I'm not even close to playing a full game on this map yet, but I'm not doing a speed game or anything and it's 8 players so it will take awhile... thus my overall opinion on the map can't compare to some players who have played through it.
SirSebestar wrote:far out suggestion. the central commander and 2/3s of the availiable commanders(commanders being the +2 autodeploy spot)? (that way, if you win the game by objective, you are likely to have won it anyways
However I can briefly give my very own 2 cents on the above comment and the proposed drastic increase in the difficulty of taking the victory objective.
I suppose my disagreement with SirSebestar's statement comes from a different idea of what a victory objective is meant to do in a map. If a VO (victory objective) is meant to only be possible once a player has effectively already won the game, then its only purpose is to simply speed along the inevitable end, perhaps saving a round or two in certain situations. This is a minor convenience to be gained, in my opinion, for the added clutter and misdirection (especially for rookies) of a special rule, and I always recommend against this use when maps are being developed. From my perspective, a map is better off without a VO at all in order to keep it simple and clean, rather than being stuck in there for the odd 50th game where it actually sped things up by a fractional amount.
So, if you're going to go this route for the VO, my suggestion is to just cut it out entirely, thematic as it may be.
Otherwise, I'd recommend to try to keep the VO for what it is really meant to do, to offer a realistic alternate method of winning the game to the normal method of conquering the entire map. By 'realistic', I mean that it is possible in most (if not all) game types if a player who pursues it is not strongly opposed, much like any bonus area.
At the same time, if it is too easy to take and/or hold, then it might dominate the play of a game more than a mapmaker intended. However, that is dependent upon the mapmaker's personal vision and only he or she knows when a VO is too easy and is distorting how he or she wants the map to play out.
It seems that the VO is currently too easy for koontz's liking, so I agree that the VO should be toughened up, but I caution against going overboard and making the VO completely irrelevant.
-- Marshal Ney
P.S. The decay zones in the game that I'm playing seem horribly imbalancing... one player (myself) only lost 4 troops total, while another player lost 10 troops by the second round, all simply from the luck of the drop. If this has been commented on already and/or changed, I apologize.
