- Automatic Balancers for games that aren't filled

- Ability to claim armies that leave the game

- Hotkeyable & instant Evil Massers



- Hero Giver to allow dead heroes to continue to play



- Improvement of 1v1 Gameplay (white hall-bunkers/turrets, accurate balancers, removing Drain Gates)



- Desync Banners (removes hackers and laggers quickly)

- Hero Claiming (for afk heroes)



- Slightly easier setup for p7

- Removed gates completly when destroyed (easier to see terrain)

- Made Terrain distinct when entering stairways



- Ability for "skinny" units to fit between all bunkers and the Great Hall

- Mission Objectives Teaching system (for inexperianced players)

- Reduction of sprite and unit count



- Fixing the few errors in 10.51

- Ability to tank the Caves from the back gate



- Glitch that would cause an unnecesary gate to block 3 (when p8 dropped or left in first second)

- Inconsitancy where olny some bunkers would allow ghosts to pass



- Swarm Glitch Refund to fix perhaps the biggest problem in Helms (both for firelag & CCMU)

For years Helms Deep Annatar 10.51 dominated the playing field, versions like 1.3x and such were released, but USEast remained relatively immune to such maps.

Under the direction of the Pros of KHD and 4H public skill would only continue to grow. The best players of the map would mainly play private games where we would be able to play great games.

As a joke, HBN (one of the few pro non-KHD's/4H's) built a map where heroes were assigned randomly, for private play; This was all well and good, but an unknown player among us hosted it public, and it was a unfortunate hit with the pubs. Nib- expanded on the concept, his mapmaking skills were very poor, creating bad looks, placement, and especially balance... and without respect for the input of the pros, his version decimated the skills of the public, and alienated the better players of the map. At the same time, several pros began playing on west, version 1.3x, the version had poor balance and game play of lesser quality - the supposed balance was created by giving each side very strong units that enabled teams to kill each other�s heroes quickly, reducing the need for micro and creativity, not to mention the specials that enabled heroes to take ridiculous risks and removed the need for their attentiveness.

So public games were no longer teaching players to get better, and those that were "pro" were either playing on west, or begrudgingly playing RH, each day getting closer to quitting (and indeed many did).

One day, when we finally gathered enough players to play a few private games again, KHD-Gwor began an informal meeting on what to do for the future, I (Rs_yes-im4real) attended. It was decided that we would add features, the likes of those in 1.3x to 10.51 in order to get public players to begin playing a legitimate version again. Gwor wanted a mapmaker within his clan to be the main creator, but no one was so able. So he accepted me as the author.

With Gwor and KHD-Clowns help, we hammered out the first versions of our map, soon renamed Annatar East, to include the name of its original creator (Annatar), and the Realm of the Pros it represented.

In time the map caught on, and most decent public players began to play it, allowing the pros to once again play a public game they would enjoy - increasing their activity on battle.net, increasing the skills of all players, and training more people to play well enough to join in private games.

This map has been heavily scrutinized by the pros, every change and feature had to be conducive to both new and old players, and game play shouldn't be significantly changed as that would upset the perfect balance we felt. So as time went on I learned more and more of Mapmaking and reached the level off point of the map - where almost nothing more can be done without either increasing the memory burden (lag) or changing the game play - which has to be a slow process in a game with such an integrated base of players.

Yeah... used first #'s too quickly

Classics
10.5 - created long ago by Annatar, balance worked on by Conquest_W_4H (aka Castle) aided by BFFL (a name to which several players place claim!), basis of contemporary helms Annatar maps
10.51 - single edit allowed tanks to spawn first, preventing CCMU of tank spawns

East
10.6x - First attempt at a hero giver, used far too many units, looked poor, displaced traditional banners, hotkey able massers , evil banners accident waiting to happen
10.7x - Amount of units much reduced, evil banners made safe, still used unnecessary amounts of units, unable to cope with inability to use terrain changes (that would change pathing, even when not changing in area near the path).
East - thought to be finished, still poor looking terrain on edited parts, unnecessary units still used
East 2 - Successfully replaced unnecessary units with terrain
East 3 - Terrain revamped, hero giver rebuilt from scratch
East 4 - Hero giver again rebuilt, was completely air based
East 5 - Used Reavers instead of civs for gate operators (unpopular, later removed)
East 6 - Hero giver rebuilt into terrain, simpler for people new to it to use, terrain relatively poor looking
East 7 - Tanks all moved to hall (later removed), some medics, marines, ghosts removed in attempt to prevent CCMU

