Written by chaos952
RBG will get to choose the city for the next city… again. That's 4 wins straight. Come on RBG, go easy on them! Choose Huambo so that everybody else has a chance of winning! 
Check out the list of cities that you can choose from here. You all submitted great designs, and hopefully you will submit great designs again for the competitions to come! 
If RBG does choose Huambo (which I highly doubt he will), I'd better not see Chris' Huambo, as almost everybody builds Chris' Huambo. 
Comments from the Judges
Winner – Entry #1 – RBG
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 7 8 9 24 Dunebug 10 9 10 29 Stubbs 8 8 7 23 zhantrim 9 9 9 27 |
Average Total Score: 26
chaos952: The southeastern and southern entrances are very inviting to attackers, even though you have 3 turrets at both of those entrances. Attackers will definitely be persistent on attacking those two areas. Once your plasma factory is gone, you're pretty much doomed.
Dunebug: This is a quality design. Only suggestions I have are: move the orb research to where the hosp is, put the hosp below it. There’s really no weak spot. Maybe move your cougar and lazer factories apart but not a big deal either. If I had to attack it I’d attack from the west or south. Both have a bunch of shit to blow through before you can do anything so … Kudos for having such a good design. The one point you missed is ‘cuz that plasma one square east of the plasma factory is the only thing covering that area, which if bombed will undoubtedly get you orbed. Also I’m a douchebag. So I wouldn’t give out a 30 and maybe I was just looking for something to pick at
zhantrim: This is a very nice and well thought out design. You have good entrances for the most part, solid house/res barriers and some nice interior decorating. The line of vertical factories to the east is a very good thought, as it makes it difficult to effectively bomb multiples of them. They do offer hidey holes, though if I'm defending, I would hope someone would trap themselves in there so I could drop mines or a turret on the outlet. South seems to need one additional turret, though I do notice that you have four layers there. Take note of the northeastern entrance and its guardian turret. Remember that it can be shot from across the lava. With my designs of this city, I had buildings block that line. Then again, there is nothing worth bombing up there. One kind of minor thing that I liked a lot was the placement of the orb res (though I would have used a turret res instead). I think many people would have used a factory there and I think that this is better. It almost breaks the city in half without limiting defender mobility and it makes a northern approach that much more difficult. The weakest entrance is northwest. I would spend some time setting up entrances and having your friends practice on them. The entrances with a turret two spaces away are easy to penetrate for a skilled attacker. Kudos for a job well done.
2nd Place – Entry #4 – yoyo
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 7 8 9 25 Dunebug 8 8 10 26 Stubbs 8 8 6 22 zhantrim 7 7 8 22 |
Average Total Score: 24
chaos952: Orbed from the west. Your bomb factory is easy to reach, and once that's gone, your offensive abilities will be crippled until you get the bomb factory back up. Not much else I can say.
Dunebug: At first glance, blow up the green research and kill that plasma… could either try to bomb or try to kill the plasma that’s farther east. Or maybe try to stand far back and kill the sleeper by the lazer factory, which would give you a load of options.
SE Entrance has 3 layers of scented carrots in front of it and nothing good to bomb.
South would be worth it though. What you do is, set a bomb on the house then start shooting the plasma, backup before bomb explodes and kill the green then start shooting the plasma again.
From there you can either kill the green across the lava or bomb the walkie factory, maybe both. Bomb the sleeper factory and you’re golden goose! If you’re stupid you’ll bomb the sleeper factory and the hospital, which will allow the plasma to shoot you and also disallow you to heal.
