The Modern Multiplayer Map Reader's Digest

[Doc Paterson]

I figured you did realize it... so why is it like this?

I could either answer that in a few thousand words.....

or just simplify it and say "variety."

Honestly, there is just so much to say about why anyone chooses to make a map in the way that they do. The underlying goal for me has always been to try to make maps that are interesting (in various ways, including visually) and distinct, without them being unfun or "broken." I've made the majority of the default 1v1s with this in mind, and if, from time to time, people believe that the entirety of the above goal isn't being met, I don't mind debating the points and (sometimes) being convinced to alter things.

Back to the subject-

how about you adjust how the keeps is?

Already done before reading this, if you can believe it. I'm happy with the village spacing. I'm happy with the vertical dimensions and the horizontal dimensions. I didn't change those, and I doubt that I will at any point. I thought long and hard about this whole issue of the 3 movement turns for a fighter to reach an enemy village. Yes, it's true for most 1v1s. That fact alone is not enough for me, and it doesn't necessarily mean that I should always stick to it (I've certainly gone below it, but that's less controversial ). I thought, and still do, that people greatly oversimplified and missed a lot of the subtleties involved, but-

if I preserve the majority of the changes, the village spacings, the basic length/width dimensions, etc. etc., I don't think it hurts anything to let those non-quick 5mp units make it there in 3 turns.

The deal with Hamlets is essentially this: Besides Hornshark, which I basically gave up on a year or two ago , Hamlets has always been the map of mine that has bothered me the most. Not because of any particular abuse (though banking was a debatable flaw), but because I've come to think of it as a very boring map. Maybe some people will back me up on this one- I've certainly heard it from a lot of players over the years. I don't just want to leave it at that though; I want to make it more dynamic. So, that's how I see it, and that's my goal.

Here's where it's at right now, though I haven't yet released this:

http://i153.photobucket.com/albums/s230 ... amlets.jpg

[Cackfiend]

nice, i think you will find people much happier over such a simple change

[Doc Paterson]

nice, i think you will find people much happier over such a simple change

I had soldiers with riot gear standing by for when I converted all of the grassland into lava anyway.

Here it is:

[The Black Sword]

So here's a test game on new new hamlets between me, orcs, and Rigor, dwarves.
I tried a rush on the left hand side which tbh I didn't think was going very well. As I say in the replay I thought I was in a lot of trouble if he trapped my flanking grunts instead of piling up on my wolf. Instead I got 2 of his back villages and kept them for most of the game.
I'm not sure if you see orc rushes being good/bad here but they really should fail against all those guards and fighters in the initial recruit. On the other hand, like I said, I think Rigor had me if he'd went for the grunts.
The rest of the game I was mostly waiting to let my advantage build up again, managed to isolate a guard on another village the next night but rigor hit back hard and he set himself up well to really hurt my forces and lvl units in the coming day. His attack was marred by a lot of misses though and with me having pretty much all of the vills that was game.
I'm not sure how much relevance to the map balance, one thing is that(as p2) I felt I pretty much had to attack the left. The extra castle tile on the right makes setting up a defense there really easy and even if I had the units to take the defenses on, he could easily retreat and he's just giving up one village.

[Doc Paterson]

So here's a test game on new new hamlets between me, orcs, and Rigor, dwarves.

I'm not sure if you see orc rushes being good/bad here but they really should fail against all those guards and fighters in the initial recruit.

Did you pick your faction? The guard/fighter recruit would be the thing to do, if he knew that an orc rush was coming. So it would naturally be more difficult in that case. Maybe he didn't know your faction, and just wanted to play it very safe?

I'm not sure how much relevance to the map balance, one thing is that(as p2) I felt I pretty much had to attack the left. The extra castle tile on the right makes setting up a defense there really easy and even if I had the units to take the defenses on, he could easily retreat and he's just giving up one village.

Not sure which extra castle hex you mean. If you mean the one connected to the keep which I added/rearranged for this recent version- That's the same spacing as occurred in the "original" Hamlets, the difference being that it is now 7 hexes away for both sides. Before, it was 6 away from P2's keep, and 7 away from P1's keep. If you're talking about the other castle hex that was added to that area though, the singular one that is in a part of that diagonal terrain line near the same village- That used to be a hill. So similar impact on this matchup.

[Nexeld]

I like hamlets because there are no impassable terrain in the middle.

[The Black Sword]

Both of us picked. I didn't mean that part in a negative way about the map since I don't think this proves if the rush is over/underpowered. On the one hand it did work(IMO) against the best counter-recruit but I think it probably should have failed. I was really thinking aloud as opposed to stating anything conclusive.

Not sure which extra castle hex you mean. If you mean the one connected to the keep which I added/rearranged for this recent version- That's the same spacing as occurred in the "original" Hamlets, the difference being that it is now 7 hexes away for both sides. Before, it was 6 away from P2's keep, and 7 away from P1's keep. If you're talking about the other castle hex that was added to that area though, the singular one that is in a part of that diagonal terrain line near the same village- That used to be a hill. So similar impact on this matchup.

I meant the one in the diagonal terrain line. I couldn't remember what is was before hand so thats fair enough.

[Rigor]

cant hide in a hex besides a 3rd party unit (scorpion) on the scoprion map

[Doc Paterson]

cant hide in a hex besides a 3rd party unit (scorpion) on the scoprion map

This has always been the case on maps with statues. On Sulla's for example, it has always been true that woses cannot hide in forests that are adjacent to Sulla or her Yetis. Same with Caves of the Basilisk. TSGarrison has the least number of statue-adjacent forests, with a grand total of 2 (one near each keep), and has 2 hexes of deep water total where skeletons can't hide.

Not a significant problem at all in my opinion, but if someone has a WML answer for this, I'll put it in there.

[Rigor]

just remove the scorpions from there and keep the fire instead so u have no statues problem. imho thats non intuitive for beginners but if u want it that way they will have to live with it.

[Doc Paterson]

just remove the scorpions from there and keep the fire instead so u have no statues problem. imho thats non intuitive for beginners but if u want it that way they will have to live with it.

You don't get it. If it's just the fire there, people can recruit anywhere on the castle, and that goes against the whole layout and structure of the map. Even if I make those hexes completely impassible, a player would still be able to *recruit to them* and move *away* from them. The statues actually prevent those hexes from being recruiting spots, while still maintaining the "connection," which allows the player to recruit elsewhere on the map. Now maybe there is a more complicated WML solution, but if we are talking about new players, as you were, I think any other solution would be very unintuitive. I'm not at all worried about the fact that a wose can't hide in 2 hexes on a roughly 700 hex map. And like I said, this effect is already much more frequent on other maps.

[pauxlo]

Maybe it works if you make the scorpion side allied to both of the others?

[Doc Paterson]

Very small adjustments again to CoTB:

[Doc Paterson]

Minor adjustments to Thousand Stings Garrison:

[Doc Paterson]

A massive update for the 1.9x branch. Includes all of the newest versions of the Bold New Maps, as well as a few minor adjustments to Den of Onis, Fallenstar Lake, Sablestone Delta, and Freelands. Some additional aesthetic-oriented tweaks (taking advantage of new terrain shades) to a number of others, as well.

Remember crew, this will only work for the dev version, so don't go putting these into your 1.8x folders.