Written by chaos952
I do have a life outside BattleCity. That's my only excuse.
Anyways, guess who won again…-oops. I guess I gave that away. 
RBG will get to choose the next city for the next competition. 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! 
Note: Utrecht will not be placed on the list of available cities you can choose from, as it was opened by an administrator…
Comments from the Judges
zhantrim's note: First, I would like to say that the designs are steadily improving with each competition. I'm not sure if that's because the weaker designers got tired of the harassment and left or if people are getting better through practice. Hopefully it’s the latter. Secondly, Santa Fe is kind of like Huambo in that you have to try pretty hard to screw this place up. There is so much advantageous terrain that it’s easy to make a decent design here. This has created somewhat of a ceiling effect, resulting in a minimum of variance between scores. Hopefully, whoever wins will pick a more challenging location next time.
Winner – Entry #3 – RBG
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 8 8 10 26 zhantrim 9 9 9 27 Stubbs 8 10 9 27 |
Average Total Score: 27
chaos952: Huge southern weakness. Also, the lack of defense to the far west will give you trouble, as you have a single sleeper guarding four factories.
zhantrim: This is a really bizarre city, but I like it nonetheless. That whole eastern side appeals to me for some reason. Where would I attack? Probably through the orb research. Firstly, I would try and shoot the lone ss guarding all those western facts. Then I would bomb the orb res, shoot the plasma, and bomb the wall/ss factories. With these out of the way, the western inner defense is much less powerful, and there is a nice clean shot to the green factory. This plan involves a lot of bombs and time–I'm just saying that is what I'd try first. If this failed, I might try to bomb the walky factory and bomb res with my first bomb, shoot some turrets, and hope to reach your plasma/green factories. If I was able to do that, it would pretty much be over.
Stubbs: I really like this, it looks like it was well thought out. No major thing I disliked. But I felt this would hold up real well.
2nd Place – Entry #2 – Surge
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 8 7 10 25 zhantrim 8 8 10 26 Stubbs 5 7 8 20 |
Average Score: 24
chaos952: Your plasma turret factory is easy to reach, but your city is even weaker from the north. Destroy the orb research and orb factory (and any obstacles in your way), and your mine and turret factories would soon be gone. Once those are gone, you'll have virtually no defense around your CC.
zhantrim: Good city. I don't like the location of the plasma factory, b/c I think it is very easy to kill. The ss to the left is shot readily enough across the lava, after which I would enter the rocky entrance, sit in the corridor, shoot the ss to the south (which you can do without being hit, as it is only one space removed), shoot the wall, then drive up to the fact and sit on the little rock niche to its south. Unload about five bombs, and it is toast. With that out of the way and the ss you already shot, walls become accessible. If these are bombed as well with your remaining load, you can basically just drive over and orb because the plasmas are gone.
Most of your entrances are pretty strong and you make nice use of terrain. I like the positioning of your outer perimeter, forcing people to use two bombs or go through an entrance.
Stubbs: I like it,but the open cc (not surrounded by buildings) tends to be less productive. Overall I just started seeing problems, most of which could be improved, simply by rearranging the buildings. I just think i could be more bablanced, seems hard to get into the city, but pretty simple after that.
Tied for 3rd Place – Entry #1 – Zeike
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 8 8 8 24 zhantrim 8 7 9 24 Stubbs 8 6 7 21 |
Average Total Score: 23
chaos952: Huge southern weakness. Your mine, missile, laser, medkit, and turret factories are quite easy to reach. Also, up northwest, you have very little defense up there, so your wall, plasma turret, and sleeper factories will be easy to reach.
zhantrim: I think people would try and attack through your southeast entrance, or bomb through your walky research. In the former, my first bomb would be placed to the left of the wall, clearing a good deal of space. That would leave 2 greens in the way of the house adjacent to the cc. I like the thought of having a plasma on the cc proper, but take note that because of they way your houses are arranged, someone can bomb the southern one, then bomb the plasma without ever being shot.
When attacking through the walky res, only 2 greens stand between an attacker and the green fact/zooka fact. This is kind of bad, especially because you can hide between the two facts after shooting the green and not get hit.
Overall, you do an excellent job of concealing and separating good factories. I generally like your entrances, but I would suggest improving the northwestern and southeastern ones.
Stubbs: I like it, looks like you can get rid of a few buildings and turrets, but still have a hard time getting in.
