Conquer Club

There has always been uncertainty in my mind about the best way for a mapmaker to mitigate against the random drop provided by the game engine.

1. Number of territories/players.

The number of territories will have an impact on the number of starting neutral territories, and the territory bonus allocated to whoever goes first. I recall the start of a conversation about the optimum number(s) of starting territories for each game-type, but am not sure if this reached any conclusions?

2. Designated Neutrals.

In order to prevent anybody starting with a bonus, it is possible to designate any number of territories (strategic or otherwise) as neutral starts. This might alter the number of starting territories per player, and ensures that there will be neutrals on the map, which some people try desperately to avoid.

3. Starting Positions.

There is possibly some confusion as to how the starting positions XML actually functions. It is not possible for a mapmaker to designate specific starting positions for a given player/team; rather the Start Positions functionality almost serves as an inverse to the Designated Neutrals functionality: you specify the territories that you do NOT want to start neutral (subject to the number of territories/players as per #1).

At the moment these are possibly the only three things that a mapmaker can take into consideration for mapping the drop.

The following are some suggestions for other additional options (none of the following are currently possible)...

• Make it so that nobody starts with a bonus in round 1 (by re-shuffling in the same way that happens for objectives)
• Make it so that no region bonuses are given in round 1
• Allow more prescriptive use of starting positions
• Pre-setting deploy positions
• Specify the preferred position of any neutrals required as a result of the number of territories/players
• more suggestions I can't remember...

Make your map like AOR or Feudal where you only start with one territ??

Before I launch into this, I should say that getting a bonus on the drop is part of the game. If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Now, if you were really serious about creating a map in which everybody started with an even distribution across the board, you could make extensive use of the Start Positions tag. I'll use Classic as an example:

You have eight start position tags (since you could have up to eight players).
Since you want to split up both Australia and S. America evenly, you assign one of those territories to each of the eight start position tags.

Code: Select all

   <position>
<!-- Start player 1-->
<territory>Brazil</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 2-->
<territory>Argentina</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 3-->
<territory>Peru</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 4-->
<territory>Venezuela</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 5-->
<territory>Indonesia</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 6-->
<territory>New Guinea</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 7-->
<territory>Eastern Australia</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 8-->
<territory>Western Australia</territory>
</position>

With this, in an eight player game everybody would start with one territory on each of the little continents. In a six player game two terits would start neutral, and I believe that in a four player game everybody would be assigned two of the start positions so the most you could land in any one of the two little regions would be two territories. Still a chance somebody would get one in a two player game, but in that case BOTH players would start with one of the two regions.

Now, you aren't done of course - since you want all of the regions to be evenly divided you now start splitting up the territories among the regions... one Africa territory in each, one Europe territory in each, etc. The first couple of start tags would look something like this:

Code: Select all

   <position>
<!-- Start player 1-->
<territory>Brazil</territory>
<territory>Alaska</territory>
<territory>Madagascar</territory>
<territory>Iceland</territory>
<territory>China</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 2-->
<territory>Argentina</territory>
<territory>Ontario</territory>
<territory>Ukraine</territory>
<territory>India</territory>
<territory>Congo</territory>
</position>


And so on, with two territories that will have to be neutral in every game.

Alternatively, you could just code the start position tags with the territories from the regions you want to split up, and as long as you don't put neutral tags in the other territories they will be split up by the system. Personally I think this would be the better option, since we want to preserve at least some luck of the draw.

oaktown wrote:Before I launch into this, I should say that getting a bonus on the drop is part of the game. If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Or, if you're playing with people who suck at games like Risk, like my siblings, you get to drop with all of Asia

Anyway, I would like to see a way to stop a player from starting with a bonus similar to how a player can't start with an objetive. Hard-coding start locations removes too much of the luck aspect, IMO.

ZeakCytho wrote:

oaktown wrote:Before I launch into this, I should say that getting a bonus on the drop is part of the game. If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Or, if you're playing with people who suck at games like Risk, like my siblings, you get to drop with all of Asia

Anyway, I would like to see a way to stop a player from starting with a bonus similar to how a player can't start with an objetive. Hard-coding start locations removes too much of the luck aspect, IMO.

you could just set one of them as neutral

ZeakCytho wrote:

oaktown wrote:Before I launch into this, I should say that getting a bonus on the drop is part of the game. If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Or, if you're playing with people who suck at games like Risk, like my siblings, you get to drop with all of Asia

Anyway, I would like to see a way to stop a player from starting with a bonus similar to how a player can't start with an objetive. Hard-coding start locations removes too much of the luck aspect, IMO.

