If any of you WeeWar players are active on friendfeed I’ve created a room for us .  If you aren’t familiar with friendfeed it’s a social aggregation and commenting site.  If you and your friends use Facebook , Twitter , Digg , blog, or use any of the other 41 different services you can pull all of your various activities into one place and see everything your friends are doing as well.  It’s an addictive service, you can follow me by going to my freindfeed feed , although if you are only interested in my WeeWar posting and finds then joining the WeeWar room is all you really need.

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To use the simulator checkout Pluto’s Forge >> WeeWar Battle Simulator

Pluto also has an in-game greasemonkey version of the simulator, but I haven’t had much luck using it with FireFox 3.  It can be found on userscripts .  Or you can pull down the whole Greasemonkey Battle  Suite !

- What inspired you to make the Europe Map?

I found this map: http://weewar.com/map/19116 and immediately liked it.

- Can you give us a brief description of the factions and what color represents them?

Russians are red. Americans are blue. Purple is royalty and hence Britain. That leaves green yellow and white. I suppose I could have made White Russians, but I wasn’t drinking that night. I guess I could have gone with white for Turkey, yellow for Germany and green for Italy to match the flags a bit more.

- What are the major changes in the 4.x versions of the map?

Red and yellow can get at each other more easily since they can now walk around both sides of the Black Sea. America has been returned to the invasion force it once was in the original and in the first couple versions of the Stirling’s maps. Vehicles are not blocked on the mainland by mountains (Spain and Athens), but it is slow going for vehicles in those areas because of forest And the starting positions and units changed a fair amount.

- Stirling had this to say about the Europe map when we were talking about map making and what makes a good, balanced  map

Let’s look at the WWII setup and BRP vs YGW. It isn’t exactly WWII, but it works. Purple has lots of income early, but can find it difficult to land an invasion force and sustain it, so there is the challenge for purple of attacking through france or Scandanavia. White has the challenge of the two front war, but has the income or should have the income to handle it. White also needs to use every unit in the game to do well. Moving around the board, red also has a two front war but with enough infantry neither yellow nor white will be able to make progress against red and since red is Russia, having lots of infantry is "natural" for the Russian style of play. Add in heavy infantry and a couple raiders and aa guns and aircraft won’t be able to penetrate Russia’s defenses so easily, making them fairly useless purchases. Eventually red can put up a DFA to secure bases from a distance and a minimum of effort. Russia can make progress against white. The red yellow front is generally a stalemate unless the red player doesn’t think like a Russian. Yellow has options, lots of options, more than most players realize. Yellow can try to dig into the Ukraine, which is easier to do in early moves, or provoke and challenge red while sending units to Tunis to help green attack blue. Yellow will have more success against red with each increase in the number of infantry sent to Ukraine per turn. Green vs Blue was always a great matchup although I’ve shifted that war considerably in version 4.02. The entire battle of green vs blue used to come down to who controlled the southern French harbor at 11,17. Green and blue have to decide how to fight each other and blue also has to decide if and how it can support the war against white in France. What it boils down to is options. Each position has a lot of options in how to go about accomplishing their missions and add in luck and every game ends up being different, although most games follow standard patterns.

For FFA it all changes. White and green usually understand that they can’t attack each other and still hold off the other positions. The play also becomes more opportunistic and there still aren’t a lot of quick kills. Based on terrain and typical player dynamics the map lends itself to a self balancing situation. As soon as one player grows strong in a given region, the others attack it and the weaker players recover. If the weaker players get attacked, then eventually the stronger players attack each other to fight for future dominance. But there is enough income on the map that allows the weaker player to recover and survive.
There are a lot of different ways to win, the terrain is diverse and creates restrictions, dominance isn’t easy to gain, recovery from errors or bad luck or too many attackers is possible, it’s Europe after all and who doesn’t want to fight for Europe and the map allows every play style including the Russia infantry forces and the British naval forces. Players who like land vehicles should probably play as Germany, not Russia.

The main features of the WWPA are it’s "Greylist " of people who have violated the WWPA rules of fair play and it’s certification of members.  With the replay feature removed from the game, greylist accusations have become much harder to verify, making it much less useful.  I’m also sure that if you scan that list you’ll see people that you would be happy to play again and know to be good and honorable players - can you ever get delisted?  The greylist, in it’s current form and circumstances, is broken.

