Illuria balanced [1.0] is submitted for review.

[piranha]

New map: Illuria balanced [1.0] by piranha.
Map editor link: Illuria balanced [1.0]

[piranha]

I decided to update ezras version of Illuria a bit to make it more balanced version of Illuria since it's a quite popular map. It's sharable for anyone who wants to take it further.

Whats done:
White starting point is improved with 2 new cities and a bridge to the right island. It's not as exposed to green starting position either.
Yellow moved out to the side to no start as close to green giving a bit more turns before they meet.
The mountain between orange and teal is going all the way up to the city which has wall 10 to make both positions less exposed to rushing.
New access by water to several cities.
Resource buildings and a few water ruins.

[Chazar]

The random starting positions might still be a bit of a problem: Consider 1vs1 with the two players starting in dark blue and orange spots. The orange player has dark blue immediately cornered, which seemed a bit unfair in a recent test.

Especially since the map is used in the super tournament, having special starting cities for 1vs1 would be useful.

I think orange, teal and green should be prohibited in the 1vs1 setup?!

[KGB]

Yeah random start spots on maps like this makes them unplayable.

How about multiple 1v1 setups and let players pick which one they want:

1) Blue/Black/Red/Yellow all valid (so randomly selects 2 of these 4)
2) Green/(Orange/Cyan) (Orange/Cyan are both set to player 1 so not possible to get Orange vs Cyan)
3) White/Blue
4) ...

Also an interesting 2v2v2v2 setup would be:
1) Black/Red vs Yellow/Blue vs Orange/Cyan vs White/Green (the inner pair of team mates start close by to support each other since they are not in a corner and the outer pair of team mates start far apart.

KGB

P.S. It appears that when you were adjusting this you lost many of the original city names from Warlords 1. Any chance you might go back and fill in the correct names? Also many cities have set production and others are just set random. Is this an artifact of some being from the original map with set production and the rest being random when you moved stuff around?

[Chazar]

So will the map be updated before the first 1vs1 SuperTournament games take place on it?


Furthermore, why are all L3 Ruins in the South and SouthEast of the map?

[KGB]

There is 1 L3 ruin in the north on the river to the right of the Blue start spot. There are only 2 in the south and one is fairly out of the way and unlikely to be visited so this seems reasonable.

The bigger issue I see is with the Temples. 3 strength temples, 1 is for private use of Yellow and another is so close by it probably is used by Yellow and Green only. Meanwhile several other sides have no access to strength temples. I like the Move temples and the UL ones aren't game breaking so they don't matter as much. But the strength ones need to be changed.

In the original War 1 map, the private strength temple for Yellow was actually a UL temple (gave a special sage). It probably should go back to that. Then if the move temple just north of the Cyan start spot was moved to the other side of the river (across the bridge, a couple squares south near that city) and changed to Strength then you'd still have 3 strength temples and all sides had reasonable access to at least 1 of them.

KGB

P.S. I still believe the White start spot is hopeless. It should be moved to Lynvar (city in the mountain just north of White capitol). Fill in that mountain gap entirely and extend it slightly N/S (maybe add a line of lava in the middle) to prevent quick strikes between White/Yellow capitols. Then at least White can compete for the middle cities with Green, still have access to all the S/E corner as it does now and be able to move north to the E/W river to battle Red.

[Moonknight]

I agree about the White starting spot being helpless still.