Top 10 Maps...

[Bruceswar]

So I thought I would make a quick top 10 list of maps. 3 categories, graphics, game play, effect. Graphics being the best looking maps. Game play having interesting game tactics and or special items. Effect being maps that changed cc or had great effect on it.

Disclaimer: These are my picks for these categories, feel free to agree or disagree with me. Post other list or whatever.

GRAPHICS: (listed in no order)

1. Draknor Level 1 - This map is just oozing with details. Widowmaker
2. First Nations Series - Likely the best use of paper and colors this site has seen. Tisha
3. Iceland - This map set the standard for all maps to follow. Clean simple map with nice graphics. - rjbeals
4. Eurasia / mini - Super clean, overall good looking map. Good use of colors along with clean lines. - Nattydread
5. Baltic States - Clean lines and good color. Eye catching map - Bruceswar
6. North America -- Got a much needed revamp and natty dread knocked it out of the park. - Natty Dread / Dublin Doogey
7. Unification Germany / Italy - A sweet looking mini series with a good feel to the map. Those mountains. - Industrial Helix / Giligan
8. Three Kingdoms of China - Nice Parchment effect and good use of the lines/ mountains. Seamus76 / V.J.
9. Midgard - This is how you make a map look pretty. Colors, lines, designs. - Widowmaker / rjbeals
10. Scotland - Simple clean map with good use of lines and colors. - Oaktown

GAMEPLAY: (Listed in no order)

1. Hive for the sheer amount of territories. - Killerpit4e / Widowmaker / evil dimwit
2. AOR series - So much going on with soo little. Slight changes made huge differences in gameplay. - DIM
3. Peloponnesian War - To Attack or defend? When to move out. - Qwert
4. Treasures of galapagos - This map has soo much going on with it. Lots of ways to play this map and win it. - cairnswk
5. Kings Court Series- What this map lacks in graphics it makes up for it with unique game play. - kabanellas / chipv
6. Stalingrad - Tanks, Planes, Soldiers etc. So many game play options. - cairnswk
7. Rail Series - Railroads anybody? 7 maps for 7 different places. Interesting game play. - carinswk
8. Trafalgar - 3 Mighty fleets meet on the high seas. Time to see who will be best.. - carinswk
9. Age of Merchants - As you collect more items your bonuses go up. Need cotton to make shirts. - Dim / yetiC
10. Circus Maximus - Going around in circles can be great fun when it is one way! Klobber anybody? - widowmaker / petrvs dvrandimvs

Effect: (Listed in no order)

1. Classic the number 1 map on this site by a mile in terms of games played / per month.
2. Waterloo - This map would change the way we looked at CC and complex maps. - cairnswk
3. Doodle Earth - Speed 8 man Assassin anybody? 2nd most played map. Evil Dimwit
4. Feudal Empire - Castles and lands. People made a career of this map. gimil
5. Arms race - Another map that made big waves. People love this map. When things go boom people tend to like it. - mibi / widowmaker
6. Baltic Crusades - This map seems to defy the odds. Released in 2012 it is a top 10 map in terms of games per month played. - theBastard / Ender516 /Thenobodies80
7. Luxembourg - Small map that has a ton of play on it. 2nd helping of doodle? - Ruben Cassar
8. New World - Take hold of the new world or stay put while others battle it out. - gimil
9. World 2.1 - Bigger is better right? Many people seem to think so. - ZIM
10. Crossword - Fastest map ever out of the foundry. Why oh why?- Jota

[Donelladan]

You really didn't spend much time on the Gameplay list did you ?
Speaking of team game mainly, ToG, Pelo War, AOR are just boring.
Circus Maximus is like the worst gameplay ever.
I am understanding gameplay as which map is the most interesting to play, with lot of strategy and thinking to do. Circus Maximus is one of the worst of the website in that aspect.

And you should replace King's Court by King"s Court II in the list. King's Court I is one of my favorite map, but the gameplay of King's Court II is way way better.

[Bruceswar]

Fixed .. I thought I put Kings Court Series

Also more doubles on AOR 2 have been played than 90% of the maps. A ton!

[rousseau72]

I think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in many cases.
Graphics is not what I judge as a primary criteria, but Eurasia is awful in my opinion (don't like the colors and the way it renders Europe) and I love Napoleonic Wars
On Game Play - I think the Kabellnas maps: Conquer Rome, Napoleonic Wars, Dawn of Ages, and Age of Merchants are all games which have very subtle strategies that are endlessly fascinating - the anti doodle.
On Effect, I have been on CC for 6 years but was not around when many of the maps were rolled out and then saw subsequent influence on the site.

