For a year or more now, I have been a proponent and a promoter of the belief that balanced gameplay is the best gameplay.
To that end, I created a bunch of barebone perfectly balanced symmetrical 8 player maps, and they do indeed provide some really good DoW and DC gameplay:
The Symmetry Collection:
http://dawnofwar.fil...ollection;76086--
I'm not going to put them in the first post here, because they haven't been nominated, and they really aren't the 'best' maps ever created. Some of them only took an hour or two to make. BUT, nobody can successfully argue that they are not balanced! They are probably the most balanced DoW and DC maps ever made. They are as balanced as it is humanly possible to balance a map. For most of the maps, nothing there on the map to get in the way of the balance.
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I also created two other DC maps, huge 8 player theme maps, and spent two months on each. At least half of that time was spent playing the map a couple of times a day, adjusting the maps trying to get the balance and the gameplay just right so that I actually liked it, using the Ultimate Compstomp Rebalance Mod AI Skirmish Mod combo as my measuring stick. I eventually got the gameplay just the way I liked it, but it wasn't easy.
Still, these maps are not as balanced as is humanly possible to balance a map, as they are not inherently symmetrical and neither is the scenery balanced or symmetrical either:
http://dawnofwar.fil...que_Dunes;75511http://dawnofwar.fil...ing_Dunes;76158--
Since this is my thread, and since I prefer 8 player maps so that you can get one of each of the Dark Crusade factions on there for a game, I kind of felt that my maps reflected my DC gaming philosophy and desires and goals quite perfectly, actually. I made The Symmetry Collection specifically for modders and betatesters looking for perfectly balanced maps, as it was long ago one of my original assertions that balanced gameplay and balanced maps were the best gameplay and the best maps for the AI Skirmish Mod, and I still hold that belief and think it to be true.
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And, to counter that belief, I have lots of skewed teamplay maps there in the first post for the hardcore among us who like an extra challenge and who can put up with playing a DC game for two hours straight only to end up losing the game in the end. The AI skirmish mod makes that possible. I had no problems at all winning 2vs6 on the Winter Gauntlet map using the DC Plain Vanilla AI. But, with the DC AI Skirmish Mod, the 6 united AI enemies outside the castle always beat me, and it was usually 1.5 or 2 hours into the game when I finally got overrun -- a completely different 'hardcore' gaming experience than trying to take them out in five minutes or less.
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Crosslink to the thread and the post that generated the idea for this posting:
http://forums.relicn...p;postcount=201I like to be complete and give people all the info.