Piranha

[Migi]

Map Details:

Players: 1v1
Size: 128x128
Expansions: 2
Download: here

If I look at Globulation, I see that most maps are either artificial or not fun. This map was fine-tuned to both look good and be fun. The hardest part was to make sure everything was balanced, but I got some help from Pesjek (thank you), and if there's still an advantage, it's a small one.

In this map, you can't swim, so water is a natural obstacle. There's one large bridge and many small paths through the forest. These paths can serve as very good bottlenecks to block off superior forces, if the enemy has no ground attackers. You can pull off some very sneaky back attacks if you raise an army of woodcutters.

There are two expansion points: the first one is high up in the forests, with only two small paths that lead to them, so it's quite easy to defend. The downside is that it's a full 60 squares from each base, it's not very fertile and low on algues. The second expansion point, near the river, is only about 45 squares distance from each player. It's open to attack, but it's fertile and resourceful.

There's one problem though, I prevent the swimming by disabling the pool's GUI element, but the AI doesn't use that and happily builds as many pools as he likes, so you can't play the game offline. Any ideas to stop the AI from building pools?

I really tried as hard as I can to make everything balanced: wheat (precisely equal), fertility, distances to the expansions. Currently the blue side has won about 90% of the games but that's biased as I always host and play red. But if you think anything is still better for one side, please post it here, I'll gladly change it.

All other comments are welcome too, of course. Have fun!

EDIT: Made a 3 player and a 4 player version. Unlike the 2 player version, they are not fine-tuned to be balanced so they shouldn't be used in tournament play.

[Kokolihapihvi]

This is really nice map. As you said, it looks very cool. It is natural that it is still a bit unbalanced due to the nature of the map but I don't think slight unbalanceness really matters. People play strategy games which can be very unbalanced (games with many factions, for example).

I really love the paths! Nice idea!

[Kobuta]

great map!
really loved building at crossroads ^_^
please make more maps with this concept!!!
wanna play it with 3 players!

[fede]

hi,
long time i don't follow glob2 news, i'm happy to see community growing !
I'm curious about your map, but when i press start the game crashes and i get a long error message. I'm running the latest glob2 from repository (default maps work fine).
Your map is intended for stable release? Did you test latest sources? (don't know if this can be somehow my fault)
Thx!

[fede]

this map is damn cool Want to play more there

[Zenfur]

Hey migi, we've just played an enjoyable game on your map ^^. That was a good work making this map. Tip: don't relase map with 2,3,4 players, just with 4. If somebody likes to play 1v1 - 2 places will leave empty ;]

[Zenfur]

About balancing the maps: I think that blue has slightly better wheat conditions because blue swarm is placed in parallel to the wheat, and red's one is placed square. That means that on the beggining red will have better situation to collect 3 wheat, but later blue will have better... Hmm I don't know how to fix it and I'm not sure if it's such significant, it's maybe 1-2 globules I think. About 3 player variant: the one on the shore has the best situation, because he may be the closest to the wheat... Maybe add there sand, and remove some wood? (yeah I know, it was about to be 1v1 map )