Adjust early mazing balance

[nvs]

A lot of information here is out of date. Some may still apply, however.

Early Maze Balance

Early mazing is a high-risk strategy that typically is more suited for experienced players with a decent understanding of the map. The benefits of early mazing are fairly obvious: less distance for the monsters to walk before damage can be applied. This can lead to a faster start. The benefit tends to disappear somewhere in the mid-to-late twenties, and could potentially be slower than alternative mazes in later ground levels.

The downsides are also fairly obvious: fewer chances to deal damage until a maze is established, especially noticeable on air rounds. These downsides are most prevalent in the early game, especially for players who opt to solely brute force the strategy (which tends to be an exercise in futility). Someone with a bit of patience and planning can generally avoid leaking in almost all games building early.

The addition of rated games in 1.5.0 (TODO: Find issue) will most likely push players away from high-risk strategies that are prone to losing early. This is because individual games will be given more weight and meaning, assuming a player cares about their win ratio and rating. Restarting because of 'bad luck' should become less of a thing in competitive races. This is good for the health of the map, as players generally will stay longer. But it will negatively affect early mazing's popularity. In my opinion, this strategy will need a bit of help in 1.5.0.

Ideas for 1.6.0

• Rework/rebalance the early combinations. There need to be more viable gold sinks before Round 20, so adding additional upgrade levels and giving people more strategic options seems like a good idea. (TODO: Find issue)
• Add a form of armor reduction to Air Slate that applies only to air. Air is always a threat to an early maze, so this gives an additional option throughout the game to address the problem.
• Add a few base gem auras. This may or may not make much of a difference, depending on the reworks to combinations. I say this as the only aura for sure being added in 1.5.0 is mana regeneration on Aquamarine. Currently, no early combinations use mana.
• Ease the difficulty on the earliest levels. This is a bit open-ended and ranges from touching the monsters, towers, or both.

Ideas after 1.6.0

• Introduce more slates and combinations. Obviously, not happening soon. And only the combinations have the possibility of making a direct impact within the first four rounds, assuming new early ones are implemented.
• Add more auras. All the ideas are not finalized just yet. But it is highly possible they will make the game feel a bit easier, especially early on.
• Rework the map layout to be a bit more enclosed near the start. This ties in with the idea of making games faster (TODO: Find issue), as the creep walk distance on spawn can be shortened. It would have implications regarding mazing, so this change would probably not make it into 1.5.0.

[nvs]

This is already being addressed with changes to the early combinations as well as the slates. I believe this can be closed, as there are other issues to cover a number of the topics mentioned above.