Anyone have time and the players to test some maps?

@ jasmine. That's exactly the point of the map. It's a (1v1) vs (1v1) vs (1v1) vs (1v1). It's designed to be treelike, where two players are forced to fight for the one expansion.

As for the battle losses when fighting your neighbour, it won't really leave you open to attack from the others, because they will all be fighting their neighbours as well. And if you turtle, you're simply leaving your expansion for your neighbour to take it, in which case you'll be completely surrounded and most likely won't have the minerals to compete.

 

Unless they choose to turtle too

Fighting the neighbour is a small equally matched war so you can expect heavy losses.

The bigger battle is what goes on in the middle. You'll want to save up for that, not waste resources on the lesser battle.

I imagine turtling would be a good tactic. Neighbours who agree to not engage one another until the end of the game will be much stronger in the middle, and could easily expect to win the larger battle.

That tactic would reduce a 1 in 8 chance of winning to a 1 in 2 chance of winning, where you're dualing your neighbour only at the end of the game.

edit: I'm going to play it and see what happens.

 

I gave it a few goes.

It's hard to play the map aggressively. I got my units too exposed, being attacked on all sides and I lost quite quickly.

The middle of the map doesn't get a great deal of action. Most of the action happens in the expansion areas, or perimeter attacks against the main bases.

A defensive strategy works better I think, letting opponents wear each other down. With only one narrow point of entry to your base it's easy to turtle the early game.

I think there's a few too many minerals though, or too many in each base area. As players get eliminated, more become available so there could be -2 in each base area, +1 in each expansion area.

Terrans are strong on the map, also benefiting because they can build bunkers behind the shared mineral piles for extra protection and since there's only one way from A to B, you can't circumvent it. Some of the expansions are better than others in that regard, which can be a bit unfair.

I noticed that tanks have the strength of being able to make siege attacks across the space gaps to take out enemy buildings. There isn't a lot of room in some of the bases to place buildings safe from these attacks. However, tank push is hard because it's a long run between non-neighbouring bases, and various tactics can be quite effective to disrupt a line of tanks as they're making that long journey. Coupled with the narrow space gaps it's very easy to get air units out to do that.

For the zerg, hydras felt like the most useful unit in the first half of the game since there isn't much room for zerglings to get a surround over the defended choke points.

Overall I quite like the map. I'm not sure if anything can be done about the odd shaped bases that are more vulnerable to siege, and the minerals piles proving extra protection for some starting zones. Those would be my two criticisms.

 

so less minerals in the starting areas, and more in the expansions. would you be able to save a replay of significant length (ie not one where you get rushed at the start and lose)?
and some of the bridges need to be moved
the only bridge that i can't think of where to move is player 1's