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| This map comes from Fire Emblem: The Rune of Shadows |
Terrain is also important to a good map. The placement of forts and forest tiles is important when creating a good map. When done properly it affects the player’s strategy. When done poorly it becomes an annoying gimmick. Examples of poorly done terrain include desert maps where everyone who isn’t a flier or a mage has drastically lowered movement. This doesn’t really enhance the strategy of the map, it just gives fliers a huge advantage over all the other units and that’s not promoting good strategy. Holy War also has examples of maps where there’s huge forests all over like in Chapter 1 where the whole point seems to be to unnecessarily slow the player down. Chapter 2 is also guilty of this as well. Elevated terrain, like what Radiant Dawn does, adds some new dimensions and dynamics to map design. Get too close to a ledge and you can get penalized for it. Elevated ledges can also help the player out in defend chapters because they give you an advantage over the legions and hordes of enemies coming at you.
How well a map includes reinforcements can also add to a player’s enjoyment. A lot of Fire Emblem games like to use the abominable ambush spawns. AMBUSH SPAWNS ARE TERRIBLE FOR THE STRATEGY OF A GAME! Ambush spawns come across as unfair because unless you know where they’re coming from they will punish you. Mangs does a good job in his video of pointing out that a good way to have reinforcements in a map is to have the boss hint at the player about where reinforcements are coming from. This gives the player time to prepare for these reinforcements.
Before I start giving examples of good and bad maps I’d like to point out two different elements of a good map: The appropriate size that a map should be and the map objectives. Big maps have a stigma within the Fire Emblem community because more often than not they have lots of empty and wasted space. Mangs already points out in his video that the best thing to do is to cut down on the map size. “Rather have your map be shorter than longer”. In my opinion a good map always needs to have something going on in each section of it. As for objectives, multiple objectives means different and varied strategies. Games where rout is the only objective, or one of the few objectives that the game has, tend to be solved the same way each and every time. The way one approaches a defend chapter is far different from how one approaches an escape chapter or a seize chapter.
Ok so now comes the point of this post where I'm going to list examples of well designed maps that do different things very well in order to help the reader see the applications of everything that I've been talking about:
A Map with well Implemented Side Objectives: Sword of Seals Chapter 11A - The Hero of the Western Isles. You have three recruitable characters in this map (Klein, Echidna and Tate), numerous villages spread throughout the map, an armory and a vendor shop and an arena. The player is also rewarded with promotion items when all the NPCs survive, which acts as a great incentive to keep everyone alive. Also, this map has multiple paths toward the throne including a couple of breakable doors.
Example # 2:
Well designed choke-points, anti-turtling incentives & side objectives: FE 3 / 12 Chapter 8: Having a powerful hero and his army of highly-leveled mercenaries come at you from the back is a powerful incentive for the player to keep on moving. There's also a thief carrying a star shard that heads toward Astram's army. You have to kill this thief quickly with a flier in order to get it. In FE 12 Marth and Hardin have a conversation after which Astram's army charges at you. At the same time the armor knights will slow you down as well. Enemy archers are also placed very well in order to discourage the player's fliers from flying circles around the enemy armored knights. Also, I love the double bridge concept!
Well designed escape levels: Thracia 776 Chapter 6:
This map has numerous villages that give you good stuff (a Knight Proof, a recruitable character named Hicks, an Elite manual and the Odo scroll for example) providing for an excellent side objective. Also, there are plenty of enemy reinforcements that show up near the small line of trees that constitute as an anti-turtling incentive. There are also two escape arrows iirc. This map also has numerous choke-points in case enemies either catch up to you or in case you decide to go for the extra goodies (I always do). However, there are numerous avenues and paths available to enemies and players which make blocking off choke-points easier said than done.
Thracia 776 Chapter 7:
Chapter 7 is an example of a big map that has something going on in every part of the map. Off to the left-hand side are an army of bandits and hunters that threaten Finn and Safy. The map gives you side objectives in the form of houses that you can visit off to the side. However, should you go for the ones at the top then the aforementioned army of bandits will come after you. This level also gives us a recruitable character in the form of Shiva. Shiva and his army of swordmasters act as both a deterrent to the player's army coming from the north and to Finn and Safy coming from the mountains. The swordmasters themselves aren't very powerful, but trying to recruit Shiva can be tricky. Also, the Manster army will approach the player from behind if the player does not hurry up. This provides the player with a wonderful anti-turtling incentive (provided you don't prevent the boss from spawning).
If you guys want to, I can keep going with providing examples of well-designed maps of different things. Let me know in the comments section whether you do or do not want me to make an extra post detailing different kinds of well designed maps and what kinds of maps you want me to make examples of. Map design is a tricky thing, but when properly executed it can enhance and augment the player's strategy and it can provide an extra layer of enjoyment for the player.
Additional Supplemental Map Design Materials
^ This is an in-depth review of Fire Emblem 3. I do warn the readers though that this guy goes full fan girl on the game. Well I disagree with a good number of the things that he says, he does make some excellent points and he got me to look at Fire Emblem 3 in a totally different light.^ This is the in-depth map design review of Fire Emblem 3 Book 2 that the guy above makes. You can glean a lot of amazing in-depth analyses of what makes a good map design and why Fire Emblem 3 gets the praise that it does for it.
^ This link gives some wonderful insights into Nohr's map design. It gives the good, the bad and the ugly. It gives you everything about Nohr's map design. I do warn you though that it does go into detail about Fates' map design though.
^ The Newcomer's Guide to Fire Emblem Thracia 776. Not about map design per se, but it does give some wonderful tips and insights into the game. This is where I got the comment of blocking the boss spawn from. I highly recommend it since Thracia 776 is not noob friendly.
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