Antarctica [Quenched]

[natty dread]

The bonus values are from the old gameplay and haven't been reworked yet. Isaiah is working on the new bonus values, as soon as he has them done I'll update the map.

[natty dread]

new boni

Click image to enlarge.

[natty dread]

Neutrals & starting troops

Click image to enlarge.

We are also considering modifying the reinforcement to +1 for 2, with the standard 3 minimum. Any thoughts on this?

[natty dread]

Some sea routes & base locations tweaked for performance

Click image to enlarge.

Any input on the reinforcements idea, anyone?

[Victor Sullivan]

1. Bonuses (Boni) certainly look much better, but you must also take into effect the bases, as if someone else holds a base in the bonus area you are trying to take, thats a major deficit. You should also consider raising the bonuses for all the continents, considering the difficulty in holding and taking it is much, much higher than in a more standard map, plus its probably more worth it to just go for the elimination right off the bat.
2. I suggest labeling the sectors as W thru Z instead of 1 thru 4, to separate them namewise from the standard territories, but this is quite minor.
3. The neutral count on the territories is awful steep and does not promote expansion well, though with the +1 for 2 adjustment you may be okay. Still worth looking into more in depth between you and isaiah.
4. Is the South Pole really worth its cost? I understand its power, but the sheer amount of neutrals you have to suffer through hardly makes it seem better than just taking the long way around, especially with the territory pay out.
5. XML wise, I think it would definitely be advantageous to create specific starting positions, as holding two bases in the same bonus area greatly improves your chances of taking that bonus area.
6. It might also be nice to say in the legend that islands arent apart of any bonus.

Cheers,
Sully

[natty dread]

Bases can only be assaulted by south pole

[Victor Sullivan]

Bases can only be assaulted by south pole

Hmm. I guess I missed that... But the bases can attack the territory they are in though, no? A lot of my points are still valid...

[natty dread]

This just means that it's harder to defend the bonuses. If we give +1 for every 2 territories you can gather a bonus by just hoarding some land... and the bonuses become more feasible in the later game when you have less players and more bases per player.

[Victor Sullivan]

Maybe consider my misconception: have the bases able to be assaulted from the territories they are in and lower the South Pole neutral count. I just have difficulty imagining all players swarming one point going well... The South Pole is essentially an objective, the way you have it set up. Maybe make the territories the bases are in bombard its base, as opposed to assault? I think that could be very successful.

[natty dread]

The South Pole is essentially an objective, the way you have it set up.

duh, that's the point...

[natty dread]

Anywho, it'd be nice to get some more opinions on this.

[natty dread]

Ok, since feedback is a bit slow, I'll throw around some ideas:

- we could make the bases be attackable from land territories. Then we could make south pole just a really big neutral that gets an autodeploy and bombards all bases. Alternatively, we could keep southpole as killer and give the sectors autodeploys, but this would mean some bases would have advantage in proximity to the sectors and would require further balancing.

- another idea is to scrap the bonus values for bonus regions, and instead implement a feudal style bonus for them - +1 for each 2 territories within the same bonus area. This would make the bonus areas feasible even with the bases on them.

- or we could keep sp as killer, but make it bombard bases and allow bases to be attacked by land, and keep everything else as is...

[carlpgoodrich]

So one thing I keep coming back to with this map (which has beautiful graphics btw) is "what is the goal?" To me, its all about the south pole... kinda like climbing Mt Everest, this should be a real struggle to get to (and hold) the south pole. I think the gameplay should really focus on this inward quest.

I think of the story as going a bit like this: "Your mission is to conquer Antarctica and capture the South Pole. Beginning on your bases, venture out onto the frozen tundra, but do so carefully since one troop per territory will perish each turn (2 in HL, AL, and SL). Your bravery will be rewarded, though, as you will receive one reinforcement per territory under your control. Further caution, as the 4 sectors that guard the South Pole will kill 5 troops per turn, and the South Pole will kill 10. Hole the South Pole and the 4 sectors for one turn to win!"

