I used to like hill fort when it had berries on both sides in the low lands