Rorke's Drift. [QUENCHED]

[DiM]

Cannot be done. The xml will not allow it.

king_herpes was accused and cleared. If you still want to play a guy that is better, then so be it, the map cannot be blamed for that.

actually the map can and will be blamed for that.

AYBABTU had the same problem in 1v1 manual deployment where a player would put it all on the base then make a rush and kill the other player via the tech tree. it was an exploit and we changed the xml to make it impossible.

this has to be rectified as soon as possible and i'm actually surprised it's been allowed for this long. wtf?

the map is already HUGELY imbalanced in 1v1 but this exploit is inadmissible. no map should have exploits.

[DiM]

now about my beef with the map.
normally 1v1 maps involve quite a bit more luck than games with more players. the drop and the dice have more influence over the outcome of the game but on this map i've known the result of a match from round 1. i never saw this happen on any other map. not even on doodle earth.

basically imagine this. you go second, you have 11 terits in the decay zone and your opponent starts with 4 river warriors. deploys his troops near a tribe chief where he has more troops (Ndaba or Cetshwayo most often) and takes that tribe chief. for round 2 he's set to get a bonus of 12-14 troops.
you start your first round and have 6 troops to deploy. if you go for a bonus, even if you take it on round 2 the opponent will deploy his big bonus and break you so your only option is to try and take his tribe chief and break him. if you're lucky enough to have a stack right next to him it will be a 9v7 battle. 2-3 bad rolls and you fail. and that's if you have a stack right next to him but sometimes you'll have to pass through another terit with 3 troops so generally speaking your chances of breaking the bonus are bellow 50%. fail to break it and the second round starts with your opponent deploying a big bonus and trashing you.

and basically that's what the map is all about. if the player that starts the game gets a bonus and you can't break it then it's simply game over.
in 1v1 bonuses are just too easy to take and defend. no game should be decided solely on the outcome of the first round.


since a real example is always more helpful than a theoretical one here's a quick one.
i'm in a game where the bottom right corner of the map looks like this:


i'm green, i'm first and i have 6 troops to deploy. a few scenarios:

1. let's say i'm more conservative and i don't get lucky rolls. so i deploy 6 on phila and attack ndaba with 9v4. i have a 74.2% chance of winning and have 5 troops remaining. i stays in phila and i move 4 in ndaba. since this is chained i'll move 2 from mondli to sihle and get a 5 stack there. i'm not even gonna bother talking about unlimited reinfs cause it would be mayhem for whoever goes second. now i've secured a +3 deployable bonus and a +2 on the chieftain. player 2 MUST break my bonus. so he'll deploy in jabulani his 6 troops. he now has to attack 9v5,4 to conquer my chieftain. the chances to do that are 34.4% so he needs great dice to do it. and even if he does he'll have just 1 troop on those 3 terits and he'll be easy to eliminate from there in the next round. if he doesn't break my bonus and goes for a bonus of his own i'll just use my bigger deployment to break him.

2. let's say i'm feeling adventurous and i get mildly lucky rolls. nothing special though. so i deploy my 6 in sihle and attack the chieftain and jabulani. i have a 56.9% chance of winning those terits. then i'll use 2 troops from mondli to reinforce my chief. if it were unlimited i could also use other troops and make my defences even stronger. now the shortest route for player 2 to get to my chief would be from dingane and he'd have to win 8v3,1,3 to take my chief. the chance of successfully doing that is 23.3% and he'll have 1 troop on those terits. so not only he'll need great dice to break me but he'll be an easy target in the next turn where i'd deploy 6 on phila and easily take those terits with 1 troop.

and this is not even the worst case, i've seen even more imbalanced drops.

point is, in 1v1 it's too easy to get quite a hefty bonus in round 1 and successfully defend it.
if your poor opponent even gets 10-11 troops in the decay zone (like it happened to me) then by turn 3 he's already down 20 troops just from those areas.


for crying out loud half of ALL the games created on this map are 1v1 with manual deployment. games created with the sole purpose of abusing this exploit. how was this allowed to go on for this long when really all it would take was to bump the neutrals for the objective and make it impossible to get in the first rounds. sheesh.

i see that instead of changing the map you've even used this exploit for yourself which is not nice at all. you haven't used it in hundreds of games like others did, but still....

