Conquer Club

Robert The Red wrote:Archer A11 seems to be of little use

FAIL

P.S. Don't ask me why, I wont tell, I can sometimes demonstrate on the battlefield

JustCallMeStupid wrote:

DoomYoshi wrote:Ah yes, the great "territories that don't matter" debate.

Ya and one of them is a repeat off mine too lol. ITs fine if there are territories that dont matter, it seems silly to have village V10 at all, but ur right, it is a pretty irrelevant issue.

I have analyzed each of the castles and came to the conclusion that castles HA and HJ and HB have a large disadvantage because T1 can basically kill all surrounding points except an archer making it impossible for those castles to get back into the game after being bombarded. Every other castle has a knight or generic territory that can be taken to get them back into the game. I think it be a benefit to the game if T1 location was swapped with N35. Additionally, T1 being the strongest Trebuch it happens to be located near a port, (which I have seen used every game the ports), which means it has the easiest access from a team rushing the ports. (Castle HE is in a similar situation as above mentioned but T4 isn't quite as strong as T1 and I cant figure out an easy fix for that one that doesnt effect balance disproportionately)

I think this change would balance out the castles more. I really like how they are not identical in any manner but I think it is unfair that 3 castles can be completely nuked by the Trebuch leaving only an archer to survive while every other castle has at least a knight or blank territory that cannot be bombarded by a single Trebuch.

but that's just it, i think your request is irrelevant.

differences in castles make this a great map as you learn different strategies to deal with them. it is not one strategy fits all. Age Of Realms 2 anyone ?

however V10 adds nothing to the map as it is not accessable by its closest castle & not linked by road if you take the very long way round

greenoaks wrote:but that's just it, i think your request is irrelevant.

differences in castles make this a great map as you learn different strategies to deal with them. it is not one strategy fits all. Age Of Realms 2 anyone ?

however V10 adds nothing to the map as it is not accessable by its closest castle & not linked by road if you take the very long way round

Your evidence of "differences in castles.... it is not one strategy fits all." does not (at all) argue with the point I am making (In fact evidence shows it narrows the strategy down to a focus on HA first strategy, so thanks for making my point greenoaks if u want more variety). Every castle aside from castle HA has 1 territory that is either completely safe from bombarding or at least two Trebs would be needed to put the player into only a noble. HA is severely at a disadvantage and therefor there is no strategy the person on HA can take except to hope that no one takes T1 and bombards him to smithereens. As alternative to switching the location of T1 with the neutral above it the catapult and knight on HA could be switched so that HA would still have their knight after a full bombarding and could crawl back into the game like every other castle can. This would make it in a slightly comparable position as HC.

Additionally, one can argue 'each castle/realm is different like HF has no knights....' Again, my point is HA is THE ONLY CASTLE that can be completely bombarded out of the game with no comeback from a single Trebuch, where every other castle has some kind of territory they can call safe from one solo trebuch bombarding. I think Fixing this makes the map a better map overall, but specifically for the, currently, very unlucky person to get HA.

Im certain the map maker can give some reasonable feedback as to why 1 location should be severely worse off than every other or he will make a change to slightly balance this out yet still 'keep differences in the castles varied enough' for a great game. Currently any skilled player knows you go for castle HA first in a team game because of the above aforementioned evidence.

JustCallMeStupid wrote:Additionally, one can argue 'each castle/realm is different like HF has no knights....' Again, my point is HA is THE ONLY CASTLE that can be completely bombarded out of the game with no comeback from a single Trebuch, where every other castle has some kind of territory they can call safe from one solo trebuch bombarding. I think Fixing this makes the map a better map overall, but specifically for the, currently, very unlucky person to get HA.

Hi!! and sorry guys. I've been having some terrible last few weeks at work, with a lot of stuff to do (which surely reflected on my recent HEAVY point loss and my somewhat absence from forum debates)

anyway JCMS, I see what you mean. Though HA has 2 safe spots from T1 (HA1 and HA2) they just have bombard feature, so no coming back from there. Must say that this is a problem that has never been raised nor I, from all the games I made, felt uncomfortable with.

