Having played a fair share of games and watched plenty tournaments, it too often seems to me that map generation favors one player over the other. This can be done in many ways, some of which are:
On multiple occasions in KOTD3 have we seen one player being forced to drop a tower on his gold, while his opponent was safe behind walls.
I doubt this is all coming out of the blue, since I have seen casters acknowledging that certain matches had unfair maps, as did pro players. Also, if I remember correctly, some of T90s tournaments had a different script for Arabia trying to address some of these issues (mostly forward resources).
There are multiple ways to solve this and in the spirit of Age of Empires the best way would be the one which brings the most balance while keeping the maps as asymmetrical as possible. The solution is quite evident from my previous points but I will name a few:
- One player has an easy time full walling his map, while other is forced to play open.
- Player has some resources forward, while opponent's resources are safe behind town center or woodlines.
- Sheep distance and position from town center vary greatly and can result in one player scouting all his resources in a matter of seconds, while other spends minutes.
- One player has deer 15 or so tiles from town center, while other's deer are on the other side of a woodline or too far away to push.
- One players has noticeably worse hills around his base, making him more susceptible to enemy forward aggression, especially against castle age siege pushes.
- One player has most extra resources and/or relics closer to his base, giving him an advantage while expanding
- Bonus point for Arena! If you want to build a castle and your stone is close to the walls, you are forced to show your strategy, meanwhile your opponent has a back stone and needn't show nothing.
On multiple occasions in KOTD3 have we seen one player being forced to drop a tower on his gold, while his opponent was safe behind walls.
I doubt this is all coming out of the blue, since I have seen casters acknowledging that certain matches had unfair maps, as did pro players. Also, if I remember correctly, some of T90s tournaments had a different script for Arabia trying to address some of these issues (mostly forward resources).
There are multiple ways to solve this and in the spirit of Age of Empires the best way would be the one which brings the most balance while keeping the maps as asymmetrical as possible. The solution is quite evident from my previous points but I will name a few:
- If one player has forward resources, so should other.
- Make both bases equally easy (or hard) to wall with woodlines.
- Make relics equally distant to both players (or teams). Same goes for extra resources. Basically make the sum of distances of those resources from player town centers equal.
- Make deer equally hard to push