¨
Heaven's Garden
After playing way to much SC2 this month I wanted to make a standard melee map. I have made some other maps back in the days, and to wc3 to. But they where all custom ones. Now I am in a real mod to make design maps after how the game is supposed to be played, but trying to add in new twist to enchant the gameplay.
I wanted this map to have a ledge between two main bases to force battles. Obviously this path would favor far to much aggression if it was not blocked by rocks. However as seen in the image there are no rocks. I had it in earlier versions but, instead I went with using Neutral Force Fields. That's right this is something I definitively can see can be used on other maps to. The force fields stay until they are destroyed by massive creatures, so they block the path for quite some time. So mid game it opens up a new path for the gameplay.
However there is one problem, the AI becomes kinda weird. While for example the computer AI actually ignored them and moved around across the maps as intended, if the user pulls the AI units into a force field with a battle on the ledge the units will get stuck trying forever to get across that way.
For players they create more challenges-_- if the user simply tells a unit to move to the other players base the unit will try to use the ledge, so it requires players to be a little aware, its not a problem for any decent player.
Other features on this map is a back entrance to the main, blocked by rocks. This path also leads to a very close gold expansion. I want the players to might want to expand to a fast gold and be able to defend it instead of a blue one. To make it a balanced the gold expansion has a huge cliff around it, meaning it is very vurnable to drops or air harras. Its also has no choke points. So its easy to attack it straight on.
The gold is also a possible third, otherwise the normal third is the expansion on a cliff where it ramps is close to the ramp from the natural expansion.
At the fouth expansion I put a small forest in the corners behind this trees, for example pylon can be hide to harras later expansions.
In the middle there is a Xel'naga watch tower which players can battle upon, also there is 2 more inside the platform of the third ones, together these expansions give a very good vision over the center of the map.
There is also some small places with sight reducing trees.
I personally really like the ones placed between the trees that creates a wide choke where players will most likely defend their natural and third from attacks. I think it features an interesting battle position.
Maybe I went a little overboard with how much I allow air play on this map. Its intentionally a lot of space behind the mains so air units can easily attack, as I personally dislike maps where the user cant fly around a main etc. It might be to strong to go for a double stargate etc, but with the queens range 5 range now I think the only problem could be the limited space makes it hard to build enough anti air buildings.
Otherwise I also added a lot of birds, waterfalls, winds etc. I want the map to feel alive.
