What is the worst official map?
I was doing some thinking about the change in map rotation recently and the addition of Emerald Crater surprised me. This was, after all, a map I had never before played. It seemed fairly uninspired and a poor fit for competitive play. But then I had a thought: what is the absolute worst official map in existence? I looked through them and did a bit of playtesting and came up with an answer: Sludge.
Sludge is a three player 5×5 map. Each player has 12 mass deposits on an island small enough to only fit four factories. The islands are separated by water. The map’s look is trivial and uninteresting. The green sludge that separates the island is hideous in all senses of the word except for the good senses (i.e. it’s not hideously cool).
Needless to say, this map is utterly unbalanced in favor of Aeon. Naval units will never end up being used in any game with Aeon in it. In a game without Aeon, the gameplay is utterly boring. Whoever gets destroyers or T2 artillery first wins, and that’s that. The islands are so small and cramped that there isn’t even room for all of the buildings that you’d want. It has enough room for four large buildings (like factories or quantum generators) and a few medium-sized buildings. I repeatedly faced situations where I had to reclaim older buildings, or even factories, to make room for buildings higher up on the tech level. And as for shields, you can pretty much forget about using them altogether. There simply isn’t any room for shields as well as all of the necessary base infrastructure and economic buildings. Mobile shield generators actually prove quite useful (providing you are playing as a faction that has them).
I can imagine playing this map once in multiplayer, just for the novelty of the utterly small islands. But it quickly wears off, and you’re left with a dysfunctional map where real estate is the most valuable commodity. Add to that the utter imbalance that Aeon have on this map with their hovering Aurorae, and the close proximity of the bases making any kind of nuanced warfare unnecessary, and you are left with what is, in my opinion, the worst official map.
But I suppose some of you may disagree, and may have your own ideas on what the worst official map is. I’d love to hear them. Maybe I missed one that is even worse than Sludge.
April 19th, 2007 at 12:56 am
Sludge is just cute and funny.
I have this thing against Syrtis Major and Ian
s Cross. Syrtis is a red map with cliffs on chokepoints and you start from a pocket where it’s hard to get out but easy to bomb into…
Ian’s Cross would make a perfect 4 player map if it wasn’t for insane amount of experimental wreckage in middle. That just ruins it for me.
April 19th, 2007 at 1:33 am
In an Aeon vs. Aeon (possibly vs. Aeon 1v1v1) battle, I think sludge makes for an interesting quick battle, where the skills required are a bit different. On the other hand, people just run their commander under water and the game never ends.
The Scar has to be the worst of the worst though. Its ugly, the water color makes no sense and contrasts badly with the terrain, the terrain gives me a headache trying to figure it out, path finding on it is a joke, AIs can’t handle it at all, its unbalanced for 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3, and, to top it all off, the only game mode its good for, 1v1v1, its too large for!
April 19th, 2007 at 10:47 am
Well - I haven’t played enough of all the maps. Most all of the 5×5, 10×10, and 3 to 5 of the 20×20.
But of all the one’s I’ve played, for some reason I’m not found of “Drake’s Revene”. Something ‘dry’ about it.
And I’m not sure if it’s the sand thing, but it seems very laggy.
April 19th, 2007 at 10:44 pm
Personally, I like Emerald Crater, its big and lots of places to fight over. its good for an epic war, instead of commander rushes and smallscale no strategy type wars.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
I also had horrible lag problems on Drake’s Ravine, interestingly… Even with all the graphics at minimum, it just gets worse and worse whenever units are on the screen. Never got to form an opinion about the map itself though. :P
May 11th, 2007 at 9:20 am
In my opinion, Fields of Isis is a terrible map. Build a good defense at the choke point right outside your base, and the match will never end… it then just becomes an insane rush to build nukes and tech 3 artillery. That ain’t fun.