It has been a while since I made a FFH map, but IIRC hell resources will always revert to normal unless the Infernals have spawned, at which point they'll stay normal (and any hell resources you initially placed which turned into regular resources on hell terrain will go back to being their hell equivalents).
I presume '25 banned Hyborem?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
(February 7th, 2013, 22:26)Qgqqqqq Wrote: For future mapmakers:
Bobchillingworth email Wrote:Hey,
It has been a while since I made a FFH map, but IIRC hell resources will always revert to normal unless the Infernals have spawned, at which point they'll stay normal (and any hell resources you initially placed which turned into regular resources on hell terrain will go back to being their hell equivalents).
I presume '25 banned Hyborem?
No, they didn't...I will have to run another check...
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
New save
Don't have time/will to paste pics, the caged warriors will be deleted probably.
Thoughts?
Main question is does this fit the requirements they wanted - are things like ancient forests and hell gonna be too much?
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Sigh. You and BCW are right. I don't understand, though. I swear I tested it and the resources stayed the right way...
Does summoning Hyberom return the resources to hell resources?
Also, it's possible to get hell resources on a fantasy map script with the Infernals, so idk...
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Answer: I have no idea
All I know is from lurking mapmaking threads and the email I posted.
Updated map with player info:
Ryans is NOT correct, I have simply given him the luchuirp for now. (Yes he may cause problems but I wanted to get the editing done).
List I used for random.org
Ryan - - Position 5
Molach – Rhoanna – Position 4/7
Whosit – Perpentech – Position 3
Sian – Arendal Phaedra – Position 1 /2
Primepolar – Sandalphon – Position 6
Result 1 – ½
Result 2 – 3
Result 3 – 4/7
Result 4 – 5
Result 5 – 6
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
Bob Wrote:Okay, first I played the unspoiled map (twice), and then I looked over the map at turn 0 in WB. I have a, uh, few criticisms / comments / suggestions below
My main concern with the map is whether the players are in fact aware of what they'll be getting. The map isn't just "not balanced", it is massively, incredibly unbalanced. Now, if the players had asked for a randomly generated map with no balancing, I could see how you could hand them a map like this. But the fact that you've made clear and obvious edits across this map and it's still so unbalanced means that you're leaving yourself open to a lot of justified criticism, should the players be upset with there not being an even competitive field.
I'll divide my map-specific commentary into two categories- about the map in general / in whole, and each of the individual player starts.
General Map Notes:
It will take players a very long time to get their empires going on this map; slow starts. There are several reasons for this. First, barbarians are appear in large numbers due to the many lairs present. Because the map has a lot of defensive terrain, it is difficult to kill barbarians before they enter player borders or pillage improvements or attack cities. In my first trial run of the map as the Bannor, I gave up around turn 60 after I lost my second city to an endless stream of Lizardmen and 3-strength fort Goblins. Granted I was playing on Immortal difficult, but the issue remains. Second, most of the map has low commerce due to there being few rivers near starts, many hills (bad for farming or cottaging) and forests / jungle everywhere, and good, non-forested early commerce tiles being rare (wines, oasis, etc.). Third, the abundance of forests and jungle means that players require the fairly expensive mining and bronzeworking techs to unlock many of their tiles, but they lack the commerce to get these techs quickly. Fourth, while toroidal wrap does add a lot of strategic depth, it also makes expansion economically painful even for just a few cities near the capital, which slows the game down even further. In my second run at the game as Varn, it took until T130 for my empire to really start to take off, and T165 before I broke 250 beakers per turn and could tech at a reasonably fast pace. Most games have concluded or are at the end-game by that point. If you really don't want to shift around any land resources, at least consider making Pearls much more common and available for every player; this has the side effect of rewarding players clever / gutsy enough to research Sailing on a map with mostly land but many accessible bodies of water.
There are some vision issues at turn 0, with the many forests making it so players can't see resources or tiles close to their capital, making the critical capital settling decision something of a gamble (hoping you scout in the right direction with your starting units).
There is an insane 2X gems, 2X gold, Pigs, Banana spot within first-ring distance of the Bannor start. This incredibly high-value location actually helps make the tech pace bearable for the player who can secure it (I rushed for it in my Varn game, and it made a huge difference), but there's nothing comparable for the other players. Either everyone needs an decent chance at settling a spot like this, or nobody should. As it is, Decius has it almost locked up unless Varn rushes for it, and somehow manages to hold it. The only other locations of note are a 2X gems spot very close to Keelyn (second best second city location on the map, and completely uncontested), and a nice 2X gold + many FP spot between Keelyn and Charadon.
I'm not too taken with the idea of having most of the mana on the map already be specific types, since each player is locked in to a few seemingly random mana types until they turn their one plain node into metamagic. Maybe this would be acceptable if everyone had the same pre-picked mana within their respective areas of interest, like Fire + Spirit + Water + Body, but even then it's pretty easy for someone to turn their vanilla node into something other than Meta and screw themselves over by accident.
