A good way for this to be played 1vs1 is one player playing Archons (top right corner) and the other playing Undead (bottom left corner). Ideally I would like those two to be balanced in terms of spheres and skills, whereas at the moment the Undead seem to have a much better deal than the Archons.

How about giving the Undead, and the Archons, Anarchist + Explorer but not giving them Conqueror? They should be able to research the Conqueror ability relatively quickly, should they so desire.

Hi Roger,

In general I think it's just very hard to balance the wizards with pre-set skills. Some skills are just not as good as others and while they may be helpful later on, don't do much for you early in game. It's not just conqueror, but I think Arachna starts as summoner which is something I would never pick to start. I will research it later in game when I have a good summon.

Also when the ai is playing these wizards then that can change what may be best for them too.

However, if you are going to try to balance them as best as possible then I think perhaps no wizards should start with Conqueror or Explorer. This is if they are being controlled by a human and are not being customized.

I would also think about sphere choices. Undead as well as having great skill choices also are death specialist which is very nice as well. The archons for example have one of each sphere which I personally don't think is very good on bigger maps. So I might give some thought to that as well.

I may have some other suggestions if you are thinking of updating the map. I like it fine as is though.

Cheers!

Kirky

I would like to do an update of Brave New Riverland World, so all constructive suggestions are welcome. Thanks for your input Kirky, I value your opinion particularly highly because you hopefully know the mod better than anyone else in the world.

Most email games seem to ban mastery spells anyway, so I was thinking of giving all wizards 3 of one sphere and 3 of another.

If I don't give any race the Conqueror ability, some races will be at a disadvantage because it will take them much longer to research Conqueror than others.

What do other people think? Please help me to make my maps better.

In this map, races that have (relatively) advantage in learning skill are archons, undead (bonus research pts), elves and darkelves (bonus mana which allow them to slide the balance all the way to research and still have a decent mana income). One of my suggestion to balance this racial advantage is to give magic shrine or library at starting position of the other races (depending it's a village, town or city...). For example, in my game Riverland war, I was playing dark elf and the starting cap is only a village (growth limit) so the mana bonus is only 5pts. If the orcs or the goblins are given a magic shrine at start, they would have 10 mana + 10 research points, regardless what size their capitol is. So, you might want to give the dark elf city size capitol (15 mana bonus) + monastery. Giving them the city is kind of convenient because that would balance the advantage in production or growth of the orcs or goblins respectively.

The same can be applied to other races as well, IMO.

To balance between races, you have several tools in your hands like growth limit, structure limit, starting structures in the wizard capitol. Since wizard skill is kind of crucial in this mod, magic catalysts should be used wisely, IMHO. Placing them at a good distance or with a good stack of guards would be a good idea to prevent the human player to acquire it too early to boost his research process.

Conqueror could be crucial but War Shrines give a remarkably boost in unit exp too. Orcs with war shrine might not be a bad idea?

I'm a little too paranoid sometimes when it comes to map balance. But there are a lot to take into account and often I miss a thing or two here and there and.. there go the balance! *sigh*

edit: typo

[This message has been edited by naecO (edited 02-22-2010 @ 11:46 PM).]

Thanks!

It's precisely because opinions of balance vary so widely that I have asked for input from as wide a range of people as possible. I was thinking about the fact that some mapmakers claim that their maps are balanced when it is fairly clear to others that they are not.

I also think about maps such as A River Ran Through It which are completely asymmetric and yet are well balanced in practice.

Thanks again for the input

No idea when I played this map for first time, but I just started playing this map for second time (Dwarves) and I'm liking it so far. I had three races to choose from; Dwarves, Morlocks, Archons. I didn't pick Morlocks because of conqueror, and I decided to take Dwarves over Archons because according to you, Dwarves are (one of) hardest races to play. Playing in SP, so I'll see how long it takes for me.