[thenobodies80]

I received some complaints about this map. I tested it myself and I have to admit that you have to do something to change your current gameplay. In any 1vs1 game this map is just try to go faster than you can to schiess and hope that unlucky dice and a wall of 5 neutrals will keep you safe from your opponents for 1 or 2 turns, just the time to hold the objective and win. That's not fun.
Jadza and Xiop are mostly used to do that and in my opinion they shouldn't be assigned at the start of the game.
Again, when you have deleted your opponents from your border you have just to stack and break the 5 neutral troops in Hook and it's done. With fog you can do that more easily.
As DiM said this map has other many weak points, it's really nonsense when a map is just take a bonus or X regions and keep it/them for a couple of turns to win
I suggest you to really think about a solution to fix as soon as possible this problem. As it is now this is a very very unfair map for the player that find himself with a small disadvantage that becomes a big disadvantage in 1 or 2 turns.
Find a quick solution is a must now. Quick koontz, a very quick solution is required.

Now, since it's your map and it's up to you to think and find a possible fix for this issue: what you would like to change to make it more balanced for 1vs1?

[perchorin]

Just wanna point out that I brought this up months ago....just sayin'

[koontz1973]

nobodies, can I ask you want exactly the complaints where so I can address them. Will have a look at it all tonight to try and find a solution to all problems but unless I know them, I cannot respond or change them.

Percheron, your complaint was addressed in previous updates. If it is still not solved, let me know as I have not had any feedback apaert from the WC over the last couple of months. The last update only included the map image as that was all I thought was needed.

[J_Indr]

Sorry for not reading the whole thread backwards, as this might have been discussed earlier.

Is there any possibility of coding the drop into the fire zone as a separate area so that all players would have an equal number of their beginning troops there?
Especially in 2 teams games when there are no neutrals, one team can get really unlucky and really disadvantaged by getting a hugely disproportionate number of these territories.

[Oneyed]

look at this game http://www.conquerclub.com/game.php?game=10408448
the 150 yard line needs some changes, or better say more balanced starting positions. I´ve started with 4 regions inside line so I lost 4 armies, but other players had only 2 or 3 regions here, so they lost only 2 or 3 armies.

Oneyed

[DiM]

nobodies, can I ask you want exactly the complaints where so I can address them.

i'm not tnb80 but here's a list of what i find wrong:

1. the objective is too easy to reach in manual 1v1 games. - major exploit needs urgent fixing
2. the decay zone is sometimes too unfair. i've seen games where 1 player has 11 terits there and the other just 2. that's 22 troops lost for 1 player and just 4 for the other.
3. big bonuses can be very easily taken right from round 1 and in most cases they are also incredibly easy to protect. basically whoever gets the first bonus and holds it for round 1 wins and then it's just a matter of slowly killing your opponent for the next 4-6 rounds with ZERO chance of a comeback for him.

[koontz1973]

nobodies, can I ask you want exactly the complaints where so I can address them.

i'm not tnb80 but here's a list of what i find wrong:

1. the objective is too easy to reach in manual 1v1 games. - major exploit needs urgent fixing
2. the decay zone is sometimes too unfair. i've seen games where 1 player has 11 terits there and the other just 2. that's 22 troops lost for 1 player and just 4 for the other.
3. big bonuses can be very easily taken right from round 1 and in most cases they are also incredibly easy to protect. basically whoever gets the first bonus and holds it for round 1 wins and then it's just a matter of slowly killing your opponent for the next 4-6 rounds with ZERO chance of a comeback for him.

DiM, thanks for letting me know of these problems, let me address them right now before I go on and think about the others and find a solution to them.

