Here's the thing: you have quite a few troops to spare. I started with 4 priests, 4 swords, and 2 assassins. I just finished building my second combat unit, and it is only T1. You've got entire stacks and functioning cities, and you're already Free Moving dragon ships. I'm feeling flash backs to Flumen Arcana.

Orcs, Day 5

We kill another wraith. It will be another turn or two before we can get a builder to the burned city it was sitting on, and 2-3 turns after that before it becomes productive.

A dark elf swordsman appears in our army completely unexpectedly, teaching me something new. Razed cities that are being reconstructed can build things. Seems I killed the last turn's undead wraith just barely in time. Goodness knows what he would have gotten up to if that dark elf had completed for him.

TS

Goblins - Day 5.

Lost my second stack on that cave :( I'm literally down to last few units. Orc rider + 2 shamans.

Double click on a rebuilding city. It will let you access the units. If it was upgraded before being changed to ruined, it will let you install and build any of those units within the reconstruction time. A three-block takes 4 turns to rebuild, which is just enough time to install and create a level 2 unit. (balista for micro'ing, etc).
Are we pretending the map is balanced?

Dwarves, Day 6
who needs magic when you have elephants?

Carwyn of the Dark Elves, day 6

I clean up a lot of undead, including a Reaper, from a death altar first and the avengers that pop out of its ruins next. This altar seems to be placed straight at the middle of the invading undead forces. Hopefully I won't receive visits this night as I'm dangerously close to what might be a teleport location of the undead hordes...

Oh wow I had no idea. You can build from cities being rebuilt lol

Well, I'm giving feedback where I don't think that it is - aren't we playtesting this map with this purpose?

What happens if you start installation or production of something that takes longer? Do you get the money refunded when that job ends because the city was rebuilt and changes race?

Orcs, Day 6

Reconstruction has finished on two cities, reducing one of them to T1. Reconstruction starts on another city, which will reduce it to T1 when construction finishes. We're still losing money, though.

In the meantime, we walk toward our next targets. Yay walking!

TS

Southern, to have any attempt at balance, you're going to need to check who can reach what and when. Laying hands on unrazed cities means you also don't have to wait for their farms to be replanted.

Ja, I really wasn't paying enough attention with the starting cities.

If I remember correctly, you lose the money and it changes the production to "0 turns left" for "Unknown"

Seemed to switch me to producing merchandise. I didn't check my gold total so I wasn't sure if I got a refund.

Day 7 - Azracs

This map is such a breeze! With these 5 starting warships and quick access to FM, my tunneller moves all over the place! Good thing I could buy surrounding cities at my starting location. Having wall crushing units at the start really made it easy to micro the cities with my warships too. The gold is pouring in. Good thing I didn't have to heavily manage my resources and run out of income before I could make meaningful territory gains. I could probably even afford to auto-combat dungeons because AI prioritise ships. It made it really easy to lock down the wizard towers too. Just plant one of my boats at the singular access point! Mission accomplished. Having friendly indie neighbours was great too, it gave me a good flying unit to explore the wizard towers with AND I didn't even have to migrate to make the cities useful to me. I didn't even need to time the release of my extra wizards because I have enough gold income that they won't rebel. What? You other players don't have 8+ cities by now? Git Gud! It's all strategy! Nothing to do with starting conditions!

TS

^oof

Dwarves, Day 8

Just some usual expansion, I guess

Say what you will about having basically nothing for an army, at least it saves on upkeep. XD

Carwyn of the Dark Elves, day 8
Our task force in the caves reaches the last known position of the azrac leader to find nothing but a puff of smoke still reading BAMF in the air, and... A summoned frog, probably to mock us showing off all the spells that he knows. Now he's been at the wizard towers offering the best spells... While we don't have any money left. Things aren't looking as grim for him as his words try to impress to the other wizards! I wonder whether his party warping has sent him somewhere else in the Caves of Lore or back to the caverns...

OOC
This map concept is so cool, IMHO you don't need symmetrical starts, but rather to hand out advantages equally. The starting advantages that I can think of are:
* Having aligned cities in the starting cave: they provides units, but at a cost. The option to buy is the advantage.
* Having boats at start - yes, a big advantage, should count for more than one of the others.
* Teleporter close to start: we reached it on turn 2 (azrac), turn 3 dwarves, DE too but I had to commit the digger to that.
-> that's a bigger advantage the earlier the player is in turn order
* Owning diggers from the start.
* Having access to more than 1 digger.
* Quality of diggers: beetles > moles > worms, machines. Number of hexes to dig matters against this.
* wall breachers that are not your diggers
* starting gold. Is it the same for everybody?
* a compact starting cave with all things close by. Take a peek at the DE's caves, they are so large that you need to really optimise those boats!
* underground channels linking other caves giving the possibility to optimise underground expansion with boats

TBH, I find the azrac to be really well off at start, with one or two rounds alone in the caves... No need to agree but I'd be happy to play the side that the collectivity considers to be the weakest in the next iteration. If that's the azrac then I can test this opinion :) but I suspect that that won't be the case.

BTW starting with magic weapon researched is kind of important against wraiths. That sped me up considerably. To equalise this, I see these options:
- magic weapon wizard towers in the starting caves - a bit off but not so much in this map
- placing the haunted cities far enough that who starts with dispel magic has magic weapon researched
- place some other strong undead to defend the cities, although that would lower the feeling of haunted caves

Orcs, Day 7

We're really starting to feel the pinch from lack of gold income, and no good sources are presenting themselves. Most of the towns nearby need to be rebuilt, but the wasteland surrounding them is going to cut their income significantly.

We knock off a demon guarding another ruin, but it will take time for the builder to arrive. Assuming we even have enough gold to build by the time it gets there.

TS


I took a peek as you said (though at the previous version), and you started with a frakking Galleon?

Southern, I mean this in the kindest way possible, but have you lost your mind? Free Move on Galleons? At best, the Dark Elves should start with only transport ships, and even then as few as possible.

I admit that I'm really not seeing any special advantage here. Speed to reach the cavern is important, but the terrain that one has to maneuver around is far more important than turn order after the first turn.

Both my starting wraiths were far enough away that starting with Dispel Magic made little difference to me. I suppose I could have constructed a few dark elf archers from the T3 city, but my leader got the wraith experience instead which is probably more valuable in the long run.

Good, I don't want things symmetrical either. You list of advantages will be useful.

I will choose this option.

I promise to take my meds when I edit the map next (in a couple months probably).