-It seems that if there is a defending marine on the beacon and you kill it with a zergling, the territory is not captured until you step off the beacon with the zling and then step back on. It probably does this with all units, but I have just noticed with the zergling in the first couple rounds. I believe this has always been the case and is not due to a recent update.
-When you win and all of your units die, the message about becoming a spectre and rising up again appears underneath the victory page
-With being able to move the dancing units at the end, if you move a unit being healed by the vessel, it stretches out the healing line to very long lengths. I personally think this one is kind of funny and I would just keep it, but I thought I'd let you know.
EDIT: found a couple more.
-When a player left, all their regular units were killed, but a vessel was still floating around.
-When you win by all the players leaving and then win by capturing the last territory, the victory music plays twice, ontop of itself.
No hard feelings, Sun, and sorry for giving you a hard time. The only thing the new stats do is make marines so weak that it is very hard to kill zlings, making zlings (and Africa) extremely strong until much later in the game. In my opinion, zlings are not exactly the most exciting and micro-full units to play with, so it greatly decreases the skill cap. If there is a vote for whatever mode you want, I guess it doesn't matter.
I definitely was a dick about it- for that I apologize. I was upset, I guess, because you are focused on changing a game that you are not even very good at- every single time you went around with your zerglings against a good player, you lost more than you got in bonus, as well as lost the territories that you don't even bother defend. It's an awful strategy, even with zlings being OP with lower marine damage, and it's annoying to see players focusing on balancing a game they don't even understand. It's like seeing anyone gold or below on the bnet forums whining about balance when they could go and actually learn how to play, except in this case you actually get to have input on changing the map. I am "always winning" (18 in a row now!) because I don't focus on how I can change it, I focus on how I can master it, and I recommend you adapt the same attitude. If something is glaringingly ruining it, like vessels pre-speed-reduction or marine health ups pre-tank-splash-upgrade, then ya, I'll bring it up, but adapting is still the more important variable.
The map is looking great, as always, but recently I've been playing with "SunTzu" who seems to know how to change the unit stats mid-game. He types in his "code" to the chat box (I'm not sure if this is actually what triggers it or not) and it makes marines deal 7 and unable to buy health upgrades, zlings not able to get speed upgrade, and many other changes. In general, these modified numbers are way worse to play with than the real ones, and it seems to suit his playstyle of just massing zlings. Though I've at least still won all 3 games I've played with this player and these new numbers (since he just runs around annoying people until he ragequits), I now avoid playing with this player while he can change the unit numbers on the fly like this. He sometimes switches back and forth mid-game to suit his current army makeup.
I'm not sure if this is beta testing functionality for yourself, for another player, or what the heck this is, but I strongly urge you to remove the ability for other players to change the units' (well balanced) values in the game until you actually decide to implement a mode voting system. Thanks as always.
On a side note, after I beat him one time with tanks, he then mentioned how he thought tank upgrades were only supposed to be +10 in his "mode" instead of +15. The next time I played with him, tank upgrades had been changed in his mode to +10. This gave me the impression that he had access to change the map. I'm not sure if you are collaborating with him or something, but if so, I would recommend collaborating with someone with greater maturity and skill, since he seems to posses very little of either. If all of his effects were accomplished by hacking the game somehow, I apologize for going on and on about a hacker in a thread about your map, but it seemed like that whatever was going on was coded in the map.
Also, for bug reporting:
-I sometimes still see defeat when I win if the other player leaves.
-Continent bonuses still spawn for players that have left.
A few bugs I noticed, not sure if you're aware of them or they are intentional-
-If you send a dropship through the alaska-russia portal, it drops everything it's holding (to subsequently be killed by enemy tanks!)
-You can protect territories from being taken over with both dropship and vessel, but only the dropship can conquer territories (not sure which is intended, it just seems weird that it isn't consistent).
-Killing your own men gives you aggression bonus.
-Continent bonuses continue to spawn for leavers after they have left.
Also, I like the slow-healing vessels more than repairing- it helps out the little guy defending as opposed to the person with lots of spare income. I know, I was the one who suggested repairs in the first place- further proof you know way more about this game than any of us making suggestions!
The popularity decreased because it's new. Lots of people try it out-> popularity spikes -> people find out if they like it or not -> only the people who like it are playing it anymore. All games do this, and no minor change like that would effect how this map would have done.