The hell terrain fire barriers are a neat idea, but they can be passed with Life mana in addition to water, which means Varn gets an advantage here (plus anyone else who starts with Life, I forget if any of the rest do). Also, the Hell barriers directly right of Charadon and Keelyn are easy to get around. The barriers aren't evenly dispersed either, for instance Keelyn does not have a barrier between her or Charadon or Decius. The result seems awfully arbitrary. The skull tower things are excessively difficult to get past, given that the mana for Courage or non-living summons which can pillage are hard to come by. Well, except for Beeri, who can just plow through them with Golems.
The Luchiurp have significant movement advantages on this map due to all the hills. Given that most of their basic units don't have the Dwarven racial promotion this might not be too much of an issue, but don't be surprised if someone complains.
Specific Start Notes:
Charadon has the best general starting area- he has a lot of rivers, FP, and a huge amount of uncontested land he can expand into. A builder's dream, except he's very isolated, and if he wants to rush someone he's almost forced to declare on Keelyn, which isn't fair to either of them. He needs to be closer to at least two more players, so that he has options for who to attack, and isn't handed a ton of free land at the very start.
Berri has the second most-isolated start, and is essentially rush-proof. His expansion prospects almost all universally suck, but he can grab an outrageously good capital on turn 0 if he moves a little bit to the east and snags a spot with 2x silk, a town (!), rice, pigs, gold. Aside from the rice, he does not appear to have a single agriculture resource near him, which is troubling.
Decius has a lousy capital location, unless he moves 1NW and grabs the corn to pair with his pig, at which point it becomes merely mediocre. He's a big victim of the "very little early commerce" dilemma, until he grabs the insane gold/gems city. Decius and Varn start very close together compared with everyone else.
Varn has more food available to him early than anyone else thanks to having double corn, but much too little commerce until Calender + Mining (or I guess sailing if he prefers to work a bunch of unremarkable lake tiles). I don't mind the double corns so much since one of them is hard to reach, but his research pace is going to be painful early on, surviving purely on a single spice at his capital, and a wheat + incense location where he is almost force to settle his second city (which concedes the gems / gold area to Decius, if it wasn't lost already).
Keelyn does not have any food resources at her capital, and the land between her and Decius is surprisingly mountain-free.
Okay, so I know that's a lot of text above. To be clear though I don't hate the concept at all, actually I think the hell barriers and slight puzzle elements are really neat and I wouldn't mind seeing them expanded at all (say, make some shortcuts impossible to reach until players get water / life + spirit mana, and keep the pre-made nodes but make sure everyone gets a meta node and has a water / life / spirit one within reach). I also liked the caged warriors, actually I'd give each of them some nice distinct promotions they can't normally get so that players have a reason to try to free them quickly before barbarians pick them apart.
I hope that's some help!
Q Wrote:Well that's crushing
Nah thanks this is the kind of feedback I need
Just responding to the first bit for now: it is mostly aimed at just being a edited map forinterest, with the idea of roling a map - largely because I don't really trust myself to build a non mirrored balanced map.
I've then tried to balance strategics and especially mana (your right about meta).
The difficulty will likely be monarch, so shouldn't be as bad barbs (I've made very minimal edits to lairs BTW, only the dens were added) nor maintenance.
Ill respond to the rest later, but in general, what do you think I should do? Is the map salvageable with edits to thin the jungle/lairs/forests and balance out resource distribution?
Thanks for the feedback
Bob Wrote:It's surely a workable map; the concepts you have added are solid, and honestly it's not very large so there aren't really that many tiles you need to change.
I already wrote in my comments some suggested changes, and I think others you can make by reading between the lines.
The main map issue in general is just the slow start, and you can resolve that without having to get rid of all of the forests or hills- provide enough readily accessible pre-mining commerce so that players can research mining / BW in reasonable speed to begin clearing their land, and that's fine. Later game commerce issues can be fixed by ensuring that every player has access to an awesome site like the gems / gold one the bannor have, and adding more rivers. Maybe green a little bit of the frozen areas for players who have less land.
As for the players, I might just scrap most of their current starting locations and move them around a bit. Sent Varn and Beeri closer to Charadon so that the Doviello have less free land but more potential rush targets. Move the Bannor a little bit away from Keelyn (moving Varn toward Charadon will resolve his proximity issue with Decius). Make sure players have roughly the same commerce and food potential at their starts, but you don't need to use the same resources; lakeside rice is about equivalent to non-irrigated corn, and a malakim oasis is similar to a riverside wines for the Luchiurp, for instance.
Oh and expand the hell terrain passages concept, because it's a cool one I think you've got a good example of something you could do map-wide with the hell barriers east of Keelyn, where the shortest path to her opponent is blocked until she gets the right mana, forcing her to take more convoluted side paths. You could extend the idea to make it so players have a more difficult time getting to nice expansion areas until they can clear the hell paths.
One last thing- you had a Tormented Souls feature somewhere on the map where it looked kind of a odd. Generally they look best placed mostly over the "Shallows" terrain, they stand out better that way.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
