Living Caves - New map released!

[Blueblaze]

Living Caves
Players: 4 (2v2 or FFA)

The map features full randomization, every game is a new game unlike the last! Every aspect of the game is different from the past. Defeat the enemies while surviving the twists and turns of the cave.

Available on the 1.4 addon server now!

[Mist]

You know I reenabled [map] tag?

[Blueblaze]

Map image is so much cleaner and faster loading/less CPU hog

[Dovolente]

I like the map. Crazy random fun! The temple has been key in 2 of the 3 games I've played--holding it proves to be very powerful.

Nice work.

[ylmson]

I found the temple a little too unbalancing giving one bonus for the unit at the start of any side's turn (resulting in 4 rapid bonuses in between each moving turn for the units at the temple). So I did a little modification such that the bonus is only added once per round (i.e. at the start of the turn for the temple unit's owner). Please consider making a similar modification in the official version, too.

#from Living_Caves.cfg:
...
[event]
name=side turn
first_time_only=no
{RANDOM 0..17}
#Add this right after the random number is generated in the side turn event
{STORE_UNIT_VAR x,y=10,10 side temple_unit_side}
{IF_VAR temple_unit_side not_equals $side_number (
[then]
#invalidate the random number (and not give bonus) if it's not player's turn yet
{VARIABLE random -1}
[/then]
)}
{CLEAR_VARIABLE temple_unit_side}

{RANDCHECK 0}
{XP_BONUS 2}
{FLOATING_TEXT x,y=10,10 255,0,0 "+2 EXP"}
{END_IF}
...
...

And a bug - "massive sword" from chests seems to have its range type and damage type reversed: should be "blade melee" in the macro instead of "melee blade". Otherwise you'll get an attack that nobody can retaliate against.

[Blueblaze]

Indeed, I realized the massive sword bug not too long after I released it. I'm waiting to see if there are any other bugs I need to fix before I release the fix. Concerning the temple, it is quite powerful by design though, I may do something to modify it in the future so that it would be easier to take over, but we'll see. Thanks for the input.

[ylmson]

The following weapons have the same bug as massive sword:

• spirit sword (25-1 "arcane-melee")
  dragonstaff (35-1 "pierace-ranged")

One problem with gameplay is that most games end rather quickly (some before turn 10? somehow it gets lopsided really easily). So a lot of of the interesting things towards the end never get to happen. No idea how this can be improved though.

[Blueblaze]

Maybe if the temple bonuses improved over time? So from turn 0-10, they'll be fairly weak bonuses, from turn 11-20, they'll be somewhat better, etc.. until turn 50 where the temple really will decide the outcome of the game at that point (since the random events and so forth end at turn 50)

[ylmson]

Not sure if making temple stronger later on will improve the gameplay (It is already a bit too powerful imo.) Besides, the real problem remains that most games will probably end before the more powerful temple has any consequence.

I couldn't really figure out why most games are so short because on the surface things at least seem to be balancing. (AI rushing to one player = harder time but possibly more gold from killing AI, occupying temple = risk getting crushed on low defense terrain, etc.) But in reality, somehow once one side gains an advantage it can become overwhelming so quickly that the side often loses motivation to continue, this could happen even if nobody gets the temple . I have never seen human games stretched beyond turn 25 on this map, which is a pity since a lot more interesting things happen later on. Maybe you could host some games yourself and try to see what can make the game slightly longer.

That said, playing against three AIs is kind of fun though.

[Blueblaze]

Oh, what I meant was, the temple would start off much weaker than it is right now. Then as the game progressed, the temple's bonuses would get progressively stronger. For example, on turn 1-10, you might get +4 health as a random option, but on turn 11-20 it might be +8, 21-30 +12, etc..

[dlyrical]

Hmmm I like it. Makes the game more interesting on my end.

[daniel.santos]

OMG! I can't live without this map!!!!

Ok, so maybe that was a little dramatic, but really, this was very cool. What would it take to make it work on 1.8?