I think I've played enough (and commanded enough) to provide some feedback. Hopefully it will be seen as "constructive criticism"... Slaughtered -- I'm not a big fan of Slaughtered because it tends to come down to two chokepoints, or often, just one -- the narrow pass in the east. Infantry tend to be useless because there's no natural cover in that pass and large explosives like nukes means it's not even worth trying to hide behind walls -- a blast on the hillside will kill any soldier. Once the artillery comes out it's basically just a lob festival because it's so hard to push through the narrow chokepoints to attack the artillery with anything other than more artillery. Lessons learned -- don't make the chokepoints so narrow and don't make them totally devoid of cover for infantry. Canyon -- This is one of my favorite maps. It has two chokepoints but the way the game goes, usually the major fighting is done in the open, with the chokepoints having been claimed early on, NF in the west and BE in the east. Infantry have enough cover to stay valid. Lessons learned -- narrow chokepoints are fine when placed near a starting base as it gives them a direction of relative safety to attack from. Crossroads -- This one I love and hate. If both teams are about equal, then you can have a long, interesting infantry battle in the middle. However, if one team claims the middle, the game is usually over, because they now have a significant resource advantage. Lessons learned -- Channeling the combat into a small but intricate space with lots of hidey-holes can be very interesting, but if you only have one such place on your map it can make the map feel overly linear and dull to play over and over. Duststorm The problem I have with Duststorm has to do with the middle. A smart commander will insist on capturing the middle and a smart team of grenadiers can virtually guarantee victory from that position. Once you have the middle, it's very hard to stop you from having soldiers on the ridge take out enemy defenses as well as most of the enemy base and 2 of their 3 backline refineries. If the middle hills were turned into unclimbable cliffs, I think I'd love this map. The Ruins seem like an obvious asset -- 2 refineries located within fairly protective walls, but the ruins are their own enemy: it's easier to attack *into* them than it is to attack *out of* them. Lessons learned -- hilltops that overlook significant areas of the map are very powerful...probably too powerful to keep the map fun if the team that gains them knows how to use them. Resources located in difficult terrain can be fun and fair, though, since owning them gives you nice income but doesn't really give you a good base to attack from, which I think is a good compromise. Isle This map is Duststorm x4. It seems like an interesting layout with the hills overlooking the middle, but the fact is that whoever controls the western ridges is in a prime position to win the game. There's really no reason anyone should ever be able to control the middle, because a couple of enterprising players can rain rockets down from any of the ridges to keep the enemy out of the middle. The west ridge is important since it ultimately leads to the enemy base while the eastern ridges are dead ends but still basically indefensible because you can still hit it from the ground or from another ridge. I also think this map favors BE, since their barracks on a hill with walls around it is very hard to destroy from the ground while an NF barracks on a hill, walls or no, is still easily hit due to its height. Lessons learned -- Same as duststorm. Scenic overlooks provide a lot of power (due to the (nearly?) unlimited range of weapons) and this map has so many scenic overlooks that it renders most of the flatlands unusable. There's no reason why any structure placed in the middle should live for more than a couple of minutes unless you've pushed the enemy off of literally the entire ridgeline all around the map, in which case the game is almost over anyway. Money (edited for a real review) I understand that the intent of this map is to give you lots of money. Fine. However, the layout of the map just means that the battles you have aren't going to be very interesting. There's little room to maneuver so most tank fights are straight up slugfests (which isn't going to teach anyone very much) until artillery shows up. I'm not sure what could be done to make this map more interesting... perhaps if the middle platform was as big as the edges, giving a much larger area to fight over with more room to maneuver, plus more room for a forward base, that could be interesting. As it is, it just strikes me as a map with 1 strategy and no room for tactics. Lessons learned -- if you want to create a boring tank festival stalemate where the commander's main role is to research artillery, this is a good way to do it. Streets of Fire I like this map except for one problem: the tall buildings make it a pain to manipulate the commander camera. You could probably make this same map with shorter buildings, have it play exactly the same as before and be friendlier to the commander's camera. That said, there's plenty of resource spots to fight over, some of which are difficult or impossible to hit from a tank on the road, and there's no magical place to put a forward base that will make your life easier, as all forward bases are kind of like the ruins in Duststorm -- you win some resources, but the base turns out to be easier to attack than it is to attack *from*. Lessons learned -- narrow paths are fine as long as you have a lot of them and you've added some alternate narrow hallways for infantry to scoot through. Cyclopean I like this map. It has a lot of the good points of other maps and few of the bad. Like Duststorm, it has its "ruins" in the city that seems like a good spot to take and does give you some reasonably defensible resources, but it's not a great place to attack from. The northwest is similar -- good resources in difficult terrain. You'll want to put a base there but you don't get any serious advantages from it like you would with a hill top base in Isle. The middle resources in this map are therefore usable while the ones in Isle are not. There's no good spot where you can just stand and take them all out with a grenadier and an ammo box. My only complaint about this map is similar to Streets of Fire in the city: tall buildings are annoying for commanders and from a foot soldier perspective, I really hate ladders. I also personally like that the initial bases start with some basic defenses. There are some cheesy "rush" strategies you can use in Empires and I'm fond of maps that take simple measures to discourage them. Lessons learned -- look at this map and do more stuff like it. MValley This map is pretty good. With the dam being a x2 resource spot, both teams tend to be even so long as one has the dam and the other has the north. The advantage of the north is that you can put a forward base up there. The advantage of the dam is that it's close enough to your main base that you don't need to spend much separate effort to defend it. However, I don't like taking the dam because I think it's boring and painful to defend it. If someone attacks the north base, your players can deal with it during the course of normal activity. If someone attacks the dam, you have to get people to go out of their way to defend it. Lessons learned -- Implementing sneaky options (like under-the-bridge APCs having a narrow footpath up to the main base area) can be fun, but having to choose between "defensible forward base" and "defensible but boring location with no room for a forward base" just seems like a bad idea. I think those are all of the command maps I've played. Non-command maps I don't care to discuss because I hate them all and hope whoever made them gets hit by a half-brick for daring to try and corrupt this glorious mod with their Counterstrike nonsense. Overall lessons learned: * If you insist on having narrow chokepoints in the middle of the map, have several of them so that you don't end up in a clusterfuck/stalemate. * Remember infantry exist in this game and would like a place to hide from or bypass the big tanks that will squish them or nuke them in narrow passes. * Scenic overlooks should be used sparingly, as whoever controls the overlook is going to dominate anything within line of sight. * Placing resources and enough room for a forward base in an area with no view makes for a nice compromise: you get the resources and a base but you don't get a terrain advantage. * It might be interesting to create small overlooks with no resources for the opposite situation: you get no base and no resources, but it's a great place for grenadiers to stand and attack the enemy base from. * When placing a cliff area that you intend to be unaccessible, bear in mind engineer walls or 9-mine tricks that might allow people to get up there.
