Gold and stone are abundant in this map, yet food is nearly non existent.
With a distinct lack of starting food, rushing will not be likely, and any
chance that would be there anyway will be diminished by the starting units.
A very interesting game. This is still like the original advantage though,
with the same starting units for the civ choices, but the mail improvement
in this over the original is that it is just more interesting.
FEEDBACK APPRECIATED!
The original script was reviewed by and I promised to review any upgrade to the original, since it was compromised by a critical error.
Version 2 of SR@Advantage is a minimal improvement over the original. It is still plagued by errors. Even with my cursory examination of the script and testing in detail only 5 of the 18 random choices, I found many problems that doom this map script.
THEME: 1. Basically, the author has not learned to proofread his script or playtest his maps. The theme is that he made a map with 18 different random patterns, one named after each of the 18 civs. There is a terrain and forest selection based on each civ, and a number of extra starting military units and buildings based on that civ. Unfortunately the author misspelled "seige" everytime he used it and so the siege workshops do not place. He thinks there is a "Palm_Forest_Tree" so there are no Palmtrees on some of the maps where he tried to make them, there are no commanded Bamboo trees, some of the oak and other trees are inconsistantly placed. It would be so easy just to copy and paste the object names from the rmsg or one of numerous other sources if he has problems remembering their names! There is one choice for Vikings where most of the map terrain is replaced by water then he commands Longboats and Docks for each player - but they don't appear for player number 1. This degree of errors indicates a lack of testing and of understanding the commands.
VISUAL APPEAL: 2. This has not even kept up to the ES standard because of a lack of terrain blending for some of the maps and the lack of trees on many of the maps.
PLAYABILITY: 2. The above mentioned problem with the 'Viking' choice is one serious deficit. There is also a problem with playing either Aztecs or Mayans, because for several of the random 18 map possibilities a stable is given as a starting building - completely unusable by these civs and inherently unfair. Then there is the problem with giving Castle Age and Imperial Age units at the start of a game, when the vills and buildings are only in Dark Age ( and some of the other units such as Militia or Archers are in Dark or Feudal) and not as strong - most people feel that is a mistake. Of course if he wants to play with such a wide range of units that is OK but there is a lack of balance here.
The computer AI can play this map OK, as well as with other maps giving starting military.
Resources are much higher (gold and stone) than usual maps, except for the Viking choice where there is almost none due to replacing almost all the land with water.