New 6 Player MP Map: Watering Hole

I’m rearranging the Dwarf start a bit, but I was kinda hoping that the Dwarves would get stuck into the Gryphons and they could play a really important role flying around the stomping out the graves. It would also let them spread out to the other Dwarf towns quickly.

The other thing is that I think it’s interesting for each player to have somewhat of a different role. Each starting position is different, each race is different, and the challenges and opportunities presented are different. The Dwarves should be needed to fight both the human outbreaks, while the Human and Orc players are also distracted by the top and bottom problems.

After I push out the updated map, I’ll try playing as the Dwarf player and see what it feels like.

is the issue then that the gyphon nest is so far away (it’s adjacent in tile terms but there is a river in the way so you have walk over 2 mountains+ 1 plains tile), unless i’m misreading the map

It’s different now, but it’s still far away. I debated making it closer, but I think you should have to work a bit to get the Gryphons. If you get down an Urchin, Mountain King, Gnome, and/or Gryphon Horn then you could get there a bit faster.

Here’s what the new map looks like, I haven’t uploaded this yet, but it should be up later today or tomorrow.

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If you are looking for symmetry – the south zombies dont mirror.

But! I like this a lot better. Want to try it out.

This is what it looks like after 24 hours (where a normal game starts). They started the same but made different decisions in those 24 hours.

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Ahh cool so that last image you posted was normal mode? I like how the south and north groups have gotten a little buff since v1.0. I got good RNG in my match and eliminated my North zombies as humans in the first 24 hours or so.

The new version is up and ready to test. Here is an open game: Blight of the Immortals

Thoughts on the top part of the new layout

I think the layout is an improvement, the topmost blight now seems to to be better - the pool being 1 more tile away means that players have a chance to protect it (another option that would be okay would be making it the only place the blight can go, it being one of 3 targets just feels too random for me in team games)
There being 2 starting locations at the top for the blight is probably an improvement, going to be harder to dislodge quickly & puts the dragon and/or well under threat.
The tension between going after the top blight of bottom blight is as strong as before which I really like.

Haven’t played the middle position so no real comment

bottom position the blight being that little bit stronger looks good if you compared it to the other game I played, the well being moved back makes a lot of sense given the extra blighted start.

(do hope all these comments are useful and not too wordy)

(via the comment in the celestial pools game)

I don’t know what to say about the difficulty, It would of been far harder had we mishandled the beginning, I just thought It may be interesting to compare to the watering hole game that I have been playing (first map set up, before you changed it)

Just thought as the map maker seeing how differently its playing out may be of interest

Yikes! That’s a lot of zombies.

I think it shows how much the balance can change from having some experienced players, I’m unsure what if anything it means - it feeds into questions like what is the normal difficultly, should it be winnable if a player goes afk (and if it should should maps be tested with 1 player being inactive for a day or even the whole game)

the chain on that map which seems to be the biggest risk is
1)top middle human zombies get to well
2)spawn necromancer lord
3)take over the giants location

I kind of like it - its a risk but a manageable one

I think it’s a harder map now, but I think that will be OK as it’s for team battles for clans. The players that join these battles will most likely be more committed and more experienced. Or the clan will hopefully be able to fill any drop outs quickly.

Have to say this is one of the only games I’ve had a desire to play around with a map editor with.

I can think of lots of sort of little i don’t know what to call them devices I probably would name them - where you would have chains of risk to manage, and possible branching points

I would love to clean up and release the editor one day. I would love to play your maps!

I do wonder if there is some way round - if the output is some simple format I can write the tools that I would need and output the map, If there was just someway of saying this is a 30x30 map hex 1 is a mountain … etc I probably could write the tools myself (indeed one thing I’m curious about is a random map generator)

I wish I knew I would be able to, I realize its too much to ask to change plans on development order on the whim of someone who may make maps.

tl;dr I don’t think I need much of the tools just the an output format (or even just the output of some maps so I can figure it out) and some way to load it into the game

For what it’s worth, I’d be into making maps with minimalist tools as well!

In my 2nd match on this map with BlightedPea & starry_wisdom. My thoughts:

  • The game swings so much based on whether the RNG sends a large horde towards a Mana Pool that it’s easy to blame a loss on the RNG hating you rather than a lack of tactics.
  • Both times, the East Side has won first. Not sure whether it’s a coincidence, a quirk in the RNG between the sides, or the East Side players consistently doing a Dragonhelm Knight runabout with the zombie hordes attacking Lower Pond.
  • Saving Found Springs or Lower Pond seems to demand crowd control.
  • Wish those pools just had 1 Giant Cavern next to them instead of 2. One spawned a Necromancer, didn’t reach him in time to kill/CC him, and currently looking at a 20k stack of Giants that’ll probably take 2-3 days of CC/artillery down. It’s gonna be a bloody grind.

The bottom batches of zombies will always go towards the well, then there is a 50% chance that a necromancer Lord will spawn who will always go towards the giant cavern

Both times I have been on the east side and controlled this via dragonhelm knights - I’ve considered it one of the most important jobs

Well, there’s 2 different graveyards that automatically beeline towards each of those Mana Ponds. That means middle player needs 2 different CCers from the start. The other players are too far away to reach them in time, and the middle player has a Dwarf start w/o any CC cards by default.

That means a whole side can pretty much be screwed by the mid-player not putting in / not pulling any CC cards from his deck.

(Course, I might be wrong; I recall you playing the northern player first match and somehow getting CC there in time anyway.)