(February 28th, 2014, 10:39)Bacchus Wrote:(February 28th, 2014, 09:50)Fintourist Wrote: In principle I would prefer that everyone has as equal space and equal land quality as reasonably possibly
I don't think that's a good idea — 33 more-or-less identical patches of ground, more-or-less identically sized I think goes against the whole spirit of this venture. Something similar is already in play, PB17, and I don't like it for this event. Besides, if you try to make it more-or-less identical for 33 civs, it would have to be snaky as fuck to ensure a more-or-less equal proportion of water tiles within everybody's "zone of natural expansion". I am thus very strongly for Commodore's suggestion, maybe even with an amendment that we also have a choice of coast/land bias in addition to pole+wide/equator+tight bias. Coasts are just no fun to play without Fin, and vice versa if you roll Vicky of Portugal you rather want to have lots of them. Actually, just the fact that someone WILL be Portugal is probably enough to let that person know whether he has reasonable sea access or not, as he could well end up playing with no UB and UU for practical purposes, to pile onto no initial starting tech.
Oh, I mean my quoted comment only roughly, I'm completely fine with prioritizing interesting above perfectly balanced. That said, it would be nice if nobody loses the game on T0.
But, personally I would not like it if a civ is guaranteed to have a suitable start for its UU/UB, starting techs, etc. Rome should not know 100 % in advance that it has iron easily available and Portugal/Vikings should not be certain to have coastal capital. (Although in typical RB Pitbosses players don't get totally screwed by basic strategic resources and I would assume that this game will have decent amount of water too... so this won't be an issue anyways)
I'm not a fan of being allowed to express wishes regarding what kind of start one wants. I both enjoy the fact that I'm given a random start that is not designed to my pick and I think it's a lot more fair. I don't think that one should be able to wish a spacious start with ORG leader or cramped start with CRE. I imagine it would be an enormous job for Commodore also to try to implement 33/34 wishes instead of just trying to create 33/34 viable starts that to some extent are suitable and interesting for all civs and leaders. Or is the idea of this game more role-playish and whoever draws Vikings is specifically put onto some area with small islands and teams with 2-mover UUs have lot of bare and flat tiles around their start where Keshiks etc. can roam?