Moth's Arcade Fantasy 2
Creator: Saltpeter || First Published: 11/13/2007 || Players: 4 || Size: 40x40
Categories: None
Rating: 3.50 in 2 ratings
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Comments:
Saltpeter (11/13/2007 04:43pm | Edited: 11/13/2007 04:57pm):
A new and improved version of my first map. It's not as chokey as the first, but it's still tight,
and that's how I want it. There are three distinct paths, the fast route along the edge, the
middle route which goes horizontally from the airport, and the scenic route which goes
vertically from the airport. The scenic route for each player renders the greatest rewards,
the fast route offers a quick path to an enemy, and the middle route offers a place to cut the
enemy off from the scenic route. The breakable pipes can serve as chokepoints, but they
can also be broken rendering the area less effective as a chokepoint.

I wanted to have the center as a singular focus for the goodies, so that they'd be harder to
keep, but decided to put the goodies on the north and south edges. May make things more
interesting anyway, as capturing all the goodies on one side does not necessarily give one
an advantage over all.
BadFurDay (11/13/2007 06:23pm | Edited: 11/13/2007 06:23pm):
"it's still tight, and that's how I want it" - Okay, I read that the perverted way.

Anyway, this is better than your first map already. Though, for my tastes, it's damn
waaaaay to huge. I don't see anyone coping with the lag a map this size will eventually
cause and sticking to it a good hundred turns until it ends.
Plus, there are just way too many silos. A few silos is often a bad thing, but that many
silos is a horrible thing.
The FTA counter is quite excessive by the way, it gives BM, YC, and GE quite an advantage
this way.

This would deserve a very low rating as is, but at least you're showing some will to get
better, which is a good thing. So I won't rate it and let others judge :)
Saltpeter (11/13/2007 06:58pm):
I didn't exactly expect to get worse, you know. >_>

I imagine that, since BM, goes after one player, YC goes after two players and GE goes
after three, they should have successively greater FTA counters. Maybe it was a bit much,
but given how big the map is, and that each player starts with four bases, I don't think it is.

As for the size, I couldn't have the map I wanted to make if it was much smaller than that.
You saw how my first map turned out. The games would definitely be long, but since
players can have 10 days to take a turn, it shouldn't matter. No one's real lives are being held
up for the game.

Silos don't do that much damage, and they're one-shot. I designed the map with fog of war in
mind. For example, the pipe sections nearest of the HQs are lined with trees on the HQ end,
and roads on the opposite end. This makes for a very strong defense possibility. I figure the
best thing to use the silos on are pipe sections.

Now that I think about it, nine per is too much. I'll reduce that to four per. Enough to
completely obliterate up to one silo target area's worth of pipe sections.
funwes (11/13/2007 07:21pm):
"Enough to
completely obliterate up to one silo target area's worth of pipe sections."

You DO know silos don't do damage to pipeseams, right? Well, they don't. :) But like
BadFurDay said, it's an improvement.
Saltpeter (11/13/2007 07:47pm):
...Well, it's silly that they can be targetted by them, then. >_> In any case, I WANT players to
have silos firmy at their disposal, so for now I'm keeping it at four per.
Alathon (11/13/2007 08:53pm):
4 silos that have to last the entire game. I don't think that that is unbalanced at all. I'd
probubly just blow them all on the first 5 turns.
Tyrael (11/13/2007 08:59pm):
Definately better, but also way too big now, lol. Aren't we a picky lot? ;)
For FTA counter: BM gets a mech, GE gets artillery, YC gets mech + artillery. But I don't
think FTA matters much on this map, what with all the bigness and all.
Saltpeter (11/13/2007 10:25pm):
Alathon has the right idea. =D

And yes, I am picky. This, like all other sets of tools, is an art canvas. WHen I set out to make
something, it must comform to all the guidelines by which I define it. I wanted a map with
several sections blocked off by of pipes, I wanted there to be paths which either lead to
faster confrontation or greater treasure, I wanted something that would make for a mean fog
of war match. At best, I could've shaved off one or two rows and colums each. That would
reduce the map by up to 156 tiles, less than 10% of the map. Not a significant difference.

I understand that invariably long games are often considered a bad thing for a map to have,
but I sorta designed this with lengthy games in mind. I like long games sometimes, and if I
wanted to play a long game, I'd need a map that would enable long games without requiring I
compromise my strategy to intentionally prolong the action. Not all of my maps will be like this,
I promise.

Anyway, thanks for the FTA tips. Updating now. I'm going to double those numbers, and give
OS an infantry, though, to reflect the size of the map.
Tyrael (11/13/2007 11:19pm):
I secretly like big maps too, but people ALWAYS drop and ruin it
Saltpeter (11/13/2007 11:51pm):
When you can set the boot rate to several days and then some, why drop? =(

Say, if I turned some of those neutral properties to owned properties, would it make the map
more palatable to the masses? I think I might do that. It would even allow wars to go on
without the HQs exposing themselves directly.



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