1. As soon as the map came into beta, a problem was spotted with the 1v1 manual deployment. In 1v1 manual deployment you get 43 (I think) troops to deploy. My original map had a 5 neutral on both commanders and only Schiess could attack them. This meant that you had to get through 17 neutrals and only hold 1 territ to keep the objective. My solution to this was to open up the objective to 593 Jones and Reynolds. I also increased he commanders neutrals to 10. This all meant that you had to go through 27 neutrals but also hold two territs to keep the winning condition. So with 43 troops (in 1v1) it is a good chance you will be able to grab the WC in the first round. But imposable to hold the player who goes second has the same plan. There is only one solution for the 1v1 manual game to solve this problem and that is to increase the neutrals to 15 or 20 on the commanders. This would give you 37/47 to get through and mean it would be out of the reach of the manual starts. I have no real problem doing this, but and this is a big but, I believe that raising the neutrals, even to 15 would mean that you stop most people going for them in all other types of games. Having looked at the game stats for the map though, this does seem to be the only solution.

How about I raise the commanders to 15 each and Schiess which is between them to 5. This would give a neutral total of 41.

2.I was made aware of this being a touchy subject right at the start of the map and how some players refuse to play dustbowl because of it. The positions in the xml was written with 11 positions only. A max of 3 positions are given to each player. This means no one can drop a river bonus as the others are programmed neutrals. I will not go down this route with the decay regions as it would mean another 10 neutrals on the map. I also made the point that just because you are in the centre of the map and lose troops, you are also in a better position for the winning condition. What I will do though is programme them as a neutral 1. This would mean everyone gets the same but it only increase the neutrals on the map to a single 1 (per territ) and not a normal 3.

3.You say big bonuses, if you hold every territ in Cetshwayo or Dabulamanzi (the two biggest regions), you only get a bonus of 7. The chances of dropping all territs in any of those regions is beyond remote. You cannot get a river bonus at the start. There are 18 territs that surround the chieftains (17 without the decay one). I cannot programme more than one into the xml per position and I refuse to add more neutrals to the map just to make it fair for one type of game. I am sure you will admit that a game with more players will be better for the drops as is. If I take the neutrals up to a higher number, this would stop the 1v1 game getting a stranglehold straight away, but also slow down the large games. As the large games are not the most played on this map (I think I have played most of them as this is my preferred setting), I will increase them to a seven.

To do for tonight them.
Change xml to include...
increase commanders neutrals to 15
increase Schiess neutrals to 5
This would give a total of 41 to get through.

Programme the decay regions to a neutral 1.
This would mean all players get the same.

Raise the chieftains neutrals to 7.

Is this acceptable?

[isaiah40]

Looking at this, alternately, you can add in another chief and have all the chief's as starting territories and code the rest as neutral. That is divide Cetshwayo in half and add a chief.

[koontz1973]

Looking at this, alternately, you can add in another chief and have all the chief's as starting territories and code the rest as neutral. That is divide Cetshwayo in half and add a chief.

But what about Dabulamanzi being the same size, and all the rest being smaller to varying degrees?

[koontz1973]

thenobodies80, I had no idea there was a problem till this morning with the map. I do come and look every day at the thread to see if anyone has posted as well as having a notification to my email. I have responded to all queries fast. If you do get complaints, can you let me know so I can do something.

Here is the new xml that should sort the problems out (I hope). I really do not want to follow isaiah40 suggestion as I never play those types of maps.
Chieftains to 7 neutrals
Commanders to 15 neutrals
Schiess to 5 neutrals
Decay region to 1 neutral so if position not given, it is a neutral.
Removed Jadzia from the normal positions tags.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2012/1/8/3 ... Drift1.xml

As I say, this should sort the problems out (mainly for the 1v1 manual deployment) which does seem to be the biggest offender.