[rockfist]

I think Philedelphia and Classic Cities Pot Mosbi both have interesting game play dynamics.

[iAmCaffeine]

There are definitely not lots of ways to win Galapagos. At least not frequently.

[riskllama]

@ Bruceswar : regarding the NA map - the Rocky mtns. extend waayyy farther north than than the 49th(approx. 1/2 way up the BC/AB border). i do like that map, but the Rockies are a horrible eyesore...

[Bruceswar]

I think Philedelphia and Classic Cities Pot Mosbi both have interesting game play dynamics.

Philly is straight forward???

[Bruceswar]

@ Bruceswar : regarding the NA map - the Rocky mtns. extend waayyy farther north than than the 49th(approx. 1/2 way up the BC/AB border). i do like that map, but the Rockies are a horrible eyesore...

Rockies aside... he just did a revamp of the original map. He had to work with that game play.

[Bruceswar]

You really didn't spend much time on the Gameplay list did you ?
Speaking of team game mainly, ToG, Pelo War, AOR are just boring.
Circus Maximus is like the worst gameplay ever.
I am understanding gameplay as which map is the most interesting to play, with lot of strategy and thinking to do. Circus Maximus is one of the worst of the website in that aspect.

And you should replace King's Court by King"s Court II in the list. King's Court I is one of my favorite map, but the gameplay of King's Court II is way way better.

Give me your top 10 on gameplay. I tried to find all different types of game play.

[Bruceswar]

I think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in many cases.
Graphics is not what I judge as a primary criteria, but Eurasia is awful in my opinion (don't like the colors and the way it renders Europe) and I love Napoleonic Wars
On Game Play - I think the Kabellnas maps: Conquer Rome, Napoleonic Wars, Dawn of Ages, and Age of Merchants are all games which have very subtle strategies that are endlessly fascinating - the anti doodle.
On Effect, I have been on CC for 6 years but was not around when many of the maps were rolled out and then saw subsequent influence on the site.

Give me your top 10 graphics maps.... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[Donelladan]

I think Philedelphia and Classic Cities Pot Mosbi both have interesting game play dynamics.

Philly is straight forward???

Philadelphia has a very unique game play. Depends of the settings ofc, in 1vs1 the map isn't really interesting. But when you can exploit the underdog bonus, it makes the map very unique. It is the only map I know where it is interesting to have only one region, then you are very easy to eliminate, since you have only one region, but get quite a nice bonus. In quad game it isn't straightforward.


And I may give you a top 10 list, when I got bit more time to think about it.
I don't like your choice because for many of the conquest map you choose, I think they can only be played one way, always applying one strategy, thus once you discovered that strategy, game becomes boring. There is one strategy for no trench , and another for trench, and that's all.

[rockfist]

Philly can be interesting 3v3 too, but yeah 1v1 or 2v2 its not so interesting. It plays very differently if its trench vs non trench, escalating vs. no spoils vs. nuke. (Flat rate is not my favorite on Philly, although I suppose it could work with trench).

As an aside, I wonder if you could make a map where you gain troops per deploy as players on your side are eliminated? I wonder how that would play out? Possibly a horrible idea but it popped into my head.

[iAmCaffeine]

As an aside, I wonder if you could make a map where you gain troops per deploy as players on your side are eliminated? I wonder how that would play out? Possibly a horrible idea but it popped into my head.

Just take your teammate's bonus.

[Kaskavel]

Whoever created Conquer Rome has, in my opinion, far outshined the second most interesting map of the site (gameplay).

[LiveLoveTeach]

Back in 2011, a series of votes were done to find out the top 12 maps according to the community. This was part of the official event celebrating the 200th map being created on CC (Tribal Wars Florida).

The list of the top 12 is found here.

In the first post of that thread, the links to the four vote categories are still available and accurate to show which maps were grouped together and how many votes each of the 200 maps received.

[iAmCaffeine]

Lots of maps weren't around then but I don't find any of those results surprising. How did you find that?

[LiveLoveTeach]

Lots of maps weren't around then but I don't find any of those results surprising. How did you find that?

I've been working on reorganizing and updating the Announcement Archives for about a month now. I found it in there.

[grifftron]

GRAPHICS: (listed in no order - Too many to pick from, I tried to keep it 1 map per creator, but these were ones that stuck out while looking at the list of maps we have these days... not taking credit from anyone else.. most of the maps we have are nice on the eyes.)

1. vertex *koontz 1973 >>> just a beauty of a map, wasn't a fan of all the graphics koontz put out but this one was great.

