VDC Map Generation Imbalance Problem and the Game Course

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Overlord2
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VDC Map Generation Imbalance Problem and the Game Course

Postby Overlord2 » Mon Jun 11, 2012 1:08 am

Why I want to discuss this topic is because lately the tendency of the map influence over the game course has become more and more vivid. It was taking shape slowly as the race balance was taking its shape and the skills of players grew in making top performance with the certain races. Now skill is as high as to give practically zero chances for the players who got worse start when there is significant difference in starting sectors (I want to give one game example here). Also the peace rule works against it too. The ‘115 turns of peace’ rule can secure one player’s advantage and when the start of a player is higher above the average (7.5 or 8 out of 10 score) - veteran players will understand what I mean - it is almost impossible to catch up with the leading player in development. Hence arises question what to do. One way is to discard the peace rule and allow rushes or early attacks. This will completely change the game course. The extra planets advantage won’t be of such importance, but the first planets will still play same role or maybe even higher. Also, the value of monsters will depreciate, because it won’t be possible to use them to full extent, because of time restriction. Another problem with discarding the peace rule is that it will limit the race choices in favour of fastest races. Slow races will become completely unplayable under this condition.
The second way is to follow Cybersaber’s restarting practice - finding out what opponent got for a start and restarting in case of significant difference. This will often result in huge number of restarts (and huge time loss for restarts), but in return you get same quality map.
The third way is balancing built-in map generator so that it doesn’t make the maps, which give such harsh difference in starting conditions. Unfortunately the last approach has been problematic so far.
So the question about map imbalances lies open and the problem unsolved. Let the knowing players express their opinion on this issue.

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