Money was made as a noob training map/stress test map. I agree with pretty much all points, even on Slaughtered, which is my favorite map. In general, the maps are pretty bland cover-wise, no rocks/bushes/trees/grass, its all just cliffs and roads.
Although of the non-comm maps, Urbanchaos is the one I hate the least. APCs keep things moving (unlike District402) and there's more room to maneuver so that the map doesn't become all about grenade spam (also unlike District402). But I still hate it because it's what I hereby dub a "Counterstrike map".
looks good. I'd say lesson learned from Streets of fire is that city maps are REALLY tough to make, and that unless you have lots of places that building can be built, it's gunna get fairly dull and repetative. Open maps are more fun than shut off ones which play the same each match but maps need focus; players need lots of things stopping them from moving; rivers, hills, or it gets too open and boring. Mvalley is PERFECT for this.
I'll do one one for Urban Chaos: It seems like a basic map, not very much combat in the main areas, and a lot more where it's not expected. The main area(ie. the middle area between the second point for both BE and NF) does have action, but it's the same every time, you go here, you shoot their vehicles, and defend. It's the same for both teams. The unexpected area(the tunnels underground) are where most of the action takes place, it keeps getting taken over and lost by both teams, mainly because you can't fit an APC in it, and can only get one near the ends of the tunnels. The combat is so close, that engineers can revive a lot, sometimes even causing a single game to last 3 or more hours. Lessons learned -- Don't make one area big and one area too small for an APC, it'll confuse players, and generally cause a bad experience. If you're going to do it, make them both generally the same size.
Adding to the list... Oasis Most people didn't seem to like this map, but I think it's just due to a technical problem -- you can get up on the edge hills overlooking the base and it's highly annoying to root people out of there. In particular, someone got on top on the west edge of the map overlooking the NF base and while they can mortar the base from there, you can't mortar them back nor can you get to them from the base -- you have to go up the hill at some other point further south (they weren't up there with the wooden platform, they were at the higher point further south. I went up to the wooden platform trying to reach them and nearly got stuck in that little ditch thing on the map edge). I would just make all of the edge hills unclimbable, or at any rate you should not be able to get to the tops of them. Other than that, I like it. It's like Dustbowl without the problematic middle. It's a good map for a lot of hit-and-run attacks and ultimately the winner is probably going to be whichever team is the most tenacious about beating down refineries, rebuilding refineries and defending against ninjas. I wouldn't mind some more rocks or something for infantry cover. I like the "guard towers". I'd actually enjoy seeing a couple of those set up in front of the starter bases, even though they're technically as much cover for attackers as they are for defenders. As I'm sure the author is well aware, the mini-map needs yellow dots marking the refineries. It's not hard to figure out where they are, but still, everyone likes yellow dots.
Oasis isn't even an official map, and I'm pretty sure that's only the first release. If Stu wasn't lazy he would update it. And how the hell is it like Dustbowl? (Other than having dust.)
Is this forum only for official maps? I was just reviewing all the ones I've played. Dustbowl and Oasis are similar in my opinion in that it's largely a flat map for running tank battles and hard-to-defend refineries that results in a pretty open, "non-channeled" battleground. Whereas Cyclopean is fairly open, you don't get into a lot of "running tank battles" on that map because the terrain is so uneven and full of obstacles. And Canyon has two obvious chokepoints that tend to channel the battle. MValley is sort of similar but it focuses combat on the north and south points of the map whereas Dustbowl and Oasis have refineries scattered around that prevents the battle from focusing on any particular spot. Normally I'd say I prefer maps that make attempts to channel the fighting but sometimes a big, open map with wide distribution between resources can be fun, too. Those are the maps where I can take my 3-phase light and attack a heavy tank and maybe even win because I have so much room to drive circles around him. Right now I'd probably rate Oasis as 2-out-of-5 stars, but mostly because the edges annoy me. If the edges were made unclimbable I'd say more like 3-and-a-half stars. It's not a wow-knock-my-socks-off map but it's simple and has potential to be a good, fun, relatively quick map that's not liable to result in any sort of long stalemate or standoff.
Oasis was literally the second map I ever made, 2 years ago. I started to remake it but other things got in the way. I guess I should finish it since it's lasted this long.