And it's important to keep in mind for balancing that it's not 1v1, it's RISK. The person who owns NA is obviously better off than the person who owns SA, but I've won before when all I had was SA, just because of diplomacy! Because NA had bigger threats in Europe and Asia, etc. etc. I don't think a power grab of a leaver is imbalanced, since-
The vast majority of the time someone leaves, they are about to lose anyways, so their units sticking around would give more in aggression bonus than if they were removed.
When someone leaves, unless they are in Australia, there will always be people from multiple directions closing in on that new land. If you aren't one of these people, that means it gives you a greater opportunity to attack one of these people, since a good portion of their army is not there. I guess maybe it's a problem for the Aussies, but I feel like most of the time someone actually strongly controls asia, they will soon control australia anyways. It still just makes asia a bigger target if they take over australia.
With all that theoretical stuff in mind, I'll share my practical experiences. The closest things that I have seen to it making a difference are-
One game when two big powers had americas/asia+aussie respectively, and one guy had europe/africa- he was starting to be taken over by one of us and just quit since he knew he lost. It became a good amount of land to grab very quickly, which would "in theory" heavily favor someone who went for marine upgrades over tank upgrades, but there were only 2 players left anyways, we both had not gotten tank upgrades yet, and it didn't end up mattering.
Someone turtling with a dozen tanks in a corner, stopping someone's continent bonus. I STILL think they should be removed- it's really exciting when someone turtles if that player is waiting to expand and take over, but it's totally pointless if no one is controlling that player. I know if I were the bigger power I would just totally forgo that one territory/continent bonus, since by then the cost of destroying the line would cost way more than what the continent bonus is worth. That's more "unfair" than removal, if anything, since it allows the leaver to be a king-maker.
Honestly, if "that opponent was the driving force behind holding the next largest player back," then that player had absolutely no reason to quit; if they totally fail to realize that and quit anyways, then they are probably bad enough that it wouldn't have made a difference if they stayed. I personally never seen a player who was legitimately holding down a strong line against a big player, and was allied with other small players, just randomly leave without one of their lines getting totally breached.
I am all for difference of opinions- debating is the best pre-requisite for trying things out- but actually debating it is more productive than talking about popularity and vocal minorities. He will implement a change if it makes the game better, not because 10%, 50%, or 100% of people on a forum tell him to do it.
The new choke looks great. Keep up the great work! Your map is just fantastic.
I personally would be against voting for a different mode in the game unless it was an extremely different playstyle and feel than the current one. You don't want to intimidate new players with a voting process when map starts, though I suppose you can just make "default settings" front and center. Like Nickel510's post on the last page said- simplicity is one of the biggest draws of this game, and anything that could make it more complicated needs to be very valuable to make up for it.
I would also be against giving leavers units to computers- they usually don't have many men when they leave anyways, and it would just be an even greater bonus for those proximal players to get the kill rewards, especially since the computers won't have any upgrades.
I think 5+2 with the upgrade is sufficient for air range- by the time they have dropships, you should have the +2, and 7 is fine. I agree, though- 4+2 is just too low when goliaths are your only anti-dropship unit.
I strongly believe mineral counts should stay private- keeping up a supply of mins to defend attackers is a very effective strategy. Do this enough and people won't attack you, even if you have 0 mins, because they think you do. Making this knowledge public just decreases depth and adds very little in return. Please add a vote to allow this if public mins are implemented!
Besides that, I agree with Lite in liking the way everything currently is with leavers/aggression/marines/Africa bonus.
The choke between SA and Africa I think shouldn't be made smaller, but it can be extended out so it is thinner farther into Africa, allowing Africa to more easily (but not too easily) defend both Europe and SA with that one choke point. SA is already a very strong continent that doesn't need any more bonuses, imo.
Nickel, if that could be changed, it shouldn't be- that's what Starcraft is and always has been like, and it rewards quick responses and strong control.
That leads me to my next point- I have won the last 5 games in a row I have played, so I decided to watch the replays. One thing I noticed when I watched all 5 replays was that I decided to switch to the APM tab. Literally everyone, in all 5 games, had <60 APM except for one opponent who was around 90 (who was easily second that game) and me around 120-140. It's obviously hard to compare APM to a ladder game where you have so much more to manage and are doing less micro, but I mean, I don't even think very highly of myself as a sc2 player. It makes me wonder- if people are so slow, why do they like to play this game that rewards quickness so greatly? As opposed to nexus wars/desert strike, where you don't need to be fast? Perhaps I should stop making suggestions, because Lite clearly knows something that I don't about making maps.
