Maps

Seeds’ maps and players’ maps: their sizes, the generator, the starter maps, and how a match gets its map.

What a map is

Every battle is fought on a kingdom split into provinces: grass and dirt to build on, forests and shallow water that slow an army down, gold mines, and the two castles. Two kinds of map are played:

• A seed’s map: drawn by the game’s generator from a number, the seed. The same seed always draws the same map, named by its size and its seed (Small seed 1 is “Seed 101”, Medium seed 1 is “Seed 201”).
• A player’s map: made in the map editor, often from a seed’s, and shared on the Maps page once published.

Sizes

A match drawn by the game plays its level’s size. A map someone picked keeps its own size: the level then sets only the rules.

The generator

• Its maps are point-symmetric: each half is the other turned half a turn, so both castles have the same land, mines and walk. Every mine and the rival’s castle can be reached on foot.
• Each seed picks its own layout: the castles on either diagonal, or across, or up and down the screen (4 ways), how far apart, and how wet and wooded the land is.
• It never draws deep water; only a player’s map may have it.

Starter maps

A handful of the generator’s seeds, chosen for variety and with nothing wrong with them: 15 Small and 15 Medium. When nobody picks the map (Quick Match, a bot’s room, a rematch — never the same map twice in a row — or a cup’s random map), the game draws one of them. The Maps page lists them beside the players’ maps.

Playing on a map you pick

• The War Council’s map step offers a random map, a seed, Choose a map… (the Maps page, to pick one with Use this map) and, signed in, your own maps.
• Quick Match plays the map of the ruler who raised the banner: a ruler waiting shows theirs; if nobody waits, yours goes up. Your own unpublished maps are not offered there.
• Play a bot on a picked map opens a room of its own for that bot; a private match plays what its creator picks; a cup has a map, one a round, or a map vote between the match’s two players.
• From the Maps page, Play this map opens a private match on it, and Test vs bot a match against the bot.

Maps and the rating

Quick Match on a seed’s map is rated, whether the game drew it or its host picked it. On a player’s map it is not (a player’s map).

A player’s map brings its own

• The Wilds: lairs its author laid always play, “No lairs” never; untouched, the room decides (Lairs on a map).
• The time of year: its author’s pick wins over the room’s (Time of year).
• The opening host: its author may give each castle a smaller or bigger one.

Tip: Phones may browse, favourite and share maps, but battles and the map editor need a tablet or a computer.