East 8 Beta Series - Here is where the map became serious, terrain all had to be flush and good looking, systems had to be simplistic and effective
Lost maps - between East 7 and East 8B2 many changes were made, some things didn't work and others were incomplete until 8B2...
East 8B2 - Included ability for blue to close back gate, hall bunkers and turrets made white (and disabled so white can�t get ghosts out), all original units added back in, white goliaths moved to keep, 8 compensation ghosts from hall bunkers put in keep, evil massers made into shuttles, to ban you unloaded a unit, unit could have up to paragraph description, minimal units used for every feature, hero giver only used units when active, mission objective teaching system, some small errors remained
East 8B3 - First pass at an evil army claiming system
East 8B4 - improvement of claiming system, many triggers condensed, first pass at Haldir claiming
East 8B5 - Overhaul of evil systems (triggers previously in force 3 were filtered and shared between players 4, 6, and 8
East 8B6 - Trigger condensing, text cleanup, error fixing, fixed major glitch where the Beta (alt-code) symbol in the name prevented some players from downloading the map
East 8B7 - Complete overhaul of Switches and variables, switches were now only used for things appropriately true/false, death variables now used for all things that apply to more than one player or required multiple values
East 8B8 - resorted all variables (previously all over the place) into Zerg Buildings, and Zerg air units (neither of which are used in this map at all)
East 8-2 - (Due to the fact that "1" in the skewed black font looked bad, skipped to "2"), Desyncs banned players, First pass at Swarm Glitch refunding
East 8-3 - Correctly completed Swarm Glitch refunding (a major upgrade for the pros), fixed Haldir claiming errors
East 8-4 - All comparisons possible turned to "Exact", more work on Swarm Glitch refunding - reduced the 77 trigger system to 36 (so many b/c it has to read different memories based on players in game), reduced and condensed more triggers, Finished Haldir Claiming

Could use help with Mac Text banners and Mac Protection, and if possible, an alternate way to detect swarm glitches (rather then the expensive monitering of energy)

- Finish the Mission Objectives System (teaches new players how to play the game)
- Reduce the amount of triggers used to refund Swarm Glitches (Find new detection method) (33 triggers)
- Find a way to protect Mac players from Swarm Glitch EUD's (ideally disables the triggers since it is a 33 trigger system)
- Remove all unnecessary or redundant triggers; make sure triggers only apply to players needed
- Decrease download time
- Final clean up (un-name locations, un-name variables, remove comments, rename East 9 or East (no version #), possible protection)

yurtle the turtle...

not sure why it took me till now to try this, but by changing grima's unit index to 1 I made the memory location of his energy static so i'll be able to eliminate 1/2 the triggers for the swarm glitch refunder and some of the initilize math that determines players in the game (that was used to read energy at different locations and was also potentially error-filled if a player dropped immediatly)

Having this i'd be willing to now cross-platform the game, should be releasing a updated version hopefully eliminating all the errors before summer really rolls in, will probably in addition finish the teaching system and put it in a EUD based game menu (maybey, chat could pose too much of a challenge to circumvent without use of rapid triggers - which could kill a map like this with lag (keep and caves have continuous "attack" orders, could mabey put on death counter locks to decrease the rate this happens) - classic lag vs. UI

I've already implemented anti-blocks, as this was one of the big things needing patching from 10.51 - though there was an interesting way to fight it that among others I used to regularly as evil.

Old way to fight keep/cave blocks...
[collapse]
First you put all of browns heroes/tanks at back gates, all of Saruman’s at hall, then you have each army get a fresh spawn. One army places his army over the others spawns and unallied him, in this way the other army can get 40-60 tanks quite quick, then they switch and the other player gets his 40-60 tanks. With this the players then ally each other and setup for Gandalf and almost every time beat him! Rohan also usually sends out units from caves to help kill Saruman before they get Gandalf or heal after getting him, as there would be very little point to sitting in caves past Gandalf... when Gandalf dies evil gets unlimited mass again, and the caves are now open to attack (or good gets depressed losing with Gandalf and quits).

But really this is now a pointless strategy since there are anti-keep/anti-cave blocks.

Teleports in general are something I paid a lot of attention too, first making the entrances easier to see, then I made the keep exit smaller, so there was more room in keep for evil - as this was a place where Rohan's would "Bum rush" the enemy (going all out for a commander kill) - with high success due to the difficulty to control mass. My change made it easier to tank the keep - the old method previously scrapped largely due to the nature of the old keep entrance.

"Breaks" (as I wouldn't call it) aren't really a problem - (it's 100 units btw) the 75 that's actually mass units easily fills the drain entrance/the main gates while your new mass gets there (it takes a little practice to get this right), and the keep/caves (first bend only) requires teamwork - if your teammate is slow you can get by... but it will be harder as teamwork is a virtue rightfully required here.

The "break" system also adds a tremendous amount of balance to the game through the tank spawns - there are certain points that 'good' can easily hold with a good defense - the drain, '1' (main gate), keep (though it's not that easy to hold once evil has a foothold below), and the 'first bend' of caves. However these areas kill mass very fast - so evil will get more tanks - tanks are the pivotal drive that moves evil forward in this game - without them good has a fairly easy time blocking 'swarm rushes', rushing evil, and of course, holding back mass. So as good stays at easy to hold areas longer, evil gets stronger.

Thank you for reopening the issue of the difficult pathing with the teleports - as someone very used to the game I’ve forgotten how hard it is on new players. So I will put renewed effort in to 'terraining' the keep entrance, and/or making the keep teleport/massing work much better. However the cave teleport as quite reasonable - the game play here is so complex and neither side really has an advantage whether it be a pro or newbie game, though I will work on slightly improved auto-massing & better evil ability to micro here.

Annatar is a sort of sport, athleticism (StarCraft micro, APM) greatly helps, but you have to practice at the specific game and learn plays and strategies from the pro's to get good at it. The general conscious is that Saruman requires the most skill and creativity - rightfully so as Rohan is primarily a reactionary player. But everyone that really gets into the game never gets over it – many players only come on only to play private games with other pro’s, which are incredibly enjoyable – as the micro and specifics of the push and pull are always unique, and the intensity never disappoints.

