Interesting Terrain in VGAP4

Setting up a game of VGAP4 with interesting "terrain"

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By Paul Honigmann, with large chunks cribbed off Drew Sullivan, Mark Heinrich et alia. October 2002

Introduction

The purpose of this page is to spread ideas about how to create more interesting games by imaginative use of map features and other tricks. Partly this gives people incentives to do more than just sit passively building fleets. Also, you can use geography to create buffer zones to prevent fast-start blitzkreig races wiping out neighbours a bit too quickly to be fair.

A group of us were discussing how to make P4 maps "interesting" when Andrew Hirst mentioned::

The main problem that I have with the generic maps (and this could really be an issue with the whole game - in fact strategy games in general) is that you can attack someone across a broad front. You do not have to really make any consideration for the "terrain". It's just full steam ahead. With a map such as we've been discussing [featuring obstacles], such as the spiral arm one, there are established channels along which attacks can be made. These known routes can then be defended. This doesn't exclude an attack from a less well defended, but less accessible flank, etc. Perhaps I need to play something else..... with tanks, etc. Age of Empires by e-mail..... The thing about land-based warfare is that the terrain is so important.

We kicked some ideas around and came up with some interesting stuff. After some discussion Drew Sullivan emailed me to say:
"I think this is all very clever. I am a big fan of tricky maps and this one is a peach. Would you consider "publishing" this email or the parts of it that discuss the map, one way WHs, WHs moving at slow vectors etc on the Newsgroup? It would enlighten the unenlightened, encourage the unencouraged, inspire the uninspired and might even encourage the unwashed to bathe!"

So here is what we came up with.

Oh! I almost forgot. I ought to acknowledge garyg, because this topology is basically his idea. garyg (I never knew his real name) was a guy who created a similar map in a VGAP3 game I played in a long time ago. We adjusted his map's scale to suit VGAP4, which allowed us to use spiral arms instead of straight ones, but it's based on his ideas.

The map we came up with (basic idea)

What you can see is a screenshot from Mark Heinrich's Excel spiral galaxy generation tool. Click here to download it (194kB). Remember Excel files can carry viruses so you must virus-scan it before opening it.

What really happened - the problems with this map

A year later I can look back on this map and here is my advice based on experience.

It is too big. It took too long to move around, and the terrain made it worse (you had to go round things).
It favoured hyper-races such as EE and Rebels. They reached the Core first and by the time slow races like Robots and University Alliance reached the Core, the natives and contraband were gone; if they tried setting up bases, they were wiped out by raids. The hyper-races could launch effective attacks on the slow races at long range, because their supply lines were maybe 3 hyperjumps long, where the slow races took 10-15 turns to get reinforcements into the Core. The University Paxes were expensive and only got into play after the EE, etc had mined the core thoroughly, making it almost impossible for people to HYP through.
The game bogged down and fizzled out around turn 70. Once the slow races had been pinned in their spiral arms, the game became a nightmare of tedious minefield laying and sweeping. In a couple of places, it was easier to sweep through the scripted minefields (clearing a path through a mere 20 or so of them) or go round the OUTSIDE of the galaxy, than up the obvious, and well defended path of the spiral arm.
As usual the game polarised into two big alliances. The CoM had a great time with the halo and attacking round the outside of the galaxy with Pax / Virgo combos, but were eventually beaten back by the enemy alliance.
The Privateers had a surprisingly awful time, because they are not able to see minefields easily. So they lost a lot of ships by just running into them... whereas normally they are safe for the first few turns.