Tied for 3rd Place – Entry #6 – yoyo
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 7 7 6 20 zhantrim 9 10 9 28 Stubbs 5 7 8 20 |
Average Score: 23
chaos952: Hmmm… Your wall and plasma factories are easy to reach via northwest, and so is your sleeper factory from the south, where you will be orbed from.
zhantrim: This design uses as somewhat similar approach to number five, but does a much nicer job with it. Better entrances, more defense, and more layers. Additionally, the factories are pretty spread out making a concentrated bombing difficult. I guessed right last time, and I would bet another million dollars that this is yoyo's design.
I love the little things, like having a zook fact right where you spawn; having the green res buried interiorly so that you can always make greens until the bitter end; using weaker factories as partial walls (meds, dfg, orb, walky), etc.
In terms of attack strategy, I might try using the walky entrance to tunnel southward and then westward, bombing the middle house/outer house first, and then bombing the three joined houses next. I could then run to walls and avoid any turrets. This would take shooting some mines and 2 bombs before I reached the walls. Of course, I would have to deal with that green outside first.
Stubbs: This has some promise, but I dont think it took advantage of the terrain. Just kept getting the feeling that this could be better.
5th Place – Entry #5 – ~Warlord~
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 9 9 7 25 zhantrim 5 6 6 17 Stubbs 9 7 6 22 |
Average Total Score: 21
chaos952: Orbed from the east. Sometimes the long way is the best way.
zhantrim: Well, this is hilarious. I've built designs like this before and they don't tend to work out so well. The ones that do the best have their "shell" to the north, b/c the cc cannot be orbed from this direction. This grants an additional "layer" that must be bombed through to reach it. My main concern in this design is that if you are using bombs (instead of defensive items) as the limiting factor between enemies and your cc, you better have a good way to shoot them. As it stands, it’s a pretty long drive to reach those northeastern houses and researches. Good tunnelers would make their entrance even harder for you to reach, such as bombing zook res and the house to the north of it, which would leave another angle for defenders to go around as well as an excellent position with only one more bomb to go before the cc. We are only talking about shooting one green here, which is pretty much a joke. You need some type of northeastern entrance for sure.
Stubbs: I like, except getting out to defend the NW is incredibly hard. One fix I would recommend would be place a plasma on the right tile of the CC, in place of the wall.
6th Place – Entry #7 – Nightwish
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 3 3 8 14 zhantrim 5 4 9 18 Stubbs 8 7 8 23 |
Average Total Score: 18
chaos952: Orbed from the south before you know it. Enough said. 
zhantrim: This is not a very good design, but I think it would hold up longer than it should because it’s in fe. First, the green factory has virtually no protection, as it can be bombed after taking out a single house without even shooting a turret. The cc has poor defense with all that open area around it. The southern entrance is very vulnerable to attack, as I see people bombing that lonely house, shooting the two measly turrets in the way, and then bombing for the orb. Finally, you have a great deal of wasted houses/research on the eastern side. If you count bombings, there are several places where you can get through in two, so it makes no sense to partially reinforce a whole segment for nothing. If there was a quality factory right behind that segment, I'd understand, but I can see no benefit here. You make it very easy for someone to bomb into the inner area without even dealing with turrets. This is a problem.
Stubbs: Love this layout, very original, very differenet. Would rethink location of RC's, and factories (swap turrets/zook, sleepers/orb, and orb RC/med RC, bomb RC and wall RC).
Last Place – Entry #4 – names
| Code: |
| Judge Buildings Defense Entrance Total chaos952 3 4 8 15 zhantrim 5 7 9 21 Stubbs 1 5 6 12 |
Average Total Score: 16
chaos952: This city doesn't look very well-planned to say the least… Many of your factories are waaaaaay too easy to reach (even if it means bombing through two rows of buildings to reach your vital factories). Your plasma turret and missile factories are just crying out, "Bomb me please!" Your walkie-talkie is wide open, and you won't be able to call back your commandos when you're being attacked by 3 or 4 people. Also, your bomb factory is blocked off…
zhantrim: Well, I'm not a big fan of this design–mainly because my commandos can't attack anyone without bombs. If I was to guess, I'd bet you meant for the bomb and wall fact to be reversed. I would definitely tunnel from the north, reaching some pretty decent factories (greens, walls, bombs) with little difficulty. Directly north, there is a huge weakness where the plasmas and zooks are. After shooting one green and bombing the zook res, I have open access to two fairly important items.
Stubbs: I'm sorry to say, but this is the worst designs ever. I am hoping this was an accident, But just look at the bomb factory. I would have at least swaped walls and bombs. but with that the interior defense is far from adaquet.