It’s simple math, the map starts with 820 guys, when evil spawns two masses (340 units each) you are up to 1500, by the time evil first masses it’s fair to assume about 50 good units will have died, you are at 1450, if you take each evil army down to 110 units (accounting for avg. heroes/tanks), you take away 480 units, 900, add in the new masses, you are up to 1580, add 2 spawns for good, you hit 1640. If we moved the spawn minimum down even a little, we would be hitting CCMU easy. This would be amplified severally if evil was not ‘pro’ and good was allowed to spawn more – causing new players major problems.

Edit: tanks are incredibly relevant, moving minimum units to spawn up, would result in faster spawns (since less units would have to die) un-doing the balance of the map.

Unlimited mass is a staple of Helms Deep, every helms map has it, if you would like to argue semantics of it, Saruman says “Tens of thousands” not Ten Thousand in the movie, and no definite number is mentioned in the book – though it does depicts the thousands that remained in the culvert, which with courage could probably have put up a staggering fight. And if Gandalf’s death (a very difficult feat to accomplish) did not bring about a win, what then would be the purpose staying for this portion of the game?

And if you think the intensity disappoints then you have never truly played a great game of it (this very rarely occurs in a public game, if ever) – even a hero should get around 110/80 APM/eAPM, not including them constantly warning about movements of the enemy. The armies should need no explanation but regardless they each have heroes they must consistently put on the edge and consequently rescue, pushing and pulling, weighing whether they should press against the enemy or try to fall back with any given rush, and ever responding to the pressure of time and tank fire.

Thus, the intensity often disappoints.
Why don't they spawn eight masses (85 units each)?
If the only problem is faster spawns, slow it down. Tanks don't have to spawn every time you get reinforcements.


20 units, wasted. There's not even a good reason to have a teleport here.


start heroes off at 3 attack/defense, remove the science/archives, use a trigger to constantly enable the forge and remove pylon. Do the same for the 4 photon cannons for elves. -5 units


Use a single wide building rather than 2 nexuses to block the drain. There are 4 units with over 160 pixel width. -1 unit.


Use a dropship to toggle the gates. -9 units. Kill off units when gates are destroyed.


Use terrain to block paths. -3 units.

If rohan can hold out until 10,000 kills, even after gandalf is dead, they should win. Otherwise white should just lose if gandalf dies.

Skip to bottem for what i still need help with

"This very rarely occurs in a public game, if ever" "Thus, the intensity often disappoints." fair enough - but that does not mean there are no 'good' public games; rather that "pubs" (inexperienced players) can ruin the game for others, making it difficult to get a nice game, as with any related map especially our brother defense: Heavens Last Stand - Which I believe to have better mechanics (timed spawning of units like tanks, all are armies, no upgrades needed, etc.) but poorer micro-encouragement; and Helms mechanics cannot really mimic it without severe repercussions all around inevitably leading to a completely different map.

Every change goes under the heavy speculation of the pro's, if at one point you change too much (removing the fruits of their practice) they will reject the map, and it will not have a true chance of living and won't go to any real use: severally changing the mass spawns would be such a thing. In addition the book describes the wave like motions of the enemy - it's not a continuous pouring in the 'real' battle any ways.

In addition I believe you completely ignored my statements on how the mass never stops if you are reasonable skilled and diligent (and your ally helps for keep/caves – unbalanced if one team was interdependent and the other wasn’t) it just gets lighter due to being made up of hydras and axmen, which can be very useful at certain points and allow for a push time for 'Good' at other times.

And finally to close the discussion on changing spawns...

The mass requires controlling that would be intricately messed up in general by spawning in smaller intervals. Also, this would effectively disable browns ability to mass from the back gate properly, 'evils' varied cave masses (purple then brown then purple) 'goods' ability to surge 1 during browns re-massing, 'goods' ability to effectively time heals, and map balance in general. Additionally the new masses would mess up purples split mass (explained later), and the way in which mass is mixed and varied (starting with lings and axmen/heavies for effective swarms for purple, masses of hydras to effectively snipe goliaths after).


Keep Entrance

_{Yea I’m working on that; "So I will put renewed effort in to 'terraining' the keep entrance, and/or making the keep teleport/massing work much better." But if I were to keep with the current system there would be decent reason, which academy you mass to determines how fast your mass gets in, and the stair which trailing units take (preventing unbalanced clogging), so they do serve an important purpose here. The keep entrance is in any case, very difficult to change though because basically all terrain effects unit pathing on lower parts of the map - which is what the doodad refineries successfully edited in the original map; something I’m getting better at; I'll be working on terrain here.}




Cannot replace this as it is a rooted part of the map...

Why?

_{Haldir cannot know when one of them falls so Ugluk can use this to kill him if inattentive, and on the flip side: when Ugluk weakens one a lot more than the other it's common for Haldir to send dts out and move Haldir closer, forcing Ugluk to mass and kill it slower than otherwise, also a somewhat common place for Ugluk to suicide Haldir when he doesn’t know a gate has fell - all this helps to slow down blues building of a defense by forcing him to watch - if given too much free time he would build an unfairly good defense (balance by sheer APM limit)}



None of those can actually be removed.

