Overview
The first step into blowing new life into competitive gaming, encouraging new tactics and buildups and most of all: have fun on crazy new maps. Welcome to the Extreme Challenge Tournament!
Background
In September 2010, Aoczone organized the Extreme Challenge Tournament (ECT), a just for fun tournament with the only prizes being Voobly points, a banner and boasting rights. The settings were 2v2 on brand new custom designed maps, originally created by The_Prophet. He is also the creator of MegaRandom, which also contains the ECT maps. Despite being prizeless, a good deal of pro players signed up, which only made the outcome more tense. However, let’s take a look at the maps and also the best games that have been played on each of these maps. Warning, thinking outside box ahead!
Accessible Forest
Best civs
Description
This map can be called a strive towards realism. It should have been the godmother of all maps because it’s so realistic and relevant to a true medieval setting. In normal maps, armies can’t march through forests. If a brave warrior sees a palm tree in the middle of a palisade wall, he stops and is mentally defeated by the tree he cannot pass. Not so in Accessible Forest: you can run through forests and because of the unpredictable pattern they’re built on, you can get lost in them too! It’s more or less an unwallable version of arabia with a little flavour of black forest added. Armies can just roll down from the foresty hills and surprise your harmless villagers. Archers can hide in the forests and shoot at the wandering knights who are trying to find their way out of the dense shrubs.
Funny enough, this actually messes a bit with the unit balances: ranged units have a bonus because they can easily shelter between the trees. The game I therefore selected is a match between _Athena_ + _Ra_ vs [PiA]Hani_ + SlipKn0T_FeAge_. Both teams went a long way in the tournament, with a final and semi final positioning. The game also showed the weakness of Mongol hussar: because they miss the last cavalry armor upgrade, they actually don’t perform too well against sheltered skirmishers.
Recorded Game
Atacama
Best civs
Description
A mix between arabia and oasis now. Which means: all the wood in the middle and not a big abundance either. This immediately focusses the fight on the trees in the middle, making any delay for attacking a bad decision. I selected two games for this map, one game is a fierce fight for the center while the other features loads and loads of monks. I’m a sucker for the latter, so you can see it as a biased bonus game.
Recorded Game
Atlantean Relics
Best civs
Description
One of the stranger maps now: Atlantean Relics it a bit like Crater Lake, except that there are no goldmines in the center, but a huge amount of relics instead. You start off with a monk and a monastery too. This actually leads to a weird tactic at the start of the game: a dark age monk rush. The strength of this tactic lays in the weakness of Dark Age scouts: they have no speed advantage and are weaker, which even renders a Teutonic scout chanceless against a monk. Therefore I have 2 recorded games to share for this map: one is a very good game between RobLa_bogoss + I_LieD_bogoss and [TWP]Nooppi + [TWP]Zuppi. Granted, the game was a bit silly and it’s been rumoured that the Fins were a bit high on wodka and other spiritual goodies. But the fight in the south between RobLa and Zuppi was really worth watching. Mutual forwards are always interesting!
The other game was a showdown on how to do a dark age monk rush. Incredibly effective and a guarantee for a fast gg. I personally believe the map would’ve been more interesting with a small shallow connection to the center from each town. Further increasing the tactical options and stepping away more from naval fights.
Recorded Game
Border Dispute
Best civs
Description
The cosiest map of them all and actually my personal favourite. This tight packed map features tense gaming right from the start as you have to lure boars right away. If you don’t join the boar luring race right away, there’s no juicy steak for you and you’ll be forced to age on lamb chops. Because everyone is so close to each other, the tactics are very different from standard open maps. Towers and walls (forward walling to gain early territorial advantage!) rule the map but because you and your ally are so close together, even FC and slinging are very viable options. The game I have in store goes between BuzZ_Bleys and BuzZ_Sletten versus _Ra_ and _Mars_ where all the tactics mentioned above pass the stage. And once more we have a bonus game in store! This time featuring your favourite Aocbox admin and his teammate fighting it out with [RoR]BzH and AOKI_ViDa__. If you have question marks with my doubtable performance: my dad was watching me all game long, asking me with each move why I was doing it. Which was actually fun to be honest.
