Historical Theme - Mene in Venezuela by Slipkyes

Topic Subject: Historical Theme - Mene in Venezuela by Slipkyes

Enginerd
HG Angel

posted 03-07-09 12:33 PM EDT (US)

This is the Thread to Vote for Mene in Venezuela, a map submitted under the Historical Theme for the Winter 2008 Mapmaking Competition. Read the discussion below by our judges and then post your score for the map and leave comments in the thread below. Score once for each map, 1-10 points. Voting Closes at the end of March.

Part of the judges discussion is below... the full text will be made available before the judging ends.

------------------

Enginerd:Map: Mene in Venezuela by Slipkyes
Enginerd:Very detailed description in the map about the history (obviously the historical setting). Any comments on that piece?
Enginerd:I thought it was neat, I learned something from the read.
Pawel:that's one of the things that I wanted to ask him: is it about a historical event, or a hypothetical situation?
Disenchanted:I actually wrote that the story was very thin in my notes. 1. The story is vague, doesn't refer to specific historical events. 2. The story doesn't tie everything together - it almost seems irrelevant to the events of the game
Enginerd:I do think it is historical but I don't know how real it is.
Enginerd:I'll make sure I ask Slipkyes about that piece.
Pawel:I think it is related to real events to some extent
Disenchanted:I was just saying that I would have preferred if the story was concrete enough that we would KNOW it was talking about real events
Enginerd:got it
Enginerd:Any other thoughts on the historical piece?
Disenchanted:not really...just that it was an interesting idea but I thought it should have been more fleshed out
Pawel:I agree with the Disenchanted�s criticism about the story, it looks like a normal map with some added ideology
Enginerd:OK, Looks like it is a 1v1 with 2 other AI controlled players. Humans vs Azracs
Pawel: yes, I think it should be 1vs1, as the 2 human players are initially at war
Disenchanted: that's how I played it
Pawel: so you were fighting against yourself?
Disenchanted: yes
Disenchanted: lol
Pawel: some people like to play chess this way
Enginerd: I don't
Enginerd: But it is a good way to playtest a map
Enginerd:What did you notice when you did play it? Anything special jump out at you?
Disenchanted:for Enginerd's second question, I thought it bears a striking resemblance to Thinreed Lake
Enginerd:shakes off dust in brain to remember thinreed.... got it
Disenchanted:I mean, not like he copied Thinreed Lake, just the concept
Pawel:it's a real lake in Venezuela
Enginerd:I think that's what he was going for.
Pawel:lots of death nodes - I guess they are the oil deposits
Enginerd:That was my take on it too, especially the ones scattered in the waters.
Disenchanted:was going to ask him if the overall design was inspired by Thinreed Lake, but it sounds like it might reflect the actual geography if Pawel is right
Disenchanted:that did not occur to me
Pawel: [ulr=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_maracaibo]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/lake Maracaibo
Pawel:but he wrote in the description that there is no time to use magic, so they are pretty useless
Disenchanted:yeah that was one of the strangest things...it's supposed to be about fighting over oil
Disenchanted:but the death nodes are unimportant if you have no use for mana
Enginerd:Death nodes = oil?
Pawel:I think you should rather get gold income from oil
Enginerd:They do it call it black gold
Disenchanted:maybe the mines are supposed to represent oil as well, it's not really clear
Pawel:maybe they look better as death nodes than mines, but gameplay is more important than looks
Enginerd:Well... how does the map play?
Disenchanted:I am going to dump another part of my notes here

Disenchanted:There is not much to do on this map. The lake isolates players from each other and allows only 2 routes of attack. If there were more stuff to explore on each side this wouldn't be such a problem.
Disenchanted:Humans have nearby Goblin lvl 2 4H; Azracs have Frostling 4H. Both races are fixed. This isn't exactly fair, since Dragons will pwn Karaghs. (Players should have lots of money, so they can go right for lvl 4 units.) Of course Humans can make wyverns and try to harass Azracs, but Azracs also can make glows, so basically all their options are better. (glows >> wyverns)
Disenchanted:There are many nearby undefended mines, nodes, etc. Players get too much income too fast, and there are not enough cities. Also makes it not worthwhile (for a long time at least) to take the few mines and nodes that are defended.
Disenchanted:dine
Disenchanted:done
Enginerd:give me a sec
Enginerd:OK... got through it all, well thought out. Your thoughts Pawel?
Pawel:nice comment Dis, I don't have such interesting things to say