Why?

_{1. The control tower behind is actually blues one time ability to shut the back gate, it's removed after used 2. This part must be blocked with a building to allow brown to mass to here by massing to anywhere within the ditch behind the back gate/great hall. (I’ll consider combining the two buildings), and its counterpart at keep is also required - when 'evil' is microing supers up the keep they will sometimes accidently send them behind it, and their pathing goes crazy, this directs them correctly.}




Gave this heavy consideration previously, it is infeasible due to the hero giver and ability to claim elves... giving them upgrades increase the armor they have when they receive a hero, or an army (which poses huge balance concerns).

Elaborating...

_{Anticipating some feedback: "why not decrease the attack/armor of the heroes/units" - then the marines and ghosts would have to be reduced as well as everything else, initially complicated due to their armor now being 0... "you should edit everything appropriately" - I don't have the conviction to mess with this... all the attacks and defense amounts look nice and are easily workable, allowing for users to do simple math (attacks of 100, 200, 125, 300, defense of 0, and lots of 25's) to calculate various moves they'll make - by chance Annatar reached a great balance with nice numbers - and there is no mathematical formula for generating something like this - it's a staggeringly complicated brute force problem.}


"use a trigger to constantly enable the forge and remove pylon." Details please! does this mean the trig runs throughout the game? Does it work without hypers? I also read something about “crystalline cannons” that cannot be aimed, any idea if these work w/o pylons? says stuff about it in wiki

Props for recognizing I can use a drop ship for gates though I'll be implementing that soon

People will always hate change, and you're contradicting yourself talking about how the attacks come in waves and how the attack never stops if you're good.

If your partner dies, there is a stop. And way to promote an even bigger gap from newbs to experts. Constant spawn would only help the newbs out, not the experts that much.
The only viable argument is the ranged/melee distribution. I don't understand how this disables browns ability to mass anywhere, and I don't understand how good has any relevance here. You said yourself that a good player has no stops, so good has no time to surge 1 (whatever that means).

Let's compare small spawn vs large spawn:
Small spawn = you get a bunch at the start of the game, as you lose men, you get more, but they just sit there at the spawn until you give them an order, protecting your heros from ganks. If you were to mass once, then let them all die, you would get your reinforcements earlier. If you didn't play any differently than with the large spawn, it would mass identically.
Large spawn = you get a bunch at the start of the game, once you lose almost all of your men, you get them all back.

Another side effect of the small spawn is the ability to choose which units you want by killing the ones you don't want off. Now I've always thought it was a good idea to have some form of control over what units you get. There are times when archers are excellent, and there are other times when archers are completely useless and just block stuff.

All of this is made possible because there are two HPs to check?
So you tried it? Every annatar game I've ever played had that same thing in there, and it was most certainly not put in with that idea in mind.

Then don't let heros ugrade defense. 25 is more than enough to block most damage. Elves or rohan getting a hero has no problems.

They're just copied from zergling.

set doodad state: enable for photon cannon, preserve on hyper triggers, you can only enable one building/player/location combination (You'll need 1 location per photon cannon owned by the same player). Yes, it does require hyper triggers: The building will stay enabled until a unit is created or destroyed. It might not be worthwhile for the forge.

Yeah people hate change, not about to shoot myself in the foot by enacting a huge change that has countless downsides, the attacks do come in waves in this game (heavy lings/kerries, then light hydras/firebats)


Interdependency is quite reasonable... in any game when your partner dies you are going to suffer a sharp blow, teamwork is a virtue. Shorter masses really wouldn't help newbs as I’ve mentioned several things (that you quote and consider invalid on... what basis? these are all pivotal parts of the game, not recognizing that reveals your ignorance of the map itself)


If you truly think that that was the only important part of the gameplay I mentioned, frankly do not have enough experience in the game to make educated judgments’ on the matter, I’m not about to re-visit this topic unless you watch a few replays (I’ll post them in a minuet) and actually learn the map (especially browns massing from 4). Shorter masses would inevitably complicate things for newbs and pros alike, simplicity is bliss.


No, all this is made possible because Ugluk and Snaga together can kill Haldir in about 5 seconds if he's not looking, and StarCraft has latency and you have reaction time to consider. And suicide, of course, is an instant kill; so you need to watch Brown. And haldir has to be reasonably near the gate to shoot snaga and ugluk or brown will break too fast.


Hundreds of players use this every time they play Ugluk, whether it was put the originally on accident is irrelevant and unknown; it stays because it is very useful. (but why else the inconsistent lower area that even had to have a trigger put in 10.51 to prevent people from using glitches to get back there).


Why would I remove a major part of game mechanics and something that allows innovation, creativity, and current stratagies for 2 units? It's heroes getting the armies/Rohan’s hero that’s the problem (and their ability to claim Haldir solves a bigger problem).


An incredibly interesting statement, it'd be fun to see if fair 3 (Annatars predecessor) was based on this.


