I'm making a small multiplayer RTS game and I'm having trouble finding a good way to lay out resources that is not entirely random, but is random enough that it doesn't seem repetitive? Yet is also fair for both players, at least to an extent. Been doing some research and I can't find any discussion on this subject. Any ideas for how to go about this? Thanks. 

2 hours ago, BananaLover said:

a good way to lay out resources that is not entirely random, but is random enough that it doesn't seem repetitive

Are you asking for a coding solution? Or a game design principle?

Fair placement usually means requiring each player to make a similar effort to get the same resources. This can be easily achieved with an exactly or approximately symmetrical map; how symmetrical depends on the details of what's needed to get resources.

For example, with some kind of unattended mine you might need to balance the sum of the time required for a flying scout to see the resource site and the time required for a builder to walk there and begin construction (since the difference between players is how soon they start getting the resource) while with workers that transport little parcels you might need to balance the size, throughput and latency of their queues, which depend on details of terrain and obstacles along the way.

You can look at how Age of Empires 3 or Age of Mythology custom random map scripts define a map to get an idea. Basically instead of generating a totally random map, you define  how some areas should overall be, and then put all the areas together. You can download some community-made scripts from these links:

• AoE3
• AoM 

and open the scripts (xs file) with any text editor.

In my experience there's only two types of players in RTS. Offensive & Defensive. They either tend toward one or the other and try to bridge the gap because the meta design dictates towards the bias of the designers playstyle.

Offer a balanced approach to building up resources within the confines of a base that are equally competitive to territory control, balance it by the time it takes to build up the in-base resources VS the ease / cost of territory resources. Territory resources should be cheap and fast but give less resources per unit VS in-base resources that take more time to build up but give more resources per unit.

You can start balancing from making a quantifiable norm. For example sum for (amount of resource at location)/ (walking distance from starting point to this location). When both players would have the same value of this norm it should be relatively balanced.