Thalraxal Makes a FFA Map: Forgotten Citadel

[Thalraxal]

So I decided to finally start playing around with GalaxyEdit the other day, and started off with something simple: A melee map. This has taught me many valuable lessons, such as how annoying water placement is.

Anyway, I wanted some feedback on the map layout before I get too engrossed in making my map look pretty.


Forgotten Citadel v1.03

Since this is designed to be a FFA map, I decided to do away with the whole "natural expansion" thing, or at the very least cause some confusion in regards to who's natural expansion it is. I hope for this to cause more conflict, since I feel that is important in an RTS.

Everyone starts off in the outer ring, which is designed to be A Very Busy Place. The central platform has a smattering of Rich Mineral Nodes, and is otherwise a nice place to be. In the grassy area surrounding it, there are four Watchtowers on the raised platforms.

Things I am debating on doing:
-Turning the "Reaper Roads" in the outer ring into rubble-blocked ramps. I feel this would open up a lot more possibilities with them, as they'd be useful to units who weren't Reapers, Colossi or Stalkers once you cleared away rubble. If this were SC1 the Reaper Road would be all ramps (I liked maps where it was harder to defend). In SC2, however, bases tend to be a lot more squishy, so I'm willing to make things a easier to defend. If I do this, I'll connect the corner Reaper Roads to the main platform.

-Adding four more expansions to the grassy area around the central platform. They'd be at 12, 3, 6 and 9 o'clocks from the obelisk in the middle.

[IskatuMesk]

Rush distances are going to be a huge problem. As it is in any of the FFA maps it's super easy for me to rush anyone with reapers or banshees, this map is going to make that problem 10x as bad - except for the central east/west/north/south players. This map encourages air rushes nearly exclusively as a result.

Keep in mind virtually every single FFA turns into a clusterfuck of void rays and ravens. A low income map like this benefits that style a lot more than, say, Krazy's map.

Imo you should avoid the whole metalopolis lolreaper thing entirely. It's a terrible design concept and just screws a lot of people over.

Also most of those nats look tankable from the mains.

[Falchion]

Imo you should avoid the whole metalopolis lolreaper thing entirely. It's a terrible design concept and just screws a lot of people over.

Metalopolis was a pathetic attempt by Blizzard to copy Lost Temple and adapt it into urban. I just play it because I have to. (I play mostly rank matches, as there's nothing else to play, yet.)

[Krazy]

Keep in mind virtually every single FFA turns into a clusterfuck of void rays and ravens. A low income map like this benefits that style a lot more than, say, Krazy's map.

The idea of the haven terrain one was that people would be in constant conflict for the rich mineral expos thus preventing an air mass that would be slow and difficult off just one natural.

That's just not how it ends up being played out ^^

And the island map did if nothing else serve as a break from the reaper rush.

[IskatuMesk]

What I meant Krazy is that yours played better because of that, in support of what you are saying basically.

[Mucky]

As a Terran auto-pilot scrub, I mass Raven/Viking because it's way better than anything Terran can do on the ground. It's also the only way to kill Protoss air, because Thors just fail at the job. The most I'll use on the ground are tanks, Planetary Fortresses, and turrets.

Protoss tend to mass Void Rays because they're the only units fast enough to defend bases. That, and Stalkers fail at killing air.

Zerg is the only race that isn't pigeonholed into making air as soon as one person does it, but that's because Corruptors are so bad that they lose to any unit capable of attacking it.

So, the point is that there's nothing the mapmaker can do to discourage mass air, and a handful of things they can do to encourage it.

[Xenon]

there's nothing the mapmaker can do to discourage mass air

Well, they could put "no fly zones" in various places but that would be extremely awkward at best.

[Thalraxal]

Yeah, there's not much I can do to stop mass air. I suppose I could have a very limited supply of gas to help curtain their production, but I think that would just be annoying for everyone. I suppose I could just force everyone to play Zerg...

I'll remove the Reaper Roads completely. I believe Mesk when he says they'll be more annoying than anything.

I'm expecting the corners to be rough for whoever gets stuck there. I'm half-tempted to drop the map down to 8 players and tidy up those corners. For my next map, I'll probably put players 9+ closer to the middle, with 1-8 in the outer ring to prevent that sort of thing.

This game needs larger map sizes.

[Milldawg]

Needs more Scorched Earth. :p Symmetrical maps are boring; just throw shit down at random until the map is finished, MILLDAWG STYLE. It will make the map more chaotic, harder to memorize, and wildly popular among local emu populations.

[IskatuMesk]

ya symmetrical maps suck but sc2 doesn't offer much space to work with when you consistently have full house games

[Meta]

Damn, someone should remake awesome BW maps like Wheel of War, Megalopolis, Garden of War and Mirage.

[Krazy]

Damn, someone should remake awesome BW maps like Wheel of War, Megalopolis, Garden of War and Mirage.

That has been done but those are not 12 or 14 player maps and thus are not epic enough for SC2.

[mAc Chaos]

I was pretty surprised when I found out that they actually have smaller map sizes than WC3. Don't know why they scaled it back while adding to the number of players.

[Thalraxal]

Needs more Scorched Earth. :p Symmetrical maps are boring; just throw shit down at random until the map is finished, MILLDAWG STYLE. It will make the map more chaotic, harder to memorize, and wildly popular among local emu populations.

Agreed. I'm not a big fan of symmetrical maps either. My next maps will move away from this. Forgotten Citadel is a symmetrical map mostly because I wanted something simple to help familliarize myself with the editor, and I really liked the giant, abandoned fortress idea that I had.

ya symmetrical maps suck but sc2 doesn't offer much space to work with when you consistently have full house games

Why Blizzard refuses to increase map sizes beyond 256, I'll never understand.

Damn, someone should remake awesome BW maps like Wheel of War, Megalopolis, Garden of War and Mirage.

Untamed WIlds!

I was pretty surprised when I found out that they actually have smaller map sizes than WC3. Don't know why they scaled it back while adding to the number of players.

Not so much smaller, but since WC3 was smaller scale, a big map was "bigger". In SC2, units are bigger than they were in SC1, making the maps feel smaller. So we have more players, larger units and yet the maps remain at the same size.

[mAc Chaos]

Make it a four player map. Just have the staring locations be the expansions in the top corners.