Freeport
Creator: MajorGamer136 || First Published: 01/07/2014 || Players: 4 || Size: 35x25
Categories: None
Rating: 0 in 0 ratings
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Comments:
MajorGamer136 (01/07/2014 07:19pm | Edited: 01/07/2014 07:20pm):
If playing a team game, I recommend top v. bottom.
As usual; please give me some feedback and how I could improve the map.
Xmo5 (01/08/2014 10:12am):
I would make the main fronts on the two edges a bit wider. A 1 space wide front it going
to have major stalemate since each player will just camp indirects on both sides. Neither
will really be able to advance without saving up heavy air/naval forces first and at that
point the land battle won't be significant anymore.

Also, as far as the center goes, I would move the two bases by the lab further apart-
bases should be at least 1 tank/AA move and/or 1 recon move away from each other. Having
that many silos are also dangerous and will give a huge advantage to whoever gets them
first, especially with the chokepoint issue I mentioned earlier. Typically I try to limit
silos to 1 per player and, while you can make them out of the way, I would avoid the
situation where 1 player/team can access more than their share. (ie I wouldn't make them
centrally located or contested)

Just some constructive criticism. Hope its helpful! (This is the kind of stuff I was
hoping people would tell me when I first started making maps instead of just "wow this is
bad")
the-deadly-shadow (01/08/2014 12:54pm):
If you intend to play this game top vs. bottom,
There is an FTA on each side, you hope that because it is a team game it will be fair, both
teams having one FTA-player. But I don't think that this is nice because, RF will have an FTA,
but TG will be pretty disapointed that this FTA is not to any use to him and has he has a
disadvantge to GS. This gives an unfair battle on both sides.

Something else is that the players have to send the predeployed infantery to the neutrall
bases on the sides. The one who wins the battle on the side will have 3 bases and a
comtower. This player will outnumber the player with only a single base. This battle is easily
determined by the battle for the bases on the sides. I don't really like that.

And something else : ban Sturm, If you choose Sturm in a FTA position then Sturm can
capture the base on the side before the enemy can even reach his base. This will enable
Sturm to use his infantery to prevent the enemy from getting his base (if you play without
fog, with fog sturm can easily get the comtower(also a good advantage)).
MajorGamer136 (01/08/2014 04:05pm):
Map updated. I removed some silos and the pre-deployed units. The center factories have been moved farther apart. The side front are now three wide.
I assume players know what COs to ban.
Thanks for your input but I have no idea on how to counter FTA.

Xmo5 (01/09/2014 11:17am):
Well you've come to the right place! For all your FTA countering needs, visit the "All
Your FTA Countering Needs Shoppe (TM)"

It seems like you have a pretty good grasp of the concept of FTA from what I can tell, but
I'll give a little detail just in case. The idea, on a simple OSvBM map, is to make it so
both OS and BM have a "half-turn" advantage and a "half turn" disadvantage. With two bases
and low starting funds, this means 1 BM base gets an infantry. Then they'll be ahead with
that infantry, but behind on their other base. (For more, see:
http://awbw.amarriner.com/prevmaps.php?maps_id=62840)

The problem is, that approach is highly dependent on there being an even number of bases
so you can do the half ahead/half behind thing. Typically, you also want multiple fronts
(each base or set of bases would feed a different front) but you can get around that
sometimes depending on how strict you want to be. As you can see here, each player has 1
main front and 1 starting base making it pretty difficult to balance FTA cleanly. I would
suggest either adding a second base to each player and giving PC and TG an infantry OR
leaving bases as-is but giving PC and TG a pre-owned city within 1 infantry move of their
respective enemy's starting base. Of course, I would add a neutral city in the same place
by their own starting bases for symmetry. I never really liked the city approach myself,
but its used commonly in the event of an odd number of starting bases. See, for example,
this (league-approved) map: http://awbw.amarriner.com/prevmaps.php?maps_id=57364

In general, I highly recommend and encourage countering FTA by design. By that I mean
intentionally designing a map from the start so that the FTA counter always comes out
simple and clean, like the basic infantry counter. I know that restricts you a lot, but
you can still make great maps. When trying this approach I recommend: an even number of
bases, an even number of (important) fronts, low starting funds, reasonable distance
between players, no other predeployed units, and little to no use of properties that are
exactly equidistant from both players. This makes life so much easier and if you have
anything to fix it will usually work out a lot more conveniently. Just a thought for
future maps. Sorry for the long comment!!




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