Why does ROR remains the all-time favorite strategy map? After five years no one has been able to produce a map that is more tasteful than ROR?

Is it because with a little luck or a little skill you can take down the toughest spot?

Edited 7/16/2018 05:31:33

As much as I like to troll whenever possible, I am currently bereft of jokes ...

unlike other semi popular maps like europe or ME, most of the ROR map is pickable, full distribution and auto pick games can be made, and there are some degrees of freedom regarding how you can pick, and more strategies can be made. I personally am not a fan of ROR but it can still be a fun game (if people don't spam all their picks on spain that is)

Because it's pretty sweet.

I believe the map isn't that special, but it happens that the winner takes it all. People don't like playing on new maps but they associate WarLight with the most common maps.

Incamans Jerusalem map was also popular as it came out but it was lacking the final push in the player base.

Edited 7/16/2018 07:14:55

Why does ROR remains the all-time favorite strategy map? After five years no one has been able to produce a map that is more tasteful than ROR?

Surely I don't think RoR is the all time favorite strat map; if it is about the popularity for games(especially rt) it is because it is fun for all.

You need to fill an rt game as fast as possible. You don't have time to wait around for an hour for it to fill. What map do you choose?

I would choose RoR in a heartbeat. No map fills faster in open games. And since people don't like waiting around in lobbies, that makes RoR even more popular creating a snowball effect.

It's because a member of {rp} created the map.

You're wrong snife

Sound_of_silence has some good points about distribution and picking on RoR, but my feeling about why RoR is such a popular map is that the income levels on RoR make it easier to play. In some ways this is related to the points sounds_of_silence made, but basically it is usually fairly easy to expand in RoR and get 20+ income. Even when players run into opponents, usually expansion is still possible.

Because of this, picking is not as important as on other maps. FTB's while important, are not crucial like on ME or Europe. Similarly getting a bonus broken early is not usually a death knell, unlike ME or Europe.

As well, with higher income, position play and efficient army use is not as important. Sure it helps, but making sure every army is used efficiently is much more important on ME, Europe, and Roman Imperium. For instance, in RoR, making lots of small attacks late in the turn (i.e., sending 2's and 3's at 4 spots hoping to take just 1) is often a reasonable strategy. If you do that on Europe, the loss of armies will kill you.

With that, the map is easier to play. I have played RoR almost exclusively for 2 years and I am pretty good at it and can compete against top players. But when I switch to another template, be it Final Earth, Biomes, or Europe, or Battle Islands, I struggle against good players. From what I can tell, my position play is weaker than good players on other templates, and I use my armies inefficiently. Or to put it another way, I have bad habits which aren't sufficiently penalized on RoR but kill me on other templates.

I have seen the same phenomenom in other very experienced RoR players, i.e., that they struggle on new templates making moves that work time-in, time-out in RoR, but failing on Europe, or Biomes, or Battle Islands.

Edited 7/17/2018 01:56:43

I guess its the new trend. Back in my day the top maps were europe 1600 and regular europe. ROR I guess is just more famous nowadays.

Europe by Troll is probably the best strategy map on this site, too bad it looks pretty bad. I actually love the fact that Germany and France are so hard to hold and for little compensation.. they are in effect mountain ranges or wastelands that can however be crossed by a daring force.

As for ROR.. it looks nice and the territories are cut in such a way where movement looks and feels natural; you don't have any territories that connect to many others and no regions allow for quicker expansions than other regions. It makes the game flow better but tactics are less important.. capturing a big territory which can be used to launch a massive attack isn't as likely as with Europe or quite frankly most of the maps being produced nowadays.

ra's map are the most aesthetically good ones, too bad he steals it

It's because it depicts the great roman empire and allows you to feel like Marcus Aurelius fighting Parthians, like Scypio beating Hannibal, like Claudius conquring Britain or Ceasar conquering Cleopatra.

As an old ROR player, I can say ROR has something for all players as a main reason why most like it.

For me I hate luck with a passion, so ROR gives me the freedom to use preparation skills much more efficiently.
Other maps simply rely too much on that one good pick or early game advantage to snowball.

In ROR you can plan ahead and do damage control regardless of the luck you had on picks.

