Creator: Chociloni || First Published: 02/20/2024 || Players: 8 || Size: 50x50
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Chociloni (02/20/2024 03:07pm | Edited: 02/23/2024 10:27am):
BEFORE JOINING! You must pick a certain CO depending on which army you choose to play as! They are: ORANGE STAR: ADDER RED FIRE: NELL AMBER BLAZE: STURM JADE SUN: LASH COBALT ICE: ANDY TEAL GALAXY: DRAKE PURPLE LIGHTNING: EAGLE WHITE NOVA: SENSEI **Game overview: This is an asymmetric 2v2v2v2 map with a custom ruleset. It is based on previous smaller versions of the same geography. The map is a point-based experiment which mainly tries to fix some perceived problems with multi- party conflicts in Advance Wars. Reposting Raedel's summary in the top comment: "For those who want another TL;DR, - control labs for points, longer you're in control the better - no dipmacy or trying to be a gentlemen/backstabbing rogue. - be sure to pick Amber/Jade to win since Venus has the best lighthouse theme." |
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Chociloni (02/20/2024 03:08pm | Edited: 02/20/2024 03:57pm):
-RULES- TEAMS & COs: The map is designed to be played as a 2v2v2v2 with a special ruleset and a designated CO for each player. It is important that each player picks their designated CO to maintain the intended gameplay balance. TEAM MARS Sudden bursts of speed and destruction -Orange Star (Kibombo & Champa) CO: Adder -Red Fire (Prox & Yallam) CO: Nell TEAM VENUS Terrain mastery and rock solid defenses -Amber Blaze (Izumo & Ankhol) CO: Sturm -Jade Sun (Lalivero & Gaia Valley) CO: Lash TEAM MERCURY Naval dominance and healing abilities -Teal Galaxy (Lemuria & Daila) CO: Drake -Cobalt Ice (Imil & Ancient Tundaria) CO: Andy TEAM JUPITER Aerial superiority and lightning tactics -Purple Lightning (Contigo & Anemos) CO: Eagle -White Nova (Garoh & Vault) CO: Sensei WINNING: The first team to have at least 30 points wins the game. If two or more teams reach 30 points at once, the tie breakers are: 1. Highest point total 2. Number of currently controlled labs 3. Combined income 4. Reverse turn order A team also wins if all other players are eliminated. A player can still win after being eliminated if their partner survives and achieves the win condition. The game ends immediately once a team wins and other players may resign. Ultimately, the victory screen according to AWBW doesn't matter- only the victory declared by these custom made rules. The creator of the game announces the lab count and score for each team after every fifth day. POINTS: Points are awarded to each team at the end of every fifth day (so when White Nova ends their turn on day 5, 10, 15 and so on). Each team get points equal to the combined number of labs currently controlled by that team -1 for every whole 5 points they already have. This makes accumulating points much harder when getting close to the victory condition. Teams will need at least 6 labs and probably more to get the final points needed for the 30 point goal. As an example, if a team has 23 points and 7 labs at the end of day 20, they will get 7-4=3 points, resulting in a new 26 point total. NO DIPLOMACY: It is against the rules to message members of other teams to strike deals or alliances and/or to present ultimatums, threats, promises or suggestions. The only allowed way of communocation with other teams is by messaging "all" and is limited to non- strategy related messages, such as questions about the game or rules. The rationale behind this is how outcomes of games can be entirely decided by two parties deciding to work together and this also avoids blurring the strategic end goals for the players. Each team should play to win (or score as many points as possible) and not aim to draw the game with another team. This also mitigates the possibility of negativity between players which is often caused by miscommunication, backstabbing etc. Note that you can still expect your team to be ganged up on, especially if you are doing well, and sometimes this will feel unfair. But this is part of the game and it will be more enjoyable for you and everyone else if you try to make the best of the situation regardless. STAYING IN THE GAME: If you think your team is so far behind that it seems impossible to win, you are encouraged to still keep playing towards the secondary goal of scoring as many points as possible before losing. This mostly means playing to survive, delaying the other teams from reaching a win condition and to control as many labs as possible while doing so. Players leaving can skew the outcome of the game in ways which make things less enjoyable for the remaining players (especially for the remaining team mate). Also leaving while your HQ is being captured is discouraged as this makes the expected strategic value of going for HQ captures unreliable. Taking turns quickly is encouraged when possible but it is also completely fine to use all your available time (usually 7 days) whenever needed. Making swift and unplanned turns is also okay if you do not have the time or energy to play at your best. This is a big map with long games and you should play in whatever way makes it feel less stressful for you if you have lots of things going on. If you still have to leave the game because you are unable to play AWBW for any reason- and cannot use the vacation mode- no hard feelings! This whole section is all just to emphasise how leaving early affects other players and not to judge anyone who does so by accident or by choice. |