I don't like any wizard starting with conqueror unless there's at least one negative skill balancing it. Conqueror is simply making it (usually) less attractive to play BNW, as it rips off feeling of achievement from unit progress. I think there should be something negative in conqueror. Well, actually every skill should have its cons and pros, that or limit the number of skills to research.()

Note: I just gave my opinion about conqueror, not about balancing. Must help.

Might give comments regarding balance later.

[This message has been edited by The A M (edited 02-25-2010 @ 11:22 AM).]

So you won't be complaining if Kirky decides to make Conqueror cost two skill picks instead of one

Chanlerer aint´s very good skill and peacekeeper is better with neutral race Undead wizard seem stronger than others. Can check the map later.

Thanks Muna

Following two suggestions in the thread about favourite race/skill combinations:

http://aow.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/display.cgi?action=ct&f=32,5414,,20

how about:

Undead - Life Specialist - Peace Keeper

Archons - Death Specialist - Peace Keeper

Would that be an original and fun combination for those wizards - i.e. would you be interested in trying them out if you saw that combo?

Or perhaps it just seems like anathema to you, maybe archons should always have life magic, and undead should always have death magic...

Hi Roger,

No I personally wouldn't go that route with Archons being death magic etc. I think three of one kind of sphere and then some kind of mix with the other three sounds good. Also for the non-research type races that you may be concerned about not be able to research conqueror etc. as fast. Well you could set a node or two of theirs to power ones rather then random or whatever they currently are. Getting an early power node or two can help quite a bit.

I have some other suggestions too, but will get to them another time.



Kirky

Pure evil races do get cheerful morale with peacekeeper to capitol, even with terrain penalty what comes to undead, what I doubted. Problem comes with full death that archon capitol will be surrounded with wasteland and they can´t grow crops to other towns if they build any.

Checked the map and start units seem as strong in every race, the new BNW looked cool btw. There´s always a option to put custom wizards on in custom maps too, but would be much better if wizard skills can´t be choosen freely there. Elf and dwarf spots are in the middle and most likely they get attacked the most, maybe add more starting units to them or powerful skills?

Thanks guys

The Orcs also often tend to die quite quickly, especially if they are AI-controlled and the Halflings are controlled by a human player.

It's maybe off the track of skill balance here but I've just found out a lack of boats in this map due to structure limits in villages. I'm playing it blind in a PBEM so I cannot speak for the other races but in dark elf area, I have no mean to get a boat. My cities are either too far from water or are limited in structure development (no shipyard available). Maybe I'm expanding in the wrong direction, but with this map design, more access to water transportation would offer better game-play.

They're in the shipyards - so you just need to look a bit harder

The settlements I have either do not have builder hall allowed or no shipyard available to build if one has a builder hall. I could be wrong though. I'll check it more thorough next time I play.

You can't build them - you have to buy them from a shipyard. Here is a quote from the instructions for the map:

Shipbuilding has been disabled. The only way to "build" a ship is by recruiting one from one of the marketplaces -- these being the "shipyards" for the scenario. I had wanted to make it take time to build a ship, but there is no easy way to do this with scripts (and have it be obvious to the player and let the AI use it as well), so I have instead set up marketplaces in strategic and hard to defend locations. Each "shipyard" is stocked with five warships. Use them wisely.

If all else fails, read the instructions

Hi Roger,

Okay, I said I would offer some suggestions, so no use putting it off any longer. I do feel a little uncomfortable in this as it can come across as if you are telling someone how they should make their maps, which I have no interest in doing.

Anyway, a lot of this may just be personable preferences, but here goes...

In the latest version I see you have added dire boars which will not only take things but raze them as well. I don't really think this a good idea. These are quite fast,
fairly strong units and it is easy for one get either some structures or even a town and raze it. Many people don't study maps before playing them and they may find their main towns razed early in the game. And while this could happen to anyone, most often it will be the player who can least afford such a setback. I don't think a single independent raider should have this much impact in a multi-player game. If they just stole things that would be fine but the razing is a bit much I think (not sure if units can be set to steal but not raze tho).