2. third crusade *kabanellas >>> Dudes.. Kabanella rocked every map he did, guy was a legend, wish he was still making maps for CC.

3. pelowar *qwert >>> Alright alright.. a little annoying sometimes, but the guy made some pretty maps.. always loved playing on this map, just looking at it when losing made me feel like a winner.

4. das schlab & salems switch *CairnsWK >>> Of course, Cairns will be on a list of the best of any category of anything map related... LEGEND

5. charleston *rjbeals >>> brings me back to the early days of cc... always loved the look of this map, rjbeals made some epic maps.

6. duck & cover *oaktown >>> this one of oaktowns was so simple for me, loved the idea and look for the map.

7. first nations *Tisha >>> Oh Tisha.. she had great ones as well... this trilogy was some of the sites most beautiful maps, she had skills.

8. wars of unification: the german empire *IH >>> One of his best imo.. most of his maps were great for the eye.

9. Woodboro *evilDimwit >>> Another fun & simple map of evilDims with bright fun graphics.

10. eurasia *Natty >>> DANGGGG

GAMEPLAY: (For this category, i chose maps that stuck out to ME during my early days.. brought a new sense of RISK to me as a newer player and changed my idea of RISK as a whole. Once again trying to stick to ONE map per creator if possible.)

1. supermax *mibi & coleman >>> These two guys, put some crazyyy maps out... supermax was one of those maps that when I played for the first time, I was hooked.

2. waterloo *CairnsWK >>> One of my favorite maps of ALL TIME. I have had some of my best wins on this map, most exciting games on this map and my WORST loss on this map... CairnsWK changed the RISK world for us gameplay wise, we owe this guy a lot with the millions of maps he made. ALSO... who doesn't think back to the farming days of DH in LiveChat while playing this classic? Even I was farmed by the guy... legend! Cairns, not DH.

3. usapocalypse *jota >>> What the heck is a radiation!!! This map was one of the first ones I played that made me understand why I had to read the rules before just jumping in... Still one of my favorites today.

4. pelo war *qwert >>> Starting points??? Not sure which was made first, this one of feudal, but the starting points idea in risk was amazing to me when I first came on CC... Spent lots of time on this map.

5. conquerman *WM & coleman >>> One of my favorite dub maps of all time, lots of epic games on this one as well... sucks when your behind, but coming back in esc on this one is always fun... And one of the only maps with animated graphics on the site.

6. hive *WM, killerp & Evil Dimwit >>> Still hate this map, but this map has taught me how important it is to check everything before you take your turn, TONS of little bonuses which add up after a while... hate it, but love it.

7. lunar war *isaiah40 >>> When this first came out I rocked this map non stop, will always be one of my favorites... few ways you can play but pretty much a stack and sack map.

8. feudal war *gimil, yeti & DiM >>> Once again... brings me back to day 1 of CC... I remember just taking as many terts as possible, not understanding that my opponents were stacking, I would just walk right out thinking I was the MAN... Then game over... This map changed CC forever.

9. city mogul *DiM & Yeti >>> Who doesn't love getting this many troops per turn?

10. Dust Bowl *rjbeals >>> One of the first maps I played on where you would all of a sudden lose troops on terts... never even crossed my mind that I could lose troops on a map in risk.. one of the maps that will have changed CC forever.. always read those rules kids.

Effect: (Listed in no order)

Not really sure what effect was so i'll leave this out for now.

-griff

[rousseau72]

Top 10 Graphics in no particular order
I realized after typing these out that I like classic style maps that look like a real map. I am not into really colorful designs - they often get in the way of playability as well.
Napoleonic Wars - love the classic period feel of it. Nice use of border colors to keep it readable.
Conquer Rome - again - very appropriate to the era. Nice use of shades of colors as well
France 1789 - Matching with what I would expect a map of that era to look like
Iwo Jima - looks like a military briefing - liked the theme
Third Crusades - nice graphics in the background as well
District of Alaska
Pirates of Merchants
Austro Hungarian Empire
Nordic Countries

I think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder in many cases.
Graphics is not what I judge as a primary criteria, but Eurasia is awful in my opinion (don't like the colors and the way it renders Europe) and I love Napoleonic Wars
On Game Play - I think the Kabellnas maps: Conquer Rome, Napoleonic Wars, Dawn of Ages, and Age of Merchants are all games which have very subtle strategies that are endlessly fascinating - the anti doodle.
On Effect, I have been on CC for 6 years but was not around when many of the maps were rolled out and then saw subsequent influence on the site.

Give me your top 10 graphics maps.... beauty is in the eye of the beholder.