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Chociloni (02/20/2024 03:15pm | Edited: 02/25/2024 08:07am):
-STRATEGY- SCAN THE MAP: Most importantly, make sure you have remembered all your units and production facilities. Each players starts in at least two widely separated locations. COORDINATION: Communicate with your teammate! Make sure to help each other out when needed- for example by sending unit support or by putting pressure on your partner's aggressor. Try to make long or short term plans for how to advance your positions. LABS: The point system is designed to be relevant from the start while it being possible to catch up to a team scoring many points early by reducing their lab count to below 6 or so. Early on, income, unit presence and map control is most important but as the game progresses you should value controlling the labs higher. Your team could win despite being significantly behind in imcome and unit value if you have a decent number of points and capture several unguarded labs quickly. STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES: Each team has COs and starting positions with certain advantages and disadvantages. Some teams have easier access to com towers while others have more airports or airports in more forward locations. And so on. Try to devise a strategy which mitigates your team's shortcomings. Also be aware of how well you are doing in different metrics. For example- if you have a relatively secure position and lots of cities, but few labs or points, and not yet a strong army- maybe your best bet is to delay the game and prevent the point leader from scoring a winning amount of points until your team can levarage your long term advantage and take over the map. GAME THEORY: Explicit diplomacy is not allowed, but this doesn't make the multi-party aspect of the game less important. Try to assess which players are the biggest immediate threats to you and which teams look most likely to win. In many cases it is advantageous to forego a free hit on an enemy if someone else gets to reap the rewards- Such as attacking a weak player, only your main opponent to capture their cities and labs and ultimately put you in a weaker spot. MAXIMISATION OF EXPECTED UTILITY: This section is more abstract and can be ignored if it seems overly confusing or convulated. But this is the theoretical breakdown of exactly how to value various goals and sub-goals for your team. The rationale behind this is to lessen the prevalence of kingmaker situations, scenarios where player agency stops mattering when nearing a conclusion, and arbitrary/subjective strategic incentives. Winning is the priority and scoring as many points as possible and placing higher amongst the teams is second priority. This can be formalised and broken down into a single value dimension measured in utility points (UP). The team should only maximise the expected UP for their team by the end of the game and (in theory) remain completely agnostic and indifferent as to how many utility points other teams get for themselves. This admittedly somewhat goes against the normally competitive player psychology, but if this is taken seriously it would make a lot of frustrating situations more enjoyable, as there is always a meaningful puzzle of how to score as many UP as possible. *The UP are recieved accordingly by each team at the end of the game: Score: +[your team's total score at end of game, capped at 30] UP First place: +(100-[day number when game ends]) UP Second place: +10 UP Third place: +5 UP Elimination does not affect UP directly This also incentivises the team in the most favourable position to close out the game quickly, even at the cost of slightly reducing predicted chance of winning. Winning the game scores vastly more points than any other position but the relative differences should inform you of how badly things need to be going before you pivot away from a win for yourselves- and switch to a different strategy. If so, this shift should happen gradually when the win equity drops as other teams get much closer to the victory condition. The relative score differences between second & third, and third & fourth places are only 5 points each. This means that a team could possibly score more points by delaying an opponent from winning for 5 or 10 turns rather than getting ahead of another losing opponent slightly ahead of you. It doesn't matter if you score the least UP in the end, you only care about your expected total- and your team's placement is only a means (but not the only means) to that end. To elaborate on this a bit further: this way of thinking is applicable to multi-party conflict games such as this. The reason it is not needed for 1v1 games is that the actual utility values attainable are binary and the value function of different actions can be accounted for with the perceived win equity alone. If it reaches 0 you simply resign and the game is over. But as previously explained, this messes up the game for all the remaining players, so a more complex value function is needed. |
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Chociloni (02/20/2024 03:16pm | Edited: 02/20/2024 06:34pm):