The certification process is still of some value, but if you take a look at the list there are some big names missing and judging by the number of uncertified members, it doesn’t look like people are spending a lot of time updating it.  I think most players just trust each other by default - WeeWar is a great community and you’re unlikely to get burned if the player you’re playing has some players that ‘prefer them’ and have played more than a handful of games.

Please tell me your opinions:  with no replay, no way to earn a removal from the greylist, and few updates to the certification list - does the WWPA still have a role to play in WeeWar?  If so, what is it?

Image via Wikipedia

As promised in yesterday’s Interview with WeeWar’s most popular cartographer , here are Stirling’s map balancing tips.  This is a must read if you want to make good playable maps that people will enjoy:

Chess is pretty balanced. Same units, same starting positions, no income. The balance is broken when 1 player moves first and the other second. So given an even start the most unbalancing factor is player skill and a mapmaker can only do so much to balance player skill. I actively consider poor players in the design of my maps. I arrange the starting set up to give players hints about how to begin the game. Beyond that there is only so much you can do to balance player skill, so on to balancing maps.
1) Balance the turn order advantage. For example: Play against yourself and count total income until all bases have been activated, which includes conquering opponent bases. Once income is generated at least once for each base list it for all positions. The total income from all turns played to that point should be slightly in favor of the last player and slightly out of favor for blue: Yellow total income 2400, Purple total income 2200, Red total income 2000, Blue total income 1800. This might be supposing that each player ends up with 400 income per turn.
1a) Another way to balance turn order is shown by Stirling’s Lotus http://weewar.com/map/24524 which is based on Mo’s Rubicule http://weewar.com/map/22505 .
1b) Both are fun maps, but non-base space is extremely limited on Mo’s rubicule and it is likely that yellow, green and white won’t get any their fair share of space. Both maps are dominated early by zerks and the more non-base space you have the better you’ll do even if you are sticking infantry into sand to "Reserve" that space for a later turn zerk. So give everyone a chance to do well in as equal measure as possible. I do like Mo’s Rubicule and hence the digs in the article. Play Mo’s Rubicule!
1c) Stirling’s Lotus gives every player a starting infantry in their corner. Then I added infantry to every base that blue could cover on the first turn so that no player would have another player step on their base unless a player chooses not to protect their own bases. Same for red and so on. Then I upgraded the units to raiders or tanks or zerks depending on the future need of that base. The income is really high on that map, so all players would have a good chance to try different strategies.
1d) The easiest way to balance turn order advantage is shown on Botanic Gardens http://weewar.com/map/2 . Yes it is literally map 2. Red activates the 3rd and 4th bases before blue so red ends up with 100 credits more than blue.
1e) The second easiest is by giving later colors more and better quality starting units like in Stirling’s Lotus. The advantage is proportional to the income. Red with 5 infantry and blue with none but both starting with 2,000 income per turn is an insignificant way to balance it.

If you balance the income/starting units then you have done the most to balance the game. Some maps such as Middle East Theater http://battleground3.weewar.com/map/27537 are great looking maps, but the starting units are way out of line. Blue could easily dominate. I like the map and the concept so I started fixing it http://weewar.com/map/27971 .

2) Take a screenshot of your map using the 2 buttons in combination: Alt-Print Screen. Paste the picture into a picture editing program such as Paint that comes installed on most PCs. Don’t know if it still is. Then figure out which players will definitely get which bases. If a great player can get it from a noob, then it isn’t definite is it. Each player should have the same number of bases that they can definitely get. All remaining bases are "middle" bases that are up for grabs. These middle bases are prizes or rewards for playing well. Too many middle bases and the game is unbalanced or tippy. So if each player gets 5 definite bases, then it is reasonable to add 1 middle base per player.
2a) Stirling’s Cityscape started as http://weewar.com/map/19250 . It has 5 bases per player and 8 middle bases. The map is deceptively simple and caters entirely to the players who appreciate mobility and flanking maneuvers . It doesn’t play the same way twice and it is hard to lock down an opponent.

3) Stirling’s Europe map gives purple a fast quick income because to do anything outside the UK it has to be done by expensive units such as hovercraft instead of infantry. Similarly it is hard to attack the UK. So consider what it takes for a player to activate their bases and to gain the middle bases and attack opponents.

4) Middle bases are not based on numbers of hexes. They are based on how many turns it takes for units to get there.

Suppose a map has a single base in each corner, is 35×35 in size and is a four player map with no starting units. The game will never end with equally skilled players because you have to have enough firepower to conquer the "next" base given that the opponent will build reinforcements and you are delayed in traveling to the target. Ok the game will end in boredom and it won’t be fun for anyone.