Make sure that housing in the northeast doesn’t power anything in the northeast.
zhantrim: This is another design with some very nice features but a few weaknesses. In terms of flaws, I think that the southwestern entrance is too flimsy and the southern entrance is only average. Many attackers would bomb the med research to gain access to the two plasmas as opposed to dealing with the difficult angles. Once this is gone, they can shoot them quite easily enough. Another exploit from this approach is that bombs laid to open the cc will actually destroy the wall as well–a huge problem. In fact, with this setup, I wouldn't have even put that wall there (actually, I would never have this setup, I'm just saying hypothetically). In terms of good things, you have some excellent turret angles. I really like the northeastern entrance. I commented earlier about blocking shots across the lava and you've done that nicely here. I think that turret would be a bear to shoot without laying some demolition first. Some mayors eventually notice that the shooter's angle becomes more difficult depending on the location he is facing. For some reason, BC tanks do not originate their shots from their centers. They instead fire slightly offset to the north. This makes some entrances impossible to enter without bombing something first. In general, I like this design, but the glaring southwestern weakness to the cc forces me to give it a lower score than I would like. Excellent effort.
Tied for 3rd Place – Entry #3 – merloch
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 7 8 4 19 Dunebug 8 8 8 24 Stubbs 7 6 7 20 zhantrim 8 8 9 25 |
Average Total Score: 22
chaos952: Orbed from the south. Why do I say that? Because you have no entrances over there to deal with attackers attacking there. You might as well let them bomb both of your houses to save you the time of driving all the way over there. 
Also, you should never put all three of your turret factories around your CC. Why? Because once walls are gone, you will have to demolish one of your turret factories to set your commandos free.
Dunebug: At first glance south or southeast is the way to go. Gotta blow through some buildings but at least they are houses. Two turrets will slow a guy down but won’t stop ‘em and a defender will take forever to get down there.
Southwest looks pretty solid, there’s a lot of shit to kill before you can really bomb.
I guess if I have any suggestions it’s move your turrets on the south and southeast closer to your factories. That’ll help a lot. Oh you also have all turret factories around the CC, so if your wall factory gets blown up you’re going to have to doze something important.
zhantrim: This design is certainly promising, but south makes me very nervous, especially directly south. Two plasmas and two houses are the only things guarding your cc, in addition to arguably the two most important factories in your arsenal. I definitely would have more turrets there. Additionally, if built poorly, those houses might actually be fueling the turret factories allowing them to be shot, but I will assume this is not the case. Many people would attack this city from that position. Southeast is similar but a little better. I generally discourage large areas of open space as they afford the attacker too much room to maneuver around turret fire. A happy medium is best, for tiny spaces (read: Method) give too many hidey holes for bombers with dfg. This is a good design, but not as good as #1 in my opinion.
Tied for 3rd Place – Entry #6 – Surge
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 7 7 10 24 Dunebug 8 7 8 23 Stubbs 8 6 7 21 zhantrim 6 5 9 20 |
Average Total Score: 22
chaos952: Orbed from the northwest. Shoot the the turret guarding that entrance, shoot the plasma inside, shoot the sleeper further down, bomb the plasma turret and missile factories (and the left wall on the CC). Also, the mine, turret, and wall factories are within easy reach from the southeast.
Dunebug: Comments: It’s bad to be the last city because I’m tired of grading now. This city design’s not bad in my opinion.
We’ll start at the southwest, which is weak. It’s Hard for it not to be given the proximity of that entrance to the CC. But still I can bomb your zook fact without actually having to kill a turret. If I wanted to kill some turrets, that plasma is the only thing guarding your CC so it’s a great place to start. Now if that’s gone then the CC is completely uncovered.
Southeast is poor. If you don’t believe me that’s fine, But it is. 2 turrets and a building and from that I can get walls and greens without much trouble. The silver lining is that all the turrets around your CC are plasmas and blowing up those 2 facts won’t guarantee an orb.
Speaking of plasmas your plasma factory is pretty secure but you’re going to have to do a lot of walking to get to it. Just move the sleeper a square or two away so you can get in there. It’s stupid where it is you can just bomb below the rock and kill the plasma factory. Of course why would you do that when you could just get the zooks instead and then orb it.
zhantrim: This design is very weak from a tunneling approach to the west. Even worse, given Harbin's location on the map, many people will be coming from this angle. I would bomb the plasma res and the house to its west, drive on top of the zook factory, and then lay about 10 bombs next to the cc, taking out the wall in the process. This orb would be practically unsatisfying. Pay more attention to turret angles. The plasma to the right of the laser factory has an excellent shot to the northeast entrance, but the plasma to the west of the plasma factory is not doing much to protect the northwestern entrance. Finally, the southeastern entrance is frankly terrible, allowing ready access to the walls, mines and greens with minimal defense.
