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Post by CotF | Cohenski on Jul 20, 2013 22:10:38 GMT 1
Here are my notes on every competitive map under consideration:
Andes: Well balanced map, good res distribution, the occasional very good treasure can create imbalance. Also the Inca are a little on the strong side.
California: Good resource distribution. Some of the cliffs in the middle can be annoying, but they are probably not making the map any less competitive. I managed to get 12 sheep in a game recently, so sheep overdosage might still be an issue.
Great planes: Good resource distribution. Good map. Certain treasure distributions can give civs advantages, but nothing too bad. Hunt screws have really seemed to be less common.
Himalayas: Cliffs can give certain civ's advantages as well as trade post locations. Hunts can be on the low side, but its fine. I don't think any changes are needed.
Mongolia: Access to war elephants can give certain civs advantages even though I don't see it used too often. Large numbers of yaks still give civs like China an edge. Trade post distance gives civ's like ottomans a pretty big disadvantage. They are almost certain to miss a full rotation of the trade rout.
New England: Resource distribution and natural barriers can make some civ's very susceptible to raids, and yet difficult to attack outright. I think this map gives advantages to civs like sioux or germany and it might need a few tweaks to clear space on the map.
Pampas: Inconstant trade rout location can really hurt civs like ottomans. The new resource distribution is quite good. Not including the ottoman issue, the map is very competitive.
Patagonia: I hate this map. Due to the choke point at the middle, the access to trade routes, and the fish, it makes turtling too easy. Civ's like Britain and Sioux/Aztec (3 tp card), seem to have an advantage. I would suggest moving towns closer together slightly. Even if that puts them closer than average, it might make the map more interesting considering that the ability to turtle is still there.
Rockies: It is a good map, but I feel it gives civ's like China an advantage, since the treasures are on the strong side, 2nt ring hunts tend to be pretty far (easy to protect as China), and the cliffs are reasonably extensive (helps civs with good light infantry).
Saguenay: I think starting with cree on your side can give you an advantage, especially for certain civs like France, who can afford building the native vills and gains access to a strong light infantry age 2.
Siberia: Treasures are strong, but both players usually have decent access to them. It is kind of hard to attack the opponent, and mines can run out. Probably gives advantages to civs with strong cav semis like germany or sioux.
Silk Road - Lanzshou: I would like to see how much xp the trade routes give on this, because the silk road trade posts are significantly worse than ones on other maps, since they are captured in a weird way. If the trade route gather rate is balanced, the the map is perfect.
Sonora: Great map when the center is closed. When the center is open it tends to give certain civs really big advantages like Britain, due to easy camping of longbows by an outpost in the center. I would propose getting rid of the open center for games that have 2 players, so team games can still have it.
Yucatan: The treasures can be a little bit strong, but its a good map.
Yukon: Gives civ's like sioux a pretty big advantage. Having a very good treasure gathering explorer makes a notable difference on this map, and can get you hundreds of extra resources.
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icourt
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 88
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Post by icourt on Jul 20, 2013 22:58:45 GMT 1
I'll respond to a few of the concerns you have.
California: It only spawns 14 sheep regardless of the number of players. The fact you captured so many was due to extremely poor scouting by your opponent. The sheep provide a little bit less resources than the cows on other maps since sheep only provide 300 food and fatten much slower.
Mongolia: Ottomans also have a virtually protected trade route on that map. Armies can't really push on those posts without opponent pushing pretty hard into their base. I'd say Ottoman will have to suck it up and deal with it.
Pampas: It's fine for Ottomans. You just need to scout more, which I see nothing wrong with that. Sounds like an Ottoman issue more than a map issue. Might want to look into that...
Lanzshou: Trade post averages around 100-120 xp per post. This is because the map no longer uses the Silk Road map type. It uses Yellow Rivers, which changes the trade route type.
Sonora: Best of luck persuading Neuron to make that change.
You mention treasures a lot, but sounds more like a treasure rebalance issue. Not a map issue. Two totally different files.
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Post by {PHX} Alaron on Jul 21, 2013 9:19:39 GMT 1
California: I think I remember the distance between TCs being compared to that of Great Plains. After playing on the map a few times I'm pretty sure this isn't the case, and they actually seem to spawn quite far away from each other. On Great Plains both TCs spawn on the same half of the map, but on California both TCs spawn on different halves. It would be great if they spawned a little closer.
