4lords for Tournament

[Chazar]

Dear KGB, could you explain a bit about your design intentions for the FourLords map for the tournament? The map is still not in the version that I remember and loved, and I just want to understand a but more, now that we look at a special tournament version.

• Why only red and green a starting positions? Why not allowing any cross position?
• Why the heavy guardians on the ruins in the middle, but not in the (active) city that offers the quite valuable Grandfather item? Also, spiders on L3 seem odd, as they are actually weaker than the Wizards on the L2 (since UL adds to strength, but not city specialisation)
• Why not fixing the prime L1 Ruin at each starting location to a certain Gold amount, to ensure a smooth start for everyone? The first ruin has quite an impact, reducing this random factor for the tournament seems sensible to me.
• Money-site guardians seem inconsistent: some have default guardians, others have special guardians, sometimes quite stronger (pike on village has +15 versus light inf!), sometimes weaker (scorpion on quarry is -5 versus heavy inf)
• Should really that many cities be active?
• The roads and towers for the four center cities are new to me, too. Are they really a good idea? I quite liked that the center was an obstacle one had to go around, rather than cut through easily with a non-flying force.
• Archon Castle / Evil Castle have fixed production which might not be fair. While this is true to the original, it might need tweaking for the tournament?

[KGB]

Chazar,

1) Why only red and green a starting positions? Why not allowing any cross position?

Two reasons:
- If I allow Black/White starting spots then the game will randomly pick from the 2 allotted spots and it's possible you can start next to each other instead of across. There is no map option to specify 2 different starting spots for 1v1 games.
- The White position is the best spot in that if there is a Sandworm in the initial units it's a huge advantage. Also a scout turns the sand into open terrain while all other start spots can't be reduced to 2 moves from a scout. The Black position suffers the worst due to snow and no 1 turn snow move unit.

2) Why the heavy guardians on the ruins in the middle, but not in the (active) city that offers the quite valuable Grandfather item? Also, spiders on L3 seem odd, as they are actually weaker than the Wizards on the L2 (since UL adds to strength, but not city specialisation).

I left the default guardians on those ruins that Darkh placed there. The reason is those ruins hold REALLY good stuff (5000 gold, 4 Red Dragons) that are more valuable than the central city itself given you get them immediately. Also the central city is set to active and will start making Red Dragons and will build at least 3 of them so there will be plenty of defenders in there by the time a player arrives. I deliberately made that city vulnerable to archery / city bonus units so that it could be conquered.

The Spiders on L3 ruins was a mistake. I thought they'd be getting their city bonus but they don't. So I could easily replace them with 1 Wizard just to make all L2/L3 ruins guarded by the same unit.

3) Why not fixing the prime L1 Ruin at each starting location to a certain Gold amount, to ensure a smooth start for everyone? The first ruin has quite an impact, reducing this random factor for the tournament seems sensible to me.

What would you fix it to (my choice would be Ally instead of gold)? I assume you have to fix the guardians too so one player doesn't face 1 Skeleton and another 2 Ghouls. My problem with fixing it to gold / guardians is that it becomes too much of a known quantity. For example on a low gold start (600-800) you'd automatically take a Ranger on T1 to search for the sure gold boost to buy better production. Or on a high gold start you do the same to by able to buy certain production (Gryphon). That to me removes some of the strategy of 1st hero choice and deciding how to play low/high gold starts (ruin grabbing vs take a hero to conquer cities).

Also there are 3 L1 ruins in each starting spot so if the 1st ruin yields something other than gold you can quickly search another one for gold.

4) Money-site guardians seem inconsistent: some have default guardians, others have special guardians, sometimes quite stronger (pike on village has +15 versus light inf!), sometimes weaker (scorpion on quarry is -5 versus heavy inf)

The Pikemen on villages indicate the site has a high fixed gold income (24) rather than a random one that is less than 20. Because those are more valuable they have better defenders.

The Scorpion on a Quarry is actually 19 strength (15+4 swarm). That was put there for thematic purposes. The other thematic ones near the middle are all Dwarves on hills (25). I hope that 19 vs 25 isn't that much of a game imbalance.

5) Should really that many cities be active?

I don't know. Right now the central city, 1 city on each island (the weakest one), the 4 cities between each start area, the 2 special cities and a few on the outer ring are active. That may well be too many. I've played a couple of games now and haven't found it too much of a problem. Really only the 4 cities between each start area has been a problem. I can turn those 'off'. You want the ones on the outer ring turned off too?

6) The roads and towers for the four center cities are new to me, too. Are they really a good idea? I quite liked that the center was an obstacle one had to go around, rather than cut through easily with a non-flying force.

Those roads were added by Darkh. I actually have found them to be a really good addition. It gives players a 3rd way to move around the map besides the outer ring and middle road which often got blocked into a stalemate when you owned one of the key blocking cities between start areas. Now there is another way to attack/defend making it a bit more of a dynamic map. The last game I played revolved around an invasion through those new roads which made the game more interesting (it's harder than you think to get control of those cities/towers there).

7) Archon Castle / Evil Castle have fixed production which might not be fair. While this is true to the original, it might need tweaking for the tournament?

In what way would you propose? In all the games I played on the original and this map I think I've seen those cities taken maybe 2 times and then only really late in the game. It's very hard to capture them due to defenders and realistically only flight access. So it's not really worth the effort especially in 1v1 games. In Team games those 2 cities are more important because you can have another player helping to capture them.

KGB

[Chazar]

Thanks for the detailed answer!

It all makes sense, except for the spiders on the L3 ruins, but i don't think this is important enough to make another version (ghosts would be the obvious other choice, but I actually think that wizards are tougher due to their anti-air bonus, since the ghost is easily dealt with by bringing a crow along - sop maybe ghost on L2 and wizards on L3?).

I don't like active cities too much, since it slows one down quite a bit, and it spoils the game if one loses a hero in a 80% battle against such neutrals due to ill luck. However, I would definitely keep the important middle cities in the inner ring active, but maybe fewer active cities on the outer ring? Well, not sure. I guess the toned-down map version is mostly fine as it is now.

Thanks again!