Beta Map-set Discussion

[zoom]

Please discuss anything relating specifically to map-sets, here. See this thread for discussion of actual maps.

[deleted_user]

I think to start with, about map diversity, I think it's not very well shared, that said, RE map set have %50 of water maps %8 of no tp and %42 of tp maps. while on "ESOC-C Team Maps" set it is %15 no tp %25 sea and %60 tp, actually considering the no-tp maps, only thar dessert and bengal are reasonable to stay to be honest, gran chaco is quite boring map. also we don't have enough water maps after malaysia and stuffs removed, basicly only good maps for water are alaska/baja california/manchuria, so so ones is hudson bay ( quite hard to sea boom on winter spawn ) and bad one is filorida, basicly the tp line prevents you from building set of walls and makes it complicated to defend your base. ah also there is adirondacks/cascade range which are also considered as water maps but it's very much mu dependant and you don't want to sea boom most of the time since no whales.

I think the amount of water maps are not in good situation, should probably add 2-3 more to make it fairly distributed if we care.

[deleted_user]

also we have so many maps with bad hunts and useless bugs like great basin, you can't go tp on this map aswell because 2nd tp is bugged most of the time, and we have so many maps without tp, Tassili is one of the bad map which shouldn't be in any Map-set aswell I think, I would leave bengal-Pampas Sierras on the Map-set since these maps are fine, would probably remove Gran chaco, Thar dessert, I also don't know why some RE maps are not included at all, if we really need non-std Maps we can go for Deccan-Yukon-Yellow River. Overall Map-set should have less No-TP maps imo, adding some water maps could be good aswell, since the amount is like %30 in Map-sets now ( down from %50 )

[Garja]

also we have so many maps with bad hunts and useless bugs like great basin, you can't go tp on this map aswell because 2nd tp is bugged most of the time, and we have so many maps without tp, Tassili is one of the bad map which shouldn't be in any Map-set aswell I think, I would leave bengal-Pampas Sierras on the Map-set since these maps are fine, would probably remove Gran chaco, Thar dessert, I also don't know why some RE maps are not included at all, if we really need non-std Maps we can go for Deccan-Yukon-Yellow River. Overall Map-set should have less No-TP maps imo, adding some water maps could be good aswell, since the amount is like %30 in Map-sets now ( down from %50 )

As much as everyone is entitled to his own opinion regarding map preferences, when it comes to balance discussion you should at least try to include objectives parameters for your arguments. Else it's impossible to either get your point or take you seriously when you try to actually make one.
You say many maps have bad hunts and it seems like Great Basin for you is one of them. Except Great Basin has tons of hunt and rather standard so called "close hunts".
Tassili has slightly below average hunts and still standard "close hunts".
"Pampas Sierras and Bengal are fine", thank you very much but this again isn't anything else than just personal preference. "Would probably remove Gran Chaco", again based on what? As far as I'm aware this map is just like the previous two, maybe even more standard.
Thar Desert should be removed but Yukon and Yellow River should be in. Ok sure.
Less no TP maps but more water maps. Ok feedback received, but again I think that 30% each are in fact a fair share of the map pool.

[deleted_user]

also we have so many maps with bad hunts and useless bugs like great basin, you can't go tp on this map aswell because 2nd tp is bugged most of the time, and we have so many maps without tp, Tassili is one of the bad map which shouldn't be in any Map-set aswell I think, I would leave bengal-Pampas Sierras on the Map-set since these maps are fine, would probably remove Gran chaco, Thar dessert, I also don't know why some RE maps are not included at all, if we really need non-std Maps we can go for Deccan-Yukon-Yellow River. Overall Map-set should have less No-TP maps imo, adding some water maps could be good aswell, since the amount is like %30 in Map-sets now ( down from %50 )

As much as everyone is entitled to his own opinion regarding map preferences, when it comes to balance discussion you should at least try to include objectives parameters for your arguments. Else it's impossible to either get your point or take you seriously when you try to actually make one.
You say many maps have bad hunts and it seems like Great Basin for you is one of them. Except Great Basin has tons of hunt and rather standard so called "close hunts".
Tassili has slightly below average hunts and still standard "close hunts".
"Pampas Sierras and Bengal are fine", thank you very much but this again isn't anything else than just personal preference. "Would probably remove Gran Chaco", again based on what? As far as I'm aware this map is just like the previous two, maybe even more standard.
Thar Desert should be removed but Yukon and Yellow River should be in. Ok sure.
Less no TP maps but more water maps. Ok feedback received, but again I think that 30% each are in fact a fair share of the map pool.