Sorry for the rant, didn't mean to offend or target anyone in particular- it's just an interesting phenomena, I suppose.
To be fair, unloading things on tanks has been done for ages in sc1, I just realized that I could do it in this game.. so I'm not quite a genius ;)
I think the tank upgrades have made it far better, making them a great counter to marines. The only issue is that again, there really isn't an alternative to marines and health upgrades in the very beginning before you can afford multiple tanks, but that is a much, much smaller issue than those that permeated the game before.
I like keeping the damage high on units- I agree, goliaths would become too unstoppable otherwise.
I think the chokes are great and are probably fine for now- maybe 1 or 2 small issues may come up over playtesting.
For aggression income- I also think it should not take upgrades into account. The main factor where upgrade imbalance comes in is when wiping out players, and you want to give that type of massive incentive to throw your army at a turtling small player when there are other big players ready to attack you.
I think Stim and speed zlings are fine, now- by the time you get both stim and +50 health there are lots of tanks out on the game.
I think cannon upgrade would be better to give splash more than increase damage- with large armies, cannons just never matter later in the game, and a small amount of splash would make them do so whereas more damage would just make them more annoying.
Finally, I agree with nickel- keep this game simple!
I disagree, Booleeas- I think very powerful tanks are a great thing, giving people who have fewer resources a chance not to be immediately eliminated. It also opens up way more strategies- for example, in the late game, you can use dropships to drop marines onto the tanks and kill them with their splash.
Goliaths also are still not useless- for tank lines with 4 or fewer tanks, goliaths decimate them.
The only truly unstoppable combination right now, imo, is if someone has 8+ tanks with 2+ goliaths to shoot down dropships, and that is simply just not affordable at every choke in a game that is still competitive.
Hey LitePollution,
I just want to say, you are doing an absolutely fantastic job on this map. It really is incredible, and I think it has the potential to be the best RISK map ever made, including sc1! With the better UI it's already better than playing on sc1, for sure.
As far as balance though, I'd like to address a few concerns. I come from a background in which I actually made my own RISK map in sc1 that used a very particular style of balancing, so I will try not to be too biased towards that, but I think at the same time it can help me make good suggestions.
Here is the link to it, if you're ever curious. Overall it's not the best sc1 RISK game because the continent layout I used was inferior, but I thought it was well balanced:
http://sc.nibbits.com/maps/view/125706/riskff7-12
So, onto the suggestions.. when playing, I noticed two extremely dominant strategies that flat out took over the game 15-20 minutes in, and whoever could pull it off first won. I believe by weakening these strategies it would allow for a more varied gameplay. They were:
1) Marine upgrades- a little bit with armor/weapons, but especially health, +50 health on the first gas, stim, etc, marine upgrades are just far too powerful, giving you marines that are 3x more powerful than your opponents' within 15 minutes in. Very mobile, not too expensive, and absolutely dominating through a runaway effect due to more kill rewards per cost and more cost efficient usage of those rewards due to the strong upgrades.
and my personal favorite, 2) Goliath and vessel. Once I get a Goliath and get to 25 gas, I get a vessel and a couple tanks, and this allows me to poke into defenses, pick off a few guys/a tank, and walk right back into my defenses only to heal up and go again 20 seconds later. Lots of kill rewards for 0 units lost, and this allows a very easy transition into the unstoppable multiple goliaths/multiple vessels army.
So, what to do about this? In addressing #1-
1) Remove marine health upgrades, both mineral and gas. It's kind of an exponential problem- combined with marine armor, stim, and considering how much cheaper each upgrade is because of the gas upgrade, these upgrades are far better than the rest. 5 upgrades and the gas upgrade literally make them twice as powerful. I would say to just nerf the upgrades, but I think they have a Pobes vs Zeelot balance problem in that they will always be teetering between worthless and overpowered. I guess I should just say to be careful with how many ups it takes tanks to 1-shot marines, for their vs light damage.
2) Stim as-is needs to be nerfed, but with those changes I don't think stim would be as big of a problem.
