Meatcat wrote:Bad name for the map - too generic. Should be more explicit, something like Europe's Colonial Powers before WW1.
14 months into production and now somebody is unhappy with the name of the map? I'll probably be accused of being an "elitist" for saying this, but at this point I'd rather not change the name.
iancanton wrote:sadly, it turns out that the odds of starting with one of the 3-region +2 bonuses (italian empire, portuguese empire or dutch empire) are looking pretty high. this is because some of the start positions combine in a way that is favourable to player 1. i haven't analysed this yet, except to look at seven active 1v1 games, of which player 1 twice started with a +2 bonus. if 28% (or even 14%) is the real average, then we need to reduce the number of sets of start positions (i'm thinking to 2 or 3 sets), to stop this from happening so often. this needs a bit more thought.
Alright, this is a 70 territory map. Even if we removed ALL of the starting positions each player would start the game with 23 territories, which means player one gets to start the game by placing 7 armies. Anybody who chooses to set up a 1v1 game on a 70 territory map is counting on the fact that it is not going to be an even game from the start.
Currently with 16 coded starts each player in a 1v1 game starts with 25 territories, or a first placement of 8 armies. A one army difference on a big map, so I'm not going to get too bent out of shape over it.
The concern seems to be that there is a slightly increased chance of getting a bonus. So...
There are four 3-territory bonus regions on this map. There is less than a 2.9% chance of a player dropping Horn of Africa, of which none of the territories are start-coded. There is about a 4.9% chance that somebody will drop a three-territory empire bonus such as the Italian Empire - it's a slightly higher % because the European territory (which is start-coded) has a 1 in 2 chance of going to player X, rather than a 1 in 3 chance.
If we removed ALL of the starting locations the odds of a player dropping the Italian Empire goes down to 3.3%. The odds of a player dropping Horn of Africa actually goes up from 2.9% to 3.3%. The odds of having an advantage in - or dropping all of - one of the other regions also goes up.
This is a big map. While it is certainly playable by two players, short of coding just two even starts and adding about 20 starting neutrals to the map, I don't think that a map this size will ever be an ideal 1v1 map. If the community overwhelmingly wants to sacrifice playability in 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 player games to make it the perfect 1v1 map we can certainly do that, but my guess is that this is not the direction folks want to go.