In other words: bring back the decay (and make it worse as you get to the center), but counteract this loss of troops with a +1 per 1 instead of +1 per 3 standard deploy. The large decays on the SP and sectors make it risky to try to hold the objective, since if someone breaks one of your sectors, you will loose 5+5+5+10 troops to decays. I think this is a practical way to bring back some of the unique aspects of the gameplay (the decay) and increase the Antarctica-ness of the map.

[isaiah40]

Without quoting carl, this may work out pretty well. Here I was a little afraid so to speak about making the decay higher than what I suggested. So what you are saying about the South Pole is to have it at a -10 decay instead of the killer neutral? Hmmm .....

[natty dread]

So Carl's idea is basically Oasis in a different skin.

I've nothing against Oasis (cept the fact that I seem to suck on the map) but frankly I'd rather this map be something different...

I think the fact that SP can attack all the bases - considering that bases are losing conditions - makes it very powerful, and already makes it sort of an objective... Even if we make the bases assaultable by land, the SP would still have an advantage of being able to attack all of them at once.

One possibility would of course be to drop the losing conditions and make SP a victory condition. But that would again make this a lot like Oasis...


I do like the idea of giving SP a high decay instead of killer neutral, though.

[carlpgoodrich]

My suggestion is set up similar to Oasis, but I do not believe the gameplay would be at all similar. In Oasis, there are lots of territories that do not decay so people stick to those until they are ready to attack the objective. Also, the +1 per 1 makes it very advantageous to conquer large amounts of land despite the decay. Still, it was just a suggestion and of course all decisions are left to Natty and Isaiah.

[isaiah40]

My suggestion is set up similar to Oasis, but I do not believe the gameplay would be at all similar. In Oasis, there are lots of territories that do not decay so people stick to those until they are ready to attack the objective. Also, the +1 per 1 makes it very advantageous to conquer large amounts of land despite the decay. Still, it was just a suggestion and of course all decisions are left to Natty and Isaiah.

I think if we go with the high decay on the SP, and go with a feudal type reinforcements of +1 for every 2 regions (whereas we would have to redraw a few borders here and there) that would still work out pretty good. I still think that having the bases only able to be attacked through the South Pole is the way to go here. This would set it up for a very strategic game. With having the decays as carl mentioned -2 for each territory, you wouldn't want to be sitting in one spot for too long, so you would be forced to keep moving. Maybe have the territories the bases are in have a decay of -1 up to two territories away and the -2, and the sectors we can keep at -3 decay with the SP having the decay of -10.

[natty dread]

Hm. Seems a bit complicated... If we're going to introduce the decay again, I'd rather it was the same for all land territories - this would save us the trouble of figuring out how to represent the alternating decays visually...

My main reservation with the decay is, that I'm afraid it will stagnate gameplay... I'm afraid this will lead to strategies where people just sit on their bases, building their stacks, until they have enough to storm the south pole...

[isaiah40]

Either way, doesn't matter to me. You are right though, you would have to visually show the increase in decay rates. Okay now that i took a step back to remember K.I.S.S. Keep It Simple Stupid.

[natty dread]

Well, we need to make some decisions here...

- Bases: assaultable from SP only, or by land too?
- Land: decay or not?
- Bonuses: keep the "continent" bonus, or introduce feudal style "+1 for 2 territories" bonus?
- South pole: killer neutral, decay, regular neutral; bombard/attack the bases; objective?

These are the main questions.

I guess I'd like the gameplay to be dynamic, something that doesn't stagnate and resists stalemating well... maps like that are the most fun to play IMO. Other than that, I don't really care about the details, even though I like to throw suggestions and ideas now and then...

[isaiah40]

Well, we need to make some decisions here...