Original comments on this topology - what we hoped would happen

A smaller map (50 stars per person or less) means a shorter game, so the game is less likely to lose momentum before the end. The above map has 496 stars between 10 players.
The point of this is giving the races a small area to develop a little early (no one can be killed out on turn 4) but still "encouraging" battle quite early and a decision perhaps by turn 40 or 50...
The globular clusters are best Rich. Everything else is best Average. Whilst a game with very low levels of, say, fuel or natives might inspire competition, it would favour some race or other. If anyone wants to play CoM you need to discuss the Virgo and its properties in detail vis a vis can the CoM player knock out anyone else before they can defend themselves?
There are several strategies players can follow here. They can expand linearly down their spiral arm. They can race for the core via wormhole. They can race for the globular clusters. They can try to reach a neighbour for a sneak attack through the big voids between arms.
I am not sure if it is worth scrpting the minefields or not yet. The arms are pretty far apart which may be enough security. If I did so it would be using ScriptZ0r. Alternatively, we contacted Tim and asked him if ion storms or other scriptable obstacles could be added to truly isolate arms. He is thinking about that and considering changing the Hyperdrive rules so very mobile races have less of an advantage over slow ones.
Because there's plenty of alternative routes to take, and everyone can potentially clash in the centre, there is probably no need to introduce wraparound to this map. If I were to add wraparound, I think I would do it by scripting 2-way wormholes in opposing globular clusters.
With fewer clusters than arms, they might be evenly spaced, but it will be like musical chairs and whoever takes the initiative to go out could get two clusters effectively forcing someone else to concentrate on going into the "killing ground" of the core area.
A larger number of players than we usually play with encourages teamplay as a skill.
The map's core is generally considered too dense. Pods sometimes have difficulty landing on the correct planet when stars are <3LY apart and the minimum distance the algorithm can guarantee is 2LY. Also, HYP races (and even normal ones) have difficulty maneuvering in very dense conditions. So, I shall be tinkering with the map a little before releasing the .map file using Mapmaker , a handy utility by Bob Andrews which allows you to click on a star and move it by hand.

Clever maps can easily become too gimmicky. A few trap doors to a killing floor might be fun, but fields of hundreds of moving WH's or jump gates can be Too Much.

Suggested winning criteria

Two winning criteria are suggested for people who like rules. First guy to get uncontested bases on one third of all planets is hailed as The Archon. This is good for encouraging conflict. It leads to a lot of frantic fighting and backstabbing if someone gets near 200. And if you rule that "no alliances may win", people form alliances for a while, then break them..! If anyone plays Privateers, (pod speed 120) they will probably be acclaimed as Archon by turn 15. However, I have always favoured a less artifical "kill 'em all" objective. So if anyone achieves undeniable military superiority they are acclaimed as The Tyrant. I envisage someone achieving Archon status then the game continuing a bit to see who achieves Tyranny.

(Concerning the "number of bases" winning criterion: I considered writing a little utility to analyse the game's .sco file and issue a report to say how many bases everyone has, and no more. Some people don't like others knowing what their population, etc is. Of course, this won't be do-able with a robot host.)

We experimented in one game with setting the Alliance limit to 1 ally max, but it tended to lead to stagnation (ie no backstabs). Our group decided that in future it is better to play with rather more players (ie 10-12) and set the ally limits higher - say 4 - so that there are more options. And to teach people who do not want to ally, that they need to learn new skills. (Some people are good at rules - "mechanics" - but not so good at team work. As it happens, our newer players seem better at team work, which will compensate for their lower knowledge of rules.)

We have tried various schemes, but because half of us know each other in Real Life, we really enjoy Kill Them All. It allows us to express our rivalry. Last game ended around turn 58 by mutual consent when it became obvious the Birds could beat everyone else. There was no point playing on.

Drew Sullivan agrees: "A problem with victory conditions is the true power in the game may not be evident (I may even try to hide my power so people won't gang up on me). Stonewall Jackson defined victory as follows: "If there is any discussion about it, they weren't whipped." Me, I would suggest (from the sidelines) that you can all pretty much tell when the game is over and you should agree that you won't draw things out endlessly in a hopeless, time consuming rearguard action but will agree that when it is pretty evident what will happen in another 20 turns you don't need to play out those turns. That's worked well for me in the past."