Not sure what to really say about the sheep thing. Personally I don't think it should be much of an issue, since both players will still most likely get roughly the same number of sheep in most games.
New England: Resource distribution seems fine, IMO. The two ponds in the middle do make turtling a decent option, but I feel like an aggressive player can still use that against the opponent. You can get complete control of that trade route in the middle, and some good hunts that spawn along it as well. There's always the uncommon (at least on GameRanger) option of going water and shipping an army along the coast. =P
There are a lot of natural barriers, I can't disagree; although I feel like with some creative play it can hurt the raider as much as it can help. Tweaking may be necessary.
Would be interested in seeing the reasons for removing this map from competitive maps in FP 1.2.
Patagonia: I don't really have any issues with this map personally... and after loading the map a few times I really don't see the problem. The west side of the map is very open to raids for both players, and the "choke" point really doesn't seem like it should be an issue. The distance between the two lakes it fairly sizeable, most civs should be able to exploit that somehow, and there's always the backdoor behind the lake on the west; and when the map spawns without the backdoor the distance between the two lakes is even larger.
I feel like most of the time Sioux/Aztec shouldn't even be able to afford to send the 3TP card until mid-late Colonial. I suppose Aztec could sacrifice the 5 vill or 4 vill card for it, but it would take a long time to pay off. Especially considering that you need to get that card back for it to even matter, and to get resources from it you have to spend 200f/200w to upgrade it. I think most of the time this should be exploitable; not to mention the trade route doesn't provide the best xp/resource yield (even if it is frequent).
Yukon: I feel that most civs can still compete for treasures despite a civ like Sioux having a clear advantage obtaining them. This is due to the fact that there are TONS of treasures, and all the important ones spawn on the other half of the map, as opposed to inside or behind the players' towns.
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It really seems like you dislike the boomy/defensive aspects of some of the maps. What's wrong with the game not staying in Colonial?
On a side note... Unfortunately I probably won't be able to help much with beta testing until August 1st, due to my family's irritating overuse of the internet. I'll try to check the forum occasionally... but until I get use of the internet back... good luck!
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icourt
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 88
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Post by icourt on Jul 22, 2013 0:18:06 GMT 1
California: The town centers are further apart. I mentioned this, and only said the map is the exact same size as Plains including the water area. This means there is less land to actually run around on than on Plains. The map has far fewer hunts than Plains too, and is much harder to herd on. That being said... I don't think you have any chance of moving the TC closer together with Neuron gone. TC placement is extremely hard to do, and I just don't think it's that big of a deal on that map. If you want I can decrease the size of the map if you think it's too big for some reason. The most comparable distance is to another map is Patagonia, and I actually think the TC sit a tiny bit closer on California.
New England: It was removed from comp maps due to the pond being so large and spawning boats in it to completely seal off the choke point. You could also spawn the boats and rescue vills being raided by popping them on the boat. The highly reduced ponds sizes I feel help here. It still allows you to play boats in the ponds, they just aren't quite as significant.
Patagonia: Trade routes regardless of the map (Silk Road being the 1 exception) will have nearly the same yield of xp or resources (It's about give or take 10 res per second). So say you have 2 trade posts on Patagonia and 2 on Great Plains. You will be gaining nearly the same number of resources per second despite the fact the posts will read different xp and resource values. So 3 TP card can pay off pretty quick on some maps. It's not really overpowered in my opinion though, just a civ advantage.
Boom/Defensive Civs: I agree with Mike. The game shouldn't just be based on rushing and defending against that rush and playing everything out age 2 and extremely early age 3. Just cause a map is a little bit more boomy, I don't think it makes the map any less competitive. You'll just need to adapt and maybe not play quite as aggressive colonial, or look into raiding more.
