It is a little less exciting being on the receiving end of it. Maybe I'm just a traditionalist "March your booping armies across the map the old fashioned way" kind of guy.

You have already done that map. It's Swirlmount. The cities are there as a distraction :P

Everyone has access to warp party and town gate. Everyone can make counterplays by also using it. It isn't the solution to every problem, but it forces snowballing players to consider the possibility that their unguarded cities might be attacked (or that remote locations may be attacked). In the example here, the Azracs reclaimed all of the warp party / town gated cities back within one turn, so it's hardly an unstoppable force (I suspect Arnus is just rocking some killer roleplay of an emperor that claims he is always under siege to gander sympathy). The only potential for abuse / suspicion is seeing a game restart when warp party was used.

It would be interesting to have a resource scarce map without a giant vault of passive mana/gold income for the first player that gets there. I surrendered after losing a key naval battle, you should see the early game Azrac advantage on the end game charts (on both Swirlmount I and II)! Some rebalance considerations. GG, kudos to all the solid roleplaying. Goblins took the cake though.

I opened the file this morning before going to work, too curious to pass it up. That battle went really well for me, 2 dragonships and a galleon vs 2 dragonships, 1 frog and 2 lizard archers should be closer. Having first shot matters though. Still, I expected to lose the fleet, I moved it there by mistake - I wanted to first gather up 5-6 lizardmen more that I had a bit north of there.
1. On the RP: yes it's fun, but it's not so far from the truth, don't forget that to welcome this noob the goblins razed my farms on turn 5 or so ;) Agreed on the goblin rp!

2. Azracs are not as powerful as it seems in this map. They can gather an enormous empire by farmer's gambit but it's indefensible, there are teleporters landing on the NW surface corner (orcs), NE cavern just below the capital (goblins), and centre-north border in the caverns close to a gate to the surface (from the teleporter in the SW close to the halfling/lizard border, not so difficult to access for lizards or dwarves). I suspect that what you saw as initial advantage is rather coming from the higher starting gold, but that matters less. They're also the ones that need most time to reach the deep, it's quite surprising that I ended up possessing most of it. I've tried the whole match to reach the goblin teleporter just to be beaten to it by the orcs when the goblins committed harakiri after blocking me for 5? turns, till I managed to come out with a digger. I didn't expect you to end your mana so quickly, now I am at 1 turn from casting mana leak.. I'm already in the negative with all the godl rush I've cast, but I have something like 3.5k in the vault. I think you would be a giant pain if you didn't abandon ship, you've underestimated how much it takes to get to your capital... To entertain you: your balloon in the north after becoming independent has conquered another undefended dwarven city on its own, it's painful that troops are built at the end of the turn of the independents! Makes life easier for the last one.
Another funny bit: I had a flying galley trying to transport my stacks of mixed archers from the area surrounded by lava that I took from the goblins, but it couldn't because of your damn balloon full of fire-halo'd bombardiers! I've had easy time dealing with it now as independents and they've still managed to pop my demon. The demon hasn't made a single casualty in its brief time in this dimension. Oh, and I "lowered terrain" in the mountains close to the 2 caves that bring the dwarves to the surface, so I was closer to attack your rearlines than you realised, but Ham was around there and with some archers he would have easily repelled that. My last line of attack was the driller that was tunnelling towards the farms to the east of your capital, 1-2 turns for an airship to do so on the other side of the river.

3.On warp party: in Eve Online there was a saying, what helps the solo helps the blob relatively more. Or, whatever tools the underdog can use to fight the higher force, the empire can exploit more. Warp party doesn't differ. If you're using it to menace me at 19/9 hexes from a city that you conquer, I can do the same but those hexes represent a much higher percentage of your lands. OTOH, I saw your post about 19/9 hexes only after my previous comment so I consider it less problematic now, but make no mistake: it's more a tool to win harder not to resist the winning party. In this case you had more casters which matters, but usually I'd expect a snowballing player to have the advantage - either heroes or mana...
On the other hand, I think you converted the elven 4 square city, that's unattackable, and with a small node it's the perfect place to warp party in my rearlines on the surface. The only defence against that that I could think of is mana leak.

I don't think there's a balance problem. As long, that is, as all the players realise what this map entails: a race to the giant vault. That's where the fight takes place, because owning it makes it pointless to fight for the other nodes, invest in fixing the teleporters that bring to the 4-node corners in the deep, and owning more than the cities that can send quickly reinforcements to the vault. So, the advantage goes to goblins and dwarves, which are the closest to start from the teleporters. But it doesn't matter that much normally each player should reach their deep city before it's conquered - apart perhaps azrac, if the dwarves go for their city immediately after entering, it's pretty close. Air magic rules in a race, and if someone's lucky enough to start with haste that's even better. This then compounds with the magic item list which makes summon hero doubly powerful: you can qickly build an unbeatable taskforce, no need to level them if they can get +5 in all attributes with objects.