In addressing strategy #2-
I believe the problem is not in the goliath but in the vessel. Win a battle with 50 marines, 25 die; win a battle with a goliath, it's at half health. The goliath is fully healed (bam, free 25 minerals), whereas the marines are out of luck (unless they get in enough OP upgrades before the goliaths start to run away with it). There are lots of options what to do with the vessel (remove, make it use energy that needs to regen, etc.) but I think a good idea may just be to make it repair instead of heal, using up minerals to repair. Even if it uses up half the minerals it would have cost build it, it will still be a very, very strong unit that might need nerfing later.
As an alternative, less drastic solution- though this doesn't fix the mid-game strength of the goliath-vessel, you could address the absolutley insanely OP goliaths in the end game by implementing a limit:2 or something on the vessel and/or goliath.
Of course, I find this strategy way more fun than the marine one, so don't nerf this without nerfing the marine upgrades ;)
On a more miscellaneous note, right now the zergling has a big problem in that it's not particularly useful for anything right now except maybe stealing a few territories from bad players, and using the free ones you get for tank fodder. I ran into this myself when making my RISK game, and my solution that I came up with would unfortunately not work in your game due to how my 50 mineral unit was different, but I think the zergling would at least have a more functional early and mid game if you gave it the speed upgrade off the bat and nerfed the marines a little.
The increased cannon damage to armored is more annoying than anything, imo- it just means you need to grab a few marines to take a cannon instead of taking it with the tank itself, and if you have goliaths, you have vessels, so it doesn't matter.
And finally, I saw this in one of the reviews on battle.net and I agree wholeheartedly- tighten the chokes, even if just slightly. Have the mid-continent chokes be wide still, but allow slightly tighter chokes for the rest, giving more opportunity for defensive advantage. There is a very large incentive to be on the aggression (normally with cards but in this case with kill rewards), and I believe it would open up the strategic approach to the game much more if you could feel like you actually had a real advantage for being the defender.
If you do this, though, I believe your kill reward scheme would not be as effective as it is now- the defender would get the advantage as well as the kill bonus! Cards may be better for this reason, only rewarding the attacker. I guess this issue is a little bit more of a philosophical one, with more strategy and tactics and less nonstop action and micro, so I'd totally understand if you didn't go for it. It would make the tank more viable, too.
Well, let me know what you think! They're all just ideas being thrown out there, don't take it as criticism of any kind- your map is fantastic and I can't wait to keep playing more of it!
Also, addressing a few other suggestions other people have said, I agree with you- I think only 1 rebel works out very well. I think tank damage is good as it is. And reducing the very high aggression bonus may be slightly better strategically, but it would be far worse from a popularity stand point- the COD-crowd enjoys the nonstop fighting and action and being able to stay in at least a while.
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Bug report update:
-It seems that if there is a defending marine on the beacon and you kill it with a zergling, the territory is not captured until you step off the beacon with the zling and then step back on. It probably does this with all units, but I have just noticed with the zergling in the first couple rounds. I believe this has always been the case and is not due to a recent update.
-When you win and all of your units die, the message about becoming a spectre and rising up again appears underneath the victory page
-With being able to move the dancing units at the end, if you move a unit being healed by the vessel, it stretches out the healing line to very long lengths. I personally think this one is kind of funny and I would just keep it, but I thought I'd let you know.
EDIT: found a couple more.
-When a player left, all their regular units were killed, but a vessel was still floating around.
-When you win by all the players leaving and then win by capturing the last territory, the victory music plays twice, ontop of itself.
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No hard feelings, Sun, and sorry for giving you a hard time. The only thing the new stats do is make marines so weak that it is very hard to kill zlings, making zlings (and Africa) extremely strong until much later in the game. In my opinion, zlings are not exactly the most exciting and micro-full units to play with, so it greatly decreases the skill cap. If there is a vote for whatever mode you want, I guess it doesn't matter.