Pawel:for me it just played like a typical AoW map
Disenchanted:as you can probably tell from my second comment in that list, I felt the balance was a bit off
Pawel:it's important which races you will get in the random cities
Enginerd:I'm wondering if this was part of the whole historical thing going on with the indians rising up against their oppressors?
Enginerd:I agree the balance needs some tweaking.
Pawel:if you get neutral races, you can buy the units, and capture the 4-hex city fast
Disenchanted:good point
Pawel:also the Azracs can buy the 4-hex city, while the Humans can't
Enginerd:In any of your playtesting were the lizards or elves a factor or did they stay stuck out in the waters doing nothing?
Disenchanted:They attacked the Azracs only I think
Disenchanted:not sure if that is random, they were definitely a factor
Pawel:I didn't playtest to the end, while I played they didn't attack
Enginerd:Did the undead 4-hex in the underground come into play or was it too isolated and hard to get to?
Disenchanted:no...seems like a lot of the stuff underground is not worth it
Pawel:I went there, built a ship and captured it, but I was playing SP, in 1vs1 it's probably not worth it
Enginerd:I think we've covered balance and the historical theme? Any other thoughts on the playability? What did you like about the map? What about the custom items/heroes?
Enginerd:Any positive things about the map?
Pawel:I don't see anything really stunning in this map
Disenchanted:my opinion there is similar to the story...there are very few heroes and items and they don't add much to the theme
Enginerd:So that's a no

Disenchanted:well I liked the terrain
Enginerd:lol

Disenchanted:in an aesthetic sense
Disenchanted:but I'm not sure it helped the gameplay
Pawel:for me the aesthetics is average
Enginerd:I actually thought there could have been more, there is lots of openness to it so I'd recommend going back and filling in some of those open spots.
Enginerd:What else could be done to improve it? (I don't want to discourage our young mapmakers

)
Pawel:it could use some more thing like flowers and stones, it's too much plain grass for me
Disenchanted:as I mentioned, the main issue for me is balance and gameplay
Pawel: also there are some things that don't make much sense, like a fire next to some poison plants and evil woods
Disenchanted: 1. Balance problems. 2. Not much interaction between the 2 players, since the 2 sides are only connected at 2 points. 3. Given #3, there should be more for each player to explore on their own side.
Pawel: for me it's not a bad thing that there are only 2 connections, I don't like maps with too much open space
Disenchanted: so basically "either more open, or more to explore" would be the simplest take home message
Disenchanted: it's OK, but the small area each player has is explored so quickly...
Pawel: Yes
Disenchanted: then you're left with nothing to do
Enginerd: I think there should be more to explore as well (and tweak the balance thing). More to explore would create a natural way to introduce more natural barriers and fill in that open space.
Pawel: you can go to the underground, but then the other player will eat you (if he is a human)
Enginerd: Lots of opportunities for our mapmaker....
Enginerd: So... do we give it a score?
Disenchanted: ok, do you want individual scores for the different areas or just overall score?
Enginerd: Basic idea was 1-10 and I'd prefer just the one number.

---------(come back for the judges scores next week)----

Disenchanted: 5
Pawel: I wanted to give it a 6, but after seeing the issues that Disenchanted pointed out, I'll give it a 5 too
Disenchanted: is this his first map? I thought it was a good first effort
Enginerd: I've always found it interesting judging maps... the judges are rarely united in everything. Sometimes (like with this map) there are obvious things that need work but I'm sure we'll get to some maps that one will love and the other will hate.
Disenchanted: and could be good if some gameplay issues are fixed
Enginerd: An overall score of 5 for Slipkyes, great effort from him, really appreciate the effort and thanks to our judges for their comments and scores.

----------------------

[This message has been edited by Enginerd (edited 03-23-2009 @ 07:07 PM).]

Author

Replies:

Enginerd
HG Angel

posted 03-15-09 12:27 PM EDT (US) 1 / 16

Voting now open, good luck Slipkyes!

Enginerd
HG Angel

posted 03-15-09 08:52 PM EDT (US) 2 / 16

Header updated... added the judges comments... come back in a week for the judges scores!

Slipkyes
Member

posted 03-17-09 11:59 AM EDT (US) 3 / 16

all the comments are great, this is my first map so I'm just looking to improve in that matter. I couldn't for my life remember how Thinreed lake looks like, as pawel mentioned it's based on real geography of my country, the lake is real (it's actually a gulf but it was a lake many years ago and is still called a lake). Thanks to the judges for all the constructive comments. About the connections I kinda liked that there were limited but varied ways to attack the other, maybe I should make more paths underground to make it more accessible for the players to confront there and open a new path. Plus you might have missed that there's a third way to go trhough, the way that gave me victory when I playtested it with a friend: through the lake on boat, so I can quickly take the human's lightning shrine that would destroy me If I went south on foot (I played azracs)

edit: btw enginerd it's Venezuela, you misspelled in the title. and yeah death nodes represent oil wells, they are simply a representation of the storyline on the map, don't mean to make you more powerfull in the actual map, but it is part of symbolic objectives to control all oilwells as to match the storyline

[This message has been edited by slipkyes (edited 03-17-2009 @ 12:11 PM).]

