(6) Warlords

[Captain Griffen]

That's partially deliberate. Once it's down to one barb, he needs all the help he can get.

[Whitehorn]

Finally got to play this with you.

It's a fun map, and pretty quick, but suffers some problems.

cons:

Temporary alliances/wars are horrible. Every risk game and similar suffers from brain-rot retards who will all ally at a whim and then stab you in the back. Working to overcome the barbarians (as is objective for warlords) only to have to fight your ally afterwards is silly. Diplomacy is always a farce and I think supporting such a loose system in your map is a flaw. All it takes is two friends in a game to break the balance for everyone else.

pros:

It's good that you accomodated for leavers.

[Captain Griffen]

Thanks for the feedback.

Originally Posted by Whitehorn

Temporary alliances/wars are horrible. Every risk game and similar suffers from brain-rot retards who will all ally at a whim and then stab you in the back. Working to overcome the barbarians (as is objective for warlords) only to have to fight your ally afterwards is silly.

Deciding when to fight and when to ally is key. It works here I think because there are three warlords or less. Any more and it simply becomes too unweildy to forge an alliance or to fight properly.

You don't have to fight your ally afterwards. During and before are also acceptable methods. Just be careful it doesn't drag on, or you may find yourself in a bit of trouble with the barbs. The Imperials help to balance that, as for short periods they can quite easily handle the barbarians on their own.

Diplomacy is always a farce and I think supporting such a loose system in your map is a flaw. All it takes is two friends in a game to break the balance for everyone else.

That is the main problem with it, but even when players cannot officially ally, two friends can (and often will) do the same thing. No way around it really.

The map is static and after one game there are no new surprises regarding content. I always enjoyed exploring this kind of map, but its small size and few nodes makes it old pretty quick.

I don't see that as a problem.

Unit limit seems a bit low for such an open map. You can't defend, view allies and hope to build a useful attacking force at the same time. I actually had an ally steal one of my points because he 'got no monay'. He didn't realise his huge army sat at home had an upkeep. Perhaps each turn could throw up a text summary for such idiots. Would be nice if you can't steal allied nodes too.

If someone is taking your node and you don't want them to, declare war on them.

And yes, the unit softcap is fairly low until you get a considerable number of control points. With respect to viewing allies, you can see all nodes as warlords at all times anyway.

Upkeep and corruption encourage people to attack and speeds up the game. Makes aggressive play much more viable.

The constructable siege weapons don't seem to fit in with the fast-paced combat. Armies are built and killed faster than a siege weapon can be made. Its incredibly slow moving, attacking and gets targeted fast.

I'm not personally happy with the current state of siege weapons. I'm considering how to address that.

[Rising_Dusk]

I wanted to bump this because I tried the map and was really quite impressed.
Generally I do not enjoy these kinds of maps because they're usually all the same with masses of units that spawn and you just throw haphazardly at enemies and hope you win.

But quite frankly, I think this map is far more focused and directed than the other ones like it.
Different roles such as the barbarians, imperial guard, and the warlords really adds a different feel to the map each time you play.
As a whole, I think the map belongs in the map database, it's good and it's different enough from the rest.

Notably though, I do have some suggestions for improvements:

• Barbarians need more diversified units, sometimes it's just painful having to use the same things over and over again.
• Consider giving the warlock model barbarians an autocast method to use their invulnerability skill. Part of what makes this map fun is the macro-intensity, I don't want to have to micro 36 of them to cast it at any given time.
• Warlord units could use some diversification too, there are too many "generic" melee unit types, for example. Consider making their roles more apparent.
• The silly cauldron spell on the Orc heroes was really useless, it didn't do much in terms of helping at any level. I suggest replacing it with some form of point blank area nuke of some sort.
• The ultimate skill on the Blue-player hero was useless when it revived only 1 unit and it wasn't even a food-costing unit. It should ressurect more units considering you have so many units on the field at once.
• Consider increasing siege weapon life and armor. I shredded ballistae in one/two casts of the long-range entangle the barbarian heroes have.
• On the note of siege, why not make them have like 1000 life and low fort armor, but make them move slow/not move and attack very slow. (The last two they already do, but they could use the former few).
• Consider making the silly "Barbarians are getting stronger!" message stop after awhile. Once I hit 80 income, I got either 1 or 0 bonus income from the upgrades, which really did nothing to make me stronger at all.
• I suggest adding more spellcasters. One for the barbarians and the assorted priest model in the battles really don't add a lot to the map alone.
• Consider making certain heroes better with certain unit types. I know this might be unnecessary, but elves could be good with ranged and red could be good with cavalry but blue with infantry. It would diversify player roles at the very least.

I think that's about all I can think of now.
Keep up the good work, I really enjoyed the map. <3

[Captain Griffen]

Originally Posted by Rising_Dusk

I wanted to bump this because I tried the map and was really quite impressed.
Generally I do not enjoy these kinds of maps because they're usually all the same with masses of units that spawn and you just throw haphazardly at enemies and hope you win.