I definitely was a dick about it- for that I apologize. I was upset, I guess, because you are focused on changing a game that you are not even very good at- every single time you went around with your zerglings against a good player, you lost more than you got in bonus, as well as lost the territories that you don't even bother defend. It's an awful strategy, even with zlings being OP with lower marine damage, and it's annoying to see players focusing on balancing a game they don't even understand. It's like seeing anyone gold or below on the bnet forums whining about balance when they could go and actually learn how to play, except in this case you actually get to have input on changing the map. I am "always winning" (18 in a row now!) because I don't focus on how I can change it, I focus on how I can master it, and I recommend you adapt the same attitude. If something is glaringingly ruining it, like vessels pre-speed-reduction or marine health ups pre-tank-splash-upgrade, then ya, I'll bring it up, but adapting is still the more important variable.
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Hey Lite,
The map is looking great, as always, but recently I've been playing with "SunTzu" who seems to know how to change the unit stats mid-game. He types in his "code" to the chat box (I'm not sure if this is actually what triggers it or not) and it makes marines deal 7 and unable to buy health upgrades, zlings not able to get speed upgrade, and many other changes. In general, these modified numbers are way worse to play with than the real ones, and it seems to suit his playstyle of just massing zlings. Though I've at least still won all 3 games I've played with this player and these new numbers (since he just runs around annoying people until he ragequits), I now avoid playing with this player while he can change the unit numbers on the fly like this. He sometimes switches back and forth mid-game to suit his current army makeup.
I'm not sure if this is beta testing functionality for yourself, for another player, or what the heck this is, but I strongly urge you to remove the ability for other players to change the units' (well balanced) values in the game until you actually decide to implement a mode voting system. Thanks as always.
On a side note, after I beat him one time with tanks, he then mentioned how he thought tank upgrades were only supposed to be +10 in his "mode" instead of +15. The next time I played with him, tank upgrades had been changed in his mode to +10. This gave me the impression that he had access to change the map. I'm not sure if you are collaborating with him or something, but if so, I would recommend collaborating with someone with greater maturity and skill, since he seems to posses very little of either. If all of his effects were accomplished by hacking the game somehow, I apologize for going on and on about a hacker in a thread about your map, but it seemed like that whatever was going on was coded in the map.
Also, for bug reporting:
-I sometimes still see defeat when I win if the other player leaves.
-Continent bonuses still spawn for players that have left.
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A few bugs I noticed, not sure if you're aware of them or they are intentional-
-If you send a dropship through the alaska-russia portal, it drops everything it's holding (to subsequently be killed by enemy tanks!)
-You can protect territories from being taken over with both dropship and vessel, but only the dropship can conquer territories (not sure which is intended, it just seems weird that it isn't consistent).
-Killing your own men gives you aggression bonus.
-Continent bonuses continue to spawn for leavers after they have left.
Also, I like the slow-healing vessels more than repairing- it helps out the little guy defending as opposed to the person with lots of spare income. I know, I was the one who suggested repairs in the first place- further proof you know way more about this game than any of us making suggestions!
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@bobby8934: Go
The popularity decreased because it's new. Lots of people try it out-> popularity spikes -> people find out if they like it or not -> only the people who like it are playing it anymore. All games do this, and no minor change like that would effect how this map would have done.
And it's important to keep in mind for balancing that it's not 1v1, it's RISK. The person who owns NA is obviously better off than the person who owns SA, but I've won before when all I had was SA, just because of diplomacy! Because NA had bigger threats in Europe and Asia, etc. etc. I don't think a power grab of a leaver is imbalanced, since-
With all that theoretical stuff in mind, I'll share my practical experiences. The closest things that I have seen to it making a difference are-
Honestly, if "that opponent was the driving force behind holding the next largest player back," then that player had absolutely no reason to quit; if they totally fail to realize that and quit anyways, then they are probably bad enough that it wouldn't have made a difference if they stayed. I personally never seen a player who was legitimately holding down a strong line against a big player, and was allied with other small players, just randomly leave without one of their lines getting totally breached.
I am all for difference of opinions- debating is the best pre-requisite for trying things out- but actually debating it is more productive than talking about popularity and vocal minorities. He will implement a change if it makes the game better, not because 10%, 50%, or 100% of people on a forum tell him to do it.
0
The new choke looks great. Keep up the great work! Your map is just fantastic.
I personally would be against voting for a different mode in the game unless it was an extremely different playstyle and feel than the current one. You don't want to intimidate new players with a voting process when map starts, though I suppose you can just make "default settings" front and center. Like Nickel510's post on the last page said- simplicity is one of the biggest draws of this game, and anything that could make it more complicated needs to be very valuable to make up for it.