Enginerd
HG Angel

posted 03-17-09 04:39 PM EDT (US) 4 / 16

fixed!

disenchanted
Member

posted 03-19-09 02:44 AM EDT (US) 5 / 16

Hi Slipkyes, thanks for responding to our comments. (This is how the judging was originally supposed to go - the mapmaker was going to be part of the conversation so he could answer the mapmakers' questions, respond to their criticisms, explain why he did things the way he did, etc. But we gave up on that idea due to scheduling problems.)

Also, probably not everything I was trying to say in the chat came out very clearly, so maybe this is a good time to explain some of my comments further.

Quoted from Slipkyes:
I couldn't for my life remember how Thinreed lake looks like, as pawel mentioned it's based on real geography of my country, the lake is real (it's actually a gulf...

That's interesting...not knowing the geography of Venezuela too well, I didn't recognize that the map looks like Lake Maracaibo. So I assumed it probably wasn't based on any particular place. As for whether it was inspired by Thinreed Lake in any way, that's not actually all that important to me, I was just saying that my first reaction was "hey, that looks kinda like Thinreed Lake..." Also, just because you weren't thinking of Thinreed Lake doesn't mean this is pure coincidence - maybe you just have good design sense

)

Also, including this sort of information in the story would be one small example of how I think the map could be improved. In the chat, I complained that the story was vague: for a historical map, I think you should make references to specific people, places and events. (The preceding comments about the location are just one small aspect of that.) Like if there were a lot of oil fields in or around Lake Maracaibo, and there was a particular Native American tribe that fought a particular government force in that area, the people who did the fighting, the battles they fought, the locations of the battles, etc. could all be part of the scenario. For example, you can add details in the story and in message events, choose the initial placement of each player's forces to reflect real battles that might have just taken place, make some custom heroes to represent the generals and tribal leaders, and so on. I suppose it would be valid to just say that the map represents the history of the conflict between government and native people in an abstract way, but I find that less interesting, and it makes less sense now that I know the map represents a real place and not some hypothetical place.

Quoted from Slipkyes:
About the connections I kinda liked that there were limited but varied ways to attack the other, maybe I should make more paths underground to make it more accessible for the players to confront there and open a new path. Plus you might have missed that there's a third way to go through, the way that gave me victory when I playtested it with a friend: through the lake on boat

Interesting...I did of course notice the shipyard but I didn't think it would be very useful - I'll explain why in a moment. But first let me explain that my point was not just that there are 2 sides with only 2 points connecting them, but that this is very limiting on such a small map. Actually it's not the physical size so much as the lack of things to do and explore. You only have a handful of mostly closely grouped cities to capture. I assumed most people would capture their 4-hex and the vicinity within a few turns. After that the only choice is to mass your forces and send them either north or south. Then either the entire game is decided by one battle, or there's a prolonged faceoff at one of the chokepoints. Once you've played a few games like that it gets a bit boring, which is why I'm suspicious of maps that have very few avenues of attack. Adding a third option like water travel (even if it really does work) doesn't dramatically change that dynamic, IMO.

In Snowscapes and Mirages, by contrast, there's a physical barrier and only a few ways to cross it but there's still a lot going on. It's exactly the same size as your map. There are only a few ways across the river, but more than two, and you can't attack your opponent right away, but there are lots of out-of-the-way towns to conquer, crypts to explore, heroes to liberate, monsters to dominate, and so on. And who ultimately wins is in large part determined by your success in exploring your world, building up your army, leveling your heroes and recruiting new ones, not just when and where you choose (from a small list of possibilities) to attack. The number of paths you can take through your own back yard to the various river crossing points adds a lot to the strategic depth of that scenario.

Anyway...I can try to explain why I thought ships wouldn't be used often, even though it doesn't make a huge difference to me in terms of playability. First, I wonder what was your opponent doing while you were building a dragon ship? My reasoning was that the two land routes between the capitals are both faster than going underground or over water. If the other player attacks with everything he's got and half your guys are still mucking about underground or in the middle of a lake, you're in serious trouble. (I know it's possible to launch a successful surprise attack by a water route, but only if you can spare the units and still defend against his attack, and capture and defend his cities with only 5 units, etc, etc, so it seemed like that would be a suboptimal plan except in rare situations. But that's not the fundamental issue for me.)