But quite frankly, I think this map is far more focused and directed than the other ones like it.
Different roles such as the barbarians, imperial guard, and the warlords really adds a different feel to the map each time you play.
As a whole, I think the map belongs in the map database, it's good and it's different enough from the rest.

Glad you liked it.

Barbarians need more diversified units, sometimes it's just painful having to use the same things over and over again.

Perhaps. But I'm trying to keep each unit type, especially for the barbs and imperials, focused. I think I might add some cavalry for them.

Consider giving the warlock model barbarians an autocast method to use their invulnerability skill. Part of what makes this map fun is the macro-intensity, I don't want to have to micro 36 of them to cast it at any given time.

Hmm...not sure. It's not really a micro issue for me, and I hate micro. Then again, I love organisation, so I just have

Warlord units could use some diversification too, there are too many "generic" melee unit types, for example. Consider making their roles more apparent.

Most of them have the roles of 'dying and hitting stuff', and mainly vary in quality to initial cost to upkeep cost ratio, and then infantry, cavalry or archer (for the cost, archers are worse, and for the upkeep, cavalry are worse, but they have their advantages).

The silly cauldron spell on the Orc heroes was really useless, it didn't do much in terms of helping at any level. I suggest replacing it with some form of point blank area nuke of some sort.

I find it quite useful in combat on the field myself. Can have a considerable impact upon the whole enemy army.

The ultimate skill on the Blue-player hero was useless when it revived only 1 unit and it wasn't even a food-costing unit. It should ressurect more units considering you have so many units on the field at once.

Good point.I'm not really sure this should be an ultimate (note the low cost and cooldown). I might change it to not being an ultimate, and make Energy Blade the ultimate.

Consider increasing siege weapon life and armor. I shredded ballistae in one/two casts of the long-range entangle the barbarian heroes have.
On the note of siege, why not make them have like 1000 life and low fort armor, but make them move slow/not move and attack very slow. (The last two they already do, but they could use the former few).

I am still undecided on what role siege weapons should play. Until there, I cannot decide on this, but siege weapons definately need work.

Consider making the silly "Barbarians are getting stronger!" message stop after awhile. Once I hit 80 income, I got either 1 or 0 bonus income from the upgrades, which really did nothing to make me stronger at all.

I agree; it's a bit of a hangover from their rather excessive growth.

I suggest adding more spellcasters. One for the barbarians and the assorted priest model in the battles really don't add a lot to the map alone.

I think that may overcomplicate the map.

So wait for version 2, which will add more caster, epic spells, and stuff that generally fits into the 'ownage' catagory.

Consider making certain heroes better with certain unit types. I know this might be unnecessary, but elves could be good with ranged and red could be good with cavalry but blue with infantry. It would diversify player roles at the very least.

I don't particularly want to diversify player roles much. However, their heroes and their starting positions already have a big impact on how they play.

I think that's about all I can think of now.
Keep up the good work, I really enjoyed the map. <3

Thank you, and thank you very much for your comments, well thought out and explained comments are incredibly useful.

[Captain Griffen]

New version. I think I'm right in saying this is the first proper map ever released (or made) for WC3 that has multiplayer replay detection (now it's easier to analyse stuff in replays).

EDIT: Due to various reasons, it's been taken down. I tend to go in spurts of unstable versions before reaching a stable one.

[Captain Griffen]

Updated again. Observer mode with economic data (same as in replays). Should be a stable release.

[UnMi]

The gameplay is interesting and innovative indeed...but one of the striking problems in having massive units is the inability to actually control them all.
Adding a certain "all units command" such as "Order all units to attack (Gather) point" will bring this map closer to perfection.

[Captain Griffen]

Hmm...I'll add it to the GUI command 'hero' (coming...sometime...). Basically, an extra hero with commands like that, as well as allying commands and commands for controlling the imperials (should they drop), etc., grouped via spellbooks.

[Captain Griffen]

RAWR! Calling all admins, calling all admins. Please respond.

Huston, we have a problem. No admins exist.

[rulerofiron99]

Good map. Stop double and triple posting, or is this your way of getting an admin here for final approval? Is I was an admin this map would be in the map DB already.

[Captain Griffen]

Thanks, glad you liked it.

Double and triple posting is fine with updates.

It's also acceptable after a month of no activity while waiting for the final admin approval. *growls* Lazy admins.

Anyway, it should be getting tested soon (ambushed blu on MSN).

[blu_da_noob]

Add your GUI and make the allying information impossible to miss. And make the control points easier to see. Then we'll talk again :)

[Captain Griffen]

Updated it with a new version, Delta Test 2 (sometime after Beta testing, but sometime just before full v1.0). Yes, I know the numbering system is a bit odd...

Anyway, this has fixed the issues blu brought up, so...