So if not balance, what's the problem? Well, if all the players realise that this is about the race, then this beautiful carefully crafted map becomes less and less relevant the farther away you go from the 4-square cities and the teleporters to the deep, quickly reaching irrelevance. I'd play azracs much differently now. I would say that this is what needs to be fixed.

I am for once too busy to do reworks of my maps at present. When I do I may make a thread for each map asking for advice. Or just PM I suppose.

Sure, we should finish these two games first anyway.

TS

TS

Orcs, Day 36

I know for the Dwarves at least, that the only route into the depths was blocked by the Dwarven hero. I had the choice to kill the hero to gain access, or wait until I could find Elven cities to build nymphs. Even if I had chosen to kill the hero, it was still going to take time. My third plan for getting into the depths by rushing warp party, but the Dwarven hero moved by that time. If the hero hadn't moved, I doubt I would have add the opportunity for any access into the depths. Aside from blocked access to the depths, Dwarves also didn't have water magic, so peace-time blockades, or other water capable creatures (solid work with the beholders by the way) would cripple any efforts for the dwarves to expand. On lava dwarves were fine because you can run cannons in with fire-halo (accessible from a wizard tower). If you placed a beholder on water, there wasn't much dwarves could do (dwarves have some deficiencies with water and air).

I was hoping you wouldn't notice the enchantments and just try to mount an attack to see the surprise. My other trick was going to be to town gate a firehalo galeon into the lava to launch attacks

I'm surprised you didn't just dedicate a freemove boat or two instead for the cause.

I see the opposite pattern. My thought on this was that when an underdog is surrounded by a snowballing enemy, warp party has a higher percent chance of landing you in their vulnerable territory (because they have more of it), where the snowballing player will likely end up warping into their own territory. Warp party is more valuable to the underdog.

Notably, I was actually hoping to get into the depths when I warped. I had eagles ready in hopes of grabbing mana. It just so happened that it didn't matter which direction I ended up, I would be near your structures.

Hey! I'm happy to see my notes coming in handy. I still update the gameplay design thread whenever I find something new. A plan of mine was foiled this game when I figured out that towngate only checks the target hex + 3 hex radius.

Unfortunately, despite the tower guards being up for a bribe, the city is not. To make matters worse, that is one heavily defended 4-block that would take enormous resources to gain control of. I made a dock, made a boat, moved a troop over, only to find out that the city is not for sale. I had no way of breaking the walls to even try to mount an attack. If there had been at least one wallbreaker or climber, I maybe could have micro'd the city into submission. If I was close enough to cast wind-walking, occassionally that will let you attack walled cities as well. If I had owned the city I probably would have converted it to human to get air galleys.

Goblins maybe, because they have wyvern and can just bypass obstacles and water. Dwarves? maybe with the Swirlmount 1 layout if the hero wasn't blocking the way. I'll give a more in-depth analysis of the layout of the map later, but do you feel it would worsen the map by removing the giant centre mana vault?

If there's anything I've learned it's that a 8x3 roaming pack of archers with destroy any squad of 10/10/10/10 heroes. Air is good, but earth magic with freemovement is better (if mana is not massively abundant), and so is having access to water magic for a vault that is covered in water. Eagles are great, but they are mid-to-late game, frogs are a starting spell. Waterwalking is less expensive (and an earlier spell) than wind-walking.

It definitely is a beautifully crafted map, and I always look forward to Southern's work. But! I do notice that sometimes little quirks in the map cause grief.

We move around some armies... Although it might be better to just kill them all and rebuild them considering the maintenance!!

TS

TS

Painful turn sent. I start to desire to declare war just to stop having to consider blocks ^_^'

Eh, I remember that I forgot that towers have walls and went in equipped for the attack but without a wall breaker. Had to spend 2-3 turns waiting for an elephant. I really think that everybody should have been there by the time I arrived.
A goblin spotted it from the small town he captured right on the turn where I would have crossed ^_^' You hid it behind a wall.

You really don't visualize the size of the empire, I had to cast enchant roads as soon as I could. Freemove boats are cool but the leader was in the wrong place and doing other higher priority stuff.

Well the enemy won't "surround" the underdog no? Usually there are 2 sides, some war-line that moves back and forth. I'm thinking before one gets surrounded, when the snowballing is still stoppable: then warp party helps the stronger more than the weaker imho.

On the grabbing mana: it's really nasty that the first one in the turn is screwed by the game calculating income and building stuff at the end of the turn. You might want to add this to your game design thread if it isn't already on it.

I've just had a convert popup on a dwarven town when I have 41% relations. This conversion thing is really annoying :F

IMHO the vault needs some roaming stacks of 8 dragons....

I see. I'll make the day log of swirlmount II eventually, that should be convincing enough.

I'm pretty certain that stuff is actually finished based on where in the turn order it was started, not at the beginning of the turn. If Player 3 starts building a Swordsman, and Player 6 captures the town right after, then the swordsman actually shows up at the start of Player 3's next turn, not on Player 6's next turn.

Likewise, I believe your income is calculated at the beginning of your turn, not during the indy turn.

TS