I guess the fact that things happened differently from what I expected in your game underscores one of the limitations of our method of judging (we did not have time to play all the maps in PBEM, so either we played them all against the computer. In some cases I made a hotseat game where I played 2 of the playable races.) So when we try to rate things like "playability" and "fun," it's based on some combination of playing against a computer and speculation about what would happen in a "real" game between humans. Maybe in this case there are more ways to play the scenario than we guessed.

One more idea: there is an underground route across the map which we said no one would ever use in a MP game because it's too long. But if you made it shorter, and/or added some more tunnels, there might be a better variety of viable strategies. For example, on Thinreed Lake, there are two underground 3-hex cities, and one island 4-hex. But the tunnels that lead to those cities also provide easy access to the enemy capital, so your opponent really has to worry about an attack from underground. Not to mention that those cities in the middle are worth fighting over. So that adds a bit of complexity right there, although personally I still find Thinreed lake a bit too constrained. (It's well-designed, but I prefer more open maps where movement is less channeled, like World of Paradise for instance, and maps that have more channels, like Capture the Flag.)

PawelS
Member

posted 03-19-09 08:10 AM EDT (US) 6 / 16

Quoted from Slipkyes:
and yeah death nodes represent oil wells, they are simply a representation of the storyline on the map, don't mean to make you more powerfull in the actual map, but it is part of symbolic objectives to control all oilwells as to match the storyline

Maybe you should change the victory condition to Capture locations, and make the one who captures all the Death Nodes win?

A proud member of the Unofficial Patch team.
Creator of the AoW1 Mod.

disenchanted
Member

posted 03-19-09 08:55 AM EDT (US) 7 / 16

Quoted from PawelS:
Maybe you should change the victory condition to Capture locations, and make the one who captures all the Death Nodes win?

That's a really nifty idea. I didn't even know "capture locations" could include nodes (I guess I never really thought about it.) It would require players to explore a lot more, assuming the nodes aren't all in one place, which would address my main concern about the gameplay (the one I've just been going on and on about...)

[This message has been edited by disenchanted (edited 03-19-2009 @ 08:56 AM).]

Slipkyes
Member

posted 03-20-09 00:29 AM EDT (US) 8 / 16

wow. that was my original idea, and almost before uploading I decided to call that off and prefered to make it a more basic infantry battle. Guess it was a mistake, it certainly would've been more interesting. Thanks for all the criticism disenchanted, I'm definitely gonna make a new version with more underground paths and make difficult to reach oil wells to make the game interesting. Plus more custom heroes and items, there are but too little, only 2 per race or something like that.

and about the story being too vague, there are two reasons:
1- It is not a totally real event, there was no real battles (besides presidential assassination attempts lol), it was merely a political and diplomatic issue that happened in my country, the battle thing and the indians uprising is just something I made up in the middle of it to make a cool aow map.
2- Nothing of this was made through research (maybe just a couple Indian hero names), it was all made from recent memory, and my memory isn't that good. I guess I was just too lazy to make more research and put actual dates and stuff, plus #1 made me not go too far, as the battles and such are fictional.

Still, thanks a lot for the help you guys, I will make a better version as soon as I free some time for other RL stuff, and though I never thought I would win with such great mapmakers competing, I knew it would be great fun and a lot of learning participating in this competition, and would do it again

Deroman
Member

posted 03-20-09 10:25 AM EDT (US) 9 / 16

Reviewing this map because this is the only scenario I have so far played through.

Now I got little suspicious about the Death Nodes presenting oil rifts, after all this was early 1800s. I am well aware how proud the Venezuelans are of their oil, something that finally makes the Venezuela rich rather than the foreign capitalist monopolies, but there is a big but in this scenario. First of all, early 1800s is a very loose timeline. Although Venezuela declared independence from Spain around 1811, Bolivar and the rebels were defeated many times and Venezuela returned to Spain's control until final victory for the rebels in Lima around 1821. Shortly after (still in 1821) independance of South American nations, Bolivar founded nation of New-Granada, consisting Ecuador, Columbia and Venezuela which broke apart in 1830-1831 leading independence of Ecuador, Great-Columbia and Venezuela. Because the map presents Columbian border and Central Goverment, it must be somewhere after 1830(?) This becomes a problem as the great oil deposits of Venezuela were found in early 1900s (I checked this up because it bothered me; around First World War ~1910-1920). How is it possible that Americans and British are "invading" for the oil rights in early 1800s? As the map is strictly limited around the culf of Maracaraibo(?) the Mene indians seem to inhabit quite vast lands even reaching all the way to the costline, was this historically true (I must admit that now I simply don't know, but I doubt anyway)?