[DiM]

1. As soon as the map came into beta, a problem was spotted with the 1v1 manual deployment. In 1v1 manual deployment you get 43 (I think) troops to deploy. My original map had a 5 neutral on both commanders and only Schiess could attack them. This meant that you had to get through 17 neutrals and only hold 1 territ to keep the objective. My solution to this was to open up the objective to 593 Jones and Reynolds. I also increased he commanders neutrals to 10. This all meant that you had to go through 27 neutrals but also hold two territs to keep the winning condition. So with 43 troops (in 1v1) it is a good chance you will be able to grab the WC in the first round. But imposable to hold the player who goes second has the same plan. There is only one solution for the 1v1 manual game to solve this problem and that is to increase the neutrals to 15 or 20 on the commanders. This would give you 37/47 to get through and mean it would be out of the reach of the manual starts. I have no real problem doing this, but and this is a big but, I believe that raising the neutrals, even to 15 would mean that you stop most people going for them in all other types of games. Having looked at the game stats for the map though, this does seem to be the only solution.

How about I raise the commanders to 15 each and Schiess which is between them to 5. This would give a neutral total of 41.

no map should have an objective that's achievable in round 1. regardless if you have enough troops to hold it or not, you shouldn't be able to get it in the first place. with commanders at 15 and schiess at 5, one would have to get through 41 troops spread over 5 terits like this: 5, 1, 15, 5, 15. with a 43 initial deploy you have a 68.1% chance of succeeding which is HUGE. if we have fog and an unsuspecting player it really doesn't matter if you don't have many troops on the objective for defence because he won't know you did it. so at the start of round 1 you win.
the chance of successfully getting an objective in round 1 should be zero or at least close to zero.
but in order to do that you must either increase the neutrals a lot which would make the objective impossible to get in games with more players or figure out a new approach. one that makes the game more balanced and fair with a realistically attainable objective.

2.I was made aware of this being a touchy subject right at the start of the map and how some players refuse to play dustbowl because of it. The positions in the xml was written with 11 positions only. A max of 3 positions are given to each player. This means no one can drop a river bonus as the others are programmed neutrals. I will not go down this route with the decay regions as it would mean another 10 neutrals on the map. I also made the point that just because you are in the centre of the map and lose troops, you are also in a better position for the winning condition. What I will do though is programme them as a neutral 1. This would mean everyone gets the same but it only increase the neutrals on the map to a single 1 (per territ) and not a normal 3.

being close to the objective is of no importance especially if the objective is made impossible to take early in the game. or if we're taling about a non-manual deployment.
right now a player can get 10 or more terits in the decay zone while another could get 1 or none. in round 1 you already lost 10 or more troops and if you don't have unlimited forts you're gonna lose 10 more in round 2. losing 20 troops in a 1v1 where each player starts with 75 is very bad. right from the start you have almost 30% less troops than your opponent.
i'm not sure if i understand you correctly, but you say you'll make the whole decay area to start as neutral or that it will still be distributed to players but terits will start as 1?

3.You say big bonuses, if you hold every territ in Cetshwayo or Dabulamanzi (the two biggest regions), you only get a bonus of 7. The chances of dropping all territs in any of those regions is beyond remote. You cannot get a river bonus at the start. There are 18 territs that surround the chieftains (17 without the decay one). I cannot programme more than one into the xml per position and I refuse to add more neutrals to the map just to make it fair for one type of game. I am sure you will admit that a game with more players will be better for the drops as is. If I take the neutrals up to a higher number, this would stop the 1v1 game getting a stranglehold straight away, but also slow down the large games. As the large games are not the most played on this map (I think I have played most of them as this is my preferred setting), I will increase them to a seven.

when i say big bonus i mean a +3. in the image i previously shown getting the chieftain there gets you a +3 or +4 on hand and another +2 on the chief. that's pretty common in 1v1. with the 6 you get from the number of terits owned that means that next turn you'll get the +2 on the chief as defence and use a +10 to destroy your enemy's bonus (if he managed to get one). game over.

increasing the chiefs to 7 will not solve the problem. in fact i'm afraid it will put even more emphasis on luck. 9v7 = 64.3%chance of success. i get good dice i get my bonus, you get bad you don't get one so i win. all decided in round 1.