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Neuron
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 48
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Post by Neuron on Jul 22, 2013 3:06:54 GMT 1
{PHX} AlaronCalifornia is just a bit larger than GP overall, but as iCourt said, that includes the water. You're right, the distance between TCs is bigger, though it's not by a huge amount. GP is 290-300 metres in diameter and California about 310-320 (I think). (Plus/minus 10 meters in one map is not really significant enough to say they have a different size. GP is not a large map, so California having like 10-20 meters more in each direction doesn't make it a large map.) You can do this test to see how much bigger the distance is. A market is about 10 meters length x width. How many markets can you build between TCs multiplied by 10 metres is the distance between them. I get about 19-20 on GP and 23-25 on California. But keep in mind that on GP town centers are placed on the edge of the trade route, a bit away from the axis which divides the map in two*. Also, California has cliffs in the middle, which were part of the map concept. So, California is not an open-field map like GP, it needs to fit more stuff in less space in the middle. That's why TCs were kept a bit closer to the edge of the map. I can try make the TCs spawn a bit closer to each other, the only risk is that this will increase the probability of cliffs spawning behind your TC (because they basically spawn randomly where they find a right spot, constraints being taken into account). I haven't finished the map 100%, as I said, but I still think in terms of playability it's an improvement over the old one. And it's actually better in 1v1 and 2v2 than in 3v3, imo. It depends on how you define half of map. GP has a 2-variations set-up, in which you either get a Southeast trade route or a Northwest one. TCs align with the trade route orientation so they are more aligned with a SW-NE axis. On California I simplified the map orientation and made it have a North - South orientation because the map was already too twisted in design, so in order to compute all the coordinates necessary to write the new TC placement setup it would have taken me a lot more time. It's a pretty complex map to edit, compared to maps like Pampas or Siberia, and the TC placement I wrote uses three different methods for each setup (circular for games with more than 5 players, liniar for games with more than 2 players and point placement for 1v1), which is more complicated than the one in the original map, but it's supposed to get a better result (because it uses the newly created space better). My main focus for the map was to simplify the land area and make as equal for both player areas as possible, because the cliffs and forests that would come on top of it would already make it difficult enough to get through with units. *Another test is a bit more difficult: you have to place a copy of the map with a different name in the original maps folder and spawn it in the editor and enable the grid ticks to get an estimate of the map size. One small square is about 2 meters long per 2 meters wide. The bigger square is 10/10.
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icourt
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 88
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Post by icourt on Jul 22, 2013 6:03:53 GMT 1
Surprised you guys like rockies, figured that'd be first to be cut.
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Post by {PHX} Alaron on Jul 22, 2013 8:07:17 GMT 1
Rockies is good on TAD, terrible on Nilla.
Decreasing the distance between TCs might be worth trying. It's nothing too huge, but with all the clutter in the middle you have to maneuver through to reach the opponent's town, it might help.
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Neuron
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 48
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Post by Neuron on Jul 22, 2013 12:38:42 GMT 1
Well, I can't attach files now, so I'll post the TC placement part. I changed the distance only for the 1v1 set-up, in 2v2 and 3v3 the TCs were already closer. // DEFINE AREAS
// Set up player starting locations
if(cNumberTeams == 2) { float teamStartLoc = rmRandFloat(0.0, 1.0);
if (teamStartLoc > 0.5) // Team 0 up north, team 1 down south { if(cNumberNonGaiaPlayers >= 5) { rmSetPlacementTeam(0); rmSetPlacementSection(0.05, 0.23); rmPlacePlayersCircular(0.37, 0.37, 0);
rmSetPlacementTeam(1); rmSetPlacementSection(0.52, 0.7); rmPlacePlayersCircular(0.37, 0.37, 0);
rmSetTeamSpacingModifier(0.3); }
else if (cNumberNonGaiaPlayers >= 3) { rmSetPlacementTeam(0); rmPlacePlayersLine(.675, .8, .8, .6, .0, .15); rmSetPlacementTeam(1); rmPlacePlayersLine(.2, .325, .40, .20, .0, .15); rmSetTeamSpacingModifier(0.3); }
else if (cNumberNonGaiaPlayers == 2) { rmPlacePlayer(1, .73, .73); rmPlacePlayer(2, .27, .27); } } else // The reverse (0 south, 1 north) { if(cNumberNonGaiaPlayers >= 5) { rmSetPlacementTeam(0); rmSetPlacementSection(0.52, 0.7); rmPlacePlayersCircular(0.37, 0.37, 0);
rmSetPlacementTeam(1); rmSetPlacementSection(0.05, 0.23); rmPlacePlayersCircular(0.37, 0.37, 0);
rmSetTeamSpacingModifier(0.3); }
else if (cNumberNonGaiaPlayers >= 3) { rmSetPlacementTeam(0); rmPlacePlayersLine(.2, .325, .40, .20, .0, .15); rmSetPlacementTeam(1); rmPlacePlayersLine(.675, .8, .8, .6, .0, .15); rmSetTeamSpacingModifier(0.3); }
else if (cNumberNonGaiaPlayers == 2) { rmPlacePlayer(1, .27, .27); rmPlacePlayer(2, .73, .73); } } }
else // FFA rmSetPlacementSection(0.05, 0.7); rmSetTeamSpacingModifier(0.6); rmPlacePlayersCircular(0.37, 0.37, 0);
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icourt
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 88
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Post by icourt on Jul 23, 2013 4:55:05 GMT 1
I fixed the Rockies and Pampas 1v1 Observer map. It didn't code correctly using the app I used, so I hand coded this new one by hand and it should work properly now.