The problem is - there are several maps out there where people HAVE to start with bonuses (All of the AOR's - Feudal etc) and also maps where there are 1 territory bonuses that can't be not given out too.

C.

yeti_c wrote:

ZeakCytho wrote:

oaktown wrote:Before I launch into this, I should say that getting a bonus on the drop is part of the game. If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Or, if you're playing with people who suck at games like Risk, like my siblings, you get to drop with all of Asia

Anyway, I would like to see a way to stop a player from starting with a bonus similar to how a player can't start with an objetive. Hard-coding start locations removes too much of the luck aspect, IMO.

The problem is - there are several maps out there where people HAVE to start with bonuses (All of the AOR's - Feudal etc) and also maps where there are 1 territory bonuses that can't be not given out too.

C.

It could be a thing set on a map-by-map basis, as part of the XML, not an overarching rule applied to all maps.

oaktown wrote:Before I launch into this, I should say that getting a bonus on the drop is part of the game. If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Now, if you were really serious about creating a map in which everybody started with an even distribution across the board, you could make extensive use of the Start Positions tag. I'll use Classic as an example:

You have eight start position tags (since you could have up to eight players).
Since you want to split up both Australia and S. America evenly, you assign one of those territories to each of the eight start position tags.

Code: Select all

   <position>
<!-- Start player 1-->
<territory>Brazil</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 2-->
<territory>Argentina</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 3-->
<territory>Peru</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 4-->
<territory>Venezuela</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 5-->
<territory>Indonesia</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 6-->
<territory>New Guinea</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 7-->
<territory>Eastern Australia</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 8-->
<territory>Western Australia</territory>
</position>

With this, in an eight player game everybody would start with one territory on each of the little continents. In a six player game two terits would start neutral, and I believe that in a four player game everybody would be assigned two of the start positions so the most you could land in any one of the two little regions would be two territories. Still a chance somebody would get one in a two player game, but in that case BOTH players would start with one of the two regions.

Now, you aren't done of course - since you want all of the regions to be evenly divided you now start splitting up the territories among the regions... one Africa territory in each, one Europe territory in each, etc. The first couple of start tags would look something like this:

Code: Select all

   <position>
<!-- Start player 1-->
<territory>Brazil</territory>
<territory>Alaska</territory>
<territory>Madagascar</territory>
<territory>Iceland</territory>
<territory>China</territory>
</position>

   <position>
<!-- Start player 2-->
<territory>Argentina</territory>
<territory>Ontario</territory>
<territory>Ukraine</territory>
<territory>India</territory>
<territory>Congo</territory>
</position>


And so on, with two territories that will have to be neutral in every game.

Alternatively, you could just code the start position tags with the territories from the regions you want to split up, and as long as you don't put neutral tags in the other territories they will be split up by the system. Personally I think this would be the better option, since we want to preserve at least some luck of the draw.

I didn't think the start positions worked like that... I thought you couldn't allocate specific territories to specific players??... I thought the start positions just got jumbled up??

Your starting positions are asigned randomly once the game starts. So you can create a starting position, you just don't know who will get it

So would it be possible to amend the XML for Classic so that all of Austrailia is one starting position, and all South America another, for example?

MrBenn wrote:So would it be possible to amend the XML for Classic so that all of Austrailia is one starting position, and all South America another, for example?

But then one player would always start with Australia, and another with SA. That's no good. You'd need to make 4 start postions - half of Australia, the other half of Australia, half of SA, and the other half of SA. Or 8, and do fourths.

oaktown wrote:If you play Risk at home on a board with realy dice and plastic armies, there is always a slim chance that somebody will get all of Australia, or S. America, or Africa. It happens.

Yes.
I'm in a classic 1v1 where the guy started with aus and south america, guarded by lots of neutrals, and i was up north in asia - unlucky me, losing 50 points to that :/

ZeakCytho wrote:

MrBenn wrote:So would it be possible to amend the XML for Classic so that all of Austrailia is one starting position, and all South America another, for example?

But then one player would always start with Australia, and another with SA. That's no good. You'd need to make 4 start postions - half of Australia, the other half of Australia, half of SA, and the other half of SA. Or 8, and do fourths.

I'm not saying I would want to do that - just asking if it is theoretically possible...

MrBenn wrote:

ZeakCytho wrote:

MrBenn wrote:So would it be possible to amend the XML for Classic so that all of Austrailia is one starting position, and all South America another, for example?

But then one player would always start with Australia, and another with SA. That's no good. You'd need to make 4 start postions - half of Australia, the other half of Australia, half of SA, and the other half of SA. Or 8, and do fourths.

I'm not saying I would want to do that - just asking if it is theoretically possible...

Yes it is.

C.