Which levels do you think make the most intense games most often?

Canyon and Slaughtered, maps that have 2 chokepoints tend to be more epic than the rest, atleast on public games. But you can have intense game on almost every map, you just need evenly skilled teams.

 

I like open maps since they allow tactics, contrary to clusterfuck maps like sloughtred and crossroad which is only really fun on smaller player numbers, but now days there are no server playing with below 30 players so they are kind of useless in my opinion.

My old thread on maps and why some are more or less fun for certain people and difference between maps. http://forums.empiresmod.com/showthread.php?t=8182.

Yeah i can imagined that would not like your 45min trench war gone in the first minutes...

 

I generally prefer maps that have more than one chokepoint at any one time. SoF kinda does this, but is annoying as all heck to navigate in a vehicle.

Duststorm is too open IMO. Slaughtered too claustrophobic and only 1 real push region (damned S-bend), at least to me.

Canyon's my favorite, although the 4 major chokepoints tend to be the end-all. Isle is also potentially good if people take advantage of the different ways to get around. mValley is also good if the teams know what to do.

 

bush if there are enough people. Canyon. Cyclopean. Duststorm can be epic, it can also be pretty dull.

 

eh, moors makes for the best games

 

district

escort

RAINBOWROAD

 

Why Dont We Have Rainbowroad :?!?!?!?!

 

isle, crossroads, tropicvendetta, cyclopean and mvally...

And if we ignore the fact that the map isnt avaible, sinking (NOT altoll, its played differently, fighting for the higher ground aso)

 

I kind of like Sinking, just because it makes for different gameplay than the other maps -- let's face it, there's a kind of same-y feeling to most Empires maps.

 

The chokepoint maps make for the best gameplay; that's going to be crossroads, slaughtered, canyon, hazard, and blah4.

Money has chokepoints but there's no advantage given to the attacker so it turns into an arty spamfest and therefore sucks. coast has problems as well because the middle flag is simply worth too many res (5 refineries from what I understand)

Some maps have chokepoints but are more open than those, and they are still pretty fun when the server has a high pop. Maps such as bush and mesa fit this template.

open maps with refinery scarcity still have contention over areas of interest, but what happens is a large portion of the map is only used for driving about and is never fought/contested. An example of this is Mvalley.

Open maps with ref spam are the absolute worst. There's no way to control an area to lock someone off from a larger part of the map so 'combat' devolves into engineers (and scouts now) driving around, killing undefended refs and rebuilding them. The worst example of this is isle, which is, in my opinion, one of the worst empires maps. this also occurs on moors. I can join up in one of these games, go engi, drive around and kill/build refs, get top score, be the sole reason for my team's victory, and NEVER FIGHT ANOTHER PERSON. In my opinion this is terrible gameplay. nadespamming and rebuilding refs is fucking boring. Maps should try to herd each side to each other and force fights over areas of interest, not make so many areas of interest that conflict with the other team is unlikely.

 

Oh, and what about Streets of Fire?

 

I forgot to mention them, but SOF and homeland are two of my favorite maps.

 

I love a good SoF match, and Crossroads has potential, so long as certain things aren't whored. I'm actually warming up to Urbanchaos nowadays, but grens are too powerful in Urbanchaos, making it a bit painful.

 

Personally, what I think is nice about Streets of Fire is that it has defined 'areas' on the map you can hold (enough to make games sometimes play differently on it depending on which areas people focus on), plus some chokepoints, but without the one or two unavoidable CHOKEPOINTS OF DOOM that can make slaughtered so repetitive.

 

Open maps require two cordinated and skilled teams to be fun

 

Yeah. But there's a middle ground between 'completely open big flat almost-shapeless wasteland' and 'CHOKEPOINT OF DOOM where you will stall every time, guaranteed'. Streets of Fire strikes that balance well, I think.

Perhaps Arid, too, although it does tend to go to whichever team has one or two people sneak off to grab the refs everyone else is ignoring.

 

My favourites have to be- duststorm,cyclopean,and slaughtered, because, like what pickled heretic said-points of interest- and even if his huge tl;dr style comment contradicts some of the above mentioned maps, they have "points of interest".

And at these points of interest, like the city in cyclopean or the sbend in slaughtered, major war happens in these areas because of their resource and/or the advantage a team gains with the area, both teams fight for it. And that in the end creates a battle, and as technology progresses, it turns into a bloodbath.

But the downfall is that if each team is equal to eachother in technology, amount of vehicles, or the team thats worst uses walls to equal themselves, the game basically turns into a tug of war with no pull on either end of the rope.