-MAP- WEYARD: This map is based on the world map from the second Golden Sun game with some settlements from Dark Dawn in their presumed original location. A bunch of extra settlements and islands are added where they make sense. TERRAIN: The topography has been altered in places to enable more dynamic gameplay by removing mountains, adding shoals and drawing different rivers. -Teleport tiles: The void beyond the edge of the world. With the power of alchemy restored- adepts can traverse the void to take shortcuts or find parts of Weyard that have fallen off Gaia falls since the lost age of alchemy. -Missile platforms: Glaciers and snowy fields. -Pipe seams: Natural or artificial barriers such as rock slides or barricades. -Broken pipes: Horizontal represent deserts and vertical represent elevated terrain or mountain passes. -Shoals: Are used to represent a wide variety of terrain types, such as shallow seas, coastlines, rivers, lakes. The ease of traversing these areas are for gameplay reasons as rivers and sea tiles make the map much more chokey. -Cities, ports and airports: Various towns and villages. Several in proximity represent larger cities, such as Kalay, Tolbi or Alhafra. -HQs: Elemental lighthouses and rocks. *** -Listed in order, from top to bottom, left to right *** Mars Lighthouse (Red Fire) Mercury Lighthouse (Cobalt Ice) Gaia Rock (Amber Blaze) Venus Lighthouse (Jade Sun) Jupiter Lighthouse (Purple Lightning) Magma Rock (Orange Star) Aqua Rock (Teal Galaxy) Air's Rock (White Nova) -Bases: Settlements with a significant adept population. Usually the core location of a regional power. *** Anemos (Purple Lightning) Ankhol (Amber Blaze) Prox (Red Fire) Imil (Cobalt Ice) Vault (White Nova) Izumo (Amber Blaze) Champa (Orange Star) Lalivero (Jade Sun) Lemuria (Teal Galaxy) Contigo (Purple Lightning) Kibombo (Orange star) Daila (Teal Galaxy) Yallam (Red Fire) Garoh (White Nova) Ancient Tundaria (Cobalt Ice) Gaia Valley (Jade Sun) -Com towers: Towers and significant mountains. *** Mount Aleph (Orange Star) Ankhol Ruins (Amber Blaze) Babi Lighthouse Kibombo Mountains Shrine of the Sea God Tundaria Tower -Labs: Locations which summon powerful djinni. Temples, caves etc. Mostly canon dungeons with some "shrine" locations added where more labs are needed. Each player starts with a unit shielded pre-owned lab. *** Void Shrine Treasure Isle (Cobolt Ice) Sol Sanctum (Amber Blaze) Tret Trial Road Lama Temple (White Nova) Fuchin Temple Altmiller Cave (Teal Galaxy) Izumo Ruins Gaia Falls Shrine Colosseum (Orange Star) Crossbone Isle Desert Shrine Tunnel Ruins Ancient Lemuria Islet Cave (Purple Lightning) Anemos Inner Sanctum (Jade Sun) Gabomba Catacombs Island Shrine Kandorean Temple Madra Catacombs Yampi Desert Cave (Red Fire) Ocean Shrine Forest Shrine Taopo Swamp |
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Raedel (02/20/2024 09:46pm):
For those who want another TL;DR, - control labs for points, longer you're in control the better - no dipmacy or trying to be a gentlemen/backstabbing rogue. - be sure to pick Amber/Jade to win since Venus has the best lighthouse theme. |
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Meta Rexy (02/21/2024 12:40pm | Edited: 02/21/2024 01:04pm):
Interesting. A geographical map with a twist on the usual victory conditions. Great effort. I'll add this to my favourites list :) Let's hope nobody drops out... Why is purple's HQ airport so easily carrier locked by Orange or Cobalt? I also think Jade has a rough start, being the only country with both corner ports being shoal locked. Amber should have a piperunner on his HQ in addition to the missile, just like Teal. He's at risk of being double teamed by Cobalt and Teal, and that's without considering Purple's inevitable breaking of the pipe seam to fight with ground units. |
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Chociloni (02/21/2024 02:09pm | Edited: 02/22/2024 04:59am):
Thanks for the feedback :) I'm sure there are several things that need tweaking and rebalancing. Some are hard to tell until playing a few times. The PL HQ airport has at least two turns to build bombers and other countermessures vs Cobalt when a carrier is built. And OS cannot airport lock without getting into potential rocket range. Building a carrier from the shoal locked port locks immediately, but will also be very vulnerable so that 30000 investemnt would usually not be the best option i think. Purple stills has double bases to counter with land units after all. And probably surrounded by fewer other enemies than orange is. So i hope there is enough counterplay. Jade starts a bit weaker but is also the only one with 4 bases. The bottom corner cannot be targeted by battleships and there are plenty of different land routes from the teleport tiles to attack four different players with land units. And with two bases i think the lack of naval and air support is manageable. TG has a piperunner since the HQ island lacks a base and is arguably the most vulnerable hq of all. AB has all 3 production types at the HQ so capturing it should at least be very costly for TG and CI. Though CI is much further from AB than in a previous version of the map so if AB has a hard time it would likely be because of PL complicating things. Anyway, this is part of the reason for AB having one of the strongest COs as well. On the other hand, a piperunner can't hurt much either so i will consider adding it. The PL position in the top right is one of the things I'm less sure of rn. Perhaps it would be good to shift things around so they become more of a threat to Cobalt and less so to Amber. It could also be that those purple properties aren't very useful since the land routes are so narrow and onl air without land/naval is easily countered. Also few neutral properties to fight over. I will keep an eye on those potential issues though. Some might be more prevalent than I anticipated. |
