The Conquer 500

[dolomite13]

For mapmaker request the map is now listed as Conquer 500, without "the".

Nobodies

I will agree to that

=D=

[The Voice]

For mapmaker request the map is now listed as Conquer 500, without "the".

Nobodies

I will agree to that

=D=

Grazie . I foresee this map being a favorite of mine!

[dolomite13]

You would think that it would be easy enough to add a few more things to the key on this map. But noooooo ... after 4 hours yesterday evening I realize I need another few hours this evening or next to get the map with the latest changes finished.

* All pit equipment can assault the pit row. - this should get rid of the pit equipment dead end

* +2 bonus for 3 of the same pit equipment. - this will give some bonus for holding 3 of the same equipment and promote more fighting in the pits.

* Pitstop Bonus +5 for holding your entire car, pit crew, and 1 of each pit equipment. - this will allow someone who gets control over the pits to get back into the race faster

* change to display name of map to "Conquer 500".

This makes the bonuses as follows...

Pit Side
- car +1 each +5 for all
- crew autodeploy 2
- 1 tool, 1 jack +2 (+6 max)
- 1 engine, 1 tires, 1 fuel +3 (+9 max)
- 3 engines +2
- 3 tires +2
- 3 fuel +2
- 3 jacks +2
- 3 tools +2
- entire car, pit crew, and 1 of each pit equipment +5
Total for pit side 35 up from 20

Track
- each full track segment +3 (max 10)
- 1 in each of the 10 track segments +40
Total for track side 50

[dolomite13]

Here is the updated map with the above changes.

If Gilligan can add the Pit Stop Bonus, bonuses for 3 of each pit equipment, and the one way assault from each pit equipment to Pit Row we will be golden for what I hope will be the last round of balancing. Oh yea and take the "The" off the name in the XML so it appears on the dropdown as "Conquer 500" ... however I am leaving the "The" on the map image itself.

=D13=

Small
http://imageshack.us/a/img707/7977/c500115sm614600.png


Large
http://imageshack.us/a/img542/508/c500115lg800782.png

[Woltato]

I can't imagine that the entire pits bonus will ever be much of a factor. It's almost half the board so by the time a player has all of those territories secured they're almost certain to have the game won anyway.

The 40 track bonus is a nice idea though. Doubt anyone would be allowed to take it during a sunny game but it's one that might go unnoticed under fog.

Actually a lot of players already do go for 3 of the same in the pit, even though it doesn't give them any bonuses. Also keeping in mind the last edition of this beta map that was released, most of the focus was on the pit. Another thing to remember is that inexperienced players(for this specific map) will almost always concentrate on the pit rather than on the track. This is just an observation I have had after 82 games played on this map

Additionally you can actually know that people have the entire track while playing fog. All you have to do is check territory numbers, check how many teritories every player has in the pits, count in the crew and check the log whether they have any troops on their car and voila you'll know how many troops the player has on track.

counting the territories only tells you how many territories an opponent has on the track, not whether they have the 40 bonus. The 40 bonus is awarded for having one territory in every segment. so while a player might have 10 track territories they're not necessarily distributed correctly to claim the bonus.

I always play fog escalating and I've noticed the same thing, low ranked players do tend to fight it out in the pits when the best tactic is simply to build one big stack on the track.

[waauw]

I can't imagine that the entire pits bonus will ever be much of a factor. It's almost half the board so by the time a player has all of those territories secured they're almost certain to have the game won anyway.

The 40 track bonus is a nice idea though. Doubt anyone would be allowed to take it during a sunny game but it's one that might go unnoticed under fog.