I have mostly studied the corner positions on the map and not as much the others. I will say that Archon and Dark Elves do not have nearly as nice layouts as Halflings or Undead. Their positions are quite restricted and it is neccessary to use boats just to get from one little place to the next. Now I actually don't think that is bad at all. Rather I think Halflings and Undead could use a few similar obstacles to overcome. As it is now they have complete freedom to go wherever they want and can do so with or without boats. They also have very easy access to large dwellings early on.

That brings me to the dwellings themselves. All recruitment sites have been set to contain High recruits. Yet the guards are only set to average (this includes dungeons). I am not sure if this was intentional or not. I do think more variety here would be better though and when recuits/prisoners are set to high then the guards should be as well. I also don't think a player should have the best recruitment sites/dungeons in there immediate area which they can get very early on as is the case for Halflings and Undead. This takes away from the progression aspect you want in a game when people suddenly have some of the best units within their first few turns.

The exception to this are the recruit places where you have personally set the recuits to contain ships as well as where you have used taverns as dwellings. These taverns are still set the same as in the default game as I have never reset those as I have others. They usually contain poor recruits even if set to high and are quite illogical in how they are set really. It is almost completely random and you might get better recruits at the average indexes then you would at high where you may just end up with a large amount of low levels. I need to set these up properly in the next update.

One final thing which I believe would improve this fine map is a basic reduction in the number of towns. I think it would just be better if there were a bit less and also less towns which already have or can produce wizard towers. I think cities with towers should have more of a strategic value than is currently the case. Now what you would put in their place could be anything really (except magic relays, heh). Even just some more scenery would be nice in some spots such as the weird machines etc. you used quite a bit in Last Dwarf or I really like those wheat fields in Glorious Lands. Pretty much anything would work. In may areas you end up hitting another town in a days travel and I think some reduction here would make the map even better.

Okay, let me say again a lot of this is just personal preference and if you have different preferences go ahead and stick with yours, lol. I am enjoying my games on the map very much and thank you again for making it.

Cheers!

Kirky

Thanks for such a detailed and insight-full analysis

It's important to remember that this was TalonThorn's map and essentially I have changed it to BNW structures, so I don't really look on it as "my map" at this point in time, I look on it as TalonThorn's map. However I have really loved the map for a long time, and have played a lot of good games on it over the years, but I was well aware that I tended to do better playing Undead on it than when playing any other race.

I put the boars in simply because I love their graphics, and I was quite surprised at the devastation they can cause. I do like maps to have raiders, but I agree that they are probably too fast and too powerful. I will have to find another visually gorgeous raider that is a bit slower and a bit less violent, yet will still steal structures belonging to all races - but there are always plenty of great units to choose from in BNW, so I'm sure that won't be a problem! That old favourite of mine - the murlocs - won't be any good this time, as their swimming and water concealment would make them much too hard to catch in a map with this much water

However, my main concern is for the map to be more balanced, especially for the players in the four corners. I quite often remove buildable wiz towers as an option in most towns on my maps, and I don't mind doing it here too, although clearly that was not what TalonThorn had in mind.

To my mind one of the unique things about this map is that there are an enormous amount of resources available, far more than anyone could ever really need, and players that spend all their time concentrating on capturing resources will quite often be caught out by somebody who has instead concentrated on moving a big army straight towards their enemy.

If other people say that they would like the number of towns reduced I will do it, but one thing I could do in the meantime is put garrisons on all towns, and set them to guard. That way somebody can't fly around the map, buying all the friendly towns they can find.

I also don't think a player should have the best recruitment sites/dungeons in there immediate area which they can get very early on as is the case for Halflings and Undead.

Yes, that definitely needs some attention.

I'm going to reset the shipyards to only contain boats, as I think the combination of boats and a few low-level units feels quite odd, and there are plenty of other recruitment sites available anyway. Because BNW has such a wide variety of ships it will still give an interesting and colourful selection of units to choose from.