I'm open to change, much more than the other veterans of this map are, but don't continue to point out upsides of shorter masses until you understand and can address the following in the map. Without such understanding you are making prejudice statements, and nit-picking comprehensive arguments

- Purples split mass (protection, perfect split)
- Mass bunching up at 3 when massing keep/caves
- How to break a well setup drain as brown
- Massing from back gate to hall
- How people break drain gate
- How to set a drain defense
- Speeds of mass death at different areas, pushing
- Push and Pull during light and heavy masses
- '1' rushes, retakes ("surges"), pressure
- How to mass constantly (& how long it takes to learn)
- Balance by APM limits
- Balance by tank spawns, tank pressure locations
- Variations (Drain D, Keep D, Cave D, Quick 3rd Bend)

- and If nothing else, the general stages of the game

Anyone can choose to hop up the learning curve simply by initiative (read mission objectives, watch replays, ask pros questions, watch pro replays); it is a game you learn, not a minigame you can just hop into and play great the first time. We make no attempt to restrict learning and keep secret stratagies, we work to increase players skill every single chance we get.

Replays:
Rs Han - decent display of mechanics, though evil made several mistakes
Han vs Drow - don't have time to watch it yet, judging by players and time it's a great match (glitched)
i'll find more later...

I've conceded four consequences: waves possibly removed/modified (they get pretty jumbled anyway), cheese with sending off ranged/melee alone to get more guys, Evil masses and reacts much faster with less lag time which allows better control of the units, good has a much harder time attacking. I only consider the first two downsides, unless you think that handicaps are a good thing.
-"mass never stops if you are reasonable skilled and diligent"
* The mass stopped in the replay all the time. Each second it was stopped could have whittled down rohan. "KHD" is pro right?
-"and your ally helps for keep/caves – (unbalanced if one team was interdependent and the other wasn’t)
* All allies (in starcraft) are interdependent because they share the same goal (to win).
-"The mass requires controlling that would be intricately messed up in general by spawning in smaller intervals."
* How is getting 400 men in 8 groups different from getting 400 men in 1 group when massing is completely user controlled? It lets you mass more often when you need reinforcements.
-"Also, this would effectively disable browns ability to mass from the back gate properly"
* How?
-"'evils' varied cave masses (purple then brown then purple)"
* How? Purple doesn't have to spam mass. In fact, I don't think you can GET a constant stream with one person into caves. You can't just mass or else you'll get a single file line.
-"'goods' ability to surge 1 during browns re-massing, 'goods' ability to effectively time heals, and map balance in general."
* I don't particularly think these are good things. Good shouldn't be able to go on the offensive when in caves and should have to stagger heal. It might change the map balance a little bit I suppose, but you said yourself that saruman was the hardest to play. Time to balance it out so they are all equal.
-"Additionally the new masses would mess up purples split mass"
* If you order a unit to go from point A to point B, all that matters is where point A is. Nothing would change.
-"Shorter masses would inevitably complicate things for newbs and pros alike, simplicity is bliss."
* You don't have to mass more often if you don't want to.
Okay, I didn't suggest you remove Ugluk and Snaga. I suggested you make two buildings into one. Unless you can tell me why having 2 buildings is better than one, you're arguing the wrong point.

Gwor didn't in the replay. One unit isn't worth it anyway.
Because you have 3 options:
Don't let heros take over leavers.
Let heros take over leavers and give extra armor.
Let heros take over leavers and remove armor entirely.
You have to pick one. I don't think that having 28 armor allows innovation, creativity, and strategy more than 25 armor, and it it certainly not a major part of the game.

As I recall Annatar was made to be very similar to zergling to compete with it, but with a much smaller map and less "features". Don't talk to many players anymore, and my memory is fuzzy about the whole thing, but I do know both have the same stats and units (mostly). I will say I greatly dislike all of ryu's changes though in Zerg. What you're trying to do is what we tried to do with zergling expert but failed because ben sucks at making triggers and did everything wrong. Hyper triggers killed the map and I was too lazy to fix it all.

Please remember I'm an expert zergling player. There's a clear difference in zergling and annatar's strategies, mainly in that zergling has a lot more space to maneuver, and it's more about attrition, as white only has 3 people he can heal, and only 16 usable vultures. As I said before, cave D was rigged though. Uruk have to play a perfect game to win against a good rohan. However the general premise is the same, and the strategies are at least related.

- Purples split mass (protection, perfect split)
* As I said before, point A to point B. Not affected.
- Mass bunching up at 3 when massing keep/caves
* Wait, you want this to happen? If anything shorter mass lets you control that so that when mass bunches up at 3 you can then send reinforcements to 1.
- How to break a well setup drain as brown
* tanks. Micro the hydras to the side and send the front line past the heros.
- Massing from back gate to hall
* You have an observer which should really be a scourge, and you use it to mass from the back gate to the hall. While your guys are dying, you can manually send reinforcements through the deeping wall to re-mass later. If you catch reinforcements going the wrong way, you can stop them pretty easily or you can retreat mass
- How people break drain gate
* un, you send in your heros.
- How to set a drain defense
* I thought we were talking about massing evil here. you mass ghosts and put your dts in front.
- Speeds of mass death at different areas, pushing
* I don't understand
- Push and Pull during light and heavy masses
* this is obvious
- '1' rushes, retakes ("surges"), pressure
* bullshit. Should never happen.
- How to mass constantly (& how long it takes to learn)
* aren't I adressing this? Why should this be some skill?
- Balance by APM limits
* what?
- Balance by tank spawns, tank pressure locations
* this is common sense/requires an essay.
- Variations (Drain D, Keep D, Cave D, Quick 3rd Bend)
* this is common sense/requires an essay
- and If nothing else, the general stages of the game
* denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance

Does the defiler still die when you mass? Because that's the dumbest thing about annatar.