Actually a lot of players already do go for 3 of the same in the pit, even though it doesn't give them any bonuses. Also keeping in mind the last edition of this beta map that was released, most of the focus was on the pit. Another thing to remember is that inexperienced players(for this specific map) will almost always concentrate on the pit rather than on the track. This is just an observation I have had after 82 games played on this map

Additionally you can actually know that people have the entire track while playing fog. All you have to do is check territory numbers, check how many teritories every player has in the pits, count in the crew and check the log whether they have any troops on their car and voila you'll know how many troops the player has on track.

counting the territories only tells you how many territories an opponent has on the track, not whether they have the 40 bonus. The 40 bonus is awarded for having one territory in every segment. so while a player might have 10 track territories they're not necessarily distributed correctly to claim the bonus.

I always play fog escalating and I've noticed the same thing, low ranked players do tend to fight it out in the pits when the best tactic is simply to build one big stack on the track.

agreed, but you do get an idea on the probability of them holding the +40 bonus. Plus in the log you can also read the +2's per segment, so you do have some idea about the distribution even though limited.

[Gilligan]

dolomite, PM me with a list of what you'd like updated (if not already finalized at this point) so that I know for sure.

[dolomite13]

I am heading out of town for a week. I will try and check in from time to time.

=D13=

[Gilligan]

Hi Dolomite

Sorry for the delay - completely slipped my mind. Thanks for the PM reminder.

* All pit equipment should now be able to assault the pit row.

* 3 of the same pit equipment will give you a +2 bonus. (3 tools, 3tires, 3fuel, 3 jacks, 3 engines)

* A new bonus is being added called "Pitstop Bonus" which is +5 for holding your entire car, your pit crew, and 1 of each pit equipment.

* The display name of map in the XML that is used to populate the drop down should be changed to "Conquer 500" so as to make it appear alphabetically under C instead of T.

* I moved the pit equipment row C of unit boxes down one pixel on the large map and made them slightly wiser... this probably won't require any nudging of the numbers but wanted to mention it .

All right -

Point 1 - done

Point 2 - Done

Point 3 - done

Point 4 - already been done

Point 5 - I'll check it out...good thing they are wiser now, they were stupid before

[dolomite13]

Thanks Gilligan =)

I have noticed some graphics on the map that look odd or a bit fuzzy and I'll be fixing that this evening and posting an updated map to go with the xml.

I expect this update will be the final tweaks in Beta.

=D13=

[dolomite13]

Latest map ... I think this cleans up some of the graphics I was unhappy with.

With Gilligan's XML above I think we are ready for an update.

=D13=

Small
https://imageshack.com/a/img835/9527/qx7.png


Large
https://imageshack.com/a/img5/627/hyi4.png

[dolomite13]

It has been about a week since we updated the map and xml was just wondering if there was any feedback or an eta on this getting uploaded.

Thanks

=D13=

[Gilligan]

Wouldn't we all like to know.

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

[dolomite13]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

Yeah, getting stuck is an issue. If this latest change causes some unforeseen issue (I'm not seeing that it would, but you never know), a different potential fix could be that if you only control equipment, you're out of the game (similar to controlling only Home Runs on the Baseball board).

[dolomite13]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

Yeah, getting stuck is an issue. If this latest change causes some unforeseen issue (I'm not seeing that it would, but you never know), a different potential fix could be that if you only control equipment, you're out of the game (similar to controlling only Home Runs on the Baseball board).

We shall see soon enough =)

=D13=

[waauw]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

actually with these changes, I would expect even more troops to get stacked into the pit equipment at the start of the game. The connection with the pit row, gives an extra incentive to focus less on track and more on pit.

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

actually with these changes, I would expect even more troops to get stacked into the pit equipment at the start of the game. The connection with the pit row, gives an extra incentive to focus less on track and more on pit.

Could be. That's one of the reasons I suggested the out-of-the-game scenario if unforeseen issues were created by the latest change. That would reduce the focus on the equipment.

[waauw]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

actually with these changes, I would expect even more troops to get stacked into the pit equipment at the start of the game. The connection with the pit row, gives an extra incentive to focus less on track and more on pit.

