One Minute Madness - Changelog
Version 1.6
- Banned Rion and Verdish. The possibility of losing tier 2 stacks from the tavern hero in exchange for a first aid tent just feels bad for Castle and Fortress.
- Banned Orb of Tempestous Fire. This artifact was an experimental addition to this template, and the experiment simply failed. This artifact had little to no use and was far, far too niche to justify keeping it in the major artifact pool.
- Changed the timer recommendation from 1+1+3 to 1+1+2. The combat timer was extremely long, and allowed for more abuse than it is normally expected and acceptable. With support from the community, this timer was shortened to a more appropriate value.
Version 1.5a
- Actually implemented the missing changes for 1.5 version.
Version 1.5
- Banned Targ of the Rampaging Ogre. Ironfist of the Ogre, while it was cool at first, was shown to be a significiant issue when it comes to the balance of the template. It was left in the game as an unlikely late game goal meant for stallbreaking, but it has become a thing that players may specifically hunt out and sometimes even assemble it as early as 121-122. This affects the metagame of this template to an unacceptable level, causing major disparities between both sides of the map with a surprisingly high frequency. As for why specifically the Targ, and not any other element of this set: there is one extra shield in the form of the Dragon Scale Shield available in the pool of major artifacts - which makes removing the Targ less of a practical issue.
- Banned Cape of Velocity. Over the course of the Season 2 of the One Minute Madness League it was shown that this was way too high of a speed boost - especially when combined with Ring of the Wayfarer it was affecting the game in a way too strong manner to be acceptable, even if it wasn’t an autowin find.
- Unbanned Orb of Tempestous Fire. It is a somewhat experimental addition to this template, but hopefully it may be an interesting option which allows for stronger Magic Arrows and possible push to make Fireballs and Infernos at least a bit more viable opions for use in combat.
Version 1.4
This is most likely the final update of this template, at least until the next HotA release. I am currently very satisfied with both the balance and design of this template - and it is really hard to come up with any way to actually improve this template at this point. Of course, this doesn’t mean I will stop supporting this template - of course not! The 1MM league will continue, and I will intervene with an update in case of any issues requiring one.
- Banned Cape of Silence. This artifact has been found to be broken by virtue of invalidating two factions barred from high level spell use, namely Fortress and Stronghold - and as such it was extremely unhealthy to the metagame, effectively dictating the result of the game in many cases.
Version 1.3a
- Fixed the occasional issue where the green monolith color was taken by one of the offroad connections between zones 1 and 2.
Version 1.3
General Settings
- Banned Leena. While she wasn’t winning the games by herself, she was an autobuy hero - even at level 1, she contributes to the economy immensely, instantly making the game significiantly easier for the player who buys her. Other gold generating heroes, along with the Finance skill is currently put on a watchlist - depending on the data gathered from games and player opinion they may be banned too in a future version.
- Minor improvements to the stability of zone generation.
Zones 5 and 7
- Forced the amount of Trees of Knowledge on this zone to 2. This object provides interesting decisions to the players, especially in lategame - and as such, they contribute positively to the map. Additionally, they may become important enough in some games that they should spawn in a more controlled manner.
Zones 1 and 2
- Reworked connections between these zones - now the road connection should always be the green two-way monolith, and there shouldn’t be an offroad connection spawning in a way that completely blocks the expansion into the desert zone anymore.
Version 1.2
Zones 1 and 2
- Increased the treasure value to (3000-6000, 9), (10000-16000, 15), (12000-20000, 9). This is done to stabilize the amount of the major artifacts on the map - the games had too high of a chance to become unbalanced just because of one player getting all two major artifacts on the entire map.
Zones 6 and 8
- The amount of stat boosting objects have been hard capped to prevent ridiculous generations with faaaaar too many stat points. The stat boosting objects all have their frequency changed and their amount limited:
- School of War
- frequency 500
- max per zone 2
- School of Magic
- frequency 300
- max per zone 2
- Marletto Tower
- frequency 700
- max per zone 3
- Mercenary Camp
- frequency 700
- max per zone 3
- Star Axis
- frequency 600
- max per zone 2
- Garden of Revelation
- frequency 600
- max per zone 3
- Arena
- frequency 200
- max per zone 1
- Colosseum of the Magi
- frequency 200
- max per zone 1
- Library of Enlightenment
- Disabled
- School of War
- For the same reason, the amount of Learning Stones has been capped to 5.
