I haven't really committed myself to redesigning this map unless I am forced to, if mibi wants to he might have a fight on his hands. Most of the arguments I see I am willing to attempt to refute.
This map is really unbalanced in 1v1, first turn wins, starting with the -1 bonus is death sentence, ect ect.
To begin with this map was created before 1v1 games. We never had to consider balancing for them and I would like to believe a grandfather clause should be in effect here. That said I wouldn't hate it if there were 2 less random German territories although I can't see how we would do it without making the map look really really weird.
WTF, attacks instead of bombardments? That makes no thematic sense.
Also while we are on the subject of a grandfather clause, there were no bombardments when this map was made. It was not in the xml. Along with starting neutrals, they were not in the xml. Unfortunately we love the way this plays too much to be willing to change it to bombardments unless the foundry forces us to. In addition I am concerned that people stuck with artillery would never be able to win because they lack a way to attack ship bonuses if it were bombardments. With the current system someone with an artillery bonus can make a charge against a ship to break a bonus.
lol noob, you made north and south wrong.
In response to the top vs bottom arguments that constantly come up, we never put a compass on the map. North is on the bottom and south is on the top. We wanted to create the feeling you were storming the beach and when the beach was on the bottom the feeling was that you were defending the beach. Thus it put the flavor of the map off. I would be willing to have an upside down compass on the map to show that north is in fact the bottom and south is the top but I don't think it would fit anywhere. mibi didn't waste any of the space available to him under the size constraints so a compass would have to be really small and would probably just look goofy.
Really though, that -1 bonus is punishing, why is it there?
The -1 bonus came about because the ships had too much of an advantage otherwise. Without that -1 bonus the people with the ships had a very high chance of always winning and removing the flyovers made for very long games so that was the compromise.
So another words you are a stubborn old goat and won't fix anything.
Actually, there are 2 problems I see that have merit in my eyes, first, that the territory count is very bad for 1v1 games and second that the -1 bonus is equally bad if you get it in a 1v1 game. To fix these two problems simultaneously
all I would need to do is make both planes start with 3 neutral. This would in effect decrease the territory count by 2 and it would stop people from starting with the -1 bonus in 1v1 without requiring us to do any drastic redesigns to the map.
If the cartos feel this is a positive change I'll adjust the xml and send it to whomever receives xml updates now a days.