Could be. That's one of the reasons I suggested the out-of-the-game scenario if unforeseen issues were created by the latest change. That would reduce the focus on the equipment.

what might be fun is to only connect the A-part of the pit equipment to the pit row(more fighting between pitequipment troops themselves). could be an interesting twist to the game I think.

[dolomite13]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

actually with these changes, I would expect even more troops to get stacked into the pit equipment at the start of the game. The connection with the pit row, gives an extra incentive to focus less on track and more on pit.

I originally considered conditional borders so that you would need all 3 of a piece of equipment and then you would get access to pit row but allowing all pit equipment to access pit row should change how people view the pit equipment.

If one of the foundry foremen thinks that having all of the pit equipment access the pit row is excessive and that having that conditional border to promote fighting in the pits I would consider that change before this update goes out. Although i'm not sure where I could cram that into the key on this map

=D13=

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

actually with these changes, I would expect even more troops to get stacked into the pit equipment at the start of the game. The connection with the pit row, gives an extra incentive to focus less on track and more on pit.

I originally considered conditional borders so that you would need all 3 of a piece of equipment and then you would get access to pit row but allowing all pit equipment to access pit row should change how people view the pit equipment.

If one of the foundry foremen thinks that having all of the pit equipment access the pit row is excessive and that having that conditional border to promote fighting in the pits I would consider that change before this update goes out. Although i'm not sure where I could cram that into the key on this map

=D13=

I think this map/board/whatever-you-prefer-to-call-it is already sufficiently complicated to play. Limiting attack of Pit Row to only one equipment spot is on the cusp of challenging strategy and frustrating strategy. In a Trench game, you would have to overcome a potential stack to get to the attack position and then potentially another neutral stack of 20 on Pit Row. I think people wouldn't bother unless they had a huge advantage in troops; you're likely not to that advantage if you're stuck in the equipment.

[dolomite13]

This should make one of the games I'm currently playing in a little more interesting. One player stuck in the equipment, piling on to his stacks each turn. Just hope he goes for the track rather than the other player sharing the bonuses (me).

I'm not sure what the final result of this change will be but I expect that we will see slightly less troops stacked in the pits and it should make it possible to get back into the race a bit quicker as well as remove that boring grind that can occur when troops can get trapped.

In any case I expect this change to be the final for beta.

=D13=

actually with these changes, I would expect even more troops to get stacked into the pit equipment at the start of the game. The connection with the pit row, gives an extra incentive to focus less on track and more on pit.

I originally considered conditional borders so that you would need all 3 of a piece of equipment and then you would get access to pit row but allowing all pit equipment to access pit row should change how people view the pit equipment.

If one of the foundry foremen thinks that having all of the pit equipment access the pit row is excessive and that having that conditional border to promote fighting in the pits I would consider that change before this update goes out. Although i'm not sure where I could cram that into the key on this map

=D13=

I think this map/board/whatever-you-prefer-to-call-it is already sufficiently complicated to play. Limiting attack of Pit Row to only one equipment spot is on the cusp of challenging strategy and frustrating strategy. In a Trench game, you would have to overcome a potential stack to get to the attack position and then potentially another neutral stack of 20 on Pit Row. I think people wouldn't bother unless they had a huge advantage in troops; you're likely not to that advantage if you're stuck in the equipment.

True ...

The current changes should help with trapped troops and make it a little easier to get back into the race.

No need to make it more complicated.

=D13=

[dolomite13]

Here is an update to the xml ... looks like we had a small typo with "A Pit Tire" being used in place of "A Pit Tires" in the new Pit Stop bonus continent.

=D13=

[GeeksAreMyPeeps]

Here is an update to the xml ... looks like we had a small typo with "A Pit Tire" being used in place of "A Pit Tires" in the new Pit Stop bonus continent.

=D13=

Looks like the gameplay has been updated (based on my ability to attack Pit Row from the Pit Equipment), but not the map. That might cause confusion.