Palatins Maps

[Palatin]

Hi everybody!

I play Battle of Wesnoth for 2 years now and it still gives me pleasure. Thanks! ... so finally I want to contribute something ... starting with my five homemade multiplayer maps.
They are all 4-player-maps and I kept them pretty small (24 by 12 max) but tried to make them somewhat diverse. Because of the tight space the action starts very soon, but the terrain also has features that slows things down. Luckily there are enough villages to recover and make a comeback if you made a mistake and lost your units.
I only played them against computer, but they were always fun, fast-paced battles.

They are already on the Add-Ons-Server under the name "Palatins First Maps".
Here are some screenshots. The names are in german, I think that shouldn't be problem, but I tried to add some translation to give an idea what the names mean.

Comments are welcome ... happy battling!

[Reepurr]

Looking at the screenshots, I can see quite a few glaring problems...at least, I believe they're problems.

Map I:
Most villages seem to be very close to mountains. This means a Dwarf can easily siege that village thanks to 70% resistance - this is a definite no-no when it comes to map designing. Or at least seems to be.

That huge central clump of mountains looks like a place where Dwarves would be unbeatable. *shudders*

All the mushrooms and caves, the ONLY things that slow flying units down, are in the right side of the map. Gryphons will have unparallelled speed in the left side, but not the right side.

The right side has a lot of caves, making it easy for Knalgans to get 50% defence in a place highly disadvantageous to everyone else.

The southwestern corner has almost all the water. Loyalists, Rebels and Northerners are the only factions with water, not flying, units available.


Map II:
Lots of cave (Knalgans advantage). An awful lot of hills for them to hide in, too.
Many, many bottlenecks (narrow corridors), where a mass of units can quite easily fend off a smaller number of level-2s.
The only "forest" is mushrooms, which Rebels don't do so well in. Rebels need their forest defence to survive, and they're not getting it.

Map III:
Lot of rough terrain (Knalgans advantage again...) and not much forest.
Lot of sand, which most factions do badly in, but Drakes do excellently in - 40% and 1 movement cost!

Map IV:
With so much water, you have to feel sorry for factions with no water units. No rough terrain at all, so Knalgans are doomed.

Map V:
Left side is good for Knalgans and slow for flying units. Right side is good for Rebels - especially that northeastern chunk - and the river causes a bottleneck along with the cave walls.



If they weren't meant to be mainline-balanced though, I'm sorry to be waffling on about it. Visually, they look quite nice...

[Palatin]

Well, thanks for the comments Reepurr and I definitely learned something in case I will make a balanced map. However, I mainly made these 5 maps to battle the computer and so I willfully added some extra challenge in the form of bottlenecks and terrain that is advantageous to some factions but terrible for others. And the Drachenhoehle is designed to have a big melee for the center but strongholds for the loosers of the opening melee.
To me it is just more fun to overcome some extra problems, it's like the poor mans campaign. (In fact, the "Am Styx" map was even designed to be part of a campaign.)

I admit for humans against humans it might be too unbalanced, well, except if you want to give experienced players a handicap when fighting a beginner. I don't know if that is custom, I don't play online.

Anyway, maybe someone will get a bit fun out of them or use them in a campaign.

[Reepurr]

I see your idea there, but people might get annoyed fast.

A few years ago, back when I still played multiplayer extremely frequently, I created a big map full of swamps, with a grassland "S" in the middle for S aurians.
Guy joined.
Went "Did you make this?"
I said "Yeah."
They said, "It's rubbish, it's not balanced at all, you're stupid" (or along the lines of this)
They left.

[Palatin]

Yeah, that's one of the reasons I don't play online. The other is that I like to ponder over tactical situations, even go back a couple of rounds to try again a different approach if things go horribly wrong - like a chess problem. Maybe that is not how Wesnoth is supposed to be played, but I don't care.
For this stuff, these maps are good enough - just got my butt kicked in the cave on "Am Styx" by an AI-necromancer and an AI-orc ... guess it will be a long night till I find the key to defeat them.

[Zaroth]

Just as Reepurr said, they're not suited for MP at all, the whole idea of making clumps of one terrain type is wrong when doing MP maps - you have to mix terrains (and bonus points if you manage to make it visually look good, like most of mainline MP maps). A lot. Have a look at this sticky topic if you're planning on doing a balanced MP map.

However, these maps are probably quite fine if used within a campaign - and will probably also get played quite a lot if the campaign is overall good. You'll still probably have to fix some balance issues (especially after players complain about difficulty / turn limit), but it's a whole level easier than creating a balanced MP map. Good luck!

[Reepurr]

if you're planning on doing a balanced MP map.

He's not. He's intentionally making unbalanced maps, which are good for some factions, bad for others. Balance doesn't seem to have anything to do with it at the moment.

[H-Hour]

These look like they would be good vs. AI. How would you feel if I included them in my 2p Campaign Battle System addon? I would need to make minor adjustments to fit them into the system, but they would remain largely the same. And of course you'd get full credit in the Readme.

[Palatin]

Hi H-Hour,
the answer is: I would feel great! Go right ahead and include them, adjust them ... abuse them

And as stated above: Yepp, the goal weren't balanced MP-Maps, but maps that provide quick, yet more challenging battles against AI.