Mapping Tournament 4 (20x20)

[FtXCommando]

Overall Map Rankings:

1. Gateway and Rose [3.45]
2. Adaptive Kusoge [3.175]
3. Adaptive Tessalis Isles [2.95]
4. Adaptive Furious Road [1.85]

Breakdowns:

Tessalis Isles [2.5/2.5/2]
Aesthetically, I feel the map is about a 2.5/5. I don’t really feel like anything remarkable was done to the terrain nor do the stratas on the map stand out for me. The map is quite easy to read on the initial look so it doesn’t get points deducted for obfuscated terrain, but it also doesn’t get any points for being particularly remarkable in looks.

Gameplay: 2.5/5. The map certainly has a variety of things that can be impactful and almost feels like it could create a unique scenario of navy wins vs mid wins. I fear the massive impact of early air will likely decide the games as the huge distance between early mexes means bombers could destroy early builds as could ints catching any sort of trans rush. I feel it is most likely decided in the first few minutes and wish some more mass was available early on to protect against those autoloss scenarios.

Variance: 2/5. Due to the lack of mass early on, I don’t expect a lot of variation in the meta on this map. It will boil down to a choice between land spam with ACU in mid or a massive navy investment after some sort of early air play if the air play didn’t decide the game.

Overall: Consider taking some of those navy mexes and putting them closer to the spawn location.

Furious Road: [3.5/1.5/1]
Aesthetics: 3.5/5. Personally I enjoy the aesthetics of the map. I think it tells a nice story and gives a great wasteland vibe. Everything seems particularly clear terrain wise, though I do think it could use a bit more love. Some of the mountains look particularly well done and others look like a paint brush was put on them; so it’s a bit inconsistent.

Gameplay: 1.5/5. I’m really not a fan of the quantity of civilians on the map. The lack of mass early on combined with the civs practically everywhere makes this map play incredibly slow early on and will result in the person with the most farmed build order to efficiently clear out the civs on their half of the map to win. There’s really no way to interact with the opponent and stop this reality.

Variance: 1/5. For the same reasons stated in the Gameplay section, there is just no way to do anything different here. Sure you can do drops and land spam etc, but that’s pretty typical for a 20x20 with no navy play. The problem is that the civs delay these sort of things to the point that they’re irrelevant. The game was decided ages ago by whoever farmed the best build order to get their map half against the civs.

Overall: Try to go a bit less hard on the civs, it's really not conductive to interactive gameplay.

Gateway and Rose [4.5/3.5/2.5]
Aesthetics: 4.5. Any criticism of the aesthetics here is entirely marginal. I feel some of the decals could be placed a touch better in the areas transitioning between sea and cliffs on the map. Everything is clearly marked so that there are no issues in determining whether terrain is walkable or not. The map aesthetics do their job excellently in creating the theme of the map as well as the terrain needed for the expected gameplay. Even the cliff with no obvious gameplay factors in the bottom left/top right corners serves to make the navy less snowbally by giving a chokepoint that is difficult to push through.

Gameplay: 3.5. I believe the map has the potential for really strong gameplay. In fact, it has the potential to go up to 4 in my opinion. Yet I only gave it a 3.5, why is that? Well, the map has two major concerns for me that massively decrease the gameplay score. The first is that this map is absolutely, without a doubt, an int/trans rush map. The distance between the bases is not large at all and so, failing to counter an aggressive int rush will more than likely lose you the game. This then leads both players to doing some sort of int rush which of course runs the risk of having games decided by who lucks out on winning due to good first turns. It isn’t necessarily impossible to recover from, but it puts you on a massive back foot.

I also feel that the map massively favors Cybran and their wagners and the gameplay in a Cybran matchup is going to heavily rely on abusing wagners to such a decree that it even demotivates me just thinking about it. The map plays beautifully without these concerns though. For instance, a Seraphim mirror matchup has importance in mid, has importance in navy due to the potential zthuee brutality and frig raids, and the importance of air due to notha/gunship abuse. Those matchups are what brings it up to the potential of a 4.5 in my mind, but sadly they are not the most common on the ladder.

Variance: 2.5. For a 20x20, I feel it has slightly less potential moves. Ultimately, navy and land seem more secondary than air on the map. While you can’t just ignore navy and land, the air win is what will define the game as it is very difficult to prevent raids on your islands as well as drops. The choice basically revolves around where you have the advantage, AFTER you have won air, and then exploiting that advantage to secure a victory.

Overall: I think either adding an extra anti air to the middle or moving the ones on the corners of the middle island into the direct middle would greatly nerf the potential of int rush and make the map quite a bit better in variance due to that.

Kusoge [4/3.5/2]
Aesthetics: 4. The map is a relatively unique color combination, which always gives points to me as it’s basically the first thing anyone associates a map with. It has great looking mountains and very clearly defined terrain. The minor concerns I have relate to the floating trees that can be found in the middle as well as the inconsistency with putting some mexes on black outlines. There are a few mexes between the players that do not have a black overlay which can make seeing them difficult, particularly since it seems the rest of the mexes on the map follow the pattern of having the overlay. I also really like the minimalist but efficient civilian bases when it comes to removing the danger of int rushes.

Gameplay: 3. The map kind of plays like a land version of Roanoke to me. While there is no auto loss due to transport rush because countered by int rush, the game seems to be defined by massive t1 spam everywhere until very late in the game. This is because it is extremely difficult to properly defend all the potentially raidable areas and securing the additional reclaim/mexes through the land spam makes it a safe way to play. There are of course, the typical expected responses of a land or air rush and while these options are viable, they can only be done alongside massive t1 spam of your own.

Variance: 2. I do believe this map has the potential for a variety of cheese options thanks to the relatively strong encouragement to send ACU to mid to secure the mexes. While massive t1 land spam is indisputably the way the majority of games will go on the map, it should be slightly open to a counter-meta with air abuse. However, I do not believe it will go further than air snipes as drops won’t really see much influence and raiding exterior mexes wont do the damage necessary to overcome the incoming spam.

Overall: I wish there was just a little bit more concentration or terrain chokes preventing the massive utility of t1 spam anywhere and everywhere.

Thanks to everyone that participated! I hope the comments help give some insight on the map rating thought process. If anyone has any comments, let me know.

[MadMax]

congratulations to the winners, thank you for your feedback, I do agree that my map does have a slow start that was part of my anti air rush plan along with the civs, but being my first attempt at a mapping contest i might have gone a bit overboard, I felt it fit the narrative of my map tho. I'm looking forward to the next map torny hopefully ill do better next time.