How is that biased? I offer to remove gran-chaco because the map doesn't offer any additional strategy and a lot of no-tp maps are too much, for the record garja, the only no tp map on RE patch is Bayou, only 1 but on EP we have 4 no TP maps, so, my suggestion is only having bengal and pampas but remove the rest no-tp maps from the pool, also if you really think Great basin / Tassili are good maps. I don't think we have something to discuss anyway. About water maps, based on what do you reduce the amount of them from %50 to %30 ? About Yukon/Yellow River, these maps are non std TP maps with better balance than Great basin, not even counting 150 wood + 95 treasures on the map. I am sorry but you are taking it personal when someone talks about your maps.

[Garja]

First of all I didn't use the word biased anywhere (yet). Unless you use the "word" biased in opposition to "objective" I think you're misunderstanding my point.
Gran Chaco doesn't offer additional strategies. Ok I can agree with that. In the end the map was only supposed to be a fairly standard no TP map. For the record RE qs pool also have Painted Desert, Indochina and Hispaniola as no TP maps. Also Silk Road is to some extent.
The amount of water maps is not something decided in advance but rather a parameter which is observed and the adjusted. It has be said that RE map pool has many water maps that are simply too extreme for a balanced game. Borneo, Hispaniola and Indochina are all non standard and borderline non competitive maps. They can be ok with some tweaks (see Alaska which is a fairly standard map everything considered).
With that said I don't see how water is underepresented on the EP, especially in tourneys (where the map pool is selected accordingly to include enough wate maps). Adirondacks, Alaska, Baja California, Florida, Hudson Bay, Malaysia, Manchuria all are fairly common maps. Then you also have Indonesia, Jebel Musa and Wadmalaw that occasionally see play in tourneys.
Yukon is known to be one of the most unbalanced maps ever. Yes EP version fixes most of resource imbalances but still it's not close to the balance of Great Basin honestly. And you talk about treasures but Yukon has the most unbalanced treasure set ever.
Yellow River is pure garbage in terms of resource balance. It also has a very abusable layout which is something I'm not sure we can consider standard at the moment. Even discarding the classic warships in the middle own everything mechanic, the map still has bad choke points which are not up to the standards of EP maps.
And please don't bring the personal argument bs. I could tell the same for you trying to sneak in more water maps just to favor your play style.

[deleted_user]

First of all I didn't use the word biased anywhere (yet). Unless you use the "word" biased in opposition to "objective" I think you're misunderstanding my point.
Gran Chaco doesn't offer additional strategies. Ok I can agree with that. In the end the map was only supposed to be a fairly standard no TP map. For the record RE qs pool also have Painted Desert, Indochina and Hispaniola as no TP maps. Also Silk Road is to some extent.
First of all the amount of water maps is not something decided in advance but rather a parameter which is observed and the adjusted. It has be said that RE map pool has many water maps that are simply too extreme for a balanced game. Borneo, Hispaniola and Indochina are all non standard and borderline non competitive maps. They can be ok with some tweaks (see Alaska which is a fairly standard map everything considered).
With that said I don't see how water is underepresented on the EP, especially in tourneys (where the map pool is selected accordingly to include enough wate maps). Adirondacks, Alaska, Baja California, Florida, Hudson Bay, Malaysia, Manchuria all are fairly common maps. Then you also have Indonesia, Jebel Musa and Wadmalaw that occasionally see play in tourneys.
Yukon is known to be one of the most unbalanced maps ever. Yes EP version fixes most of resource imbalances but still it's not close to the balance of Great Basin honestly. And you talk about treasures but Yukon has the most unbalanced treasure set ever.
Yellow River is pure garbage in terms of resource balance. It also has a very abusable layout which is something I'm not sure we can consider standard at the moment. Even discarding the classic warships in the middle own everything mechanic, the map still has bad choke points which are not up to the standards of EP maps.
And please don't bring the personal argument bs. I could tell the same for you trying to sneak in more water maps just to favor your play style.