If this proves to be such a great issue, I'm ready to swap H1 Archer for H3 Knight (though I was completely ready to quench this map already). H1 will lose access to 2 archers, on the other hand the knight will reach V01, which will surely compensate

Ya look into it Kaban, cause so far in one map I have used T1 to my teams advantage by stacking HB going straight for T1 and complletely destroying all of HA's areas since the poor guy never even took his catapult, I figured out the strategy so in this game Game 11907597 when my castle HJ got bombarded later in the game when they took the Trebuchet 1 via the port. Being my first time on the map I realized being narrowed down to an archer sucks so I went around each castle figuring out where the safe spots were from Trebs. It wont be a problem for the less competitive play but in any clan competitions all the other clans will soon realize the weakness of castle HA and also that T1 is the strongest Trebuch in the map and T4 is probably the second strongest Trebuchet based on the damage opportunity they have. As someone else said, I like the variety, but HA needs a little bit of love. Its actually better if u switch them because losing access to A01 archer makes the castle a tiny bit safer from an archer invade not that Ive ever seen one yet, the only downside of the switch is the access to the K Knight which is further away via knight to knight travel.

Also, I find it hard to figure out which castle goes to which noble by looking at the pictures alone. Im not sure if in small lettering you can put the castle name right below each noble and extend the 'key' a little larger to make room for this. The only way I figure out which castle to take to eliminate their noble is using BOB. I come into this problem after the castle has been taken by someone else or bombarded. The game I am in where I am having this trouble is Game 11964765 where people have taken other peoples castles and it is getting confusing for when I am at a computer w/o BOB.

Im just trying to get every castle to have an option for a safety spot to get back into the game if hit by Treb, no one has to take these spots but at least they would be there and they wouldn't be a -2 either.

Suggestions I think would help improve balance and not significantly give any location an advantage:
HA: Switch knight with archer
HE5: Add road to here (its a safe spot from T3) (alternatively switch HE archer w HE5 and add road even safer spot if someone were to want to have one)
Label the Nobles so easy to associate with castle. Maybe this could be done like NJ for Noble Jaroman.
N06: add road
change the -2 non road to a -1 (this is just a preference, Im not really sure how often this really comes into play (this is probably least important change Id suggest)
N83: should there have been a knight here instead of a neutral spot? (would this add to the map, take away, or do basically nothing? I kind of think it would make it better, maybe someone would go for V10)


I really enjoy the map. Me and my buddies have been testing out a lot of team games on it and it is well designed through and through. I hope you dont see any of this as me saying ur map sucks cause it doesnt, its an awesome map and thanks for making it.

JustCallMeStupid wrote:Suggestions I think would help improve balance and not significantly give any location an advantage:
HA: Switch knight with archer
Will do
HE5: Add road to here (its a safe spot from T3) (alternatively switch HE archer w HE5 and add road even safer spot if someone were to want to have one)
I'd prefer not to. For conceptual reasons, mainly... It would be a road leading to nowhere and remember that you can always take that spot just don't leave troops on it
Label the Nobles so easy to associate with castle. Maybe this could be done like NJ for Noble Jaroman.
If you look at it there are letters inside those noble's circles (HA,HB....) not perceptible though... I'll see what I can do about it. In the meanwhile you can always have this mental scheme: HA is the first Castle/Noble and it goes clockwise so HC = 3rd noble spot
N06: add road
Please please please no that would be insane work at this stage. I would have to reaname all N hexes on map and all R hexes as well. That would be a major XML change and a lot of work on the graphics part as well.
change the -2 non road to a -1 (this is just a preference, Im not really sure how often this really comes into play (this is probably least important change Id suggest)
I'd rather keep the -2. This works great on trench warfare
N83: should there have been a knight here instead of a neutral spot? (would this add to the map, take away, or do basically nothing? I kind of think it would make it better, maybe someone would go for V10)
That would give some advantage to HG over HF and again..... a lot of stuff to change....

JustCallMeStupid wrote:I really enjoy the map. Me and my buddies have been testing out a lot of team games on it and it is well designed through and through. I hope you dont see any of this as me saying ur map sucks cause it doesnt, its an awesome map and thanks for making it.