I will probably restrict the number of heroes per player to 3. This doesn't mean that you can only have 3 heroes, of course, it means that any time that you have 3 or more heroes (which all players start off with anyway) you won't have any heroes volunteer to join your services.

I have mostly studied the corner positions on the map and not as much the others. I will say that Archon and Dark Elves do not have nearly as nice layouts as Halflings or Undead. Their positions are quite restricted and it is neccessary to use boats just to get from one little place to the next. Now I actually don't think that is bad at all. Rather I think Halflings and Undead could use a few similar obstacles to overcome. As it is now they have complete freedom to go wherever they want and can do so with or without boats. They also have very easy access to large dwellings early on.

There is no "quick fix" for this, but I will have to work out an effective way to restrain the hobbits and the undead from unbridled expansion.

Thanks again for taking the time and trouble to post your views.

This is the list of skills and magic spheres that I had in mind:

Dwarves - The Dwarf – Constructor – 3 air, 2 earth, 1 life

Gobbos - The Morlock – Expander – 3 earth, 2 water, 1 death

Halflings – The Hobbit – Expander - 3 earth, 2 air, 1 life

Undead – The Zombie - Anarchist, Constructor, Expander – 3 death, 2 fire, 1 life

Dark Elves – Drow Mistress – Constructor - 3 death, 2 air, 1 earth

Elves – That One Elf – Expander – 3 life, 2 air, 1 earth

Orcs – The Orc – Constructor – 3 earth, 1 life, 1 death, 1 air

Archons – Anarchist, Constructor, Expander – 3 life, 2 fire, 1 death

Any obvious discrepancies there, please, or potential balance issues?

Guess this will be near 100% balanced skill/sphere combos as best skills are picked (except conqueror as BNW-mod) and any can´t get 4th lvl spells

[This message has been edited by Munataros (edited 03-25-2010 @ 01:33 PM).]

Halflings

Own race wiz tower village - - - 5 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 5
Own race town - - - 13
Random village (max village) - - - 13
Random village - - - 24
Random village - - - 27
Random village - - - 26


Orcs

Own race wiz tower village - - - 5 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 6
Own race town - - - 10
Random village (max village) - - - 16
Random village - - - 26
Random village - - - 34
Random village - - - 20
Random village - - - 38


Gobbo/Morlocks

Own race wiz tower village - - - 6 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 3
Own race town - - - 9
Random village (max village) - - - 18
Random village - - - 22
Random village - - - 19
Random village - - - 17


Archons

Own race wiz tower village - - - 8 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 5
Own race town - - - 6
Random village (max village) - - - 11
Random village - - - 27
Random village - - - 25
Random village - - - 19


Dwarves

Own race wiz tower village - - - 7 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 18
Own race town - - - 14
Random village (max village) - - - 20
Random village - - - 29
Random village - - - 19
Random village - - - 29
Random village - - - 15


Elves

Own race wiz tower village - - - 5 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 7
Own race town - - - 11
Random village (max village) - - - 14
Random village - - - 21
Random village - - - 25
Random village - - - 24
Random village - - - 20


Undead

Own race wiz tower village - - - 7 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 5
Own race town - - - 11
Random village (max village) - - - 20
Random village - - - 16
Random village - - - 14
Random village - - - 24


Dark Elves

Own race wiz tower village - - - 4 hexes
Own race village (max town) - - - 13
Own race town - - - 12
Random village (max village) - - - 34
Random village - - - 26
Random village - - - 26
Random village - - - 25

Still need to have a look at the neutral wizard towers and check that they don't have too many towns close to them, giving an unfair advantage to people editing the map to use one of the "non-standard" neutral wizards.

I meant to reply sooner, but kept running away from my responsibilities.

I played this map in SP and here I'm writing on how I would probably play it in multi, and how I see things are. So pardon me if I'm totally wrong.

I'm not going to get in spheres now (other than no "mono" spheres, please), maybe later.
(Also bear in mind that I played this map with only Dwarfs.)

