DoomYoshi wrote:Hmm... a pretty open map this is.
Starting spots 124, 093 are almost identical.
Starting spots 116 and 110 are also identical. They are both strictly worse than 143 and 133.
Territories 080 and 135 is my personal favourite. Interesting formation down around 049-056.
037 is the worst possible starting location; should probably be beefed up a bit.
037 I feel has the advantage of being close to the 129/140 bonus pair, but still looks a little feeble, I'll grant.
I could remove region 044 if you feel that would make things better, or did you have something else in mind ?
nolefan5311 wrote:I'm glad you choose this version. I have a couple questions as far as gameplay is concerned.
I'm struggling to find why certain regions exist...020, 045, 008, 135...those regions bypass the food/shelter, but what's the point of having them there? If taking the food/shelter leads to the exact same attack path, will anyone take them if the choice is taking another autodecay, or taking a region that yields a +3? I think 9 times out of 10, the person will take the +3, with that 1 other time being only if someone already has the game locked up and is just choosing the quickest path for elimination.
There are several things you could do with one of those regions. Without those regions, the map would be closer to the overly-linear exhibit B, with practically no differences between any of the start positions.
As you say, one option is to bypass a region when one the path to elimination. If a player from shelter 69 left a stack on food region 61, you may attempt to go from 61 -> 70 -> 69 without taking out the food region. Or something of that nature...
You may also use the 'surplus' region by your shelter as an extra card spot.
But mainly, I feel that it forces players to choose where to position their troops.
nolefan5311 wrote:Do you intend each player to drop 3 per turn regardless of how many total regions they hold or is there an increase in troops based on the amount of regions held? Or are troops only awarded from autodeploys and food regions? With so many regions, drops could be huge relatively early and with a +3 for each food and an autodeploy for each shelter, perhaps you need to increase the amount of neutrals on the jungle regions.
Good question, this will have to be decided once your next question has been answered.
Actually, some of the previous drafts had a "1 troop for every 1 region" structure, and I'm not 100% sure how that would fit with the gameplay I have in mind.
I'm also contemplating multiplying all of the troop counts by a scale factor. Kind of how City Mogul auto-deploys 20 instead of 2 to overcome dice issues, see ?
nolefan5311 wrote:How many starting regions do you want to have per player in each game type? Does a player start with 4 shelters in 1v1? Two a piece in an 8 player game? You need to clarify that in the OP.
I'd always assumed that I'd let the game engine distribute the shelters as it would in a standard map.
That is to say that - in the Classic map - there are 42 regions. In a 1 vs 1 game, each player has 14, and neutral has 14. This way, one could never be sure that a hidden (foggy) shelter being attacked is that of an enemy, while still giving multiple options for the strategy of each player.
What's your opinion ?
nolefan5311 wrote:Maybe you can make the mountains bombard points or something to break up the chain of regions players are bound to have? That would add a unique element to the gameplay. Just an idea, you'd need to figure out how to access them.
I like the idea though and hope you develop it all the way...could be a real fun map.
An interesting idea, but not one which I'd like to include, I'm afraid. In previous drafts, I've had different gameplay features (winning conditions, and all sorts of different bonuses), which make the game more complicated than I'd like. This now has a lot of regions, and non-standard gameplay, but is simple.
Thanks for the great feedback, guys. This sub-forum doesn't seem to get as much attention as some of the other areas, so I really appreciate every comment I can get.
PS. I think I'll include a simplified naming system in the next update. I was thinking of giving each of the three islands a name - let's say A, B and C. Then I could use double-digit numbers (00) as opposed to the three-digits we have now, and the log could show the regions as A01, A02....
What are your thoughts on this ?