everyone has turned into an Arabia only clown and doesn't know how to play any other map any more.
for people like me who dont hate arabia but dont want to play it 24/7 its horrible. with arena as a favorite map it is basicly 100% arabia since all the arabia lovers ban arena. The only way to not play arabia 10 out of 10 games is to ban it. I think its a very weird system that the game always picks the favorite map of a player. with a little bit of strategic mapbanning, the arabia enthusiast gets to play his map 100% of the times. I think it would be better if both players have different favorite maps, the game chooses from a random map in the pool (which both have unbanned ofcourse) instead of someone's favorite. That way you will have a variation and not one person always playing his homemap and the other never being able to play his homemap.
samePerfect so far. I ban Arabia, Cross and Golden Pit and I got 5 Arenas (my favourite map) and two Hideouts (the second favourite map). I am loving it, especially will the random civs combination.
Ban arabia + preferred islands is your option.1450 Elo players are trash at Islands and I am trash at Arabia so close games stopped existing for me. 95% of the time the game is won/lost on the map selection screen.