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United States2824 Posts
Casino Palace
By: TheFish
Published on NA
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/2YMrP.jpg)
Introduction/Inspiration:
This map is a concept for an Island team play ( 3 vs 3 ) map.
The idea was to create a layout that favors air play, but can still punish very fast expansions by Terran players. I have no idea if I have succeeded at this endeavor, but hopefully through the brilliant shared collective wisdom of the TL mapping community, we can create a "genre" of map that is fun to play. I made this map because I believe it is possible to use map features to eliminate some of the racial imbalance on Island maps.
A few things that are not standard in the hopes of balancing/creating a fun environment for players:
- the natural expos are blocked off by supply depots. I wanted to disallow very fast expansions, but I thought rocks with their hp and armor favored T and P too heavily.
- the naturals are 3,750 high yield gas, this is to help players going air to be able to support gas heavy units, and hopefully decrease the utility of marines and static defense...
- You can blink around the sides of the map. a 4 gate blink build will not hit until after the 9 minute mark, since you require an obs and 6 blinks to get across.
- Middle watchtowers overlook only airspace
Pictures (Aesthetics):
Just want to note that the aesthetics are pretty half-assed, since I would plan on using this as a proof-of-concept and possibly developing a prettier map with water and stuffs.
+ Show Spoiler +
Analyzer was bugged by this map, but here is air distance;
+ Show Spoiler +
I am most interested to know what people think of the features of the map and whether or not they help with the viability of the map - Feedback is welcome ^.^
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Looks pretty awesome! Would be fun to play with some friends. 
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Definitely looks awesome. Island maps are interesting, but I fear the power of a muta feed strat. That would be pretty impossible to deal with, especially with the high yield gas.
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Is that 12 expansions per player? Seems a little overkill to me.
Other than that it seems like a good premise for an Intro island map. Having blink stalkers being able to go around on islands also seems important for this type of map.
My advices:
You need to reduce the reassources on the main island. People can max out just from 3 bases, having 5 on the main gives no futher reason to move out on the islands.
Islands in general needs to be rather big or turretrings becomes too powerful.
Also stick to standard Mineral/gas values. I know what you are trying but you won't convince anyone that islands are possible by breaking all the rules of ladder maps. I know ladder likely never will have an island map but still try to stick to them.
Edit: Missread it as a 1v1 Ignore all above.
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United States2824 Posts
On April 29 2012 12:02 Sumadin wrote:
Is that 12 expansions per player? Seems a little overkill to me.
Other than that it seems like a good premise for an Intro island map. Having blink stalkers being able to go around on islands also seems important for this type of map.
My advices:
You need to reduce the reassources on the main island. People can max out just from 3 bases, having 5 on the main gives no futher reason to move out on the islands.
Islands in general needs to be rather big or turretrings becomes too powerful.
Also stick to standard Mineral/gas values. I know what you are trying but you won't convince anyone that islands are possible by breaking all the rules of ladder maps. I know ladder likely never will have an island map but still try to stick to them.
Its a 3v3 map, so theres only ~ 4 expansions per player.
Working on the assumption that players will go for air builds on this map, I thought the extra gas might be necessary considering that any race that goes purely for air will be starved for gas and floating minerals. I feel that air units overall are weaker than ground units, so without the extra gas I thought that it would be too easy to have stalemates. The extra gas is in there to hopefully discourage turtling. Its obviously untested but something I feel might be needed to allow air heavy compositions - I'll change it if it proves to be imbalanced.
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Looks Pretty cool. I have always wanted to have a balanced island map.
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The middle seems pointless to take
Especially if it's an air / island map and where you tend to be more gas restricted than mineral restricted.
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Unfortunately, Island maps in sc2 restrict builds rather than encourage them. I never liked maps where people can easily turtle themselves in (like Twillight Fortress), and here you actually stimulate that effect. There will be a lot of long 200/200 builds as well as some air raids and drops and thats where the true variety ends.
It could be fun for some people, and the map looks definitly well-made for it's purpose - but it is not my taste.
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On April 29 2012 12:14 TheFish7 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 29 2012 12:02 Sumadin wrote:
Is that 12 expansions per player? Seems a little overkill to me.
Other than that it seems like a good premise for an Intro island map. Having blink stalkers being able to go around on islands also seems important for this type of map.
My advices:
You need to reduce the reassources on the main island. People can max out just from 3 bases, having 5 on the main gives no futher reason to move out on the islands.
Islands in general needs to be rather big or turretrings becomes too powerful.
Also stick to standard Mineral/gas values. I know what you are trying but you won't convince anyone that islands are possible by breaking all the rules of ladder maps. I know ladder likely never will have an island map but still try to stick to them. Its a 3v3 map, so theres only ~ 4 expansions per player. Working on the assumption that players will go for air builds on this map, I thought the extra gas might be necessary considering that any race that goes purely for air will be starved for gas and floating minerals. I feel that air units overall are weaker than ground units, so without the extra gas I thought that it would be too easy to have stalemates. The extra gas is in there to hopefully discourage turtling. Its obviously untested but something I feel might be needed to allow air heavy compositions - I'll change it if it proves to be imbalanced.
