Starting Neutrals: Issues.

by **unriggable** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 3:50 pm

Some hate it. Others love it. I loved BfA before the neutral-getter-ridder-ofer, now its just another circular map. So what do you think: do you think neutrals should be spread far and wide in maps, or should they only need to exist to balance out the number of territories?

by **Wisse** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 3:54 pm

no, i don't want them, i don't like 2 player games because of the neutrals

by **Coleman** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:10 pm

Depends on how they are used.

Starting neutral is an easy solution to stopping players from starting with a territory that could be game changing on the first turn. Having them all over just to stop players from starting with continents (aka old Battle for Australia) is probably not the best route.

The conquest idea a few maps are employing (which from this point on I'm willing to just say is a collective foundry idea since we can't prove who thought it first) has an unknown future.

I have two concerns with conquest gameplay.
1) You could make a severe imbalance on accident: Examples would be 1 start point has an 80% chance of winning if all players are competent or 1 start point has a 10% or less chance of winning.
2) You run the risk of making things too symmetrical. Symmetry has been proven to create bad gameplay... Or if not bad, at least very unpopular gameplay.

Regardless, I can't put myself in a place where I can say neutral armies are all bad or all good.

by **cairnswk** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 4:52 pm

Coleman wrote:Depends on how they are used.

Having them all over just to stop players from starting with continents (aka old Battle for Australia) is probably not the best route.

I agree on how they are are used.
However in old BfA, they were there spread across the middle of the map to separate north (ie Japan) from the south (Allies) to SOME extent, and also many of those terts that were deployed as neutral were actual countries who were in that position when the north attacked.

I changed this due to a call from the players, but also to determine if there would be any improvement in the popularity of that map if it were made to be standard play strategy. I may yet change it back to deploy some neutrals, however, i think that it will not be the initial 18 that were deployed. I'm thinking more like 9.

There are also calls for the planes in PH to be made neutral, however i think this defeats the historical purpose of the map, and would be something i wouldn't consider.

I can see there are occasions where deploying neutrals would be beneficial, and i have some plans to this extent for another new map i am working on, however, i cannot say that deploying neutrals on maps from my experience has been a good idea thus far.

It's a shame that the vote above doesn't give an option for 'in other circumstances they could be useful."

by **gimil** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 5:57 pm

Im going to vote yes on this one, but only for the conquers mode that a number of foundry regulers including myself, are tackling. This however wont be needed if lack was to introduce an XML feature that would allow palyers to start with a paticular territory/s (at least in feudal)

by **oaktown** on Mon Oct 08, 2007 6:16 pm

it depends entirely on how they are used. I would argue that they were overused in Bat4Aus, as I played long games on that map in which many territories were never taken; if that's going to be the case, you may as well remove the territory entirely. Still, I recognize and applaud the effort and the thought that must have gone into the decisions to introduce, and ultimately pull the neutrals.

On the Berlin map that I'm working on I have three neutral starts, and the neutral start option allowed me to allot bonuses in a way that would have made games on traditional maps unbalanced. Likewise, the neutral starts could be used in more creative ways as mapmakers get to better know that and the other XML additions.

The more XML options we have, the greater variety we'll ultimately have in our gameplay.