1- Yea I forgot about Painted Desert, I'm not counting water maps among "no tp" if we count them aswell, roughly %20 maps are no tp maps currently,

2- The amount of water maps are slightly decreased on the EP map-set aswell as the amount of resources on water, also it's inaccurate conclusion because you basicly count fish map like adirondacks as "water" map while sea boom strats are not viable to implement at them, maybe some sort of semi stuffs. Florida is not a good water map since the tp line denies you from walling and easy to punish it, There is basicly 5 "good" water maps and which is sorta %20 of the map-set while it was %40 on RE ( %50 with only fish maps ). Strong water maps are Alaska/Baja California and good ones are Malaysia/Manchuria,

3- I don't know how great basin is a good map, you can't ATP because 2 tp's are bugged, what sort of strategies would you make on that map?

4- As mentioned before, Yukon/Yellowriver can be added if we really want to add some sort of nonstandard maps and overall these two maps are fine since both can claim the treasures on Yukon and you don't get rekt by hunts either of these maps as much as you do on Great basin

5- I'm not bringing personal bs here, look at what you have wrote, and I'm just stating the fact that the amount of water maps were removed sneakily without even mentioning as you can't deny

[Garja]

We can discard Adirondacks as water map sinceit is not even supposed to be one (and btw the amount of fish will be halved at some point). Florida is a great water map since it has many water resources. I think we saw that in practice, it's hard to argue against that. The TP preventing you from full walling is both unrelevant to the water argument (you don't need to wall like a lowbob to play water properly) and also a good thing for balance.
I don't consider Great Basin a great map, but you can't say it's a bad one. It's just a simple standard map with no major drawbacks nor particular perks. ATP is irrelevant to a being good/bad map? Any strategy but ATP? Also TPs are not bugged, simply you're not supposed to take more than 3.
Yellow River is not anywhere close to be a balanced map. Hunts and mines are awful. The only interesting things about the map (island layout + 2x 3TP lines) have been used respectively in Kamchatka and Tibet. EP standard set anyway doesn't have any RE map so, regardless of the actual maps, it's simply not an option for now.

Again, water maps were not removed sneakily. We just didn't make maps according to any %. We only started making maps, period. Map pool management is something we started to do only later as it makes sense when you start to have 20+ maps. Your obsessions for water maps anyway has no objective base. Even tho the % of EP water maps is lower than on RE it doesn't mean they are too few. Besides, next map will be water map and if it were for me, I would turn herald Island into a special water map.

[deleted_user]

We can discard Adirondacks as water map sinceit is not even supposed to be one (and btw the amount of fish will be halved at some point). Florida is a great water map since it has many water resources. I think we saw that in practice, it's hard to argue against that. The TP preventing you from full walling is both unrelevant to the water argument (you don't need to wall like a lowbob to play water properly) and also a good thing for balance.
I don't consider Great Basin a great map, but you can't say it's a bad one. It's just a simple standard map with no major drawbacks nor particular perks. ATP is irrelevant to a being good/bad map? Any strategy but ATP? Also TPs are not bugged, simply you're not supposed to take more than 3.
Yellow River is not anywhere close to be a balanced map. Hunts and mines are awful. The only interesting things about the map (island layout + 2x 3TP lines) have been used respectively in Kamchatka and Tibet. EP standard set anyway doesn't have any RE map so, regardless of the actual maps, it's simply not an option for now.

Again, water maps were not removed sneakily. We just didn't make maps according to any %. We only started making maps, period. Map pool management is something we started to do only later as it makes sense when you start to have 20+ maps. Your obsessions for water maps anyway has no objective base. Even tho the % of EP water maps is lower than on RE it doesn't mean they are too few. Besides, next map will be water map and if it were for me, I would turn herald Island into a special water map.

Again, I'm not accusing you, you have been in this tiring job, but please don't take it personal, On filorida I can warranty that any kind of water boom is not good at all simply because the tp line passes nearby your tc and you can't build reasonable walls, there is no need to throw hate against walls while it's commonly used in aoe2, just because a group of people hate it in aoe3 won't change the fact that walls are part of the game. I have no obsession with having more water maps, I was the one who hated wadmalaw design and told to Zoi in time, aswell as parralel rivers/tassili and some other maps. About Great basin I'm not gonna repeat the same thing again and again. All I want is for the distribution to be fair, cheers Garja

[Garja]

Man, Kynesie rekt everyone on Florida with Ports. Even if that wasn't the case, the fact that you can't wall completely doesn't make water boom not good let alone not viable.
Walls are known to be problematic in this game. On top of that necessarily relating them to water boom success is a bit dumb, frankly.
Anyway, I just have hard time taking you seriously because even if you may be in good faith you have such distorted perception of some maps that it simply doesn't match the objective parameters (e.g number of hunts).

