Currently, when you start a new custom game, it defaults to the four player "Conflict" map where on both top left and bottom right side of the map, two players start close to each other. The default game setup for a custom game is this:
PLAYER ID NAME CONTROL MULTIPLIER FACTION TEAM
0 tomreyn Human -/- Egypt 1
1 -/- CPU 1.0 Indian 2
2 -/- (Closed) -/- -/- -/-
3 -/- (Closed) -/- -/- -/-
The average newbie will see that two players are in place, her/him and a bot, and just start the game. Which results in this player getting immediately attacked by the nearby CPU. So this setup is a bad default in my opinion. Sure, it does teach newbies that they need to look at the team ID (an important value which is unluckily positioned at the end of each row) and see how each players' team ID fits with the start positions color coded on the mini map.
The impact of the (very similar) defaults on Internet games are even worse, since newbies will often just start the game without making any modifications as soon as someone connects to the server they are hosting or (more likey) control.
I think a much better default setup would be to still use the Conflict map but to set players up like this:
PLAYER ID NAME CONTROL MULTIPLIER FACTION TEAM
0 tomreyn Human -/- Roman 1
1 -/- (Closed) -/- -/- -/-
2 -/- (Closed) -/- -/- -/-
3 -/- CPU 1.0 Indian 2
On Internet games, the default setup should be a cooperative setup like this:
PLAYER ID NAME CONTROL MULTIPLIER FACTION TEAM
0 tomreyn Human -/- Roman 1
1 -/- (Network) -/- Roman 1
2 -/- CPU 1.0 Indian 2
3 -/- CPU 1.0 Indian 2
Other options are possible here and can be discussed, but whichever setup is chosen should make more sense than the current default setup.