I made a Silk Road - Lanzshou and a California 1v1 Observer map as well. All this will be on the next beta release. If you peeps can agree on maps soon, I can release the next beta by Wednesday night. It seems most everyone is for the most part happy with the current selection of maps apart from 1-2 they personally dislike.
Neuron everyone is loving California by the way.
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Neuron
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 48
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Post by Neuron on Jul 23, 2013 13:00:07 GMT 1
Glad to hear that California is at least now not a map people will avoid playing on. I'm still not 100% content with how it looks like in the 3v3 setup, but since there are 3 TCs on a side, there's not much room to make the trade route have a more curved path without running the risk of having a TC next to the route fail to place. So that was the best compromise if TCs are to be kept on one side (no more players in the desert in non-FFA setups).
Maybe the FFA setup needed a totally different layout, because right now one player in FFA will spawn in the desert and one native TP will get dropped. One possible fix to this was to place the natives closer to each player area and maybe remove the cliffs in FFA (or something which creates more room in the center). On the other hand, FFAs are less played and many maps lack a good layout for this type of game (probably no trade route maps would do better).
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Post by CotF | Cohenski on Jul 23, 2013 19:32:18 GMT 1
Yucatan still has a small problem. If you get the top left and bottom right spawns, the top left side is better defended by natural barriers and has a small advantage.
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icourt
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 88
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Post by icourt on Jul 25, 2013 0:34:10 GMT 1
That's an older version of Yucatan, and the native village spawns in a 3/4 circle form around the TC. It won't always be 100% even for both players to totally wall it off, but some spawns will be. It's one of the random chance things that come with "random maps"
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Neuron
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 48
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Post by Neuron on Jul 25, 2013 14:40:13 GMT 1
The Yucatan problem can be solved, imo, by changing the TC placement for 1v1 and moving the natives in the same spot for both players. icourtThey tried to use trigonometric functions in Yucatan for native placement, but I think the coders who made Yucatan didn't know AoE3 doesn't support trig functions, they have to be initialised before the main function of the map. So, the trigonometric equations you see in the script don't work, that's why they were block-commented and the natives were simply placed relative to players TC location. Too bad they didn't make sure they spawn in a similar spot (I wrote such a solution for a Siberia 1v1 obs map used on ESO so it's possible).
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icourt
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 88
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Post by icourt on Jul 25, 2013 16:20:27 GMT 1
Well you're the one that would know how to change that correctly. Sounds as most of you are pleased with the maps though. Really need to finish these changes before we move onto the 1.9 beta. So please list your concerns or gripes.
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Neuron
AOE III: TAD/TWC
Posts: 48
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Post by Neuron on Jul 26, 2013 15:24:08 GMT 1
The Yucatan TP problem can't be solved with this map layout. There are a number of things which make it go haywire:
- the trade route is very curved so it pushes a lot of stuff around (trees, cliffs, mines) making their spawn position unreliable around them
- the ocean shores are very irregular which also create problems for placing anything near them
- this is the only map which has a starting native TP for each player, which comes on top of all the other starting units
- the forests on this map can overshoot in both directions: either spawn too many or too few in some parts, which either create placement problems for other objects or leave large empty areas on the map
- the space between the trade route and the irregular shore is not large enough to have everything spawn right all the time.
So, although the solution I found works in some spawns, it doesn't work in all (one TP can fail to place in some, in others there are large parts of map without trees, etc). The only way I found in which this solution works is if the trade route in 1v1 doesn't curve at all, so it runs in a straight line from the upper side of the map to the lower one. Then the starting native TPs align right.
I might post the script later, so you can test it and see what I mean.
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