Bold New Maps

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Kolbur
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Kolbur »

The Black Sword wrote:Hey Doc,

I haven't played the map yet but I don't see the need for the micro keep. The way it is now you can traverse north to south without having even 1 turn without recruiting. In the previous set up, you had to give up just the 1 turn which doesn't seem too bad. I'd have to play it a bit to find out the dynamics but for example Sullas ruins has a similar keep setup with no problems.
Hey TBS,
I was the one who suggested to put it there. While it's true what you say you have to take into account that the travel there with the leader is very risky. The shortest route is easily interruptable. If you don't want to risk it you are stuck at one of the flank keeps and this is potentially a guessing game, because if you walk to the wrong keep your other flank might be overrun. Such guessing games are not very fun in my book.
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Doc Paterson »

Kolbur wrote:
The Black Sword wrote:Hey Doc,

I haven't played the map yet but I don't see the need for the micro keep. The way it is now you can traverse north to south without having even 1 turn without recruiting. In the previous set up, you had to give up just the 1 turn which doesn't seem too bad. I'd have to play it a bit to find out the dynamics but for example Sullas ruins has a similar keep setup with no problems.
Hey TBS,
I was the one who suggested to put it there. While it's true what you say you have to take into account that the travel there with the leader is very risky. The shortest route is easily interruptable. If you don't want to risk it you are stuck at one of the flank keeps and this is potentially a guessing game, because if you walk to the wrong keep your other flank might be overrun. Such guessing games are not very fun in my book.
The other thing is that if you did want to travel from, for example, south keep to north keep on a path that allows you to recruit every turn, you used to have to move way back to the starting keeps, for a total travel time of 5 turns. :P (10 spaces back to one, and from there, 3 turns to the northern keep- All in all, a sort of counter-clockwise arc from the southern keep to the northern keep). While you were in the area of those 2 starting keeps, any fighter units recruited there would be a good 2 turns away from any urgent defensive situation. Thus, the mini-keep. :)
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The Black Sword
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by The Black Sword »

The route isn't too risky I think, not many people want to take on your leader. Besides, you need to redeploy before your opponents powerphase, if your redeploying during it then your already in trouble. If its before your opponents powerphase, then its your powerphase, so you should be pretty safe.

One additional point; the mini keep now makes a very flexible base, probably better than either of the other 2 keeps. You only have 8 vills, so you only need to recruit 1 unit per turn anyway. The leader can reach both of the more central front vills from there and can join in the defense of either of the other 2 more outlying villages in 2 moves including moving through one of the side keeps to recruit. I'm wondering why I would choose a side keep now?

IMO (though again without having played it :P ), the micro keep strengthens the defenses unnecessarily, I'd prefer a map that encourages attackers.
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Doc Paterson »

The Black Sword wrote:The route isn't too risky I think, not many people want to take on your leader. Besides, you need to redeploy before your opponents powerphase, if your redeploying during it then your already in trouble. If its before your opponents powerphase, then its your powerphase, so you should be pretty safe.
Hmm, I think I either misunderstood you, or you misunderstood me. :) Let's say I'm player 1, and I'm in my farthest south keep. There's big trouble in my northern area, or it seems as though there could be some time in the next few turns, and I want to bring my leader up there. As it was before, it was a three turn trip. Now maybe that's not too bad- It is as you said before, just like the right to left switch on Sulla's. One small difference with this one though is that some leaders have to walk a very set path, which is very susceptible to disruption, i.e. an enemy unit makes you deviate even one hex from your route, and there's another turn tacked on there. I think that the nature of the center here can make that sort of disruption more common than on other maps (it happened earlier today in my match with Quetzalcoatl- don't know if you saw that one). And yes, the trip can be aligned with beneficial TOD depending on the matchup, but my thinking at the moment is that, at least on this map, there would be a bit too nasty of a guessing game going on. I think Kolbur's primary point was that this guessing game is pretty huge early game, because both north and south are nearly equally viable targets for a rusher.

As for the micro-keep making aggression more difficult, I don't think that's the case, because unlike almost any other map, you can't respond to an impending attack by unloading a bunch of banked gold. You get the one unit, and if you want to unload more than that, you have to be more committed to one side than the other. Recruiting at one keep and then the other on the same turn is never possible, and I think that most of the time, if an opposing leader is hanging around the middle of that map, he's going to see units just going around him, pillaging on one side or the other. Yes, he can reinforce, but usually a turn too late to actually avoid a village being taken.

Don't get me wrong, I'm actually not entirely decided about the micro-keep. But that's the gist of my reasons for keeping it. I don't even remember using it once in the games I've played there- Generally, it just got so hot in one area, that my leader stayed at the closest north-or-south keep.
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Gallifax
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Gallifax »

Seems an interesting map, will try that one.

I saw you did the changes on sablestone. Nice I hope they work out as some of us hoped.

No changes to hgbl yet on 1.9.10? I like that map, just not balanced as in 1.8.6. I wish there was a way keeping dynamics and dealing with the too strong chaotic rushes.
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Doc Paterson »

Gallifax wrote:
No changes to hgbl yet on 1.9.10?
Actually, there are a ton of changes. Have another look? ;)

As for the TOD bump which was recently reverted, I'd say let's have people debate that on the other forum, where HGB has its own thread. When I took measures against chaotic rushes, there was quite a bit of disagreement. When I reverted it, there was also vocal disagreement, this time from others. Feedback is good, but I do wish that opposing "sides" (if we can call them that) would talk a bit more to one another about these sorts of things, and do more testing games with one another, etc. As it is now, I feel like there's often this 50/50 discontentment ratio that occurs, when I have to make a tough call.