[koontz1973]

1.So, if I increase the commanders to 20, that means there is no chance of getting them.
2.The decay region will be given out per the positions, Max of 3 each. So in a 1v1 game, both will get 3 only. 3 player game, 3 each. 4 player game, 2 each. etc. All the rest will bbe deployed as a 1 neutral. Easy to get through.
3.So, what is your solution then? I am not going to rush into to big a change and make te matter worse. You say raising it to 7 will be more of a problem, but if I reduce, it is another problem. I cannot make it to high as then no one will play them.

[DiM]

1.So, if I increase the commanders to 20, that means there is no chance of getting them.
2.The decay region will be given out per the positions, Max of 3 each. So in a 1v1 game, both will get 3 only. 3 player game, 3 each. 4 player game, 2 each. etc. All the rest will bbe deployed as a 1 neutral. Easy to get through.
3.So, what is your solution then? I am not going to rush into to big a change and make te matter worse. You say raising it to 7 will be more of a problem, but if I reduce, it is another problem. I cannot make it to high as then no one will play them.

1. actually making the commanders to 20 will mean a 29.7% chance of getting them in round 1. which is still too much because even if you don't make it all the way in round 1 your chances go to around 50% for getting it round 2. not to mention that this will make the objective completely unrealistic in games with 4 or more players where getting 40-50 troops to take the objective and some more to hold it is impossible.

2. i like this.

3. i'm not exactly sure. i'm thinking a map with starting positions as isaiah suggested, with various terits counting for 2 chiefs, variable neutral values on different terits. i really don't know yet.

[koontz1973]

1. That's the problem, balancing it so in a 1v1 game, it is hard to get but in the larger games it is still gettable. If the problem persists with the new numbers, they can go higher or a different approach can be found. But I think that as soon as the new numbers hit, less will do it.
2. Glad you approve.
3. I really really do not want to do that. I never play those maps. Why make a map that you will never play? Have a think on it, I will do the same and try to come up with a solution soon.

I started this to make a good map. For the last couple of months, people have played and commented on it, I have changed things when needed, but I had no idea there was this much of a problem. With the manual, I tested the new version and it did seem to of sorted it out. Obviously not.

[DiM]

I had no idea there was this much of a problem.

10 days ago

i call this a huge problem:

Click image to enlarge.

[thenobodies80]

Today I'm really tired so maybe I'm going to say a stupid thing but change the WC? Extend them to something else than just 2 territories?

If you will raise the neutrals to a point in which no one will be able to take them easily in a 1vs1, maybe you'll solve a problem, but for sure you will make this map a "shit" for the other types of game.
Although I'm also inclined to see it as a sort of conquest map, you don't like the idea so I won't push you in that direction.

So I would say to you to try to force the player of a manual 1vs1 to spread his troops on the map.... What about add chieftains or something on that line?

[J_Indr]

This is getting to look good.

As for the WC:
I'd suggest keeping it at two territories, maybe increasing to three, BUT with a change that would effectively separate the British camp to two/three parts and each of them would have to be accessed from a different side. I have no idea what that would make with percentages, but getting to the condition through manual deployment on three different regions will be rather riskier.

Another option would be to play around with the map a bit and give some river warriors the possibility to bombard the WC soldiers. It would just create a check against exploitation. It is a similar principle that was used in AYBABTU map for attacking lvl1 tech bonus from lvl2 tech which worked quite well. (That said, DiM, you can easily beat people unfamiliar with the map, even if very experienced otherwise, through attacking their base through lvl3 before they realise what is happening.)

[koontz1973]

Came up with some solutions (I think) so we can add this to the mix.