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D.M.A. (02/22/2024 11:52am):
It is nice that some try and create game modes, with different rules and winning conditions than your everyday awbw game. I guess the main problem is people can't read. The map maker just created 8 games... in only 2 of them did players take the correct COs. (I prefer to believe it is an inability yo read rather than a wish to purposefully ignore the rules.) |
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Meta Rexy (02/22/2024 12:11pm):
Part of the problem with Purple's position is that the terrain doesn't allow a good fight with Cobalt. The pipe seam cannot be defended because it's separated by the teleport tiles, and any air units can be easily deterred by AA. However, purple can also block every tile accessible by the teleport tiles to create an impossible stalemate, although this would just encourage Cobalt to use carriers to lock down the airports... At least against Amber, a rocket can break the seam and defend the choked bridge, in addition to being able to overwhelm Amber's island with a fleet of bombers and fighters (especially when Eagle can threaten a lightning strike). I definitely think purple needs more land to fight over, and if Amber is too exposed even with a piperunner, you can use pipes to limit his exposure to air units. |
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Meta Rexy (02/22/2024 12:19pm | Edited: 02/23/2024 12:07am):
Btw, there's also FTA with Jade's boats starting a stone's throw away from Teal's neutral port. Move Teal's starting infantry to prevent any port blocking on day 1. Edit: Orange can also block Jade's port on day 1. This can be prevented by moving Orange's black boat out of range, or by starting Jade's APC on the port (though this will affect Lash's capture phase) |
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Chociloni (02/22/2024 12:49pm):
@D.M.A I like trying new ideas and also enjoy when other people have made games with special rules. If it seems promising i might expand upon the idea in other maps as well. The problem is indeed that people don't seem to expect there being a bunch of rules to read. But i think it has more to do with joining games too quickly than an unwillingness to try. I think this probably works better when inviting people who are already familiar with the concept than when opening a public game (which most have been so far). |
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Chociloni (02/22/2024 12:59pm | Edited: 02/24/2024 11:13am):
@Meta Rexy All good points. I will redesign the layout to mitigate those problems. A stalemate possibility isn't too bad when isolated to a corner of the map, but since it is eagle specifically you're right that it could become very tricky for amber to prepare for the SCOP. And purple is (likely) not pressured too hard on their other fron early on either- making that more possible. Moving the teleport border further up, adding more defensive options for amber and adding more land up north for cobolt and purple to fight over + making them more threatening to each other in general seems like the way to go. Edit: I think a good option is giving the closest continental port pre-owned to jade (would likely go to amber otherwise). Makes cooperation more possible for team venus and then there are two economies nearby able to repel amber HQ invaders, even if one of them is restricted to naval. Good call with the jade boat too. Will fix when updating. Also need to remove the option for the red piperunner to immediately seige cobalt's bases. Completely missed that possibility when adding that pipe seam (which isn't necessary anyway). |
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SIMΩMEGA (04/12/2024 06:59pm):
I havent read everything, but looking at the current games, id encourage you to balance, or, at worst in the worset case scenario, to re-balance the game but with proper Team Orderings to address FTA, such as the classic ABCDDCBA for 8P4T games. |
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Chociloni (04/16/2024 03:35pm):
@SIMΩMEGA The is so asymmetric that FTA has relatively little importance. That's just one of many uneven factors that aim to balance each other out. (In fact i think the current team strengths are roughly in reverse turn order, for various reasons). I think it makes more sense that the teams have their turns consistent throughout the game, with teammates going after one another. Also, this setup is very similar to a 4p ffa game if each player controlled one of the teams. |
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quacktagon (05/04/2024 10:44am):
Your map is interesting with its special rules and ideas. But after playing on it, I found it's not my favorite. The mountains make it hard to move units, and I don't like the black tiles much. Still, it's fun to play on sometimes! |
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