Kings of Survival II

Kings of Survival II
Beta: Last Update: 7/11/2009

Map Development Background
In Starcraft, there used to be a popular map type called either King of or Test of Survival where you'd be pitted as one race against the other two, usually the Terran, and all you'd have to start out with is a marine and a bunker to hide in. If you didn't hide in that bunker when many enemies were coming, you'd often get killed in a couple seconds. As it wasn't possible to have a Hydralisk also hide in that bunker, I set out to create a Test of Survival map for the Zerg which would play as ridiculous as the Terran version but not require you to have a bunker to hide in. After months of effort, I created a map that could get so insane even myself and a friend of mine who was there from beginning to end can still get boned by how hard the map is at times. In Warcraft 3, the maps existed in the beginning of its lifetime but were quickly outstripped in popularity by RPG-type maps. As the name implies, there was an original King of Survival, which was good, but suffered problems I think were the reason the map type never caught on in Warcraft 3: the computer AI being insufferably hard to control and very unlike the "dumb aggressive" AI found in Starcraft. I've made a large attempt to control that and came up with a game that plays as close as can be to the original in terms of the computer since it's the AI that largely determines how these maps feel.

Map Background
You start out as a Zergling in a base filled with creep to regenerate quickly on. Around you are large towns of the Alliance, Horde, Undead (who don't have any creep or require it to build) and Night Elves, fully built and ready to destroy. There are 6 buildings around you allowing you to build air, ranged and ground units with a myriad of upgrades and some defensive structures. Every so often, the enemy begins building a stronger set of units. Within 15 minutes the first large attack comes, sending over a wrecking crew from every enemy player. Can your survive?

Current Features
The feature list in a map like this won't look impressive as the gameplay is really designed to be simple -- the complexity being in the doing, not the what to do -- but for what it's worth:
Money: Kill a unit, get money for yourself
Classes: Ground, Ranged, Air
Units: 12 max per player, 2 tiers of units for each class
Upgrades: 100 levels of armor/damage, select upgrades for each unit
Players: 8
Help System: To guide you through choices
Upkeep: at 4, 8 and 12 units, that player begins to slowly lose money, forcing you to build your force or attack, not both

Planned Features
Classes: Magic
Units: 4 tiers of units for each class
Boss: For each computer player killed and after all computers killed
Items: For all units
Special Weapons: Nuclear launches
Enemy Hero Kills: A gold boost for all

Gameplay
All players start in the middle of the map in a fair-sized base surrounded by computer-controlled towns. Leaving would be a bad idea. You will get attacked fairly often, more often as the game progresses Your first unit is capable of killing the first tier of enemy units, albeit slowly. After collecting 300 gold, enemies that were hard to kill suddenly become a whole lot cooler to beat on. After about 2000 gold, you can train your first normal unit and suddenly the whole game of what you can kill changes. There will be kill speed progression through each tier of enemy units as you build more units and upgrade them. After 10 minutes, Ground 2 tier is released. After 35 minutes, Ground 3 tier and then the difficulty ramps up significantly. Air 1 is 40 minutes Air 1, Air 2 55, and 1 hour 5 minutes, Air 3. After some time, usually before Air 1 even, you ought to have built an extended base and attacked some computer player, either for money or to unlock a new tier of upgrades. It's not recommended you try to gather money with all 12 units as you simply can't. Save up for the extra units and make them all at once.