smursh wrote:I haven't played the new stratego yet so I don't know how quick it is. However in general I find that tightly packed cities play faster that cities that are spead out. If you have played the Jimmy H map you see this also. So it's not just the number of cities that affect the game length.
This is exactly why average game time is used, and it's the perfect measurement. In Stratego, one basically rushes across the map with the strongest stack in Open he can muster, simultaneously threatens the opponents' entire city structure (you can reach 5+ cities from one spot, making defense impossible) and collects a quick win. So maps where quick, abusive strategies dominate then generate low average turn lengths and don't count for much as victories. I'm not a huge fan of stalemates either (the polar opposite), but at least with this K-value system the maps are all fairly treated based on actual play, and not simply some value based on theory such as map size. It's really a good system and a huge step up from the original.
The real difficulties arise when a map has not been completed enough times to generate a factual K value (leaving maps to be valued by size) or when there are map creator errors (such as my originally unbalanced Burning Ice map).