Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

CTP1: DESIGNING GOOD MULTIPLAYER MAPS

Collapse
X
Collapse
  •  

  • CTP1: DESIGNING GOOD MULTIPLAYER MAPS

    By Brad Santos
    June 10, 1999

    Note: This is the Developer's Corner, a part of the C:CTP section of Apolyton, where members of the C:CTP development team discuss ctp-related topics.

    In the stillness of an ancient morning, the oar driven ships of a mighty war-fleet drive across heaving channel seas to scrape against the sands of a foreign shore. Wooden ramps crash down into foaming surf. The clatter of hooves and the ringing of iron fills the air as your invasion force thunders ashore.

    Your army looks magnificent: Cavalry and Archers arrayed in stacks of nine. Samurai and Pikeman eager to storm the enemy's walled cities. You can already taste victory… picture the face of your mysterious internet opponent as your sandaled foot crashes down on his hopes of world conquest….

    You've waited 180 Turns for this. It better be good.

    The last wav. file you ever expected to hear was the long horrifying rattle of a heavy machinegun mowing down your proud legions like wheat. Or was it the roaring engines of those strange flying machines that rain destruction down on your royal fleet from above?

    Before you can even believe it's happening, it's over.

    If this happened to you, chances are it wasn't your fault (I'm not just saying that to be nice). You probably got scr__ed on your start location.

    In a multiplayer game, map balance is perhaps the most crucial factor in determining whether the game is going to be enjoyable, close fought match, or just an unfair stomping.

    The Call to Power single player game has several kinds of built in benchmarking to make sure that this kind of thing does not happen. When a random map is generated, the game will break the whole area down into super-cells (each the size of a city radius) and rank them based on the sum total of base Production, Food, and Gold available from all the tiles in the cell. The player usually always gets the best start location on the map. The AI's get the best start location and the 2nd , 3rd, etc…

    Once the game is in progress, the AIs are programmed to watch the progress of the player's development civilization and make slight adjustments to the behavior of their own civilizations to prevent the player from getting too far ahead or falling too far behind.

    In a multiplayer game, these restrictions don't apply. Random maps, particularly unusual random maps with an abundance of Goods or Water will tend to situate players in disparate start locations. A couple of mistakes in exploration or city placement can result in one side leaving the other in the technological dust by the end of the first Age.

    The best way to handle this is to play your multiplayer games on custom maps that are specifically designed to be fair to each player. Fans of C&C and other strategy games long ago learned to address this issue by creating mirror image maps where all sides of the terrain look the same. Personally, I don't prefer the cut-and-paste look, and I don't think it fits well with the alternate-earth simulation aspect of CTP.

    You can create a well-balanced multiplayer map by following a few simple rules of thumb. First, create a map that is small or medium in size. If you are looking for a quick game, move the land-masses slider (on the Customize Map panel) towards "Continents" and you will tend to get a land connection between the opposing start locations. Increasing the number of Goods on the map is also a good way to speed up the game because it will tend to drive the players technology towards faster moving units and bigger empires. Moving the Diversity slider towards "Uniform" will tend to encourage monopolies and have the same effect.

    Start each player with 1-3 cities and a couple of warriors to scout with. This will allow the player to get right into exploration of the map and eliminate the city-placement mistake issue that can doom a game from the start. Personally, I think its best to start all players on Mountain-river or river-forest tiles. A city on a mountain river region will tend to develop much faster than one in any other terrain. The beginning of a multiplayer game is slow. Help the players get through it as quickly as possible.

    If the start locations are not connected by land then they should be on land-masses of roughly equal size and value. The number of Goods within 15 tiles of each start location should be roughly equal. It is important that you consider not only the number but also the type of Goods around each player. Pick one or two monopoly goods for each player and make sure that there are five or six Goods of that type around the start region. Any player that can't form a monopoly within the first 150 Turns will probably lose badly.

    If you add AI opponents to the map, place them close to one another to encourage them to interact with one another early on. Set them between, and equidistant from, the players. This will help discourage the situation where one guy is showered by gifts from the Indians for the first 100 Turns while the other is being slaughtered by irate Zulus. Barriers of mountains and swamps are another good way to protect the player's civilizations in their infancy. However, if a quick and dirty fight is what you want, keep it flat and fast.

    Once all the basic components are in place you can go over the whole thing adding hills and reshaping coastlines to give it a nice natural look.

    A good custom map will lead to a better multiplayer experience by reducing frustration and increasing the intensity of the game.

      Posting comments is disabled.

    Article Tags

    Collapse

    Latest Articles

    Collapse

    • CTP1: STRATEGY TIPS FOR THE ADVANCED PLAYER II
      by Martin Gühmann

      By Brad Santos
      June 23, 1999

      Note: This is the Developer's Corner, a part of the C:CTP section of Apolyton, where members of the C:CTP development team discuss ctp-related topics.