Thanks a lot!! It was made out of love

N101 is showing in a FoW game when T4 is taken but it is not displaying in the drop down as an attack/bombard option

Cool. I know it is a lot of work to make changes, hence Im just sending suggestions and you can decide what is realistic or not. I didnt think about how much map modification it is to change a neutral to a road. I still think that a knight at N83 would give the map more variety. HF has a pretty strong Archer area and it would also improve HF too as the archer can be used to protect the surrounding areas while HF moves in for the hypothetical knight. Also archer A10 would not be effected as knights cant assault archers on hills.

Im in a game right now where I am at castle HF and traveling down to HG is a real bear with all the territories I have to travel through since HF is designed around a strong archer strategy, I think it would benefit both castles almost evenly, slightly in favor of HG maybe. And you are right the letters are on the nobles but really hard to see, I never noticed it haha. If you can darken it cool, if not the clockwise thing helps if no BOB is available.

Keep it on the back burner as an idea.
K-Knight on N83
A12: make this archer on a hill (still trying to wrap my mind around this, and only a decent idea if N83 became a Knight, allowing this archer to bomb the knight, otherwise its fine)

EDIT: Why is HB knight the only knight in game that starts as a 4?

JustCallMeStupid wrote:EDIT: Why is HB knight the only knight in game that starts as a 4?

That's an error, will be promptly corrected on the next update

Hi
Still playing this map alot and really enjoying it. but now finding it is much better as a team game. In the standard game the fighting tends to rotate in a clockwise or an anti clockwise way if you are lucky, if you are unlucky you may have both neighbours attacking you. but what i think may open the game up more would be to encourage attacking across the lake. at the moment the ports seem to be a very defensive role and not usually used to attack until later in the game and usually a neighbour. if ports conected with an opposing port across the lake, gained a significant bonus i think it would encourage people to take them earlier and provoke attacks with others, rather than just fighting your imediate neighbours.
Robert The Red

Robert The Red wrote:Hi
Still playing this map alot and really enjoying it. but now finding it is much better as a team game. In the standard game the fighting tends to rotate in a clockwise or an anti clockwise way if you are lucky, if you are unlucky you may have both neighbours attacking you. but what i think may open the game up more would be to encourage attacking across the lake. at the moment the ports seem to be a very defensive role and not usually used to attack until later in the game and usually a neighbour. if ports conected with an opposing port across the lake, gained a significant bonus i think it would encourage people to take them earlier and provoke attacks with others, rather than just fighting your imediate neighbours.
Robert The Red

In my team games I have seen more fighting against neighbors as you suggest, but changing the ports in any way will not likely encourage attacks on opposite ends of the map. The reality is that the Trebuchets, knights and archers all give you incentive to secure close borders first before traveling across map. Also, taking ur own port gives ur opponents information as to where you are (I play mostly fog on this map) which opens you up to potential counter attacks. Im not sure it be that easy to modify bonus structure and add a key for it and I dont think it will vary the more common strategies of taking Councillors and attacking neighbors adjacent to your castle.

EDIT: Hey Keban, '?' on the HH castle Why is HH6 a 3 starting and HH5 a 4 I would think they would be reversed because of Treb counter attacking, no need to change it just a thought. However, what about on HG6 since that is one of the only Catapults that can be attacked by a Trebuchet should it be a 3 to make it easier for HG to take it and get it stacking up so it is defended?

EDIT2: If someone owns no castle and 2 counselors, I assume it is a +5 per counselor = to a +10 in my example? I hope its not just a flat +5.

EDIT3: To comment below, I think the island is silly and should be just connected to land so that Castle HB has a cathedral access but I think it is mostly for aesthetics. I was thinking about HA, another potential solution is to add a neutral territory behind the Knight and just label it N00 or make it a road call it R00. The reason i like a road idea better is at 3 unit deploy if u deploy somewhere to take back ur spot u just have to go balls out cause ull lose any left overs.

is there any reason to have a blank hex at n40 on the island as no body will ever take it unless they are stupid.

Best starting locations from best to last.
1. HI HH
3. HD
4. HF
5. HE *
6. HC
7. HG
8. HB
You prob dont want the last two spots although, HJ is workable.
9. HJ
10. HA

*this location could potentially also be one of the worst locations, need to hear other opinions though, because my experiences have all shown this location to hold pretty strong.

