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| Thread: Map Balance Issues |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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bobbyohms
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 23, 2006 03:35 AM |
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Map Balance Issues
Now that we can finally play some games, I figured a thread should be started to address this. It arose from a game I played last night. I figure if you find something on the game maps that causes some kind of major imbalance it should be known by all. Since these maps aren't perfect and optimized for tournament play I suggest not posting small issues like Red's wood mine is 2 steps closer than Blue's.
MAP: SUBTERRANEAN TREASURES
Red Player's area has many stat building spots, the stables and some treasures that aren't guarded like the other players are. Suggest when playing this map, Red Player position is not used.
On the good side, Dragon's Pass appears to have been balanced much better than before. Though I haven't played all positions, I do know that the border guard between Green and Blue is now like other areas and the hillfort for Green is now guarded as are the Major artifacts outside the towns.
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Klaital
Known Hero
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posted July 23, 2006 05:36 AM |
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Edited by Klaital at 05:37, 23 Jul 2006.
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Well I am not sure if this is a balance issue, but in the peninsula map the tiers of the guardians seem to change... like in one game a stack of gold and chests was guarded by wardancers, in the next game it was familiars. (and it was even harder difficulty when it was familiars)
Also in the War of the Worlds map, red players starting position seems to be far superior to others, as it is far away from any other players with level 6 guardians between, whereas all of the others seem to be rather packed next to each other.
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Arangar
Famous Hero
Weak ranger - lost viking
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posted July 23, 2006 05:39 AM |
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Hah I tried the dragon pass map with valky in 1.1 and wondered about the unguarded hill fort 
Luckily we couldn't finish, wouldn't want a stain on my record 
(Although he was daym fast that game, who knows what would have happened)
/grin
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Arangar
Norwegian viking
ranger of the north
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vesuvius
Hero of Order
Honor Above all Else
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posted July 23, 2006 08:23 AM |
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good thread, this is an important discussion -- so once enough info is compiled about every map, I can put recommendations on TOH.
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sphere
Supreme Hero
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posted July 23, 2006 03:16 PM |
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Hey,
- One could also visit : Elrath.com for some modified maps and other goddies.
- Guz
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Who is this General Failure, and why is he looking at my disk ?
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Klaital
Known Hero
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posted July 23, 2006 03:37 PM |
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The Land of Outcasts is so bugged it is about unplayable in 1.2 Three of the four subterranean gates are completely unaccessible, the marletto tower and windmill on green players area are unaccessible as is one treasure chest, and the sulfur and crystal mines of green players area can be claimed without having to fight the guards, who only guard the loose piles of sulfur/crystal next to the mine now. Also had the game crash in tactics phase of combat in that map when didn't deploy all units. Finally, the guardian of thet mercenary camp next green players base is middle of the camp (inside the building) so you can't click on it to see the numbers or things like that. There is probably more stuff too in yellow players area, seems the whole underground is messed up.
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Betruger
Known Hero
empowered mind
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posted July 23, 2006 04:21 PM |
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Edited by Betruger at 18:41, 23 Jul 2006.
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Agreed. Land Of Outcasts is way too imbalanced.
The red player has upper half of the map for himself, while sharing lower half with blue player.
Red starts on grass, while blue starts on swamp with no roads, so the blue is moving at 75% speed I think.
Don't really know about the underground green and yellow.
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zilonite
Famous Hero
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posted July 24, 2006 12:32 PM |
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On Land of Outcasts Red indeed has some advantages, but only because of the terrain. Amount of resources is roughly the same.
Just don't flame me once more about this map and noob beating, I have played most of my games here as Blue..  And sad recent experience in ubi servers was that after waiting for some 1,5 hours the only ToH game I could get was on this map...
Really serious balance bug is on the Dragon Pass (although I didn't check it out on 1.2) - Red has an access to Sphinx, which basically means some 15000 exp. for free in day 4-5...
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Klaital
Known Hero
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posted July 24, 2006 12:40 PM |
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I love sphinxes, I wish more maps would have them. I thought though that each player had one.
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Betruger
Known Hero
empowered mind
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posted July 24, 2006 04:23 PM |
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Zilonite you're mistaken, you should check it before posting.
In 1.2 the map Dragon Pass was thoroughly rebalanced.
There is no sphinx anymore!
Also other things were changed, as Bobby mentioned.