Reviewing quite strictly from Historical perspective, I will give the score of: 4/10.
The scenario was quite fun to play as the brits and americans actually invaded the costline. It was quite disappointment though that there was never any fighting for the control of the oil rifts. Mene's were not really that mutch of a challenge as it was possible to conquer Maracaraibo quite fast in the beginning with the strong starting forces. There could have been more variation in the enviroment, got pretty "flat feeling" at times. For first map, well done Slipkyes. Nonetheless, I must be honest and say that for me the historical theme failed. Hopefully this score does not disappoint you and you will keep making maps and improve to be among the master mapmakers of our time.

(PS. If you ever decide to make a map: "Adventures of Bolivar" or such, I will be glad to help

)

-/X\(++)/X\-L.E.D. Frozen Warrior-/X\(++)/X\-

[This message has been edited by Deroman (edited 03-20-2009 @ 10:29 AM).]

Slipkyes
Member

posted 03-23-09 10:01 AM EDT (US) 10 / 16

Deroman thanks a lot, now that you mention it I am totally wrong on the timeline, it should be early 1900s, not 1800s. I knew a history freak like you would not be very pleased with the storyline because I wrote it out of pure memory, and my memory for historical stuff sucks. Thanks for all the comments they are truly appreciated, in a couple of weeks I'll work on a better version of the map with more fighting over oil wells instead of fighting each other. Btw the indian's name is not mene, as the story says "Mene" is the name the indians gave to petrolium, they called it Mene, the indian tribes in Venezuela were many so I didn't chose a specific one, the heroes in the map are real names from different tribes. and the city is spelled Maracaibo (my hometown, I was born there) but you were pretty close ;-)

P.S. Really nice that you know so much about my country without being related to it in anyway :-)

Enginerd
HG Angel

posted 03-23-09 07:07 PM EDT (US) 11 / 16

Header updated... added the text from the judges on the score!

disenchanted
Member

posted 03-24-09 10:42 PM EDT (US) 12 / 16

You're welcome, I don't really look at it (mostly) as criticism though but suggestions for improvement. Either way, I'm glad you took it well.

Also keep in mind that we said this is basically a good map with some problems, which wouldn't be too hard to fix. The only reason I gave it a 5 is that gameplay is the most important factor for me, and I felt these problems hurt the gameplay to the point where the map wasn't a lot of fun to play in its current form. I guess I'm not primarily judging based on its potential, but it has the potential to be a very good map.

Slipkyes
Member

posted 03-29-10 12:48 PM EDT (US) 13 / 16

Hey guys! I�m back to the site, had to step away from PBEM gaming some time ago cause I was dealing with A LOT of rl stuff at the same time. To put it short, my dad was diagnosed with Pancreatic Cancer, I graduated from college an Industrial Engineer, I moved to Spain, my dad�s cancer was eliminated along with his whole pancreas through surgery, I got married, I�m still looking for a job, pretty much that would be it.

So I�m back, currently playing a few PBEMs with some old RL friends from Venezuela, and would like to come back to this awesome place and get into a friendly match or two.

Now I�m posting here cause I re-read through this thread and am ready to continue work on this map, in less than two weeks I�ll have a new version up on the site, and plan to do a pbem with it against whoever wants to. Again, thanks to the judges, deroman and enginerd for their thoughts on the map and hope you get a chance to check out and play the new version!

So, see you around the forums again

Enginerd
HG Angel

posted 03-31-10 10:33 PM EDT (US) 14 / 16

Welcome back and glad to hear it, look forward to seeing the updated map

Deroman
Member

posted 04-01-10 05:21 AM EDT (US) 15 / 16

Welcome back Slipkyes! I look foward testing your new version of the map, hopefully more nature variation and fixed timeline this time!

If you are interested in returning to Campaign PBEM, please make a post at the thread and we see which race we can get you into. CrazySlyHawk of Highmen seem to have gone inactive due RL issues, so we seem to be abit stuck.

-/X\(++)/X\-L.E.D. Frozen Warrior-/X\(++)/X\-

Slipkyes
Member

posted 04-07-10 11:43 AM EDT (US) 16 / 16

Hey so I think it's done, I would like you guys to take a look at it first. Is anyone available to give it some quick playtests? at least give the map a look?

I'll post a link to the map here, I want more opinions before being 100% sure and uploading it to the downloads section

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/954292/Mene in Venezuela.hsm

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