maps that have secret grouped starting positions

[t4mcr53s2]

about 2 dozen maps have grouped starting positions ie if you have country a you also have country b

suggestion 1a;this should be included in the "about the game" area of conquer club with a link to the forum topic revealing the master information
1b;if possible those maps legend keys should be retrofitted with an asterisk about this in the legend key but that may take more coding than suggestion 1a

1 example there is a map that seems to have 52 starting positions, but in truth has only 16 …. knowing which 16 is a big advantage in for game for those who know
another map has 104 potential starting positions , or 83 if you discount killer neutrals; ( helpfully if you ignore the legend and click on the map tab if you use panels and think to do so it says there are 8 starting positions,) so you could then go to the "hidden" database or start a non-fog game , or view a non-fog game in round one to see what they are

this makes the gaming experience unfairly biased against those not in the know in a very different way than simply playing an opponent who is experienced on a map, or who has better knowledge of statistics , , strategy, or who has read the strategy fora….

recently I played someone who joined in 2007 in a poly game and when I saw a position one of their starting groups I chatted to myself about their other hidden positions for later reference, but was in unmasked chat; their discus at learning about 13 years of disadvantage seems likely to tip him into leaving conquer club.

I felt the same way when I learned this at the end of me first 2 years , and was disappointed when my mentors said not to post this on the forum those 7-8 years ago … today I decided to post without consultation
we don't like people to farm know recruits on complex maps with non-intuitive strategies … what about old recruits who didn't read the forum that lists starting positions not noted in map keys...

ADDED
I would propose some addition under the about the game tab something more welcoming to newcomers (as well as old timers) to give them a chance to be more quickly competitive, along the lines of
" there are many strategy threads about individual maps and settings, and valuable strategies about attacks, dice odds and game play, as well as a SoC training academy
and here are a half dozen links to of them, and there are more in the forums that you may find equally or more valuable " and link
the old strategy guide page,
the map XML page, school for cooks , t
The thread about whether/when to attack 3 vs 1 , the first moves advice on school for cooks site ,
and even create a page listing the names of the 20+ maps with fixed starting positions E.G.
http://www.conquerclub.com/maps/
Austerlitz, Austrum, Balkan Colesium;Eurasia; Eurasia Mini,Flanders,Gilgamesh, Hive ,Holy Roman Empire,Poker Club, Portland, Rail South America, Salem's Switch,Spanish Armada, The three Kingdoms of China, The Three Kingdoms of Korea, Thyneseal , Tribal War Florida, Tribal War Israel, Vancouver, WWI Gallipoli

I retired the first poll as I hadn't realized it would generate percentages and thus dilute opions of people who voted for multiple options ; it looks like it was 2 for a reveal and 2 against ; ...SORRY TO BE SUCH A NOVICE AT POLLING ; THOSE RESULTS ARE BELOW

under game tab section on special game play after the :" special gameplay; killer neutrals "paragraph , add paragraph " some maps have linked starting positions and include link to the list of xml files (19%) (2 votes)
big wham should encourage/incentivize someone to update map legends 19% (2)
under THE GAME tab include a ninth tab strategy ; including links (19%) (2)
We should change nothing 19% (2)
LEARNING ABOUT this after being here for years is another thing that makes me feel like leaving conquer club (included for the 3 people who told me in chat that was how they felt ) 11% (1)
mention whatever we cc decides in announcements as well for existing members 19% (2)

[t4mcr53s2]

spot for a poll?
please start one if you know how

[Mad777]

Usually i try to read the discussion map topic to see if anything other than usual and to be prepare to learn quicker. Most of your described words are available to public audience.
I get the frustration from player but it is the same as game rule, you can’t pretend unfairness about a rule if you never read it and make yourself aware.

Now I’m not saying all map has all data available and if not then the map discussion topic should be the first place where those data to be available.

[t4mcr53s2]

about 2 dozen maps have grouped starting positions ie if you have country a you also have country b

suggestion 1a;this should be included in the "about the game" area of conquer club with a link to the forum topic revealing the master information
1b;if possible those maps legend keys should be retrofitted with an asterisk about this in the legend key but that may take more coding than suggestion 1a

1 example there is a map that seems to have 52 starting positions, but in truth has only 16 …. knowing which 16 is a big advantage in for game for those who know


PLEASE DONT POST A RESPONSE HERE : IF YOU HAVE AN OPINION ABOUT WHAT CC SHOULD DO< ADD IT TO THE THREAD I JUST STARTED IN SUGGESTION
so your voice wont be diluted
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=233843

[rockfist]

I don’t think this is much of a problem. It rarely comes up.