I would also be against giving leavers units to computers- they usually don't have many men when they leave anyways, and it would just be an even greater bonus for those proximal players to get the kill rewards, especially since the computers won't have any upgrades.
0
I think 5+2 with the upgrade is sufficient for air range- by the time they have dropships, you should have the +2, and 7 is fine. I agree, though- 4+2 is just too low when goliaths are your only anti-dropship unit.
I strongly believe mineral counts should stay private- keeping up a supply of mins to defend attackers is a very effective strategy. Do this enough and people won't attack you, even if you have 0 mins, because they think you do. Making this knowledge public just decreases depth and adds very little in return. Please add a vote to allow this if public mins are implemented!
Besides that, I agree with Lite in liking the way everything currently is with leavers/aggression/marines/Africa bonus.
The choke between SA and Africa I think shouldn't be made smaller, but it can be extended out so it is thinner farther into Africa, allowing Africa to more easily (but not too easily) defend both Europe and SA with that one choke point. SA is already a very strong continent that doesn't need any more bonuses, imo.
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Nickel, if that could be changed, it shouldn't be- that's what Starcraft is and always has been like, and it rewards quick responses and strong control.
That leads me to my next point- I have won the last 5 games in a row I have played, so I decided to watch the replays. One thing I noticed when I watched all 5 replays was that I decided to switch to the APM tab. Literally everyone, in all 5 games, had <60 APM except for one opponent who was around 90 (who was easily second that game) and me around 120-140. It's obviously hard to compare APM to a ladder game where you have so much more to manage and are doing less micro, but I mean, I don't even think very highly of myself as a sc2 player. It makes me wonder- if people are so slow, why do they like to play this game that rewards quickness so greatly? As opposed to nexus wars/desert strike, where you don't need to be fast? Perhaps I should stop making suggestions, because Lite clearly knows something that I don't about making maps.
Sorry for the rant, didn't mean to offend or target anyone in particular- it's just an interesting phenomena, I suppose.
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To be fair, unloading things on tanks has been done for ages in sc1, I just realized that I could do it in this game.. so I'm not quite a genius ;)
I think the tank upgrades have made it far better, making them a great counter to marines. The only issue is that again, there really isn't an alternative to marines and health upgrades in the very beginning before you can afford multiple tanks, but that is a much, much smaller issue than those that permeated the game before.
I like keeping the damage high on units- I agree, goliaths would become too unstoppable otherwise. I think the chokes are great and are probably fine for now- maybe 1 or 2 small issues may come up over playtesting. For aggression income- I also think it should not take upgrades into account. The main factor where upgrade imbalance comes in is when wiping out players, and you want to give that type of massive incentive to throw your army at a turtling small player when there are other big players ready to attack you. I think Stim and speed zlings are fine, now- by the time you get both stim and +50 health there are lots of tanks out on the game.
I think cannon upgrade would be better to give splash more than increase damage- with large armies, cannons just never matter later in the game, and a small amount of splash would make them do so whereas more damage would just make them more annoying.
Finally, I agree with nickel- keep this game simple!
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I disagree, Booleeas- I think very powerful tanks are a great thing, giving people who have fewer resources a chance not to be immediately eliminated. It also opens up way more strategies- for example, in the late game, you can use dropships to drop marines onto the tanks and kill them with their splash. Goliaths also are still not useless- for tank lines with 4 or fewer tanks, goliaths decimate them. The only truly unstoppable combination right now, imo, is if someone has 8+ tanks with 2+ goliaths to shoot down dropships, and that is simply just not affordable at every choke in a game that is still competitive.
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Hey LitePollution, I just want to say, you are doing an absolutely fantastic job on this map. It really is incredible, and I think it has the potential to be the best RISK map ever made, including sc1! With the better UI it's already better than playing on sc1, for sure.
