Welcome.
This guide is about how succesful maps are made for EIR. Here I will share my view on making maps and the formula I use when making maps. This is also the formula I used on Neuville, the most popular map in the mod. Therefor using this formula has proven to be very succesful.
I will discuss:
1. The formula itself.
2. Formula applied to Neuville, with details.
3. How to use the formula when making a new map.
4. As an extra example I will show the formula applied to the 2v2 map Forest.
1. Map formula:
- Red numbers 1- 6 are the spawns
- Red line is middle of the map, area around this is also nomansland
- Between the black dotted line is where the fighting takes place, this is the most important part of the map
- Green X is where the players will set up their armies
- Blue arrows are open areas which allows you to flank the enemy position
2. The formula applied to Neuville:
Details:- Black dotted area. This is the most important area of the map, most of the fighting will take place in here. Make sure you focus on this the most. Think about shot blockers, cover, flanking moves etc.
- Green X is where people set up their army, make sure you enable them to set up a defensive position, this means a house to put MG in, heavy cover around it for infantry, provide the players with an area they can defend. Remeber to put these defensive positions a bit away from the exact middle of the map, otherwise you will run into the enemy before you can secure your position. See Neuville, the middle church and graveyard is nomansland but the houses on either side of the middle, within the dotted line area, are for their respective sides to secure without much trouble. Assuming all players can reach the middle of the map at the same time. This map setup with defensive positions for each player a bit away from the middle allows them to set up their defensive post, secure it and go from there. For example by setting up your support weapons or put your army in a formation and continue by sending scout(s) into nomansland and see what the enemy is doing. Make sure that your defensive postitions where players can set up, are not too close to the middle.
- Blue arrows represent flanking possibilities on the sides of the map. The map should be wide enough to make this possible. You should be able to have extra space on the sides of the map so you can move with your entire army and flank the enemy defensive position (green X).
Extra details:- Map width is important, be sure to make the map wide enough so that you cannot always cover the entire frontline from side to side with your units. There should always be some unguarded area, this enables flanking options and provides a certain flow in combat. If you dont make the map wide enough it will boil down to campy gameplay and attacking head on, while a good flank is more fun, more satisfying and can be way more devastating if excecuted well.
- Map lenght is also imporant, better a bit too long than too short. A short map means you can get pushed back into your spawn quite easily.
- Dont use water, or try to limit it if you really want to use it.
- Think about where to put roads, as they provide a barrier where people dont like to move over.
Bad maps:- A bad map is a map thats too narrow meaning you cant flank the enemy position.
3. Formula applied to a new 2v2 map:- At the top and bottom you can see the white HQs, which are the starting points.
- The middle Red area is the Nomansland. This area does not belong to either team. So this is where you will initially fight over.
- What is going to happen is players will approach the nomansland area and set up their armies at the borders. They will find cover, houses and lines of fire for ATGs etc so they can set up their
defensive position. Where they will do that you can see on the next pic.
- Now, in the green zone, where the defensive position is, you want to provide the players with some cover. Give them a house so they can put MG in, give them green cover so they can put their infantry in cover, etc. Maybe even a small trench.
- This needs to be pretty close to the nomansland border, not too close otherwise it will give you an advantage over the fight in nomansland, not too far away because then you wont be able to pull back to it savely and defend properly against enemy attack.
- See green X in next picture.
- You also see the Black cross or plus + sign. This is where the players are going to move their army after they secured their defensive position/fallback position (green X area).
- In EIR it might lead to campy gameplay with support weapons fighting against eachother. That is why you need to provide flanking options to counter this.
- You keep the sides open, so that your entire army can move there is it wants to.
- The Blue arrows are where you should be able to flank. You can flank the enemies current position (black cross/ plus sign), or flank its defensive position (green X).
- When moving from the sides into the middle to do the actual flank you need to make sure there are no shotblockers blocking your line of fire. Such as a random long hedgerow you are forced to go around.
- The middle should be able to be defended well, but the sides should not. Do not build houses or defensive cover making it easy to defend against a flanking attack.
- As you can see in the picture, this map has some houses on the sides, some walls and some hedgerows. Those need to be removed, they will limit the movement of an army trying to flank.
- Another note about this map is that its too short, its height/lenght should be increased. Currently when you would try to flank you would end up being to close to the enemy spawn, this means its very dangerous to do, a limiting factor that should be removed. Make sure you keep the map long enough so you dont get too close to enemy spawn when you try to move in/flank.
- The width in this map looks good, as it should enable entire armies to move along the sides of the map pretty much unseen.
Here is a small update of the map, still a work in progress, but you can see for example houses are put in the green X areas, combined with some heavy cover to enable defensive positions. Btw I did not make this map, only assisted. Find it here
http://forums.europeinruins.com/index.php?topic=21800.0
4. Formula applied to the 2v2 map Forest:
- Red line is nomansland
- Green areas are houses with cover, defensive positions the players can occupy. This also includes 4 trenches, 2 on each side of the nomansland so each player can secure 1 trench if desired.
- Blue arrows are the relatively open sides where players can move their entire armies for flanking maneuvers.
- The area within the two black dotted lines is the area where most of the action will happen.
Now try this yourself, succes guaranteed!