[YukFoo]

It is the little tricks and secrets such as this that the experienced players seem to know, which is how they achieve and maintain such a high rank.

You don't see those high ranked players playing any simple map settings where it would be even ground.

[rockfist]

I can get to general if I just play W2.1 and don’t play tournaments. Achieving rank is not just fancy settings, it’s about game selection.

[riskllama]

It is the little tricks and secrets such as this that the experienced players seem to know, which is how they achieve and maintain such a high rank.

You don't see those high ranked players playing any simple map settings where it would be even ground.

hmmm...you have played almost 5500 games, YF - where's your high rank? cool theory, bro...

[DBandit70]

I don’t think this is much of a problem. It rarely comes up.

I agree with rockfist

[Donelladan]

Well it comes up for anyone that play a map without knowing that there are fixed starting positions.
I think it comes up pretty often.
It's not something you can assume when playing a new map. The majority of the maps do not have fixed positions, so unless someone ever told you that it's possible, I am not even sure how you can know about it.
And even if you know that some maps have fixed position, you still don't know which maps do, and what are the positions.
That's indeed of lot of secret information that only an experienced player can know about.

[Mad777]

The Atlas (viewtopic.php?f=358&t=79067) does give plenty of infos for those who want to know more about map they want to play, not sure where there is secret squirrel here?
It’s all black & white for most of not all map.

[Donelladan]

It's not that it's a completely secret information.
It's that you need to look for it.
When you play a map, you expect all the informations you need to be available on the map legend. And it's the case for the vast majority of the maps.
It's secret in that way, I can imagine many players do not check the forum topic of the map creation when playing a new map, and I don't think we can blame them for that. I think they shouldn't have to.

[Extreme Ways]

It's not that it's a completely secret information.
It's that you need to look for it.
When you play a map, you expect all the informations you need to be available on the map legend. And it's the case for the vast majority of the maps.
It's secret in that way, I can imagine many players do not check the forum topic of the map creation when playing a new map, and I don't think we can blame them for that. I think they shouldn't have to.

Same for fixed neutrals. I didn't know for example that Rail Africa always has a neutral in the O and E lines. I had noticed the pattern, but didn't realise until someone told me.

[Nut Shot Scott]

It's not that it's a completely secret information.
It's that you need to look for it.
When you play a map, you expect all the informations you need to be available on the map legend. And it's the case for the vast majority of the maps.
It's secret in that way, I can imagine many players do not check the forum topic of the map creation when playing a new map, and I don't think we can blame them for that. I think they shouldn't have to.

agreed.

[BabySasuke]

if rank isnt to important and you play what you enjoy...youll have fun... i mean, i am terrible, but am major and won ~42%, highscore only in 2200+


have fun............

[rockfist]

As a general rule people should not join games in maps they aren’t familiar with. If they do that it doesn’t come up.

[Hooch]

Just from here should be enough, or at least a start, but guess what, many of those links come up with The requested topic does not exist.
It is a failing and really Mad777's fairly outdated links aren't as helpful as they could be either.

CC is not doing enough in this regard and I applaud t4mcr53s2, for asking the question, they know what is up.

[Mad777]

It's not that it's a completely secret information.
It's that you need to look for it.
When you play a map, you expect all the informations you need to be available on the map legend. And it's the case for the vast majority of the maps.
It's secret in that way, I can imagine many players do not check the forum topic of the map creation when playing a new map, and I don't think we can blame them for that. I think they shouldn't have to.

Same for fixed neutrals. I didn't know for example that Rail Africa always has a neutral in the O and E lines. I had noticed the pattern, but didn't realise until someone told me.

i get it, it is not stipulated on the map but i found this in less than 5 minutes:
viewtopic.php?f=358&t=90035&start=250#p2373767

[Mad777]

Just from here should be enough, or at least a start, but guess what, many of those links come up with The requested topic does not exist.
It is a failing and really Mad777's fairly outdated links aren't as helpful as they could be either.

CC is not doing enough in this regard and I applaud t4mcr53s2, for asking the question, they know what is up.

yeah it is not perfect but again i have found couple of interesting thing going through it.

Of course it would be nice to have everything written on the map itself but for some
map it look pretty impossible to add that much text, for PC user perhaps adding bubble of hint while you use the map inspect however it would not work in mobile device such as tablet or smart phone.

[rockfist]

If it won't work on a smartphone I would advise against doing it. Its already a disadvantage to play the game via phone for the most part...and many new users would be on the phone so this would only make that disadvantage increase.