Advantages over other locations:
HI: Great access to double knights, very safe from double treb bombards. Port access from distance, aka knight.
HH: Treb cannot reach knight. Knight has easy access to all bonuses. 3 turn access to K08 knight. Port access from distance, aka knight.
HD: Double knights close. Very isolated. No archer bombardments is probably this castles greatest strength and can arguably be ranked as #1 due to this factor alone.
HF: Somewhat isolated. One of the highest manual deploy and auto deploy locations.
HE: Knight has good ranged access. From K06 one can attack either near ports. Because surrounding areas are generally stronger as well, for some reason be trebbed early is less likely then it is at HA.
HC: Knight cant be Trebbed.
HG: Knight cant be Trebbed.
HB: Easy access to 2 villages and knight all from castle.
HJ: Not much, maybe some decent access to a lot of archers via the knight as well as other decent bonus access.
HA: It is next to HJ, one of the weakest spots.

Disadvantages compared to other location:
HI: HH nearby is a strong location.
HH: HI nearby is strong location. 2nd knight take 3 attacks to access.
HD: First and 2nd turn bonuses are harder, knights have 3, mines are 3 and 4 attacks away, but can be accessed via knights. Going to K05 exposes oneself, HE is strong and nearby location.
HF: Slow to get out into battles. No knights anywhere nearby. Only path to unexposed at port involves a -2 neutral in trench mode. Can be hammered by field marshall access to archers.
HE: No protection from being trebbed, ur most likely stuck w an archer and catapult or worse just an archer. Axx archer is close
HC: Bad movement access to early bonuses and a second knight. Knight horribly positioned for gaining any bonuses. Bonuses in general for the location are below average.
HG: Easily attacked by HH
HB: Easy access to 2 villages and knight all from castle. A13 blocks easy access to 2nd knight as well as any kind of surprise access to port unless one wants to go around A13 to get to the knight.
HJ: Easily bombarded, very accessible from field marshall, no surprise attacks on nearest ports. Near HI one of the strongest spots.
HA: Can be annihilated by Treb alone leaving it with only archer and catapult. Access to bonuses are weak. Access to 2nd knight involves neutral attack if going quickest rout and involves exposal to Port if one takes roads. can easily be crushed by Axx archers more than anywhere. Treb that can bombard 99% of HA areas is located directly next to a port.

Like to hear some other opinions on this, maybe Im mistaken on a few of the locations, and in reality the best 6 castles are all fairly equal and dont effect game outcome too much (aside from HD not being accessible from archers like the 9 others), but I have always noticed that most games I tend to see the best strategy focused around killing the bottom 4 ranked castles. Most my game experience is 4v4 3v3 and 2v2v2v2 games. I dont play 1v1 games and would prefer feedback from all games other than 1v1 opinions.

I wrote this to help encourage more solid feedback b4 map is squelched potentially allowing for improvements. I really enjoy this map and appreciate the hard work of Keban creating it. I prob dont appreciate Keban's hard work enough because I have no idea how much time such a large complicated map takes to design.

In my view HB is one of the weaker positions to start.

There are no woods or mines nearby for easy pickings.

The two villages at 2 neutral can really stump you when you fail to capture them, and lose men instantly.

I think HB could use a mine or woods to help. Am I just not seeing the strat for this position?

(In response to above post about strengths of all positions, ... to the lowest 3 ...)

HJ strength is in the Knight. Assault the Knight. Attack the Knight right above, and you have a two move access to the port. The Knight is key here I think.

I have found HJ to be playable.

HA in corner, not sure. Seem easy enough to expand to the bonuses, and villages.

It's HB by far in my view that needs work.

Of course, overall, the map seems quite well done. It may be misleading to just give complaints like 'this one starting position is terrible, I don't understand it at all!' , but you've made a map I've played at least a dozen times, and probably more in a few days - so nothing wrong with that. Like a lot of the concepts as well.

In 1 v 1 , close starting positions makes for incredibly short game. But that might be necessary problem for chance drops.

oops. mistook HJ for HI. yes, HJ isn't fantastic, but I think HB is quite a bit worse. HJ you still have easy pickings.