Generally the map is one of the most balanced and fun to play imo.
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jrholdt
Hired Hero
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posted July 27, 2006 05:07 AM |
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just tryed a game on war of the worlds map and this was the worste unbalenced map i ever played. i played as purple player and was stuck in one little area with only way out being 30 deep hydras. karim was able to get to 3 other towns and build shipyard i guess. any way i would recomend do not try this map.
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bobbyohms
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 30, 2006 05:56 PM |
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Deleb
This isn't so much of a map balance issue as it is a warning about a hero under certain conditions. Deleb starts the game with a balista that shoots the fireball spell... WITHOUT using any mana at all. Now this might be seen as sort of like having a spell caster but it's not. First of all, spell casters such as druids have a limited ammount of casting ability where the balista just fires away with no limit. The other thing is Deleb gets this day 1. Other factions don't get casters for several days.
Anyway like or don't like this hero I ran across a tactic the other day everyone should know about. It is using this hero while playing on heroic. Basically that means the player with Deleb can still play normally since battles are much easier, while the other player is basically crippled to an extent and has trouble getting going for a while. I in fact couldn't build twice first week due to lack of wood while my opponent was tearing it up.
The one other thing to note is that this hero isn't like the level 4s from H3. She's worse since at least with those H3 heroes they had to use up mana.
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sphere
Supreme Hero
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posted July 30, 2006 09:17 PM |
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Hey,
- Well I was online looking for a game. Someone asked me to join his "find the Tear of Asha " or something like that game/map ..
 taken out of contxt :
- Me : is this a ToH game ?
- X : No I dont want to "steal" your precious ToH points, I already know in which area to look ( alot of grinnin from his/her part here )
- Me : Hmmmm
- Thats where I left and looked at some other map setups.. same map and some even had alot of that UBI rank points....
- So my question is this.. MP maps with a "nearly" fixed "Tear...." thingy aint that just as bad as beeing "Land of the outcasted - day 5+ ? "
- Just a though 
- Guz
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Who is this General Failure, and why is he looking at my disk ?
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bobbyohms
Adventuring Hero
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posted July 30, 2006 10:24 PM |
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Quote:
Hey,
- Well I was online looking for a game. Someone asked me to join his "find the Tear of Asha " or something like that game/map ..
taken out of contxt :
- Me : is this a ToH game ?
- X : No I dont want to "steal" your precious ToH points, I already know in which area to look ( alot of grinnin from his/her part here )
- Me : Hmmmm
- Thats where I left and looked at some other map setups.. same map and some even had alot of that UBI rank points....
- So my question is this.. MP maps with a "nearly" fixed "Tear...." thingy aint that just as bad as beeing "Land of the outcasted - day 5+ ? "
- Just a though
- Guz
Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know, winning by any means other than actually defeating your opponent in battle or they surrender for whatever reason isn't allowed to be claimed for wins anyway. The only reason we are using maps with possible wining conditions other than "defeat all" is due to the fact they are all we have to play on.
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vesuvius
Hero of Order
Honor Above all Else
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posted July 31, 2006 03:52 AM |
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Well I do know there is a lot of non-ToH players 'raping' the system and trying to get higher UBI point rankings, by using tricks like that.
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Betruger
Known Hero
empowered mind
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posted July 31, 2006 06:45 AM |
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Edited by Betruger at 06:55, 31 Jul 2006.
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Difficulty level
Quote:
This isn't so much of a map balance issue as it is a warning about a hero under certain conditions. Deleb starts the game with a balista that shoots the fireball spell... WITHOUT using any mana at all. Now this might be seen as sort of like having a spell caster but it's not. First of all, spell casters such as druids have a limited ammount of casting ability where the balista just fires away with no limit. The other thing is Deleb gets this day 1. Other factions don't get casters for several days.
Anyway like or don't like this hero I ran across a tactic the other day everyone should know about. It is using this hero while playing on heroic. Basically that means the player with Deleb can still play normally since battles are much easier, while the other player is basically crippled to an extent and has trouble getting going for a while. I in fact couldn't build twice first week due to lack of wood while my opponent was tearing it up.
The one other thing to note is that this hero isn't like the level 4s from H3. She's worse since at least with those H3 heroes they had to use up mana.