(This is not just to Gallifax by the way, but to everyone.)

It would be nice to do more voting on this sort of thing, on the other forum. If, for example, a majority of that council and/or the advisors said "Hey, we think X Map should be changed in such-and-such a way," you'd be able to count on a change happening. So, what do you guys say? A bit more proactivity in general would make me very happy. 8)
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Gallifax
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Gallifax »

Yeah I did notice the changes now.

Any way to have a look on the map with the changes that dealt with the chaotic rushes?
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Doc Paterson »

Gallifax wrote:Yeah I did notice the changes now.

Any way to have a look on the map with the changes that dealt with the chaotic rushes?
The primary change was just a TOD bump. Starting TOD was morning, meaning that a chaotic rush would be cut a bit short. I think a rush was still quite doable, given the spacings, but maybe some people are more cautious about charging in than I am. ;)
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Gallifax
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Gallifax »

Hmm that sounds rather good to me too as a solution.
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Nobun
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Nobun »

About new version of hornshark island... I have to say I don't like it (i prefer a lot the old one).
This is explained here: http://forum.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=35870

However I have to mark a thing that it is must be considered as a bug.
The current loyal-units-system is not good becouse, if you try to use a no-standard era (not all players plays only standard era like me) you can experience a battle where 1 of the 2 players can have loyal units (if random selects a "standard" faction from era) and one not (if random selects a "non-standard" faction from era).

So my suggestion is.... instead of having different loyal units for every faction, it can be a good idea to have the same units in any case (for example a young ogre and a mermaid mage).... or, instead of having starting loyal units, giving the "unreachble" water village owned to both players at start and the most far village (reachble with young ogre) owned at start only for p2 (for balancing reasons).
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Doc Paterson »

Nobun wrote:About new version of hornshark island... I have to say I don't like it (i prefer a lot the old one).
This is explained here: http://forum.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=35870

However I have to mark a thing that it is must be considered as a bug.
The current loyal-units-system is not good becouse, if you try to use a no-standard era (not all players plays only standard era like me) you can experience a battle where 1 of the 2 players can have loyal units (if random selects a "standard" faction from era) and one not (if random selects a "non-standard" faction from era).

So my suggestion is.... instead of having different loyal units for every faction, it can be a good idea to have the same units in any case (for example a young ogre and a mermaid mage).... or, instead of having starting loyal units, giving the "unreachble" water village owned to both players at start and the most far village (reachble with young ogre) owned at start only for p2 (for balancing reasons).
Epic response in the other thread: http://forum.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php? ... 34#p518434 8)
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Mint
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Mint »

Here's a present for doc p :wink: Tis a game on the tombs of kesorak. P1 elves vs p2 loyalists. To me it seems like it is pretty easy to pressure both sides, splitting defending forces with only 1 side having the actual attack planned. Mobility still to me seems like its a big thing on this map, but maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, here it is
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Doc Paterson
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Doc Paterson »

Mint wrote:Here's a present for doc p :wink: Tis a game on the tombs of kesorak. P1 elves vs p2 loyalists. To me it seems like it is pretty easy to pressure both sides, splitting defending forces with only 1 side having the actual attack planned. Mobility still to me seems like its a big thing on this map, but maybe that's a good thing. Anyway, here it is
Awesome- Many thanks. Forgive the slow responses- as I've said to some of the dudes on the other forum, I'm insanely busy with school and have extremely limited time for Wesnoth (most of the time goes into reading that forum... :lol2: ). That should change in about 4 months. :)

Anyways- Nice replay; very exciting game. Seems Fanjo blamed the matchup to some extent, but imo he also made some large mistakes, probably in part due to unfamiliarity with the map. The fight in the north on turn 7, where he loses the scout needlessly, was pretty ugly and set up that whole bad situation in that region. Biggest mistake though was in my opinion thinking that it's good for the leader to hang out in the center and save gold. As you can see, he finds himself with plenty of surplus gold, able to recruit only one unit per turn (most of the time, this was a Wose....and I'm not that surprised that these Woses got outmaneuvered by horses btw, though they did a pretty good job later on, when things were already bad). Because he was recruiting only one slow unit per turn for a while, he was lacking in the Fighter/Archer department, when they were most needed. I personally feel that the main function of the mini (central) keep should be to use a bit of gold as the leader is "passing through," going from north to south or vice versa, to reinforce a defense. It allows them to get one more unit on the field a turn sooner than they otherwise would, when making that journey. In spite of all of that, it certainly wasn't a slaughter, and it seemed there a few moments it might have turned, with the right luck.

So, nice game. :) Go get me some more! :twisted:
I will not tell you my corner / where threads don't get locked because of mostly no reason /
because I don't want your hostile disease / to spread all over the world.
I prefer that corner to remain hidden /
without your noses.
-Nosebane, Sorcerer Supreme
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Desertofsounds1
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Re: Bold New Maps

Post by Desertofsounds1 »

i got a question, why 1.10 Aethermaw doesn't have the labels when the wall disappears, it sets people who are unfamiliar with the map into a huge disadvantage
while also giving unpleasent suprises to people who think they know which walls will disappear, but they are wrong.
WinM
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