White Fire
A sweet little map I don’t see played too much in custom games is the excellent 10×10 White Fire. The map has never been in any of the ladder rotations, and I suppose that is appropriate because it isn’t really suited to ranked play. Nonetheless, I am fairly certain that it is my favorite map.
It can ideally be played as 2v2 or 3v3. The map is divided in half by ocean, so you will want to make sure you and your teammates start on the same side. Being 10×10, the map is large enough that Aeon Aurora rushes are unlikely to be very effective. Basically, this means you are usually left to your own devices for the first few minutes, allowing rapid expansion. You can’t sit on your laurels, though, because you need to secure naval superiority quickly to succeed!
There are a fair number of resources to be found, especially in 2v2 games, where one of the starting positions serves nicely as an expansion base. There are also some sizable wreckages to reclaim. These give a nice boost, without being as ridiculous as the wreckages on the much-maligned Seton’s Clutch.
Perhaps my favorite feature of this map is that it lends itself well to team based strategies, especially in 3v3 games. One player can just focus on getting up naval defense and destroyers, while another can focus on air power and teching up quickly. This leads to many interesting gameplay possibilities.
All in all, it is a very fun map that everyone should take a shot at playing. Unfortunately, it’s pretty rare to see it being played. But, if everyone goes out and starts hosting matches using it, that will change!
April 25th, 2007 at 4:08 am
It is a great map idd.
April 25th, 2007 at 4:24 am
I played a 1v1 vs. the AI on that map once. Seemed kinda nice. :P Far too much mass for 1v1, though, since, unlike Open Palms, small land-based raiding parties aren’t necessarily effective at harassing mexes.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:20 pm
It’s been pointed out to me that setting ren_bloom to off will take away the ignoring glowing resource deposits. I’ll have to remember this next time to get better, more consistent map screenshots.
May 1st, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Pretty interesting FFA map. I played in last night with some friends and was left on one of the islands. I had trouble defending from early agressors but eventually my navy cleared some units off the end of my island and I was able to post some proper defenses. You can shoot clear across the channels between the islands and the land with tech 3 artillery and once I got a battleship up and running pretty much everything was fair game to me.