Mirage Recalibrated

Mirage Recalibrated keeps the wide desert duel of stock Mirage: each player has a compact ocean behind the base, leaving the centre as the long land contest. The tournament treatment makes that contest more legible with one central sunken gorge and two paired gorge layers, while one shared side roll coordinates the main expansions, Gold, hunt, and gorge flanks.

Fishing is an important renewable layer, but it is not a fixed Food total. Land Food remains variable and the side oceans make dock and shoreline vision part of the opening map-control question.

For Standard-size 1v1, the two Egyptian-sea areas each request 10% of the map from a short edge behind a player. Both oceans occupy similar short stretches of the player-side map edges as Standard Mirage, so the tournament version has neither a central sea nor a required crossing. The central land remains the route between bases.

Tournament desert, oceans, and gorge layout · Gameathlon 1.3 · Standard-size 1v1 historical example Click to enlarge

Each side receives three three-mahi groups along a fixed 48-meter north–south corridor, for eighteen renewable mahi in a complete successful layout. The source moves the groups toward shore because the water does not cover the whole side, but it does not define a fixed fish-to-shore distance or group-to-group spacing. Treat the overhead as one shoreline example, not a universal dock layout.

The tournament map builds a central sunken gorge and two mirrored gorge pairs: one forward pair at 65–80 m and one broader pair at 75–125 m. Each gorge sits eight meters down, uses one to four blobs and two ramps, and avoids water, buildings, and the player starts. That is five intended inland obstacles, not a coast barrier.

The paired layers use the same side roll as the main objectives. Their exact blobs and accepted positions still vary, but their route effect is gameplay-relevant: the central desert is less like a completely open rectangle and more like a contest through recurring inland terrain features.

Initial finite land Food ranges from 15,700 to 23,600, with about 19,463 expected. This counts land animals, berries, generated-value cows, and lion carcasses; it keeps the renewable mahi outside that total. The reviewed Gameathlon generation recorded 17,180 Food, within the source-supported range.

Each player receives three 50–70-tile starting palm-forest area requests and eight later player-side requests, for twenty-two forest attempts across the map. Forests avoid water, impassable land, settlements, Town Centers, and owner paths; later forests are also held away from the starts. The reviewed example contained 132,406 Wood, an observation rather than a fixed total.

A complete layout has 54,000 Gold: one 3,000-Gold opening mine and four 6,000-Gold later mines per player. The two close large-mine layers search 50–70 m and 50–100 m while staying at least 65 m from every start; two outer large mines per player begin at 80 m. The reviewed tournament map recorded the expected 54,000 Gold.

Later mines remain 55 m apart and avoid water, tower safety, settlement space, and impassable ground. All paired large-mine layers inherit the tournament side roll, so the resource flanks read with the rest of the structured objective layout.

Each player has one backward settlement at 60–80 m and one aggressive settlement at 70–100 m. Both avoid edges, siege-ship range, tower safety, impassable ground, and a 40 m central exclusion. The tournament map applies the same-side or opposite-side roll to both settlement pairs, producing a more consistently readable objective flank than Standard Mirage.

Four relics are attempted, two per player. They start at least 80 m from every player, seek 80 m separation, and avoid water, impassable ground, tower safety, and settlement space. They remain an independent inland scouting layer rather than another shared-side package.

The tournament map keeps the Standard 380 × 240 m footprint, paired player-side oceans, eighteen mahi, variable land-Food envelope, four relics, and 54k complete Gold layout. Its strategic recalibration is terrain and coordination: stock Mirage rolls four to six gorges, while the tournament version asks for one central gorge plus two paired layers, for five intended gorges.

Tournament Mirage also brings both settlement layers, later Gold, close and outer hunt, and paired gorges under one shared flank roll, and grows later palm-forest requests from twelve to sixteen. The ocean treatment, map size, Food and Gold counts, fish count, and base desert palette are not a new economy. Lighting, terrain decoration, and the presentation-only biome setup are cosmetic or implementation-only.