* The mass stopped in the replay all the time. Each second it was stopped could have whittled down Rohan. "KHD" is pro right?

- Purple paid no attention at the beginning; he was clearly more interested in talking. Mid-game he made several mistakes (as I mentioned), and did not keep up his end of the massing when alternating with brown for keep/caves. The only point of the game I’ll truly give that is a break is: coming from back gate to hall, which would become even a bigger problem with shorter masses due to the increased frequency brown would have to get mass up to 4, given the requirement to move masser up and back down.

* All allies (in StarCraft) are interdependent because they share the same goal (to win).

- Supposed to be a counterpoint or a statement?

* You don't have to mass more often if you don't want to. (vague: statement on my decision or gameplay?)
* How? (Massing from '4' gets screwed up)

- I should hope you understand what you just asked; you’re asking me basics of the map... Brown has to mass up to here, get a fairly large blob (usually 35 seconds worth from the time mass slows down enough from ‘4’) up the stairs, and then move his masser back down and then mass the hall, or else he would just be massing mostly to '3', causing a clog, and 3/4 to not be significantly damaged. Decreasing the size of masses would increase the frequency he would have to mass back up here, taking the focus away from unit micro and more to that of massing.

* How? Purple doesn't have to spam mass. In fact, I don't think you can GET a constant stream with one person into caves. You can't just mass or else you'll get a single file line.

- Purple and brown have to have good timing to get this right, and they have to allow for most of their mass (large amounts) to get up before they can mass to the keep if they want their mass to not be 'single file', I’m not about to try to depict this point further in text, this is something you would get from understanding the map.

* ...Good shouldn't be able to go on the offensive when in caves and should have to stagger heal.

- '1' is gate 1 (controlled by first operator), the area just above the stairs directly below great hall... this is basic stuff. White can’t really go on the ‘offensive’ in caves as mass is constant there. White does have to stagger heal, the ‘surge’ I’ve been talking about is a result of other heroes being able to assist at ‘1’ when brown is not heavy massing from '4' – an important add to the balance of games.

* ...you said yourself that Saruman was the hardest to play. Time to balance it out so they are all equal.

- Shorter masses would require a significant amount of extra focus on massing, especially for keep/caves, which now could not be massed appropriately as alternating would be all screwed up, as mass dies extremely fast at keep/first bend. Not to mention the fact that they now would have less melee/ranged time at the beggining and end of their mass.

* ...If you order a unit to go from point A to point B, all that matters is where point A is. Nothing would change.

- If it were a normal map I would agree with you, but the split mass had to be specifically engineered by very careful editing of the terrain (via geyser doodads) and spawning locations. Any change to it, especially changing where in the locations units would spawn (via where they spawn in the location since less are being made), stops it from working correctly (by causing mass to enter the stairs in a less orderly fashion, increased frequency of units walking around randomely at the bottem of stairs, as was the case in East 6)- doing so would make Saruman’s ability to kill the main gate hinge, micro center tanks (the most common arrangement) significantly harder. In addition the current spawns come in nice arrays, which while not a gameplay thing does speak to the aesthetic quality of the map.

* Okay, I didn't suggest you remove Ugluk and Snaga. I suggested you make two buildings into one. Unless you can tell me why having 2 buildings is better than one, you're arguing the wrong point.

- You missed my entire point then! It's about reducing blues focus on creating too good of a defense (as earlier explained...), I didn't remotely suggest you suggested to remove Ugluk and Snaga, I explained a specific part of gameplay to you that increases game intensity early on, that hinges on the fact that there are two gates of lesser health that can fall easier, exposing Haldir, etc. (explained earlier)

* Gwor didn't in the replay. One unit isn't worth it anyway.

- One unit isn't worth increased flexibility for players that want to focus on micro more? (Rather than worry about getting masser to back gate, and not being able to do some massing tricks that help break 3/4 that require your masser here for a longer time). I shouldn’t even be discussing this...

* Because you have 3 options...

- I have a fourth, the current method -.- feel free to know the details of the map before giving me “options”.

* However the general premise is the same, and the strategies are at least related.

- Many maps have the same idea, that doesn’t mean you are experienced enough in this map specifically to understand points I tell you without me having to explain every single piece of the game even remotely related to each effect I’m trying to relay; as has been the trend for 3 posts in a row.

... You addressed very little of the ideas I wanted you to understand, if you did know them well enough, you would be able to see - without my help - why they would be affected by your suggested changes (which is what I meant by “address” sorry if I was unclear). This is why I asked you to get familiar with the map in the first place. You are wasting your clear engineering talents by drawing and sticking to solutions before immersion into the project.

Supposed to be a counterpoint or a statement? Counterpoint. I'm saying you are incorrect when you say that Allies are not interdependent.

* You don't have to mass more often if you don't want to. (vague: statement on my decision or gameplay?) You don't have to send reinforcements until you have less than 75 or 20 or 200 units already on the mass. It's entirely up to you when you want to re-mass
* How? (Massing from '4' gets screwed up) Why would it get screwed up? Mass to 4 with your large mass. You're not going to mass to 4 and get many reinforcements during that time because nobody is going to be killing you on your way into the camp once you've cleared 4.

