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Road to Utopia

#Real World  #Fantasy  #Novelty  
Created by Bla (all)
Went public on 9/15/2013
Number of ratings: 210
Average rating: 3.7761 / 5
889 territories, 253 bonuses, 4 distribution modes

Description

Race through Marx's theory of history towards the ultimate goal of communism. However, there are many challenges along and on the road to this goal. Can you overcome the challenges and bring harmony to the world?

Inspired by the Marxist theory of history, technology trees and exponential growth.

Some notes:
- It is adviced to make abandon cards available on this map.
- Diplomacy cards are not recommended.
- Keep attention to the single zone negative bonuses ("rushes") on the roads. Remember that the number in the bonuses may not reflect the actual bonus you get because they may contain negative bonuses.

A video of our second test game while the map was in development: :)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VcJU8NHkpE

Changelog:
1.1: Fixed a missing connection near the end of two Feudalism stages.

Reviews

Review by Nathan on 9/17/2013.
Interesting map. Very entertaining concept here - major kudos on originality and creativity.

My concern is that it's simply too big - and by that I mean that most games will be ended well before any player gets close to Communism mega-bonus - and probably before they get into Socialism. I think you could either reduce the number of territories in the map or else reduce the bonuses - which enables rapid conquering of enemy players.

Another suggestion is to eliminate the connections between players in their primitivism phases. In other words, make it so the first chance players have to encounter one another will be once they reach feudalism.

Cosmetically speaking, it would be fun if the territories, or at least the regions, had names that reflected historical developments and/or thinkers and concepts related to communism.

Minor correction - the connection between 23G and 23H is broken.
Response by map creator Bla on 9/22/2013
Thanks for the feedback. :)
I noticed the connections between 23G-23H and 23C-23D are broken, the fixed version will be released soon, I'm just waiting to see if more errors are found so there won't be too many small releases.

I'm considering making alternative versions of the map in the future, and I agree with many of your ideas.

Edit: The fix has been released.
11 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
It's alright. Could use moar understandable labels for the majority of the bubbles, like instead of 15F it should be like Feudalism Stage 15. Other than that, again, it's alright.
4 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Review by Gnapy on 9/18/2013.
very good map dude it's funny to play :)
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Review by Gunk on 3/2/2017.
It was a fun map to play. I took 66 turns with 7ai and no fog to complete. Great design and very original. Hats off for originality but I did find it a little long. I'm glad I played it though.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Review by Oatcutter on 3/28/2014.
Great map. Long but good.
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Review by SuomenSuurRuhtinas on 10/26/2013.
Awesome!
2 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Review by the Bloody-Nine on 4/3/2014.
Very interesting map with multi attack and heavy fog. Probably a lot of cool scenarios to play.
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by [REGL] Pooh on 10/29/2015.
nicely balanced :), but the bonuses are all backwards.
Response by map creator Bla on 12/20/2015
Thanks :) What do you mean by backwards?
3 out of 5 people found this review helpful.
Review by GeniusJKlopp on 11/2/2015.
Really nice. Awesome for 8 FFA starting on the bottom territories!
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by Andalorium on 12/2/2016.
Awesome map, definitely the scenarios make the map, and the huge negative unit bonuses to make you think twice about what path to take. Loved it.
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by t7soldier on 4/1/2018.
Love this map...no flaws I've found...have played dozens of games with it.
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by Julian on 5/12/2019.
Really liked the twists and turns
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by krinid on 5/12/2019.
Fun to play but very long. The problem with this map is that it incites warring with the players you start beside, but are rewarded for getting higher quicker. So if you neighbour one-sidedly drags you into an early fight while elsewhere on the map people don't fight until they're much higher, you by default have thus lost the game. You can't ignore the attack on you, as it will reduce your income and make you ineffective at climbing, but by fighting you're spending (wasting) units winning a fight instead of climbing, and others will continue up and likely cut you off.

So it seems to just becomes a matter of whether you have smart neighbours or not. If you don't, you lose. If you do, you're still in the game.

But it was fun to play.

Don't recommend with fog; light fog at most ... the game is so long that you could easily play 40-60 moves before realizing that you had already lost on turn 10.
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by JK_3 on 3/26/2020.
Its a very nice map, love the negative bonuses on key points to prevent rushing.
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by evanz2009 on 4/9/2021.
Very nice design and concept but very difficult level
1 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by usams on 9/16/2013.
you need to change finish part of this map only last territory called "communism" should be 2000 or even 3000. Just played this map and went for star as fast as is possible and get there just 3 turns before someone who spread everywhere. It is too unbalanced like this. You need give a hope for those who go fast also (not false hope like this is now).
Best regards
Response by map creator Bla on 9/16/2013
Thanks for the feedback. The bonus consisting of the 5 last territories give you 500 armies when you subtract the negative bonuses inside it. I think that is a lot already - in our last test game, nobody ever reached an income of over 900, but when I got Communism plus one of the socialist roads, my income quickly became 3000 and the game sort of wasn't very funny afterwards. (The socialist road bonus is now reduced from 1750 to a 400, but communism remained unchanged and is now by far the biggest bonus in the game.)

I didn't want your only objective to be being the first to reach the star, rather I think the map would give the most fun if it forces you to always consider whether it's worth rushing or if you need to stabilize your current situation.

But I am certainly open to changing the bonuses in the future based on people's experiences. Do you have a link to your game? Seeing how you played on the map could be helpful.
3 out of 6 people found this review helpful.
Review by elpibe1010 on 8/3/2014.
Climbing is great.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Review by VINAYAKA on 12/15/2014.
outstanding
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Review by askers on 11/22/2021.
If you don't care about the look this map has some potential for strategy.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.
Review by Gincompetent on 3/2/2023.
Fun map. Interesting setups
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.
Review by pcwoodland on 7/20/2023.
Pretty fun
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.
Review by Concorde Fan -{>-- on 9/14/2023.
unique yet entertaining map
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.
Review by Daniel on 1/19/2024.
Really good.
0 out of 0 people found this review helpful.
Review by Ultra TLC on 9/8/2018.
Interesting layout, though I'm not so fond of the implication that socialism is the next stage for humanity to progress through; I doubt anyone will have a government with that much integrity and power
1 out of 3 people found this review helpful.
Review by Martin Nowack on 9/21/2018.
very hard for Noobs :D
0 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by Matt Schwartz on 3/28/2020.
impossible. Obviously
0 out of 1 person found this review helpful.
Review by piepa on 12/26/2013.
asas
0 out of 8 people found this review helpful.
Review by Lord Raimonds of Baltic on 11/10/2013.
not good map
Response by map creator Bla on 11/10/2013
What did you not like about it? How could it be improved?
0 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
Review by amitab on 10/4/2013.
.
0 out of 14 people found this review helpful.