For some reason, i have a feeling that current balance does not allow making good 1x1 maps.
(1) On every map, oils that naturally belong to each player are classified as either [o.1]"oils inside your base" or [o.2]"oils to fight for and protect outside the base". Lack of the former boosts rush strategies, lack of the latter boosts turtle strategies.
(2) Now, we traditionally put exactly 4 oils at the base. It fills up the generator, which looks good, and 8 oils, to fill two gens, seem to be too much for a base; not only due to balance reasons, but also because such concentration is unrealistic, and repeating derrick objects mess up the terrain beauty.
(3) We still expect to have around 8 or 10 derricks per player. It gives mostly just right amounts of units to every side: you can still control them, but already not bored. It also gives balance between production and research prices, forcing you to have neither labs nor factories reach the limit of 5 structures. Unlike purely aesthetic statements (1) and (2), this statement is a property of game balance only.
(4) This leaves us with 4 to 6 derricks to protect outside the base. But, due to reasons explained in (1), this is too much for the "outside" part.
This contradiction shows why i cannot make any good maps.
Some nice excuses do i come up with, huh?
So, in order to avoid the problem explained above, most maps have grey areas of wasted terrain. The "outside" oils are further classified into far oils [o.2a]"oils to fight for, which you can temporarily sacrifice if necessary, but then still stand up and reclaim them" and middle oils [o.2b]"oils that you cannot sacrifice, if you do, you are already dead". Oils of category [o.2b] are balance-wise indistinguishable from oils of category [o.1]. They form the wasted terrain: you are forced to draw them simply to have a balanced map, their only function is to add more base oils without placing them inside the base. They only annoy players who need to remember more oil positions and move trucks around to capture them, and annoy map makers who need to invent terrain to hold such useless stuff.
From that, i state a long-term (not for 3.1, of course) balance suggestion:
- Power output of oil derricks should be increased by around 25%.