[Extreme Ways]

It's not that it's a completely secret information.
It's that you need to look for it.
When you play a map, you expect all the informations you need to be available on the map legend. And it's the case for the vast majority of the maps.
It's secret in that way, I can imagine many players do not check the forum topic of the map creation when playing a new map, and I don't think we can blame them for that. I think they shouldn't have to.

Same for fixed neutrals. I didn't know for example that Rail Africa always has a neutral in the O and E lines. I had noticed the pattern, but didn't realise until someone told me.

i get it, it is not stipulated on the map but i found this in less than 5 minutes:
viewtopic.php?f=358&t=90035&start=250#p2373767

Not all players will have the dedication to search for this, and even fewer will know where to look (even though the map page is linked in panel interface). It's not like Rail Africa is the worst offender of this either btw, just an example. Some maps have it less clear that there are actual starting positions, such as Poker Club.

Imo, Galipoli does it very well. It mentions '8 starting positions' which is true, but you still need to click on the map discussion link to find them. In a similar vein, the comment 'fixed neutrals' would be very helpful for some other maps.

I don't think it is possible to display all the necessary info on the map itself, but perhaps it could be clearer that there is more info on the map.

[Nut Shot Scott]

As a general rule people should not join games in maps they aren’t familiar with. If they do that it doesn’t come up.

this is an absurd statement.

[Hooch]

Just from here should be enough, or at least a start, but guess what, many of those links come up with The requested topic does not exist.
It is a failing and really Mad777's fairly outdated links aren't as helpful as they could be either.

CC is not doing enough in this regard and I applaud t4mcr53s2, for asking the question, they know what is up.

yeah it is not perfect but again i have found couple of interesting thing going through it.

Of course it would be nice to have everything written on the map itself but for some
map it look pretty impossible to add that much text, for PC user perhaps adding bubble of hint while you use the map inspect however it would not work in mobile device such as tablet or smart phone.

There is also this
As it currently stands again, the Map section has Development and Strategy Links, many are not there, whether lost or just not created.
Problem with ATLAS is, it has an icon to indicate maps with a strategy, that is 7, yes 7 out of 240 or so maps, so yes it has a colour indicating old map discussion in red and the updated map in green as an example even ignoring, a lot of the info isn't pertinent to strategy; it is relative to graphics, fonts, colours and cleaning up border lines, with the added bonus of image links that don't work anymore, so it is a read, but not always conducive to find the nugget one is after efficiently, it is a map creation thread with if lucky the strategy mentioned in there.
Page 1 of the Classic map is about removing a red ship/shark/plane/rocket.
Czecho Slovak Fragmentation is 30 pages a lot of reading for a strat.

I found my old RISK set, the map doesn't explicitly mention the dashes between continents equal assault/fort points, but it is in the 16 page booklet, it also has the tray with about another 2000 characters of information and more words on the bottom of the box.

So to summarise, as CC has strategy links that aren't completed, maybe they could be for the maps, inclusive of the starting neuts, which I don't think need to be mentioned on the boards.
Though there are things that should be mentioned, like the purple rivers on the Slovakia map, impassable, not mentioned and there is room, the log is a bit of a dog, the map has a blurry opaqueness to it and it has been in creation/talk/beta for 6-8 years.

[Mad777]

Agreed there, it would be all perfect if we would have the people helping doing it, back then was a site wide call to work back on strategy guide and to complete what was missing, only few raised hand and this worked for very few additional map then it quickly faded down because people didn’t want to help.
I’m not trying to be hard on anyone but 99.9% of the time we have posting stating how easy thing could be done, but when it is time to actually work it then everyone leave the room.
It’s like many thing here, people come and complain about thing which for some it help understand how we can improve gaming and such, and when we initiate a callout to gather extra hands, no one step in.
Believe me I’m not directing this to anybody in particular but this is a constant happening that would not change if people only want to be involve with the outcome without helping building it.
Only few people can do so much those days to try improving but ultimately we are all here to play game and use extra time to work on logistic.
Another issue for map layout and correction, is most of those map owner are no longer active and I’m not sure if the map would be editable without them, on another hand the map should certainly be uploaded within the site and perhaps editable by someone else, that i do not know, I’m not really involved with this section of the site to be able to come up with certainty, but again I do agree with some add’on proposed here to complete a map with clear explanation that would help new player to understand those trick.

Who knows, in a near future we may come up with a group of member who wants to take the bull by the horns and going over the Atlas mal after map to complete what would be worth to add.