First off, your initial post indicated that hardest to play this map would be either Elves, Dwarfs, or Morlocks. Well, can't argue how hard it could be with Morlocks. It sure looks like expanding can be quite kinky for them. But not so with Dwarfs and Elves.

While it's true that Dwarfs and Elves are in middle of map and surrounded by everyone, they are also in great position to expand in every direction. Elves are surrounded by woods and Dwarfs are surrounded by mountains, both races get distinct advantage in defending their own territory.

I'd probably try quick move towards Orcs and with some other fast units take quick advantage over human settlements in the West.

Dwarfs, unlike many other races, can't have two cities during the first turn and hence can't switch their unit factories "on" right away. This is only a minor set back (my opinion) as they can (with a little luck) summon a boar in the nearby teleport and (hopefully with some luck again ) gain advantage of the nearby camp site in the woods. Even if the camp side would end up being bummer, you still have that boar (or more) causing mischief/capturing mines, nodes, etc. around in other parts of map.

While that boar is causing some mischief in South, it's possible to extract couple units (Gruim Gloomfist, Runemaster, Mole for example) and head over the mountains to North. Maybe (with some luck, hah, lot's of luck needed) it's possible to buy that town quite nearby above capitol, and gain some supporting troops for them.

Ah, anyway. Point is that Elves and Dwarfs aren't placed very badly. Better than Frostlings and Halflings (my opinion, of course).

Though, I'd choose one race over others it would be Archons, or Undead. They have quite good starting places and expanding rapidly seems to be quite easy for them. Especially with Archons.

As I said, I played this map in single player and now I'm writing how I'd do it in multiplayer. Very logical

One minor note I remark that Expander skill will not be so useful if most of the settlements have limited growth (village, town max). I hope that it will not be the case in this map

Thanks for the analysis, The A M

It did seem to me that the dwarf towns were generally farther away from their starting position than they were for the other races, and they also had fewer available, so I've addressed that by putting in some stables (haste berry trees) and putting in another available village for the dwarves.

I will also add another village for the morlocks. The orcs had too many and the elves didn't have enough, so I've "borrowed" one of the orc ones and given it to the elves.

Naeco there are some restrictions on towns but to have two per player limited in growth, out of the seven or eight available locally, does not sound too unbearable to me. There are probably too many towns on this map, so some restrictions sounds good to me.

Let's hope that Muna is right, and the map is well-balanced in terms of skills and spheres when we play it.

Hi Roger,

I just wanted to toss a couple suggestions/ideas to you.

On the wizard skills I wonder if instead of basically doubling up with some races (Orcs and dwarves get constructor) you mix it up a bit more. Maybe give the construction races scholar and some of the research races constructor (you did give archons constructor I see).

Also I think you said you may limit heroes to just the three starting ones? This is a big map and I know in my games I really want that extra hero to pop up. So I'd prefer more than just three myself.

Anyway, just a couple thoughts...

Cheers!

Kirky

Please forgive my ignorance, I am aware of which races are research races but I'm not familiar with the phrase "construction races", which races does that apply to?

Also I am less concerned about doubling up where one race is good and one is evil than I would be about two races of the same alignment doubling up.

Hi Roger,

Well what I mean is Human, Dwarf, Orc and Shadow Demon towns already have a production bonus. So giving the constructor skill to wizards of those races is essentially improving the bonus they already have. I thought that perhaps giving them something such as scholar would help them more. However it's not that big a deal as it the four corner races which will most often be played by human players anyway.



Kirky

Thanks for the clarification, I'll give that some thought.

Actually Unicorn and I have found in our recent email games that the Archons tend to do best of all on this map, and in part this seems to be down to their easy access to a shipyard, and a reasonably straightforward expansion route down through the desert.

For that reason I've made the Archon shipyard a little less accessible, and added a bridge from the Asgardian/Frostling zone to give another route for the AI races to attack the Archon capital.

Ya maybe some diversity with Scholar and Conqueror won´t hurt the balance too much