There are some maps that take too long to get from point A to B and that’s fine but if and only if the players are given enough income to deploy against the target and get it there in time to make a successful attack.

5) So I recommend that the size of the map fits the income.

6) Historical maps. Make them. Make them as they were. Then make a playable version of it and put a link in the description to the historical version and vice versa.

7) The Air Raid map http://weewar.com/map/22715 is one of those maps that I playtested against myself more than a dozen times and I had recommendations on changes that I couldn’t incorporate because I didn’t have enough space for maps. I’m running out of space again. The Air Raid map illustrates that you can achieve balance from a non symmetric start. If you want to learn how to use aircraft really well, this is a good map to do it on as blue. Blue should be able to take me [as red] to equal bases once all bases have been activated.

So how do you make a fun map? An intriguing map? Lots of different terrain and lots of options for various types of allowable strategies.

The key to balancing harbors is to count the attack range of a new battleship and a new destroyer. Each player should have at least one harbor than is not threatened by the opponent forces. Middle harbors are good, they entice players to move towards them and try to conquer them. The "prizes" or middle bases and harbors, but not airfields are generally what cause players to initiate battle against each other. And once they start war follows.

9) If airfields are part of the game, each player should have one that is not easily or immediately threatened by opponent aa guns, jets or destroyers. Other airfields can be scattered or placed probably by whim.

Image via Wikipedia

Most of you have probably played on one of Stirling’s maps , he is one of WeeWar’s most popular and prolific mapmakers,  and one of the best players.  Stirling’s alter ego Dan Janowak, 36, from Madison, WI., (He is moving first to Scottsdale, AZ and then on to Pasadena, CA.) is a healthcare IT consultant.   When I asked him about his hobbies he listed:

Volleyball, strategic analysis [yes as a hobby], read and keep up on the latest news in biomedicine, astrophysics, archeology and whats happening in the world today. Although I don’t always hear things first since I’m not usually reading their journals. That’s why I say I read the news and not the journals… less to read… Oh and weewar and weewar mapmaking.

Dan took a break from his busy schedule of repeatedly killing me to answer a few questions:

If you add up all the votes for the different versions you have created the most popular map in WeeWar, Europe.  Why do you think the map is so popular?

rrrob says " wwii is always popular". I’ll go with that. Who doesn’t like Europe or fighting to dominate it? There is enough room between player core positions that there won’t be any quick kills, so there is a flexibility to potentially save a team member or recover on your own. The distance between positions and the variety of terrain also provide a lot of different ways to try and win.

Let’s look at the WWII setup and BRP vs YGW. It isn’t exactly WWII, but it works. Purple has lots of income early, but can find it difficult to land an invasion force and sustain it, so there is the challenge for purple of attacking through france or Scandanavia. White has the challenge of the two front war, but has the income or should have the income to handle it. White also needs to use every unit in the game to do well. Moving around the board, red also has a two front war but with enough infantry neither yellow nor white will be able to make progress against red and since red is Russia, having lots of infantry is "natural" for the Russian style of play. Add in heavy infantry and a couple raiders and aa guns and aircraft won’t be able to penetrate Russia’s defenses so easily, making them fairly useless purchases. Eventually red can put up a DFA to secure bases from a distance and a minimum of effort. Russia can make progress against white. The red yellow front is generally a stalemate unless the red player doesn’t think like a Russian. Yellow has options, lots of options, more than most players realize. Yellow can try to dig into the Ukraine , which is easier to do in early moves, or provoke and challenge red while sending units to Tunis to help green attack blue. Yellow will have more success against red with each increase in the number of infantry sent to Ukraine per turn. Green vs Blue was always a great matchup although I’ve shifted that war considerably in version 4.02. The entire battle of green vs blue used to come down to who controlled the southern French harbor at 11,17. Green and blue have to decide how to fight each other and blue also has to decide if and how it can support the war against white in France. What it boils down to is options. Each position has a lot of options in how to go about accomplishing their missions and add in luck and every game ends up being different, although most games follow standard patterns.

For FFA it all changes. White and green usually understand that they can’t attack each other and still hold off the other positions. The play also becomes more opportunistic and there still aren’t a lot of quick kills. Based on terrain and typical player dynamics the map lends itself to a self balancing situation. As soon as one player grows strong in a given region, the others attack it and the weaker players recover. If the weaker players get attacked, then eventually the stronger players attack each other to fight for future dominance. But there is enough income on the map that allows the weaker player to recover and survive.