1.Turn the whole outpost into the WC and lower the neutrals enough to make it possible but not imposable. This will stop the farming completely as you have a WC with 6 territ border.
2.Change the xml and turn the map into a normal conquest style map . Like nordic countries and Denmark. The chieftains would be the cities with a +1/2 auto. Turn all the iButhos into bonus regions but split up the two largest ones. This can be done very quickly with the map and xml done by the weekend.
3.Go down the conquest map route.
4.Take out the WC and the 150 yard line. Turn the outpost into another iButho the same as the Zulus and keep the map as is with a few tweeks.

2 things that might improve the map which ever route we go down is to remove the 150 yard line. It brought realism to the map but if players do not like it, then it needs to come out. Remove the river warrior bonus completely. Allow those troops to be deployed openly. This will then also help with the problem around 4 of the 7 iButhos.

Which ones are good and bad. As I said 2 is the only one I really hate but if it needs to go down this route, then so be it.

I do not know if this can be tweeked to keep the curent style, but that would be my prefered option. Can I get some opinions on which way to go.

[natty dread]

2.Change the xml and turn the map into a normal conquest style map . Like nordic countries and Denmark.

Those are not conquest maps. Conquest maps are maps like feudal war.

[koontz1973]

2.Change the xml and turn the map into a normal conquest style map . Like nordic countries and Denmark.

Those are not conquest maps. Conquest maps are maps like feudal war.

My mistake, to bloody early in the morning. But the two examples given, you get my meaning.

[DiM]

so far in most of my 1v1 games i know for a fact who the winner is as early as round 1 or maybe 2. then it's just a boring game where 1 player slowly takes out the other player for 3-5 more turns.
there's just 1 undecided game where me and greenoaks take turns in attacking the same chief. whoever fails his attack loses. )

[koontz1973]

Here is what I am thinking of doing so I need some confirmation today so I can get on and redo the xml and make alterations to the map over the weekend.

New winning condition will be the 2 commanders and any 3 chieftains.
Neutrals will go back to there original settings.
Commanders at 10
Schiess at 3
Front line stay at 5 but not killer. (This change is explained later)

Scrap the bonus system completely.
New bonuses will be...
Hold all river warriors = +15
The current image has 4 iButhos that are within the 150 yard line. These would be split of the main iButho and become a super bonus.

So if you hold Dabulamanzi and all the territs for him outside of the 150 yard line you get a + 8. Hold the territs inside the 150 yard line as well, you get an additional +4. If you hold the 4 inside the 150 yard line only you can get + 2.
[spoiler=example]
Dabulamanzi =+8
Dabulamanzi + 4 territs in 150 yard line =+12
Just the 4 territs =+2[/spoier]
The same will be done for the other 3 iButhos that go into the 150 yard line.

The 150 yard line.
This has caused problems with players so needs to change. I hate neutrals, players hate decays.
So if we lose the decay completely and these troops can become normal deploy. I will set it up so the British front line troops can bombard any territ inside the 150 yard line. Wit the neutral being high, it stops the players taking them early so allowing players to get the small bonuses inside the 150 yard line.

All chieftains can bombard British Commanders.
Chieftains go back to a neutral 3 with the +1 auto deploy.

New bonuses-can someone please make suggestions on these figures.
Dabulamanzi =+8
Dabulamanzi + 4 territs in 150 yard line =+12
Just the 4 territs =+3
Cetshwayo =+8
Cetshwayo + 4 territs in 150 yard line =+12
Just the 4 territs =+3
Phunga =+4
Phunga + 4 territs in 150 yard line =+8
Just the 4 territs =+3
Ndaba =+6
Ndaba + 4 territs in 150 yard line =+10
Just the 4 territs =+3
Mpande +3
Buthelezi +4
Shaka +2
River warriors = +15

This would allow me to keep the feel of the game with all of the current elements but stop the farming. It will also alleviate the concerns of DiM of players getting large bonuses in the first round.


Thoughts needed.

[koontz1973]

Asked HA, DiM, nobodies and SirSebstar to come and have a look. The complaints have been since it was in beta but I believed it was sorted out. Mainly from last 2 or 3 pages.