Impressive,

I am not shure about the gates and those cliff positions were you can bombard enemy base with siege, it does seems it may be fun, but being bombarded from above may be annoying. good thing you cant build towers there.

Ruins of Alterac

I am concerned about the size and the ammount of mines.

If compare it with ruins of alterac wich was used in tournaments

Ruins of alterac has 2 mines per player, 16 in total, Tasta castle has 6 per quadrant, 24 in total, so it has 3 per player, thats a great design. My point is that paths may be a bit narrow if 4 armies decide to collide in one place of the map, and thats where I compare it with ruins of alterac, ruins of alterac has more open space that benefits huge armies battles in one spot.

The map is really great, my sugestion is perhaps instead of 148x148 (160x160), do in (192x192) so you can have more space to place stuff and design paths.

also in mapping is always better to do it big and if you have empty space, you can narrow it, with trees doodads stuff.
but if you do something small and you need it more big to have more big paths for better huge battles, theres a big problem

as example when I did my 6FFA Frozen Streams

I did it in 190x216 (224x224) and I didnt have space. I barely could put 2 mines per player, and 6 red creeps,

the expandings mines in the center, I think they are interesting and a good spot for team battles, but I am not sure they will be that great to be used in an FFA, In fact I think it would be better to have confortable corner mines, than center ones. also center mines feel like too near each, while Ruins of alterac has the cleve design to aim the entrance to the players
center can have shops, red creeps, merc camps, that fun stuff.

-so my sugestion is that, reconsider the center, I think this map will benefit better to have corner mines with red creeps instead of fountains.
-and center can have 4 red creeps to be contested. so the map can have 8 red creeps that loots a permanent level 4 (for a fullhouse 8ffa play).

So now that the contest is over, I can review this

To be honest, I can complain about much. There are a few things that would be inadvisable for a 1v1 map, such as the gaps in the forests, or the various gates and passages supposed to be opened by cutting trees. Initially this irritated me somewhat, but for FFA really different rules apply.
The itemdrops also tend to be on the stronger end of the scale.
As an FFA map, I'm kinda surprised at the numerous small chokepoints, which could prove to be annoying for ground-heavy armies.

But I think the map has generally a very creative design and layout, and it is also visually polished. I havent looked at the other maps in full detail, but I think it's likely that I would also have rated it as a top 3 maps.

Therefore map approved.

For anyone interested, the results (and a download link) of the recent fml mapping contest are available here:
FFA Masters Map Contest 2020

mafe said:

So now that the contest is over, I can review this

To be honest, I can complain about much. There are a few things that would be inadvisable for a 1v1 map, such as the gaps in the forests, or the various gates and passages supposed to be opened by cutting trees. Initially this irritated me somewhat, but for FFA really different rules apply.
The itemdrops also tend to be on the stronger end of the scale.
As an FFA map, I'm kinda surprised at the numerous small chokepoints, which could prove to be annoying for ground-heavy armies.

But I think the map has generally a very creative design and layout, and it is also visually polished. I havent looked at the other maps in full detail, but I think it's likely that I would also have rated it as a top 3 maps.

Therefore map approved.

For anyone interested, the results (and a download link) of the recent fml mapping contest are available here:
FFA Masters Map Contest 2020

Click to expand...

thanks for sharing the exel file.
congratz to the user for the 3rd place, hard contest it seems.

Thank you both for the feedback. All my balance considerations were entirely for FFA, so many of the details (gaps in deep forest trees, ramps covered in trees, etc) may be a bit strange per 1v1 melee standards, so sorry about that.

As for the narrowness/tightness - it did come out a bit more cramped than I had originally envisioned and it would probably have been better a bit wider in some walkways for sure. As it is, I think it's just wide enough to work, and I have limited energy in changing it further, but will keep that in mind for future maps.

In latest version I have reduced total gold by 6k to make it slightly more balanced.

It looks cool visually.
You made some bold moves that i think looks nice.