Version 1.1a
Zones 9 and 10
- As an attempt to reduce the chance of a missing Town Gate in this zone, the following changes were applied:
- Increased the value of Town Gate to 750
- Decreased the frequency of every other object available on this zone by 80%.
Version 1.1
General Settings
- Banned Armageddon, Counterstrike, and Sorrow spells. Armageddon is nearly impossible to counter on this template - the only reasonable way to do so is to kill the opposing armageddon-resistant units, or preemptively cast Antimagic or Mass Protection from Fire. Each of these options requires outspeeding the opponent and having a strong starting placement - and even then, you have to deal with the fact that opponent has many other options. Counterstrike and Sorrow are simply far too weak to warrant polluting the pool of tier 4 spells.
Zones 1 and 2
- Performed a minor bump of the treasure value, up to (3000-6000, 7), (10000-16000, 12), (12000-20000, 6). This was done to add a very slightly higher amount of artifacts on this map.
- Put a cap of 3 Shrines of Magic Thoughts (tier 3 spells) per desert. In some cases, the generated amounts of these shrines was ridicolous, and this cap is put in place to prevent the most extreme generations.
Zones 6 and 8
- Reduced the frequency of Star Axes and Gardens of Revelation to 600 to slightly reduce the typical amount of magic stats you can usually reach.
Version 1.0
This update marks the end of the beta phase. Starting from this version, this template is considered fully viable for competitive play.
General Settings
- Completely changed the hero banlist. The Eagle Eye heroes were unbanned, while Solmyr, Deemer, Aislinn and Giselle were banned. The Eagle Eye heroes aren’t as bad as one might think on this template - many of them have Magic Arrow as the starting spell, resulting in being effective in the scout wars. Solmyr, Deemer and Aislinn are extraordinarily powerful from the get go - not only they are dominating as main heroes, but also picking them up in the midgame makes for waaaaaay too easy and too powerful poking heroes. Giselle can just invalidate magic heroes on the spot, making her an unhealthy addition to the metagame.
- Adjusted the Rock Blocks Radius and Zones Sparseness settings again.
Zones 1 and 2
- Changed the treasure values to (3000-6000, 6), (10000-16000, 12), (12000-20000, 6). This was done to help with spawning all the objects that should be guaranteed to spawn in this zone. While the numbers may suggest that desert is far richer than before, it is not the case.
- Forced the amount of the 10000 XP Pandora Boxes to 2. They are important enough objective that they need to spawn in a more stable way, and this change is meant to help with doing so.
Zones 5 and 7
- Reduced the size of this zone by 1. This is done to avoid bugged map generations.
- To offset the change above, the treasure values were slightly bumped to (1500-3000, 16), (3000-6000, 11), (6000-12000, 4).
Zones 9 and 10
- To offset the slightly smaller grass zone, the treasure values are slightly bumped to (500-3000, 38)
Version 0.6b
Zones 5 and 7
- Reverted the size value of this zone to 16 to fix a bug introduced by this change.
Version 0.6a
General settings
- Banned Boots of Speed. They give a far too immense bonus to movement, resulting in gamewarping advantage. They should have been already banned in 0.6, but due to a bit of forgetfulness this was missed.
Version 0.6
General settings
- Artifacts:
- Banned the Necklace of Swiftness. This is hands down the best Treasure class artifact in the game, with the ability to trivialize some fights. Additionally, in combination with other +speed artifacts, this provides a game-warping advantage to a player, nearly winning the game on the spot.
- Banned Charm of Mana and Talisman of Mana. The effect of these two artifacts is weak, and banning them has an additional effect of preventing the assembly of Wizard’s Well.