[Kaiserklein]

Yea tbh you're being very biased in this discussion breeze. Arguing that yukon or yellow river are balanced makes no sense. Nor that you should be able to atp on gran chaco or to wall up more easily on florida, that's just bs.

[deleted_user]

Please don't trim my sentence kaiser, I just offered as an alternate if we need more maps, here is what i said "if we really need non-std Maps we can go for Deccan-Yukon-Yellow River." I don't consider them as std map aswell, my main point is right now there are so many no-TP maps which doesnt make sense at all. About florida, the examples given by Garja shows how biased mindset is hold, because kynesie wins a game doesn't say that the map is fine about water, ah if the ep policy works as "if kynesie wins a game on this map then it's good water map" then i don't know what to say. If you still insist with florida being a good water map, we can play bo5 on the map tonight to show it is not an ideal water map.

[Garja]

Thing is Great Basin is supposed (and it is) to be a fairly standard map. For non standard maps we have Klondike and Tibet for example. In general we do have alternatives, that's also why the policy is to not use RE maps anymore.

[[Armag] diarouga]

Great Basin is not a standard map, it's a low resource map.
Also Florida isn't really a water map, it's too easy to punish.

[deleted_user0]

Wtf... great basin isnt low res. Its just big and the res is more in the middle but it has a lot of food and gold mines

[[Armag] diarouga]

Yea, res is in the middle.

[deleted_user]

@zoom can we do something about this? Map-sets have flaws and should fix the amount of unnecessary no-TP maps, also current Map-set is the reason civs like brits are berforming under.

[[Armag] diarouga]

I think the std map set should be revamped yea. It's quite annoying to get bengal/gran chaco/pampa half of the time when you want to test TP builds.

[Garja]

Great Basin is a standard map. It has all the elements of a standard map. Also hunts are plentiful and close enough to the base. Even in the worst case you get the starting 5 elks+ 12 bighorns + and herdable 6 elks, which is lot of food. Depending on the randomness you might instead get a 3rd hunt of bighorns which makes basically for High Plains amount of food close to the base. The distance of hunts is also very variable and quite random indeed but in no case it is prohibitive. You just have to be proactive with hunting.
All this underlying hunt mechanics are intended and the purpose is to make closer to the original aoe3 spirit of controlling resources. Right now the main resource balance concern is the 2nd mine which unfortunately suffer by the "diamond placement" which I often mentioned and which doesn't really have a solution without big comprimise.

As for Florida it has most of the connotates of what makes a "water map". The fact that you can punish water play has little to do with the specific map and more with the fact that extreme water play aka "no unit" play is simply not a good strategy. The punishable argument applies pretty much to every EP water map.

[Garja]

Can we remove herald island from the standard map set? It's just not competitive atm. There are not enough trees nearby the TCs and on the map in general. Also there are like 4 patches total of animals to shrine and treasures are basically just coin treasures or polar bears, half of which being XP or hero HP.
Also the map is really big atm. It takes forever to go from an angle to the other.

[zoom]

Can we remove herald island from the standard map set? It's just not competitive atm. There are not enough trees nearby the TCs and on the map in general. Also there are like 4 patches total of animals to shrine and treasures are basically just coin treasures or polar bears, half of which being XP or hero HP.
Also the map is really big atm. It takes forever to go from an angle to the other.

Can do. It's been brought to my attention that the map has issues with lighting (that are situationally serious), and the fringe ice passage. I think, unless those are resolved, it shouldn't feature, regardless.

I think it's fairly low on trees, but that it's nothing exceptional (compared to Jebel Musa or Thar Desert, for instance). I think the layout of the map, along with the placement of herds, makes it one of the more problematic maps for Japanese to shrine. Ideally, this were addressed, and some trees closer to spawns were added.