Some more great points. As many people mentioned, aesthetics is a strong point of RoR. Phoenix is spot on about other maps often depending on one great pick while RoR being forgiving on starting spots. Benoit is right about RoR being a gateway to more challenging templates. And psykkoman, thanks for confirming my point by providing the opposite observation. But John Titor raises a great point -- and that is team coordination is just not as important on RoR, which means if players don't need to worry about which team they join when they want to play a game.

Admittedly teams that coordinate do much better, but only minimal coordination is normally needed in most RoR games. Yes players need to learn to stay out of each others Magna's, and players need to learn to break completed Magna's and Empire's, but past that teams don't generally need to talk. Given that this site hosts a lot of players who speak English as a second language, a team game template which is not dependent on communication is bound to attract some players.

Mind you, sometimes you see stacked manual teams with manual picks, who have their picking strategies down to a science (and I have certainly been part of a few too many of these teams). Taking the other side against these teams often means a loss, especially if your teammates are not strong.

But RoR is very playable with random distribution. Sure, sometimes the distro is a near guaranteed loss for one team, but most games are competitive. And with random teams and random distribution, basically any player can find a reasonably competitive game without knowing anyone else on the site.

Add in random teams and you have a template which is perfectly welcoming to less experienced players, as well as old stalwarts.

^ Great post. A lot of great points were made on this thread. You guys make it seem as if RoR is a noob/casual friendly map, and that RoR does not require the same level of team synergy and cooperation with strat maps - this is true, and as a result it appeals a lot to casual players, along with its aforementioned appealing aesthetics. Many players do not speak English very well, and the average casual player is not interested in talking to his partners much. I see many players who pick and play without saying a word in the chat throughout the entire game, but in RoR -- particularly Auto-RoR -- they will go unpunished for such otherwise crucial lack of communication.

As for RoR being very playable, let's again remember that RoR is extremely customizable and players customize this game with so many different settings. Random distribution, warlords distribution, full distribution, 1 pick, 2 pick, 3 pick, 4 pick, 5 pick, 2x7, 3x7, 4x7, 5x4, 5x5, 1x10, neutrals at 1 territory, and so many other settings are used on RoR. You can even make RoR more appealing for strat games by using warlords, adding wastelands, reducing the magnas, adding certain cards like maybe gift or blockade card, and things like that.

Edited 8/12/2018 18:10:44