In my opinion HF is by far the worst position. Has very little access to bonuses (only a village) and it takes a long while to expand from there due to absence of a knight. In a trench game especially it is catastrophic.

HB is fine I think. Truth is it is quite vulnerable to attack from 2 catapults (but so are all but the 4 corner castles), but it has great attacking potential, plus 2 villages next to it.

Overall, all other positions are playable I think (some might be a little better, but nothing great)

These comments concern 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 games. Multiplayer games are a whole different story and I haven't played enough to be able to judge if starting position matters and to what extent.

Also, I have found absolutely no use for the Cathedrals or the College of Cardinals so far, after quite a few games.

Really? HF is a pretty strong position in my experience. You have 1 village, and 4 woods.

I suppose HB I have had bad dice experience in beginning with trying to take villages. Even waiting and letting the castle build first for extra troops. Still, HB has no easy pickings i.e. Mines or Woods... and I believe it is the only one.

HF lack of Knight is made up for by 4 woods and a village, with a very accessible port. HF is a backbone for your troop income.

Although, ... I never play trench. And so I can't say for that gameplay mode. But yes, perhaps Knights are much more powerful in Trench.

In any setting but trench though.

For trench, I sort of see the argument here. Because everything is right next to HB castle, it is easily accessible. But then it only works for trench.

Very interesting analyses JCMS

...anyway I'm not really expecting to make all castles completely equal in terms of predominance/importance in the game.

Truth is that they're different, as they should be, with different characteristics from one another. Actually, there's no map where that possibility of unbalance start doesn't happen (unless a totally symmetric map - which I personally don't like), even in maps with no starting positions. There's always that particular continent/bonus zone that everybody wants, which the guy with the most favorable drop is more likely to get.

I really enjoy playing this map as it is... honestly Of course that there's a lot of possibilities when it comes to change the gameplay here..... and that's because there's so many sides to it. I really had to choose when I was conceiving this map, and that was freaking hard!! because you just can't have the best of all worlds on one.... and there's always sooooo many options

That said, I'm about to make the following changes:

-Switch HA3 Knight with HA1 Archer (Graphics and XML change)
-Reduce HB2 Knight neutrals from 4 to 3 as it should (XML change)

I was working on the XML, when something occurred to me concerning the Archer/Knight swap.

Currently A01 is on a midpoint between HA1 Archer and HJ6 Archer. With the swap HJ Castle will have an easy (more direct) control over A01, which means some predominance over HA castle.

I could suggest some changes to compensate one of those options. Swapping or maintaining things as they are.

1- Leave HA1 Archer as it is, but reduce HA3 Knight neutrals fro 3 to 1. Making it easier for HA castle to expand.
or
2- Swap positions between HA1 Archer and HA3 Knight , but reducing the Archer neutrals from 2 to 1 and possibly A02 from 3 to 2.

Hey Keban,
I see your concern with Castle HJ having an advantage over HA castle via the archer but that archer has a 4 on it and is extremely discouraging to take. I still think the swap of the knight and archer would benefit HA more than it would hinder it. And again allow the quick bombard move to be overcome by using the knight to come back. I like suggestion 1 best and I would also suggest that the catapult could be reduced to a 3 so that at least theyd have a 1 unit retaliation advantage.

Ive played about 12+ games on the map and I have never seen anyone ever take A01 before round 10 in any game. I just realized I have to play that map some more I have no games on it right now.

SirJohn13 wrote:Also, I have found absolutely no use for the Cathedrals or the College of Cardinals so far, after quite a few games.

with 54 games on this map i didn't even notice the Collage of Cardinals and have never taken a Cathedral until a few games ago when someone else took one so i had to to take them out.

Update: I was playing a trench game and managed to dominate the council and gain access to the king.......Opponent smartly got hold of a cathedral and was able to bombard my council members in the next round. So in this case it was actually really useful.

But in non-trench you just attack head-on from your nobles

Hi
Can anyone explain the hex numbering, though it looks to be random i am sure there is some logic to it. R hexes i assume indicate road so would that mean an N hex indicates no road?
Robert the red

N hexes are all the Non-important hexes. They will give no bonus, and they will make you lose 2 armies for every round.

Just noticed archer a16 jumps to a14 witout having to go through a15. not sure you meant it like that.