- Banned Endless Sack of Gold, Endless Bag of Gold and Endless Purse of Gold. These three artifacts are cluttering the pool of Major class artifacts, while being an unappealing objective to go for. While they can provide an advantage in case of a long game, they don’t provide a power boost the Major class artifacts are supposed to do.
- Banned Ring of Vitality. The +hp effect is actually a strong effect on this template, due to the size and scaling of tier 1 and tier 2 powerstacks - a bit strong for a Treasure class artifacts. In itself it would be fine though, but the possibility of assembling a game-warping Elixir of Life forces a ban on at least one of its elements.
- Banned Rib Cage. The sole purpose of this ban is to prevent the possibility of assembling Armor of the Damned.
- Objects:
- Banned Refugee Camps from spawning. They were the only additional army-giving object that I have missed. While these don’t really provide that big of an advantage most of the time, they are still able to provide a player with an extra Archangel or Black Dragon, which is massive boost for relatively low opportunity cost. There is also an issue with their RNG state not being preserved through saves. If a crash happens during 121, and the save from 117 has to be loaded, on the next week the unit in the camp will be different.
- Banned Warrior’s Tombs. They are objects with an extremely random effect, sometimes even resulting in a relic artifact drop.
- Spells:
- Fixed the lack of ban on the Disguise spell.
- Banned the spells Destroy Undead, Hypnotize, Mirth and Misfortune. Most of the Tier 3 spells are extremely weak and/or situational, but they also house important to the metagame Antimagic and Protection From Earth. This change should also help out the Fortress and Stronghold, which are limited to the Tier 3 guild.
- Heroes:
- Banned Straker, Ufretin and Piquedram. These three heroes, if they will show up as the second hero, put the player at a massive disadvantage, effectively punishing player for being unlucky.
- Adjusted the Zones Sparseness setting again in hopes to improve the zone placement.
- Slightly reworded the template description.
Zone connections
- The connections leading from the starting zone (5-9, 6-9, 7-10, 8-10) have their value reduced to 2000.
Zones 1 and 2
- Modified the treasure values to (3000-6000, 8), (10000-15000, 8), (15000-20000, 3). It is just a simple minor adjustment to improve the quality of this zone’s generation.
- Removed Windmills and Warehouses of any kind from this zone. They were a close to being just an interactive obstacle in this zone.
- Increased the frequency of the Major class artifacts to 800, while decreasing the frequency of the Minor artifacts of 250. Major class artifacts were a little bit too rare, and this change is set to improve this.
- Banned Wood and Ore from spawning in this zone, while reducing the frequency of each magical resource and Gold to 50. Additionally, the frequency of Campfires was reduced to 75. In exchange, the frequency of Treasure Chests was increased to 1500. The extra resources were cluttering the treasure zones effectively reducing the amount of interesting objectives.
- Increased the frequency of Treasure Chests to 1500. While it is close to being “just another resource”, the amount of gold given by this is noticeable - and it can be exchanged into XP. As such, it is an interesting objective to aim for when going through the desert.
Zones 6 and 8
Most of the changes in this zone are designed towards differentiating it from the grass zone. After this update, the wasteland zone will be far more focused on stats and XP, while having a significiantly reduced amount of resources.
- Disabled Windmills, Prospectors, and Warehouses of any kind in this zone.
- Increased the frequency of the School of Wars to 500, and increased its value to 1500.
- Increased the frequency of Schools of Magic to 300, and increased their value to 1500.
- Increased the amount of 5000 XP Pandora’s Boxes to 2.
- Reduced the frequency of all resources to 40, and the Random Resource object to 100.
- Learning stones, Mercenary Camps, Marletto Towers, Star Axes and Gardens of Revelation have all their frequency increased to 700 each.
- Increased the frequency of Minor class artifacts to 400, and the Treasure class artifacts to 275.