5th Place – Entry #2 – Scile
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 8 7 8 23 Dunebug 7 8 9 24 Stubbs 6 7 5 18 zhantrim 4 4 8 16 |
Average Total Score: 20
chaos952: Expect to get hammered from the south and directly west of the CC. Your turret factory is easy to reach; just bomb the wall research and shoot the plasma guarding that entrance. The bomb, orb, missile, and mine factories are easy to reach as well. In league games, that will really hurt.
Dunebug: I really don’t like when the buildings are adjacent to the CC. It leaves it open for a “mole attack”. Which you probably know and it IS 3 layers of buildings to blow through so it’s not a terrible weakness. It’s just the first thing I see when I look at the city. Mole spots are weak just because you have to walk so far to get to the spot so you can defend it. The rest of the city has many plausible attack points, it’s not that your buildings are poorly placed it’s just that nothing’s really ironclad. There are too many turrets that will be too far away to kill a good orber. For example:
SW: Yes you’ll have to blow through 2 layers but you wont have to kill that green. If you kill that plasma you’re good to go.
S: Not bad, obviously going to have to kill a building so you can shoot the green. Provided the orber doesn’t run over mines or dfg’s on his way in, that plasma isn’t terribly hard to shoot from behind the dfg factory, and after it’s dead you can bomb.
N: kill a green, bomb a house, kill a plasma… Bomb the green factory. If you’re creative you could try to bomb the green research in the same run, which if both blew up would open the city. That’d be very swift.
zhantrim: This design has some easily exploitable weaknesses. Northeast comes immediately to mind, as it is both difficult to defend and easy to attack. An opponent can quickly take out your valuable bomb factory and possibly your zooks without too much trouble. Secondly, your southeastern entrance is lacking. Many attackers will tunnel northward from the house, choosing to ignore all the turrets to the west. They can shoot your plasma guarding the turret factory while being shielded by the western buildings and then quickly punch a hole to the cc, taking out plasmas in the process. Usually, when a city has a weak entrance it is because another entrance has too many turrets. Unfortunately for this design, there are multiple weak points, making me wonder where all the turrets went. The southern entrance is much too flimsy considering it has access to both ss, greens and plasmas. There are only a handful of turrets in the way, and the walky fact actually aids the attacker by shielding him from turrets as he bombs it. Once the ss in front of your ss/plasma facts is killed, an attacker can sit on the junction of those two factories and lay hit whole load of bombs without being hit by either of the plasmas. This is a major problem.
Last Place – Entry #5 – nightwish
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 2 2 7 11 Dunebug 3 5 5 13 Stubbs 3 7 5 15 zhantrim 2 2 9 13 |
Average Total Score: 13
chaos952: …
Dunebug: Oh yeah this one. Well I hate to break it to you, but even if the map was like that your city would still suck. For one, can you imagine how long it’s going to take you to get replacement turrets if 2 factories are over there? That’s going to be what’ll kill you if not the fact that you really haven’t guarded them that well. You could end up bombing those factories by shooting 2 turrets, a wall, and blowing up 2 layers of buildings. For all 3 factories that is Oh so worth it.
If not by doing that, you could come in from the south and shoot the sleepers from across the lava then run in to bomb them.
Southwest is also pretty easy because the firing angles are perfect, for orbers.
Stubbs: I dont know if they thought you cant get to those facts on the East, or what, but you can… which makes this design horrible. granted at first they probably wont attack there, but eventually they would, and your screwed if they get those 3 facts.
zhantrim: I feel sorry for this design. They had a good thought of trying to manipulate the eastern terrain, but lo and behold, it was not to be. As it stands, with several of its major defensive factories in such a vulnerable position, I am forced to give this a terrible score.