This comes from a very balanced map in general that allows team work to work very well and thus gives players a very enjoyable experience.
To give you an example of how team work works so well on ROR;
Which other mid sized map would you have a 6v6v6v6 FFA and not have a complete mess?

eg:
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=3746981

Edited 8/7/2018 21:54:50

Pichu here, known for being a RoR player. I've played thousands of RoR games, and am the founder of NWO which started off heavily as a RoR centric clan, and founder of GV/Snakelets, which are pervasive clans with members you will see everywhere when you play RoR. Not that any of this matters, but this is a topic that I've seen a lot and as a person whose favorite map is RoR, maybe I can explain explain the appeal to those who genuinely don't understand why this great team and FFA-centric map is so popular to people like me, and others.

For one, RoR is very, and I mean very aesthetically pleasing. The map genuinely hooks people in like no other - and it's not herd mentality, just that people genuinely enjoy the way this map plays out to the point that it gained revolutionary popularity. I started playing RoR back in early 2014, not because it was popular, but because it was unique in such a good way. It looks great and the design is really well drawn and well thought out. It has a pretty unique setup, with every magna having its strength and weaknesses. There are many strategic possibilities and I will get into that a bit but I won't go too in depth.

The map can be customized a lot to change viable picking strategies. It has the fun concept of cities that are very vital and pivotal but don't have to be (the settings are very customizable, and you can play 4/5x7 or remove values from cities if you don't like them). The magna bonuses are another fun addition and great touch to the map. Each magna can be played in many different ways depending on the strategy you want to employ, for example I like to play very pivotal in britain and ruin the enemy with Vaspasiana or Darini, and that's often all I need to ruin a britain player's day. I can use 1 pick in macedonia (for instance, Thebes, and play mind games with anyone who double-picks there)

I can pick Lemovii in Germany and I have three borders over Germanicia, and 2 borders over Superior. Basically what I'm saying is there are many strategies you can come up with on full dist RoR that add a lot of fun to the game. You can counter the enemy in fun ways that feel a bit unique to RoR, or go for quick income high risk strategies, and so on. You can defeat players in fun little ways that you can't really do on other maps. The amount of viable options and customization are just incredibly fun, so the map doesn't go stale for many players even after countless plays.

Furthermore onto picking strategies, RoR is a map that rewards your team for spreading out and picking pivotal spots. I can go into very deep detail regarding all of these great spots, like colchis (which is a narrow safe area that leads into asia and partha), and rotomagus (which leads into britain, and can travel north to Germany or south to Spain, but that would feel a bit superfluous. You can pick numidia, a +3 in Africa bordered but cold bonuses (I refer to bonuses that are common to pick as hot, and bonuses people rarely pick in as cold) which give it a level of safety and reliability similar to colchis, while being right in the center of Africa.

But enough about that. Not sure if I'm good at explaining things in good enough detail (I could easily be forgetting some points too), but these are some of the reasons. It's just a fun unique and beautiful map that's great for teams, that allows for many different styles of play.

Edited 8/8/2018 01:52:06

@Misaka
we can play sometimes, I know all about the end game counters you are talking about.
yes rotomagus is the best counter in ROR.

Gus made interesting point that playing RoR instigate habits which don't serve well on classic strategy maps. I can confirm this is the other way around, too. I grew as player on maps like MME, Battle Islands and Imperium Romanum. But RoR is very difficult map for me, because my style of play just don't work here at all.

I started to play Warzone mostly on RoR and I made an easy transition to strat games. If you ask around, you could find out that a lot of current strat players also started to play Warzone on RoR before making the transition to more strategic settings. Playing on RoR with the RT settings makes it easier in my opinion to learn cycle move order, delaying orders, the importance of coverage, the importance of communication with your teammates (in particular during the distribution), etc. without having to consider further settings like luck, WR, wastelands, cards, etc.

People also have to make the difference between the normal RoR template used in RT games and how RoR can become strategic with good settings (like Deadman's RoR). The reason that map is so popular is it's esthetic value, cool extra bonuses (magnas and empires) and maybe the thematic, which is the very appealing roman empire.

When I joined (around mid of 2016) I remember playing Rise of rome, Fall of jerusalem and Siege of Feldmere as team games more often. While the other two declined gradually, Ror held up so long because it is one map where clustering and no communication doesn't cause big problems.