As far as balance though, I'd like to address a few concerns. I come from a background in which I actually made my own RISK map in sc1 that used a very particular style of balancing, so I will try not to be too biased towards that, but I think at the same time it can help me make good suggestions. Here is the link to it, if you're ever curious. Overall it's not the best sc1 RISK game because the continent layout I used was inferior, but I thought it was well balanced: http://sc.nibbits.com/maps/view/125706/riskff7-12
So, onto the suggestions.. when playing, I noticed two extremely dominant strategies that flat out took over the game 15-20 minutes in, and whoever could pull it off first won. I believe by weakening these strategies it would allow for a more varied gameplay. They were:
1) Marine upgrades- a little bit with armor/weapons, but especially health, +50 health on the first gas, stim, etc, marine upgrades are just far too powerful, giving you marines that are 3x more powerful than your opponents' within 15 minutes in. Very mobile, not too expensive, and absolutely dominating through a runaway effect due to more kill rewards per cost and more cost efficient usage of those rewards due to the strong upgrades.
and my personal favorite, 2) Goliath and vessel. Once I get a Goliath and get to 25 gas, I get a vessel and a couple tanks, and this allows me to poke into defenses, pick off a few guys/a tank, and walk right back into my defenses only to heal up and go again 20 seconds later. Lots of kill rewards for 0 units lost, and this allows a very easy transition into the unstoppable multiple goliaths/multiple vessels army.
So, what to do about this? In addressing #1- 1) Remove marine health upgrades, both mineral and gas. It's kind of an exponential problem- combined with marine armor, stim, and considering how much cheaper each upgrade is because of the gas upgrade, these upgrades are far better than the rest. 5 upgrades and the gas upgrade literally make them twice as powerful. I would say to just nerf the upgrades, but I think they have a Pobes vs Zeelot balance problem in that they will always be teetering between worthless and overpowered. I guess I should just say to be careful with how many ups it takes tanks to 1-shot marines, for their vs light damage.
2) Stim as-is needs to be nerfed, but with those changes I don't think stim would be as big of a problem.
In addressing strategy #2- I believe the problem is not in the goliath but in the vessel. Win a battle with 50 marines, 25 die; win a battle with a goliath, it's at half health. The goliath is fully healed (bam, free 25 minerals), whereas the marines are out of luck (unless they get in enough OP upgrades before the goliaths start to run away with it). There are lots of options what to do with the vessel (remove, make it use energy that needs to regen, etc.) but I think a good idea may just be to make it repair instead of heal, using up minerals to repair. Even if it uses up half the minerals it would have cost build it, it will still be a very, very strong unit that might need nerfing later. As an alternative, less drastic solution- though this doesn't fix the mid-game strength of the goliath-vessel, you could address the absolutley insanely OP goliaths in the end game by implementing a limit:2 or something on the vessel and/or goliath.
Of course, I find this strategy way more fun than the marine one, so don't nerf this without nerfing the marine upgrades ;)
On a more miscellaneous note, right now the zergling has a big problem in that it's not particularly useful for anything right now except maybe stealing a few territories from bad players, and using the free ones you get for tank fodder. I ran into this myself when making my RISK game, and my solution that I came up with would unfortunately not work in your game due to how my 50 mineral unit was different, but I think the zergling would at least have a more functional early and mid game if you gave it the speed upgrade off the bat and nerfed the marines a little.
The increased cannon damage to armored is more annoying than anything, imo- it just means you need to grab a few marines to take a cannon instead of taking it with the tank itself, and if you have goliaths, you have vessels, so it doesn't matter.
And finally, I saw this in one of the reviews on battle.net and I agree wholeheartedly- tighten the chokes, even if just slightly. Have the mid-continent chokes be wide still, but allow slightly tighter chokes for the rest, giving more opportunity for defensive advantage. There is a very large incentive to be on the aggression (normally with cards but in this case with kill rewards), and I believe it would open up the strategic approach to the game much more if you could feel like you actually had a real advantage for being the defender. If you do this, though, I believe your kill reward scheme would not be as effective as it is now- the defender would get the advantage as well as the kill bonus! Cards may be better for this reason, only rewarding the attacker. I guess this issue is a little bit more of a philosophical one, with more strategy and tactics and less nonstop action and micro, so I'd totally understand if you didn't go for it. It would make the tank more viable, too.
Well, let me know what you think! They're all just ideas being thrown out there, don't take it as criticism of any kind- your map is fantastic and I can't wait to keep playing more of it!
Also, addressing a few other suggestions other people have said, I agree with you- I think only 1 rebel works out very well. I think tank damage is good as it is. And reducing the very high aggression bonus may be slightly better strategically, but it would be far worse from a popularity stand point- the COD-crowd enjoys the nonstop fighting and action and being able to stay in at least a while.