      For many first time players of Civilization: Call to Power, the sound of sinister cackling as an unseen Slaver kidnaps another citizen from an unsuspecting city is enough to cause an anxiety attack. The reason for this strong emotional reaction is simple… Along with the addition of a 1000 year Science Fiction game era and a completely new stacked combat system, the introduction of Special Units is one of the most fundamental differences between CTP and its mighty predecessor, Civ2. Players who stayed up playing Civ2 for hundreds of hours in the dead of night are now forced to learn the basics of unconventional warfare under a new game system. Players may feel like Arnold Schwarzeneggar in Predator, facing an invisible enemy of unknown capabilities. That can be intimidating.

      Don't worry. Change is good. As Arny pointed out in the same movie, "if it bleeds (you) can kill it". Once you get familiar with the Special Units you will learn to love them all like little computer sprite brothers….or you will never conquer the world again!

      ...
      April 23, 2012, 17:18
    • CTP1: DESIGNING GOOD MULTIPLAYER MAPS
      by Martin Gühmann

      By Brad Santos
      June 10, 1999

      Note: This is the Developer's Corner, a part of the C:CTP section of Apolyton, where members of the C:CTP development team discuss ctp-related topics.

      In the stillness of an ancient morning, the oar driven ships of a mighty war-fleet drive across heaving channel seas to scrape against the sands of a foreign shore. Wooden ramps crash down into foaming surf. The clatter of hooves and the ringing of iron fills the air as your invasion force thunders ashore.

      Your army looks magnificent: Cavalry and Archers arrayed in stacks of nine. Samurai and Pikeman eager to storm the enemy's walled cities. You can already taste victory… picture the face of your mysterious internet opponent as your sandaled foot crashes down on his hopes of world conquest….

      ...
      April 23, 2012, 17:09
    • CTP1: SLIC 1.1 EXTRAS
      by Martin Gühmann

      By Winnie Lee
      June 4, 1999

      Note: This is the Developer's Corner, a part of the C:CTP section of Apolyton, where members of the C:CTP development team express their views on ctp-related topics.

      It's a wee bit lonely out here, since more than half the team's away on holidays, so I thought I'd sneak in a little bit more information on SLIC. Mind you, this is not aimed at programmers and programmer-type people - this is just a little bit of random easy stuff. It's for those who may not necessarily want to go through the whole rigmarole of writing a scenario, but would like a couple of little cool SLIC things in their games. So advanced users, don't flame me for the simplicity - this isn't for you!

      ...
      April 23, 2012, 17:02
    • CTP1: THE 36 CHAMBERS OF DR. NO
      by Martin Gühmann

      By Brad Santos (a.k.a Dr. No)
      May 27, 1999

      Note: This is the Developer's Corner, a part of the C:CTP section of Apolyton, where members of the C:CTP development team express their views on ctp-related topics.

      Turn 472. The World teeters on the brink of another catastrophic war.…

      Turkish Fusion Tanks are massing along your Southern Border. The ominous sound of descending Space fighters fills the air as the powerful Egyptian technocrat makes yet another outrageous demand. Your depleted treasury can't afford to foot the bill for an Alien Life Project, let alone a two-front war. Then, just as things are starting to look really bad, the Ozone layer gives way and you are forced to watch in stunned horror as the gleaming towers of your capitol city disappear beneath the waves of a titanic flood.

      ...
      April 23, 2012, 16:49
    • CTP1: THE VALUE OF SCHOOL-FOLLOW UP by WW
      by Martin Gühmann

      By William Westwater
      May 20, 1999

      Note: A discussion on the recent column by William Westwater begun on our forums. WW in response posted an example with numbers. We post it here, along with Celestial Dawn's reply.

      Main Article
      Follow up by CD

      Let’s consider a concrete examples:
      Civilization:
      Rations 7.5 per pop
      Happiness: 75
      Crime: 10%
      Science contribution: 50%

      City 1:
      Pop 5. Pop are currently on:
      Forest 20 P, 5 F
      Forest 20 P, 5 F
      Shallow with Net 10 P 20 F, 5 G
      Shallow with Net 10 P 20 F, 5 G
      Shallow with Net 10 P 20 F, 5 G
      Total: 70 P, 70 F, 15 G
      Total after crime: 63.5 P, 63.5, F, 13.5 G
      Food Eaten: 22.5 F

      Should I build a marketplace, marketplace with merchant, an academy, or an academy with scientist if I want science?

      ...
      April 21, 2012, 17:00
    • CTP1: THE VALUE OF SCHOOL-FOLLOW UP by CD
      by Celestial_Dawn

      By Celestial_Dawn
      May 20, 1999

      Note: A discussion on the recent column by William Westwater begun on our forums. WW in response posted an example with numbers. We post it here, along with Celestial Dawn's reply.

      Main Article
      Follow up by WW

      Mr Westwater

      Section I - Your initial Assumptions

      I'm afraid that your concrete example isn't quite concrete.

      ...
      April 21, 2012, 16:51
    Working...
    X