- I should hope you understand what you just asked. Yes. Decreasing the size of masses would increase the frequency. No it wouldn't. It can increase the frequency if Brown wants to, but that's unlikely. The size of the mass shouldn't ever get less than 200. That's why I suggested reinforcements of 85. Once you have less than 275 guys, you get another group of 85 so that your total army is never less than 275.

could not be massed appropriately as alternating would be all screwed up No. Purple masses once with his 400 guys to caves. Meanwhile, brown masses with his 400 guys once to 4. Once purple's mass is almost completely through, or getting ready, Brown masses to caves. As brown masses to caves, purple re-masses to 1. Once brown is through, purple masses to caves. Should brown want to, he can manually move reinforcements back to 4 to prepare for next mass, or just wait until everyone is into the keep, then mass again to 4 with his reinforcements. However, I'm not entirely sure why it helps to have them go every other time like this. They could just keep massing once they get 2-3 reinforcement groups. And of course you could aid brown in the mass by setting a mass to drain/mass to masser option.

Two gates of lesser health that can fall easier. That's all I wanted to hear. It's silly, but okay. However when you don't answer the question properly it leads to confusion.
Please understand my confusion. I suggest something, and you come up with an argument which is true regardless of whether or not my suggestion is implemented. If Haldir is not looking, Ugluk and Snaga can kill Haldir, regardless of whether or not there are one or two buildings there.

One unit isn't worth it anyway. Sorry that was ambiguous, I agree with you. One unit isn't worth removing some useful glitch.

I have a fourth, the current method You can't have a fourth method. My options are made up of 2 boolean variables. If the first is false, the second does not matter, so two options are identical. Thus there are only 3 options.

I'm not asking the basics of the map; I already know the basics of the map.

Counterpoint. I'm saying you are incorrect when you say that Allies are not interdependent.


Then we agree, they are interdependant

"You can't have a fourth method. My options are made up of 2 Boolean variables. If the first is false, the second does not matter, so two options are identical. Thus there are only 3 options."

Currently I restrict heroes’ receiving Haldir/Rohan’s heroes if they have armor in the hero they want to receive, allowing them to receive them if it wouldn't upset balance (ie: have 0 armor). While you do have the Boolean variable: have Armor, you call several methods that use it differently, if false in the get elves method, you can get elves; if true the method is not called. If false every hero method from white is possible, if true you can only get heroes of different races where your armor is not a factor.

"That's all I wanted to hear. It's silly, but okay. However when you don't answer the question properly it leads to confusion."

"Sorry that was ambiguous, I agree with you. One unit isn't worth removing some useful glitch."

"Why don't they spawn eight masses (85 units each)?" (was where I went off track)

"Once you have less than 275 guys, you get another group of 85 so that your total army is never less than 275."

Seems we've had a lot of misunderstanding, this is now considerable as opposed to my original perception you wanted to just spawn less units (in my understanding the ridiculous amount of 85 guys). If I made conjectures on your skills based on this I apologize, thanks in addition for keeping your cool through this mess of predications.

While I should have got how your method works from your next post my mind glossed over it, already 'knowing' how it worked.

"And of course you could aid brown in the mass by setting a mass to drain/mass to masser option."

Crossed my mind... something to think about, these tend to be less popular and more complicated (ie: the hated split mass trigger in 1.3x)

"However, I'm not entirely sure why it helps to have them go every other time like this."

They each go after the other, so then they can micro mass independently (when one person is trying to push the other can't be shooting hydras). Also it’s important that they can’t just ally purple when he sends hallucinations so they max effectiveness on a purple only mass.

Another piece of useful info: the map is setup in such a way that ‘evil’ has a high tendency to win with just 0-5 minutes left when teams are reasonable balanced; unless they gamble their commander.

Now that we fully understand each other (I should hope!) we can work on real pros and cons, help me out with anything missing


Pros:
- Less breaks in mass for newer players
- Can re-mass faster for keep/caves (if someone fell down on the job)
- Easier to kill off undesirable units
- Easier for newer purples
- Easier to control the “mass blob”

Cons:
- Change (in general), re-learn early game massing
- Jumbled masses (No longer just lings/kerries then (mostly) hydras/fbats)
- More clog at 3 (as you previously had to use the mass or send it to ‘1’ to resolve before your new mass)
- More difficult to teach & have keep/cave alteration
- More complicated tank spawns
- Balance concerns (whites ‘push’ periods)
- To a much lesser extent, my origionl posts (amount of mass spawned at once is slightly decreased)

Crossed my mind... something to think about, these tend to be less popular and more complicated (ie: the hated split mass trigger in 1.3x)

Massing should certainly be simple. Hopefully you're using an inverted location on the shuttle, and to be honest, I suggested a scourge because it's the fastest usable unit in the game. You can also add in one extra unit to do a "special mass". Brown's would go to the drain or something, and Purple's could do a split mass. Certainly it takes a second or two to learn, but in all seriousness, optional features should never be hated, so I don't know why people don't like the split mass trigger.