- Because of the previous restrictions causing the RMG to suddenly overdo on the shrines and scrolls, the amount of Spell Scrolls and Shrines spawning in this zone is limited to the following:
- Level 1 scrolls: 3
- Level 2 scrolls: 2
- Level 3 scrolls: 1
- Level 1 shrines: 3
- Level 2 shrines: 3
- Level 3 shrines: 2
- Other levels of both scrolls and shrines are not limited.
Zones 5 and 7
- Slightly bumped the treasure values to (1500-3000, 15), (3000-6000, 11), (6000-12000, 4) to slightly increase amount of resources spawned.
- Bumped up the zone’s size setting to 17 in an attempt to improve the quality of generation.
- Removed Taverns. Their object value was too low to even spawn with any consistency, and even then - they would be difficult to utilize meaningfully in one minute timers.
- Increased the object value of Stables to 1000. The default value of 200 was far too low for this to spawn consistently under this zone’s treasure values.
- Reduced the amount of 5000 XP Pandora’s Boxes to 1. This is to keep the status quo with the amount of experience on the map after the wasteland got an extra box.
- Increased the frequency of Water Wheels to 150, and their value to 1000. This is done to provide more long-term income options.
Rule and text changes
- Made the 1+1+3 timer the default, and reflected this in the template description.
Version 0.5
This release marks the start of the Beta stage of template development.
General settings
- Rearranged the zones and modified the Zones Sparseness settings for higher minimal quality of generations.
- Banned Relic class artifacts from spawning. While it was almost impossible for them to spawn, there was an extremely low chance of this happening anyway. While Relics may be incorporated in a future version of the template, they currently can provide an undeserved victory by providing one of the players with an extremely powerful artifact.
- Banned War Machine Factories and Cannon Yards from spawning. They were uninteresting an expensive option, effectively turning them into an interactive obstacle.
- Updated the template description.
Other
- Cleaned up the redundant object rules from zones.
Version 0.4
Zone connections
- Raised the value of certain zone connections.
- Zones 1-7, 2-5 (between grass to enemy treasure): 12000
- Zones 1-2 (between both treasures): 9000
- Rationale: The connections between both halves of the map were undervalued - especially the shortcut connection between grass and the enemy treasure zone. This made red rush far too appealing, while also causing the games to end unsatisfactorily early. Additionally, the low difference between the connection values often made discerning between the connection types impossible.
- Fixed the lack of Portal Repulsion between zones 2 and 5.
Zones 1 and 2
- Increased the treasure values to (3000-6000, 9), (10000-15000, 6), (15000-20000, 2). It is just an attempt to provide a tiny bit more consistency.
- Removed Cyclops Stockpiles. The resources granted by this creature bank aren’t really a good reward on this template for the difficulty it poses, effectively making this bank worthless.
Zones 5 and 7
- Removed Naga Banks. Reasoning is exactly the same as for the Cyclops Stockpiles removal listed above.
Zones 6 and 8
- Removed Medusa Stores. Reasoning is again the same as above.
- Capped the amount of Windmills on this zone to 4. This is set to prevent RMG literally spamming windmills all across the zone on certain rolls, while also not removing them completely.
General settings
- Disabled Hill Forts. They had a very minor chance to spawn, and when they did they gave a major advantage to one of the players. They may be reintroduced later on in a more controlled manner.
Artifacts
- Banned the following artifacts:
- Pendant of Dispassion, Pendant of Second Sight, Pendant of Holiness, Pendant of Life, Pendant of Death, Pendant of Free Will, Sphere of Permamence - most of these are far too situational to ever matter in the gameplay. Being protected from one rarely used spell in FB is far too underwhelming. Out of these artifacts, only the Pendant of Second Sight might be reasonably used - but in practice, Blind is not threatening enough to warrant the existence of this artifact.
- Everflowing Crystal Cloak, Ring of Infinite Gems, Everpouring Vial of Mercury, Inexhaustible Cart of Ore, Eversmoking Ring of Sulfur, Inexhaustible Cart of Lumber - there is more than enough of resources that can be found on the ground. All these artifacts are serving just as a clutter.
