Last week I was at Goodwill and I spotted a copy of Starcraft. The disc was clean and the price tag said “95 cents.” I figured at that price any game was worth picking up, especially one of the most acclaimed RTS games of all time. So I take it home, install it, start playing and suddenly remember why I never got into this game when it came out – it doesn’t have any random maps.

Before you eat up this delicious flame bait or stop reading let me make my case.

Ten years ago I discovered Age of Empires. I had been a huge fan of Warcraft I and II and so Age of Empires was a logical progression for me. I’ve also been interested in ancient history for a long time and having the chance to build an army of hoplites and attack Persian elephants was a dream come true. I greedily rushed through the campaigns and then began venturing online.

As someone whose only RTS experience was Warcraft, I was amazed by the random maps. Instead of relying on my memory I was forced to explore each map anew. Eagerly I sent my villagers out looking for berries, elephants, and the valuable shore fish. Rather than plodding toward the same points on a map every time I felt a rush as I discovered a choke point, an extra set of animals, or the perfect place for a storage pit.

These unpredictable maps fundamentally changed the way I started my game. No longer was learning and executing the optimal build order enough to be competitive. I was forced to think on my own about what to build and when. To think on my own!

I remember reading the frustration of newbies on forums when older players wouldn’t tell them exactly what were the best build orders. They just weren’t willing to grasp that there is no perfect build order or strategy for random maps, only principles that an intelligent player must consider and choices to be made when an opportunity presents itself.

One example of opportunity was the appearance of shore fish. Food is the critical resource at the beginning of any AoE game and shore fish are the fastest way to gather it. I remember exploring the black nothingness at the edge of my map and finding prime fishing spots somewhat far from my initial base. Even though I had chosen a race not ideally suited to rushing and intended to play a defensive game I felt that the extra food made a rush the strongest tactic. So I sent my workers away from my base, harvested the aquatic vertebrates, and then began building my barracks and archery range closer to the enemy base with those same workers. My gambit succeeded and victory was mine, even though it occurred nothing like I planned. That’s the sublime beauty of it.

For me this is where Age of Empires made a quantum leap over Starcraft (the year before SC was even released I might add.) Forcing players to make hard decisions in real time rather than allowing them to rely on memorization of maps and build orders to be competitive was a wonderful innovation. I’m not saying that memorization is sufficient to be a great Starcraft player, but it’s necessary in a way that it isn’t in Age of Empires.

When Warcraft III came out I was immediately disappointed by the lack of random maps. I’d already been playing Age of Kings, with its random maps, for three years. That Blizzard’s new RTS didn’t implement a feature I’d gotten used to five years before in the original Age of Empires just didn’t seem right.

I’m sure that some of you are thinking that you’d rather take a static starting spot selected for fairness (say that five times fast) over a fresh but potentially unbalanced map. But you shouldn’t.

Think about poker for a moment. On any given hand it’s unlikely that two players have the same hand, instead there will be a disparity in the value of starting hands. Players are forced to make due with what they’re given and play the best game possible. But over a large enough period of time all players will be dealt the same number of good and bad hands. That’s just the way our statistical world seems to work. Poor players will constantly gripe about bad luck but this is just an excuse, invariably the skilled players just overcome them. There’s a reason you see the same names on the payout lists at tournaments.

I’ll admit that AoE games exist where one player does have a clear advantage over the other. But I don’t remember having too many starting spots that were just impossible and I think we can all remember games where a superior player still overcomes a starting disadvantage and seizes victory. I’m arguing that dealing with a few crap spots is worth having a perpetually new and exciting game.

If one is worried that this makes a game with random maps less appropriate for competitive matches due to unfairness there is a simple solution – play multiple games. Even in chess, a game that couldn’t be much more static in initial conditions, important matches are decided over the course of several games. This gives each player sufficient opportunity to demonstrate his skill and overcome the slight disadvantage of being black, (somehow writing “not being white” doesn’t seem any better.)

I’m not saying that Starcraft isn’t a good game. The storyline is compelling, the characters interesting, and most importantly the gameplay is fun. But for me it’ll never be as fresh as a game of Age of Empires. Once the Starcraft campaigns are done I’ll probably uninstall it. I have no intention of logging onto Battlenet and competing with people, who for a decade, have been playing the same maps.