Colourful Snowflake [1.0] is submitted for review.

[Experix]

New map: Colourful Snowflake [1.0] by Experix.
Map editor link: Colourful Snowflake [1.0]

[KGB]

Experix,

The gold site on the island in the East is set to random. All the others are set to 50 gold.

Also the central bless sites can all be accessed by flying units without fighting those Giants. Was that by design? I've played this map twice and used it to bless Crows / Eagles but otherwise find that middle area to be useless because no one ever rebuilds those razed cities because the game is over by then. Now that you've set most of the ruins to not respawn there will be even less money in the game to rebuild.

Why did you change the Dragons for Elephants? The Elephant does nothing for the city defense. If you wanted to make it slightly easier just change to a Pegasi instead of a Dragon.

KGB

[Experix]

I didn't change any ruin to not respawn. It changed itself while converting to 0.9. I checked it also on another map - the ruins are set to not respawn as well. Wouldn't it be possible to correct this globaly? It would be annoying to remove all defenders from every ruin, change it to respawn and place them back...

I am aware that blessing sites are accesible by fliers. Do you see it as a flaw?

In 3:3 game with only normal production on main islands, the small island cities turned out to be very hard to conquer. Only a few of them were taken before the game was decided. I was afraid even peagasi might be too hard, so I just replaced dragon with elephant (chose 3-turner only because you get slightly more experience for killing it).

I would like to see more use of razed cities. When I was creating the map, I was thinking that a motivation of access to fliers/swimmers might be sufficient. Now I see it isn't. And that there is not too much gold in the game. So I tried to increase gold a little (ruin, income site, higher income of some cities). I think it won't help much, but I see it as the first step and the easiest thing to change.

[KGB]

Experix,

That sucks about the ruins being auto-set to not respawn. Respawn should be the default. I would post in the Map Making forum and ask SnotlinG for the feature to globally set all ruins on a map to respawn.

I don't see bless sites accessible by fliers as a flaw. I only mentioned it because you obviously blocked land units from walking there so I thought maybe you meant for those Giants to be conquered before you blessed. Right now no one would ever make that long slow walk over the snow to bless since even with a Yeti it would be 4 turns to get there and back and no bless is worth 4 turns of time. So the Towers/Giants seem a waste of time because they do nothing.

I conquer all the island cities with Orc/Wolfrider/Assassin stacks. It's surprisingly easy with a L2 Assassin a couple of Wolfriders and 5 Orcs (or 5 Elves for the Dragon). But it would be much harder to conquer using other heroes or non-ambush stacks. I think a Pegasi wouldn't be that hard to conquer compared to a Dragon since it means 5 less bonus, 15 less strength and gets eaten alive by Elves.

If you want more use of razed cities why not put 1 razed city on each main island. That way players can eventually choose to rebuild it if they want extra production. Make it a low income city so the rebuild cost isn't too high. The high income on the sites / cities is good as that lets you generate 300+ gold a turn fairly early which is enough for production/heroes/rebuilding and the 500 gold in the L1 ruins means even more early money so I think there will be plenty of gold for those willing to conquer sites. Incidentally I'd like to see the gold sites that are on an island by themselves have a large view radius than 3. I'd like 5 to help see what's moving in the waters so that owning that plus the lookout tower would be a big advantage.

KGB

[SnotlinG]

Hello,
Was this a ver 0.8 map with respawnable ruins?
And after load into 0.9 it lost respawnable checkbox?

Ill look into it...

[Experix]

SnotlinG,
I looked at some ruins which were all respawnable in 0.8. All of them have the checkbox for respawn unchecked now in 0.9.
New ruins I added in 0.9 have the box checked by default.

[SnotlinG]

Hello,
Bug found and fixed I think.
Please hit F5 in the mapeditor and then load your map again. If the ruins look OK you need to save it again and then submit it again... Let me know how it goes

[Experix]

Thanks, SnotlinG, the ruins seems to be O.K. now.

[Experix]

KGB,

In game I played I was busy fighting other players before I could even form stack of similar strength as you suggest. I formed one now just to test it. Attacked Minotaur+Dragon. The battle turned out to be 80% for me. I wouldn't call that surprisingly easy. Even if you won, you would be quite likely to end with assassin, may be one or two orcs and would have be an easy target for attack of some opponent. I remember I once did not get over 90% even with the L3 assassin + 7 units.

I don't want to add razed cities on main islands. I'd like make the centre working. I don't know whether it is somehow possible with the razed cities, but I want to try it. Giants were there because I really thought central razed cities would be used. The idea behind their 80 gold income was that it is more advantageous to rebuild and hold such city in the long-term view. I need to play more games on the map with human players, but now I have to wait until it would be possible

[KGB]

Experix,

The game I played was a 1v1 with 4 AI's taking the other spots. On a map with 4 or 6 human players it will be obviously different since the AI never tries for those island cities but it's nice if maps are playable for anything from 2 to 6 players. In team games (3v3 or 2v2 or 2v2v2) I would think those island cities would be conquered a lot.

I think my stack was something like 86% using Elves. Not guaranteed obviously but when I am well over 80% I consider it easy especially when there are large numbers of units involved. The reward is huge because its 1 full level for the hero and high gold income city and good production. With just an Elephant + what ever unit is there I worry that those cities will just become Barbarian fodder for a L3 Barbarian with his 58 strength and Water Walk skill which you can reach by the time you conquer your initial island.

If you want to make those central razed cities playable then put ports right next to them. So that players can sail right to the razed city and rebuild. Right now it takes so long (2+ turns) to walk there over snow that it's not worth the time. Also 80 income is nice but the higher the income, the more the rebuild cost: base 500+5*income so it will cost 900 gold to rebuild which is a LOT of gold. If the income was only 20 it would only cost 580 and would be much easier to rebuild. If you want to remain at 80 income you should consider putting a Trigger in every razed city with a 400 gold reward for rebuilding the city to cover that 5*income cost.

KGB