There are a lot of different ways to win, the terrain is diverse and creates restrictions, dominance isn’t easy to gain, recovery from errors or bad luck or too many attackers is possible, it’s Europe after all and who doesn’t want to fight for Europe and the map allows every play style including the Russia infantry forces and the British naval forces. Players who like land vehicles should probably play as Germany, not Russia.

What makes a good map vs just a popular one?

Some maps are both and others are neither. Eye candy such as map 25343 are generally going to be popular. lol Allison’s http://weewar.com/map/20874 is a good 2 player, which also made it popular. A two player game is easier to finish than a 3-6 player because if you are both online then you can run through a couple games in a night. I mark some maps as favorites to remember them even if I might never have played the map. If you really want to find out if popular is skewed, then take a poll of preferred play styles. The maps that appeal to the best cross section of preferred play styles should be the most popular. Allison’s map is largish for a 2 player map and it has lots of middle "prize" bases and harbors to fight over. The terrain forces some limitations. So it becomes good because winning isn’t simple and you can play the map many times and have different paths to victory each time. Stirling’s Europe provides more of the same. Scary Island has the best coolness factor of the top three, but has the most difficult path to victory since the harbors are generally not in places where boats can join the frackas soon after being built. If the unit doesn’t get used the first turn it appears, then haven’t you wasted some of your investment? Number 4, Earth, is cool but it takes too long to win and get anywhere and it is more likely to lead to naval stalemates. Scary Island, Necklace from Tiffany’s and Earth all play slowly, so while they are popular they don’t get played as much. So there are two more pieces: coolness factor of the map and how quickly do players get into battle and get a sense that the game is progressing as well as how quickly is the game won.

Balance seems to be one of the hardest aspects of WeeCartography, do you have any tips for novice mapmakers?

Check back tomorrow for Stirlings answer to this question, it was such a complete guide that it deserved it’s own post!

What are your favorite maps to play?

Any European map, even if it is zoomed in to be just Great Britain vs Northern France. They tend to have a variety of "realistic" lol terrain that isn’t just a row of hedges.

• Stirling’s Europe version 3
• Take me I’m Cuba - but it needs to be fixed for more 3 player options.
• Fortress
• http://weewar.com/map/24524 Very hard for players to gang up on a player once a player has gained control of their corner.
• Mo’s Rubicube - tight space need to manage resources.
• http://weewar.com/map/25611 This looks nice, but I may have only played it once a long time ago.
• http://weewar.com/map/27802 This looks fun, but any 3 player game should have the the one ganged up on as blue.
• http://weewar.com/map/27971 This is a lot of fun and it might need another tweak or two, but we’ll see.
• http://weewar.com/map/25957 This would be good if it were balanced a bit better - purple needs to be able to get to one front fairly quickly. Otherwise purple doesn’t really stand a chance.
• http://weewar.com/map/28035 This could be good if green was not in the middle and was in the lower left corner.
• How could I forget this? Stirling’s Europe 4.02

If I like a map I usually copy it and fix it.

My favorite map will hopefully be Stirling’s Europe 4 after however many tweaks it goes through to balance for blue vs red - 3v3 WWII style - FFA and probably top vs bottom. I’ve been wanting to widen the map for a while so that red and yellow could walk around the Black Sea, which frees up the last remaining easy stalemate on the map.

Who are your favorite map makers?

Uh probably VandiL and Niki .

Do you have any tips or tricks that you use in the map editor?

Find a map you like and copy it and modify it and go from there. When I make my real world maps, such as Europe I google "Satellite map ukraine" without the quotes and different countries of course. There is a company that provides terrain information and city/road information. Sometimes I copy that and figure out a hex grid to lay over the top of the map and then I just make judgements as to what each hex should be. Then once the first draft is done I check for playability based on terrain limitations, then I try to figure out where to put the starting locations so that players have equal bases. China is rough because all of the big cities are in the Northeast and along the coast. So placing even starting positions can be rough.

Any final tips or words of wisdom on mapmaking or WeeWar in general?

Play against yourself.
Ask someone if it is balanced.
Play someone that has a really high ranking with that player as various positions. You’ll learn things about the map you might not see during map creation.

Weewar in general? Have fun and remember to use the bonuses and prevent the opponent from using them.

Thanks Dan! If anyone has any questions for Dan please leave a comment here and if you found this information particularly interesting and love Stirling’s maps, show your thanks by leaving a comment or buying him a Pro account !