The wormholes

In the version I created, there are one-way wormholes scripted about 2/3 of the way along the spiral arms leading to the center somewhere.The target wormholes have a little vector so they move slowly; in addition they will have a low signature; which should help keep your exit points secret and stop people ambushing each other so easily in the core.

Central WH's should be all but invisible - so folk can't lay traps - and move a bit, to promote conflict.

A big nasty ship could be scripted into the central region to kill anyone who blunders into it (race 13). I read recently that Greg Bahr, Christian Jadot and
Rogger Norris are developing a "Derelict" ship pack whose sole purpose is to provide unique hulls to be scripted into games - not actually a race to be played. What an excellent idea!

The actual game script is going to vary from game to game, depending on which races the players choose and so on. Most of this can be done with ScriptZ0r , but the Wormholes will probably need to be hand-edited. The next section describes how to do this.

Scripting the Wormholes

(I had to ask Drew Sullivan how to do this)

See links at end of page where you can download ready-made spiral maps + scripts in 2 versions, one for a 10-player spiral galaxy and one for a 12-player spiral galaxy.

"Natural" wormholes come as pairs sharing the identical code.

One-way Wormholes are scripted in triplets in the .vps file used to script the game. I would use ScriptZ0r to script the universe, then cut-and-pasted triplets like the following onto the end:

General form of the script:
Wormhole ID's are assigned in the order in which they appear in the script thus -

Wormhole ID#1 - this is the destination WH. If you fall into it you end up at #2.
Wormhole ID#2 - this is a destination W in the same position as #1
Wormhole ID#3 - this is the origin WH, the one-way WH which leads to #1
Repeat for next triplet using a different 9 digit "data1" code.

Begin Thing
     name = "WH 1 Exit"
     x = 3000    'this one is in the Core
     y = 2500
     flavor = 2
     damage = 0
     mass = 1000
     energy = 50000
     life = 0
     crew = 0
     speed = 1   'slight movement
     xway = 1
     yway = -1
     marker = 1
     info1 = "Worm Hole"
     info2 = "Stable"
     stealth = -20000    'effectively invisible
     edge = 5
     parent = 1000
     binfile = "wormhole"
     bin = 0
     data1 = 123456789 'this code has to match that of WH "WH 1 Entry Point" or they aren't linked
End

Begin Thing
     name = "WH 1 dummy Exit"
     x = 3000    'this one is in the same place as WH 1 Exit, so it forms a closed loop with the first one, making "WH1 Entry point" one-way
     y = 2500
     flavor = 2
     damage = 0
     mass = 1000
     energy = 50000
     life = 0
     crew = 0
     speed = 1   'same slight movement as WH1
     xway = 1
     yway = -1
     marker = 1
     info1 = "Worm Hole"
     info2 = "Stable"
     stealth = -20000    'effectively invisible
     edge = 5
     parent = 1000
     binfile = "wormhole"
     bin = 0
     data1 = 123456789 'this code has to match that of "WH1 Exit" or they aren't linked
End

Begin Thing
     name = "WH 1 Entry Point"
     x = 3840    'this one is in a spiral arm
     y = 4000
     flavor = 2
     damage = 0
     mass = 1000
     energy = 50000
     life = 0
     crew = 0
     speed = 0   'stationary
     xway = 0
     yway = 0
     marker = 1
     info1 = "Worm Hole"
     info2 = "Stable"
     stealth = 200    'not invisible, but will need a little searching for
     edge = 5
     parent = 1000
     binfile = "wormhole"
     bin = 0
     data1 = 123456789 'data1 has to be 9 digits long, Or Else Master.exe will make up extra digits if you don't have the right number
End

Be sure you test this script (go in and out through ALL the WHs) before unleashing it on your fellow VGAPers.

A lot can go wrong here with one typo.

You can place the WHs with ScriptZ0r but you still need to hand-edit the script if you want them to be one-way.

Remember the WHs, if one-way, need to be in the correct order in the script to function as desired (the first mentioned will have the lowest ID).