- Bases: assaultable from SP only, or by land too? From SP only
- Land: decay or not? Decay -2
- Bonuses: keep the "continent" bonus, or introduce feudal style "+1 for 2 territories" bonus? I don't know, I'm kinda leaning towards Feudal style with this one
- South pole: killer neutral, decay, regular neutral; bombard/attack the bases; objective? Well if we have it as the objective then we will need a lot of neutrals on it. At the same time if we have it as a decaying neutral then it should be a high decay of at least -10.

These are the main questions.

I guess I'd like the gameplay to be dynamic, something that doesn't stagnate and resists stalemating well... maps like that are the most fun to play IMO. Other than that, I don't really care about the details, even though I like to throw suggestions and ideas now and then...

Now if we have the SP as the objective there shouldn't be any stalemating, though if we have the SP bombard the bases, it will be like Arms Race with the missile launch, which I think would play out good here. If we go this route I'm thinking we should lower the autodeploy on the bases to +1 instead of the +2. This should force players from just stacking those autodeploys on the bases as much.

So in a nutshell, we can have this map as a decaying Feudal Arms Race style map, which in of itself would lead to exciting games IMO.

[carlpgoodrich]

I agree, if the decay is used, it needs to be offset by some sort of Feudal like bonus. Do you mean +1 per 2 territories within a region or +1 for any 2 territories? I assume this is in addition to the standard +1 per 3 (min 3) bonus?

I am somewhat indifferent regarding whether the SP is an objective or not. I think it might be interesting to have the SP attack the bases like you said, but in order to get the big Arms Race like bonus you would need to hold all 4 sectors and the SP. This is similar to Arms Race except with a twist: if someone takes one sector you get hit by massive decays. If this is the case, you wouldn't need to have a huge neutral count on SP (maybe 20-30 range?) so someone could theoretically just go through the SP and attack without the big bonus.

[isaiah40]

I agree, if the decay is used, it needs to be offset by some sort of Feudal like bonus. Do you mean +1 per 2 territories within a region or +1 for any 2 territories? I assume this is in addition to the standard +1 per 3 (min 3) bonus?

I am somewhat indifferent regarding whether the SP is an objective or not. I think it might be interesting to have the SP attack the bases like you said, but in order to get the big Arms Race like bonus you would need to hold all 4 sectors and the SP. This is similar to Arms Race except with a twist: if someone takes one sector you get hit by massive decays. If this is the case, you wouldn't need to have a huge neutral count on SP (maybe 20-30 range?) so someone could theoretically just go through the SP and attack without the big bonus.

You make a couple of good points. I'll have to get back with you on these when I have had time to mull it over.

[natty dread]

Ok, so from what I gather here:

- bases autodeploy +1 and can be assaulted from SP only.
- all land territories have -2 decay.
- bonus area bonuses are dropped, we'll still keep the areas though to keep the naming scheme of the territories. We can drop the minimap in this case, just the list of abbreviations will do, since the abbreviated names are already on the map itself.
- feudal style collection bonus: +1 for each 2 territories in the same area, in addition to regular territory bonus. Although I think we may have to up this to +2 for each 2, since we have those -2 decays.

This is similar to Arms Race except with a twist: if someone takes one sector you get hit by massive decays.

Unfortunately, autodeploys (and hence, decays which are just negative autodeploys) cannot be made conditional.
We could have it like this, though:

- sectors are regular neutrals
- sp is a high neutral, assaults all bases
- sp + sectors gives a huge bonus, but sp without all sectors gives a huge negative bonus

I'm not sure how well this would work though.

[The Bison King]

I think the South pole should reset to something Way lower the 30.

If I'm reading the legend right the only way to win the game is by attacking through the SP to attack the bases until every opponent is defeated. So in an 8 player game theoretically you'd have to attack through it 8 times. That's 240 troops Just to get through the neutrals! since the Bases auto deploy 2 troops it's likely that they'll have 30+ troops on them as well. I think games would go on unbearably long with these numbers. Maybe something like 10 or 15 would be a better neutral count on the SP.