I agree that Deleb seems way too powerful on open, or semi-open small maps, where she can just rush through the map towards the opponent, killing loads of creatures along the way, and getting new fresh troops chained from hometown. To me, it seems like a mistake or bug, that this ballista imbued with fireball doesn't drain deleb's mana.
But anyway... as you mentioned, the biggest advantage she gets is on heroic level.
The point is, I think the whole heroic level of difficulty is very unbalanced and unfair to some towns, just as normal difficulty is.
On normal the recipe for win is easy, pick Haven and train 100+ marksmen on day 4.
On heroic it's also easy: pick Deleb or Vladimir and either smash everything with ballista or raise zounds of skelleton archers, because as we know, on heroic there is substantial increase in creeps numbers, and therefore the skelletons raised are also more numerous.
Other towns stand no chance on heroic against those 2, because they simply will lack resources and gold to build troops and get things going in week 1, while neither deleb nor necromancer needs to build any troops to effectively conquer the map.
In my game on subterrean treasures for instance, i got deleb, and was able to conquer 1/2 of the map with just warmachines and my starting units (from deleb and from second inferno hero). This includes killing a pack of pitlords with just demons. Simply crazy.
Therefore I think the most sensible difficulty level is Hard.
Towns start with enough resources and cash to get things going in the first week, the creatures on map are not numerous enough to give necro a substantial advantage, while starting cash is low enough to make training non-profitable for haven in the first week (at least in most cases).
Hard diff seems also the most fun to play. Normal is way to easy in terms of creeps' strenght. Also, on normal you get so much initial resources and cash that building your town is not a challenge, becuase you can simply build everything day by day.
Because of all that I strongly recommend playing on Hard diff to all of you. It is more fun, and more fair that way.
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vesuvius
Hero of Order
Honor Above all Else
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posted July 31, 2006 06:56 PM |
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Indeed, hard difficulty is the best to play with on multi.
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jrholdt
Hired Hero
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posted August 01, 2006 06:39 AM |
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Edited by jrholdt at 07:05, 01 Aug 2006.
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accually i prefer normal difficulty over hard do to the cost to build up some of the towns. dungeon and silvan require really large amounts of gold and resources. i find on hard difficulty they struggle keeping up with some of the other towns do to not enough resources. also right now most maps don't allow us to get 2 ore and 2 wood mines early or even 2 towns. on hard difficulty with our current map choices you will often never even get your lvl 7's.
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Betruger
Known Hero
empowered mind
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posted August 01, 2006 02:49 PM |
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Edited by Betruger at 15:27, 01 Aug 2006.
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Nonsense, it's perfectly possible to get shadow dragons with dungeon on a standard map, hard diff, with just 1 sawmill and 1 oremine, by the end of week 3.
Like on dragons pass.
Of course, you would have to not build the witches, and probably minotaurs are out too (at least for now, because of prerequisite blacksmith, a lot of wood and ore in total).
But this is what makes things interesting. You can't just build everything. You have to choose.
Would I benefin from early dragons more, or would it be better to build witches + minotaurs instead? It makes things interesting.
The same goes for other towns, the only exception being Academy, which is unbalanced and sux anyway, even on normal.
For example:
Sylvan - their dragons building costs only 10k gold. So it's actually the cheapest level 7 creatue to get. In order to have enough resources though, it'd be wise to postpone the building of unicorns.
I think it's more interesting that way.
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jrholdt
Hired Hero
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posted August 01, 2006 06:02 PM |
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Quote:
Nonsense, it's perfectly possible to get shadow dragons with dungeon on a standard map, hard diff, with just 1 sawmill and 1 oremine, by the end of week 3.
Like on dragons pass.
Of course, you would have to not build the witches, and probably minotaurs are out too (at least for now, because of prerequisite blacksmith, a lot of wood and ore in total).
But this is what makes things interesting. You can't just build everything. You have to choose.
Would I benefin from early dragons more, or would it be better to build witches + minotaurs instead? It makes things interesting.
The same goes for other towns, the only exception being Academy, which is unbalanced and sux anyway, even on normal.
For example:
Sylvan - their dragons building costs only 10k gold. So it's actually the cheapest level 7 creatue to get. In order to have enough resources though, it'd be wise to postpone the building of unicorns.
I think it's more interesting that way.
even on normal difficulty with dungeon after taking a utopia i couldn't aford all creatures maybe i hire to many heroes lol. and i had only blood building upgraded was a week behind on hiring all creatures.
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