They each go after the other, so then they can micro mass independently (when one person is trying to push the other can't be shooting hydras). Also it’s important that they can’t just ally purple when he sends hallucinations so they max effectiveness on a purple only mass.

Allying/Unallying is a dick move no matter the way you look at it and should be removed from the game entirely if you haven't already.

Cons:
- More clog at 3 (as you previously had to use the mass or send it to ‘1’ to resolve before your new mass)
I'm doubtful about this. Even if you have more clog at 3, you won't ever have 200 guys clogging 3, so you can always keep massing 1. 100 guys wouldn't be too far fetched though at 3, which prevents you from getting reinforcements if you get them all at once.
- More complicated tank spawns
Barely. It's just one more trigger.

"so I don't know why people don't like the split mass trigger."

It was predominantly because it was required to mass there correctly, you couldn't just mass to the hall any more, and when on: it took precedence over wherever you were trying to mass, adding auto-control is never a very popular solution.

"Barely. It's just one more trigger."

Not map wise, for the player, would just be a quark, but still a factor.

"Allying/Unallying is a dick move no matter the way you look at it and should be removed from the game entirely if you haven't already."

I would if it hadn't been tried already... In 1.2x this was very hated, removed in 1.3x. As far as I gather it was because the repeated allying prevented people from attacking units like hydras and rhines to escape from delicate situations - not something I'd really like to prevent. This is also the reason I haven't enacted shag upgrades - as he would have to be prevented from feeding/escaping.

"I'm doubtful about this. Even if you have more clog at 3, you won't ever have 200 guys clogging 3, so you can always keep massing 1. 100 guys wouldn't be too far fetched though at 3, which prevents you from getting reinforcements if you get them all at once."

Clog at 3 would simply build up more than current, making it harder to learn middle tanks, because they are no longer required to do something with the mass (and massing only to 1 exposes them to rushes, especially after swarms/offensives with saru

Inverted locations... good idea, not something I knew when I first implemented air massers

Some further thoughts on the allying, could just detect when someone acctually unallied and drop the player, sketchy for evil however in common occurences when finishing off the other persons mass is useful. It's also a useful ability for white to ally purple if he tries to farm tanks early game by not going for hinge, using it and surrounding turrets to kill off mass as fast as possible

Run one trigger for all players:
Force 1 and Force 2 (Good) get 1 death of some DC. Force 3 (Evil) get 2 deaths, or 1 death of something else. Detect when foes/allies have allied/unallied the wrong person, and reset the alliance status.

Alternatively, you can say Ugluk will always have ugluk, saruman has saruman, rohan has 1 medic, aragorn has a forge, Elves have something that never dies somewhere... Setting a DC only takes one trigger though, and works regardless of leaver status.

As far as massing goes, I've noticed that massing works across the entire map. There are 3 major "zones": The Deep, the Keep, and the Caves. If you mass to the deep, chances are you don't want your guys in the caves or keep to retreat. After you mass all units at anywhere to attack to the location, you can either order units in the keep and caves to their respective exits in retreat, or you can ignore it and anyone in the keep is re-ordered on to the caves. I can't think of a good reason to retreat your fodder, though. Likewise, if you mass to the keep or caves, you might automatically send everyone to the keep teleport.

The "special mass" I was thinking of could be a bit dangerous as I don't know how the banning system works, but if you put something big, like a reaver in the shuttle, all you have to do is unload it to make the units mass to the "special" mass location. Apparently the problem with the special mass was the "toggle" part of it, and the fact that it wasn't really optional.

A kills2cash system would work fine for shag, because he's a hydralisk and can't kill 2 things at once for it to be erroneous.

Brown usually has to retreat (to ‘4’) after massing to hall if they break, so he isn’t blocking/massing in when it’s time to get keep hinge. I’ve considered adding massing options for a long time – partially centered around reverse keep/caves (If ‘evil’ masses caves when white does a “drain D” (all units + meds to drain) he gets his units stuck in caves, basically irresolvable.
For this I did a (relatively poor) workaround where when 0 ‘good’ units in caves ‘evil’s units disappear at ‘goods’ heal

current banning
You drop a unit from the shuttle to ban the player (you can only ban if you have an army, and only have the option to ban someone if they don’t have an army), so it’s a bit dangerous; still considering masser options in some way.

kills to cash
Would like to do so (did a lot of research to try to replace the 40 upgrade trigs) but wouldn’t like to go to Rapid Triggers (lag, much more timers to keep a lot of things previously based on trigger cycle time, not required for any current or requested system) without a bigger need. Shag is also already quite strong (upgrades would have to have minimal effect) and wouldn’t like to have him focusing on killing max # of units. Perhaps an upgrade system on how many special/hero units he kills…

more on masser options
There are completely rooted units for each player (banner beacon for red, teal, oj, blue; map revealer for each evil – helps to reveal their early destinations quicker, previous quark) use these a lot for evils banning system.
Allying/Unallying would have to be selectively restricted, as it is a age old practice for evil armies to ally enemy heroes so it’s harder for them to get kills, and to get units up certain stairs/through certain areas/past certain people faster – a bit of danger would be added for accidental ally changes (happens semi-often) while changing statuses.

Last thing to pop in my head before I sleep is the possible amazing ability to stop/slow/speed up the auto-massing in keep caves if I was to go the road of masser options