[M] (2) ESV Guardian - Page 2

On January 06 2012 05:12 Antares777 wrote:
I'd like to add onto what I said earlier.

Besides the main and natural, all of the expansions are third bases, either for you or your opponent. There are no expansions that aren't considered a possible third. This limits splits to the exact same way every game. The order at which they will expand to these areas can be different, but a horizontal line through the middle will pretty much be the dividing line in all of the games.

This is actually a bad thing in my opinion. It eliminates the possibility of having future expansions covering existing ones. This means that as you continue to expand, you continue to get more and more vulnerable, much more than on other maps. This is especially bad for Protoss because they are the least mobile. I think in the future, putting collapsable rocks on this map would be a good idea. Protoss will not be able to defend past 3 bases and it will be difficult for them to defend past the natural, but certainly not impossible.

The lack of towers on this map I think makes this situation even worse, because having more attack paths towards late game than on most maps with the absence of towers being able to spot a moving army will make this map a more aggressive oriented map.

I feel that a good way to improve this map would be to scrap its current middle and stretch the map vertically and add one or two expansions that do not function as alternate thirds, but more like the fourth or fifth expansion. Having them cover certain paths and cover preexisting expansions would be a good idea.

With that said, I strongly feel that one of the smarter things that you have done with this map is put the ramp into the safe thirds in the middle of the map. This makes it so that attacking the third there is more of a commitment and adds to the importance of destroying the rocks for the defending player. I commend you on this decision, it was really smart, and how the third on Xel'naga Caverns should have been created.