Oh i see sorry
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This actually looks like a ton of fun to play on, it seems like the kind of map where we could see BL/Corrupter vs Battlecruiser/viking vs Carrier/Voidray. Add to that drops and harass with muta/banshee/pheonix and you have a recipe for awesome.
Not sure how well it's balanced, but as far as mindless fun goes this shows a lot of promise.
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United Kingdom1381 Posts
Wouldn't a map like this encourage feeding builds? Im pretty sure if one player maxed out 3/3/3 carriers, and other used all the remaining minerals on marines, it would be pretty hard to stop.
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Problem with island maps is that they encourage turtling massively - and with hyg muta single or double muta feed is going to be pretty hard hard to stop. If you wanted to encourage air play I wouldn't make it a pure island but maybe more of a walled-off with rocks semi-island or something like that - so that ground play can actually work but is more difficult to do. Also 6 blinks is probably too much to get from one base to another.
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This looks fun, will it be on the EU server any time soon?
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This looks awesome, but did you consider putting natural creep tumors at the gold? I like your style, but I think without creep blocking it off, Terran can still gain alot by taking it as a natural or a very early 3rd.
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United States2824 Posts
On April 29 2012 17:27 Callynn wrote:
Unfortunately, Island maps in sc2 restrict builds rather than encourage them. I never liked maps where people can easily turtle themselves in (like Twillight Fortress), and here you actually stimulate that effect. There will be a lot of long 200/200 builds as well as some air raids and drops and thats where the true variety ends.
Any map with odd features will encourage a certain type of playstyle. The objective here with this map is to experiment with different map features to see if we can come up with a way to make air play / island maps possible. The turtling effect may be too strong here, but the difference is that on an island map it would be hard to counterattack with units you are using to turtle with - excepting maybe stalkers. Its not like I could sit behind a wall of siege tanks and then move out when I'm maxed - you need air support to move an army around. Still, lack of variety could certainly be an issue with an island map.
On April 29 2012 19:29 iHirO wrote:
Wouldn't a map like this encourage feeding builds? Im pretty sure if one player maxed out 3/3/3 carriers, and other used all the remaining minerals on marines, it would be pretty hard to stop.
Maybe. Thats why I think the early bases need to be gas heavy - to diminish the utility of one teammate getting all the gas. A terran floating command centers around is a big issue, maybe the biggest issue, with island maps. The thing about marines is that you would need to put them into medivacs to move them around, and the good news about that is that it encourages controlling airspace. Marines could still break the whole damn thing though, I'm not sure.
On April 29 2012 20:25 greggy wrote:
Problem with island maps is that they encourage turtling massively - and with hyg muta single or double muta feed is going to be pretty hard hard to stop. If you wanted to encourage air play I wouldn't make it a pure island but maybe more of a walled-off with rocks semi-island or something like that - so that ground play can actually work but is more difficult to do. Also 6 blinks is probably too much to get from one base to another.
From what I've been seeing in my team games theres two ways to counter mutas - You can either rush the crap out of the zerg who is going gas heavy, or use a stalker/HT, festor/Hydra or Marine/thor/raven composition. Unfortunately, an island map removes the possibility of rushing and makes these units less desirable. Therefore, I think your suggestion is a good one, in the next incarnation of this map idea, I'll probably make it more viable to rush the opponent. The trick for me is to figure out how exactly to do this - with rocks, maybe allowing cliff walking/elevator play but not straight up rushes.
On April 29 2012 22:44 moskonia wrote:
This looks awesome, but did you consider putting natural creep tumors at the gold? I like your style, but I think without creep blocking it off, Terran can still gain alot by taking it as a natural or a very early 3rd.
This is probably a good idea. For the next version there won't be any gold minerals. I'm not sure how I feel about creep tumors but its a good idea to discourage terrans from floating around.
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On April 30 2012 05:50 TheFish7 wrote:
Maybe. Thats why I think the early bases need to be gas heavy - to diminish the utility of one teammate getting all the gas. A terran floating command centers around is a big issue, maybe the biggest issue, with island maps. The thing about marines is that you would need to put them into medivacs to move them around, and the good news about that is that it encourages controlling airspace. Marines could still break the whole damn thing though, I'm not sure.
Doesn't giving gas-heavy bases encourage feeding strats? I mean, if everyone mined more gas, they have more to donate; and gas is usually the limiting factor in air strats. I think this can be balanced by making the naturals half bases; 6m1g (no high yield). You can even increase the gas limit on the natural geyser. This way, players will be more mineral heavy to discourage feeding strats. Then you need to put creep tumors/rocks everywhere to prevent terrans from building and floating ccs everywhere with all the excess minerals...
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/bk7q0.jpg)
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