Recorded Game
Hamburger
Best civs
Description
Another highly unusual map: you start without a scout but with a cavalry archer instead. Happy luring your deer without shooting them! The fight for the center is once more the highlight of the game. The small strip of wood is the only sizeable forest on the starting island and can be easily controlled by the first one to tower it. Even though easily can be taken quite lightly here. However let’s quickly move on to the game: a very good game between VN_DarK_KnighT_ + VN_KoNFeR vs [PiA]Hani_ + TossMySalid. The guys from VN being the eventual winners of the tournament too.
Recorded Game
Manx
Best civs
Description
A nomad style map! And an odd one too: contrary to a normal land nomad, there is water. And contrary to a normal nomad, you can’t start with a town center. This still means that the best civs are the typical nomad civs. A special highlight to Mayans though, who get more gold out of the scarce resources in the center. The other minerals are on the outskirts of the map, which are likely to be guarded by boats. A very weird map to play and needless to say: more than one game was won/lost because one team managed to control the distant outskirts of the island. The selected game is a fratricide in the VN clan. Un juego muy bueno!
Recorded Game
Outward Bound
Best civs
Description
Inverted migration! You start on a little island in the center of the map but are forced to migrate to the strips of land on the border early on. The water is filled with good fish so naval warfare will definitely give you an edge. Because you have to migrate and there are multiple options to migrate, I’ve included two recorded games: one is a practice game between L_Clan_Ruso and BuzZ_TheViper where Ruso just deletes his town center to migrate early. The other game is from the tournament itself featuring [RVK]RiuT and dutz_, the dropdead favourites of the tournament who disgraced themselves by giving an admin win in the semi finals. Here you can see them in an intense match against F_aLc_enSchrei and GoldenCadillaLc.
Recorded Game
Scattered Islets
Best civs
Description
Arguable the most f*ed up map in the pack: not a single island is large enough to build a small city on it, most are only marginally big enough to fit a town center on. Above that it’s a nomad style map so you have to find your way through the islets yourself only aided by a transport ship and a fishing boat. Funny enough, this latter feature paves the road for a nice buildup: dock first. If you dock first, you can already gather food with your fishing boat while you’re saving up for your town center. I’m not sure who first came up with this buildup, but proper credit should be given to him. Time for a game then featuring this funky buildup: VN_DarK_KnighT_ and VN_KoNFeR fighting it out in a quick match against [Sfi]ExIT and [Sfi]Error_cz.
Recorded Game
The Eye
Best civs
Description
Scratch what I said about last map, this one gets the award for weirdest map of the tournament! I never had a clue how to play this map, I see it as a mix of Manx and Border Dispute. But also with very limited space since ice covers most of the map. And not a single civilisation grew strong during the Ice Age as we know. The featured game comes from a match between Argentina’s _65_Aramis_Arg and __43_RnR_Arg vs iePetiteFille and [UsK]HunB94. Slinging, towering, and a lot of back and forth warfare. Yummylicious.
Recorded Game
Tsunami
Best civs
Description
Even though the map finally adds an extra dimension to naval warfare, it’s still naval warfare. Which means a limited amount of tactics. However, you can see this map as “islands on dope”. There’s one extra island in the middle with extra resources and most important: the water has elevation! Hill advantage for boats, better be prepared to catch that wave!
As for the recorded game: once more it’s one featuring the immortals clan. _Osiris_ and _Ares_ battering with fwb_inVs3here and fwb_aer.
Recorded Game
Map Pack
You probably can’t wait to play these maps yourself now, and righteous so. Mind that the maps are specifically developed to be played in 2v2. However, all maps except Hamburger work on other settings too.