- Orb of the Firmament, Orb of Silt, Orb of Tempestuous Fire - the damage from spells isn’t often the game-winning factor, and in the rare cases where it is, these orbs provide an unjust advantage that is hard to counter.
- Bow of Elven Cherrywood, Bowstring of the Unicorn’s Mane, Angel Feather Arrows - the archery bonus granted by these artifacts is ridicolously inconsequential. While they could be fine if they all were Treasure class artifacts, they are not - the Bowstring is Minor class, while the Arrows are Major class.
Minor Text Changes
- Updated the description to reflect the changes in road and timer recommendations.
Version 0.3
Zones 6 and 8
- Fixed the issue of Derricks not actually being disabled.
- Removed the Town Gate. While this object was placed to allow for higher mobility and far easier supply chains, it was not fulfilling this role properly.
- Changed the treasure values to (2500-3500, 9), (3000-5000, 16), (8000-12000, 4). After the removal of Town Gate, this zone was made barren and uninteresting. This is a temporary measure to offset this change.
- School of War and School of Magic both have their frequency increased to 200.
Zones 9 and 10
- Added the Town Gate to this zone.
Zones 1 and 2
- Mansions are completely removed - they were risky an unappealing choice, effectively making them more of a guarded obstacle instead of a point of interest they were meant to be.
- Added three 3 Churchyards with their object value increased to 2500. They are simple, consistent creature banks that are a good source of experience and artifacts - and as such they are an interesting addition to the desert. They perfectly fill the niche that Mansions were supposed to fill.
- Increased the frequency of both Minor and Major class artifacts to 400. They were simply not spawning enough.
- Added 2 Town Gates to this zone. They provide the much needed mobility to the starting town. They are also guarded, meaning you have to deliberately fight for access to this option.
Version 0.2
General
- Adjusted the values of Rock Block Radius and Zone Sparseness parameters.
Zones 6 and 8
- The value of Town Gate has been reduced to 4000 from the default value of 10000. The value of the Imp Cache was also reduced to 2500 from the default value of 5000. Both changes are introduced to increase the consistency of both objects spawning without massively increasing the amount of treasure, and as such the strength of guards on this zone.
- Disabled the Trailblazer and Derrick in this zone. The Trailblazer wasn’t a very interesting addition and made it harder for the RMG to fit all other objects that should spawn, while the Derricks were overwhelmingly common and were essentially littering this zone.
- Removed the Trading Post rule, since it can’t spawn on Wasteland anyway and as such it was redundant.
- Increased the treasure values to (1500-3000, 9), (3000-5000, 12), (8000-12000, 3) from (1500-3000, 8), (3000-5000, 12), (8000-12000, 3).
Artifacts
- Banned the following artifacts: Vampire’s Cowl, Dead Man’s Boots, Amulet of the Undertaker, Ambassador’s Sash, Diplomat’s Ring, Statesman’s Medal, Orb of Driving Rain, Bird of Perception, Stoic Watchman, Emblem of Cognizance, Legs of Legion, Loins of Legion, Torso of Legion, Arms of Legion and Head of Legion. The Necromancy boosting artifacts are banned because they favour Necropolis - which is regarded as one of the best factions in the game - while being nearly completely useless for all other factions. All other artifacts are banned because they are plain too weak and ineffective.
Spells
- Banned the following spells: Protection from Water, View Air, View Earth, Remove Obstacle, Earthquake, Land Mine, Fire Shield, Slayer and Magic Mirror. Most of these spells are far too niche and situational, and are effectively a waste of a precious spell slot in the Mage’s Guild. The exception are View Air and View Earth spells, which are banned because of two reasons - they are relatively slow to use, and they are giving a large amount of information for a low mana cost. There is also an exploit that allows to inspect the generated map even after the timer ends. This exploit is a non-issue on longer time controls, but on the one minute timer setting it is definitely unhealthy.
Heroes:
- Banned Ayden. This hero starts with View Earth spell, for which the ban rationale was listed above. Other heroes that start with the banned spells aren’t currently banned because their low impact on the game. If they will be deemed unviable, they will be banned.
Version 0.1
First version ever released!