OO is also more balance-able than the Lanun because everyone theoretically has access to it; although, I wouldn't want to play a multiplayer map where it is the one right choice
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
(February 21st, 2013, 12:56)Qgqqqqq Wrote: Wow this would be super unbalanc_ed as lanun - I suppose OO balance occurs because there's then an areas inland where the lakes thin out and disappear.
Yeah, and non-Lanun people don't want a heck of a lot of coastal cities anyway. Although Foreign Trade might push us that direction...
Anyway, I think with care we ought to be able to rule the waves with floating eyes, Maelstrom, and ships. If we want to.
Quote:Not even gonna bother mentioning what o think of the lair - I'm sure you can guess
Wow that's an awesome pop, do you see the city as aiming on commerce? If not settling might still be better.
I think it's bound to be a hybrid city - some of everything. But...because of the Palace, working even just three riverside tiles lets the Academy break even with a settled sage on beakers. Or its current tile plus either an Elder Council or an Inspiration. Or 2 farms and a trade route. Those are all things that seem obviously worth doing, even if I went full hammers here.
If I do more than one of those, or build and work a cottage or an aristofarm, then it's ahead.
The only thing I'm missing is the extra hammer/turn. But I think I'm willing to sacrifice that for the extreme upside potential.
Quote:Where's the valor scout atm - have you met anyone, or are you keeping it close?
It just found the dead end of the southeast peninsula and is coming back. Planning to reveal another ring around the eastern edge of the scouted zone. Haven't met anyone, and I don't think it's worth a beeline to try for that either, especially now that we've got that nice bonus. Better to meet people after we're ahead, than to let them know we're the ones needing suppression.
Quote:Will you have hunting in time for city 3 or is it just gonna grow on ariagrarian grass?
Not really sure. I would like to get Hunting - fur from Ringmaster's third ring, deer for health, are both good things. But I don't have a good feel how fast research will be compared to settlement, especially with the boost we just got. Probably won't be able to manage it, quite, although that's an argument for something like Calendar -> Crafting -> Mining -> AH -> Hunting as a tech order. That only leaves out AC/Edu/Myst, and we can get by with just silks, gems, and Academy for a bit here.
Been doing some thinking about how T14 Academy should change our plans, and on net, I can't really come up with anything. We're still likely to be commerce limited rather than production limited, for the most part. We still need a lot of beakers even just for city 2 to work its resources, and we still want the same techs.
Long term, I think this might give us a reason to leave behind some of the more marginal hammer -> commerce conversion options. In particular, I had been toying with the idea of Kilmorph, but the more I think about it, the less happy I am with the idea of spending 120 hammers/city for 3 gpt/2 happy (assuming gems and staying in Religion, though). Might be worth doing if I could guarantee being Spiritual, though. Or if I can count on free spreads.
Something that I've been giving some serious thought to: Giving Slavery a serious test again. Conventional wisdom says that it's bad in FFH because: granaries are more expensive and give less, and Slavery comes later when you don't want to be whipping off tiles (and when the food/pop ratio is worse).
I believe the conversion rate on Quick is 1 pop -> 20 base hammers, and one pop is 14 food + 1*city size.
So basically we'd be looking at approximately 1 food becoming 1 hammer before Granary/Smokehouse, and 1 food becoming 1.6 hammers after that significant investment. And a happiness penalty as long as we're whipping.
Oh, and another cost: Going Slavery means we can't go Apprenticeship for help in Mage generation, nor Military state for the hammer boost and support boost and drafting. Although...come to think about it, we can get the same effects from Undercouncil, for the most part, and we'll want UC definitely, totally.
To counterbalance that - as Perp, we will frequently have doubled buildings worth whipping - the ratio is much better then. If we're ever expansive or industrious, whipping will pay dramatically then as well.
And...food is much more plentiful than hammers, usually. Could emphasize that if we were to, say, go to an early festivals, early Drama, and bulb Sanitation.
Finally, of course, we get some of that whip happiness back by adding Slave Cages to our Freak shows. Slavery is definitely the earliest civic that can do that.
I guess, I'm thinking that perhaps Slavery is merely no longer OMG awesome like it is in base BtS, but it still might be pretty good. If a player were to focus on it, anyway, and actually build oodles of granaries and smokehouses and use them for more than just Health.
Looks like only me and maybe one other - gtAngel, I think, from the scoreboard, went for a worker-worker opening
If Ellimist is planning to use River of Blood soon, it's going to have to be before he grows to size 4, so, we might manage to avoid it thanks to our delay. Or else he'd hurt himself quite a bit, keeping an extra pop around.
Went for the Academy after all, which greatly boosted our demos. Remember that we're at 8.8 culture/turn at the moment, so our GNP lead isn't quite as huge as it looks. But it's still very nice:
Finally, it looks like we may have another interesting challenge this game:
Not sure if that's the result of events, or maybe someone popped ashen veil from a lair, but AC already at 10 means we may have armageddon issues this game. Suppose that's a point in favor of a slavery-type economy - the ability to shed population quickly and usefully, and a granary/smokehouse in every city would help weather Blight, too.
I think I'll give it a whirl, anyway. Aim for mid-game civics of City States/Religion/Slavery/Foreign Trade/Undercouncil, with hopefully a late game swap to Republic for all the towns I will surely have.
(February 23rd, 2013, 22:46)Mattimeo Wrote: From your screenshots, looks like the AC started at 5, as well. So it might be the map causing some of it.
True. Still is something to keep an eye on.
T16 was a mixture of good and bad news. On the one hand, Polo's still alive, still finding new stuff - at the moment some really lush land after we can remove the jungle on top. On the other:
Looks like we won't have the option to explore the barrow, not until we build a few more units. We even had odds - the scout had empower I, guerilla, was on a hill - should have been +10+40+25+50% against the griffon, or equiv Str 4.5 vs Str 4. Granted, that's only ~70%, but it's still annoying. Not that I plan to complain about the RNG anytime soon after our Sage - who already saved us a turn on our first tech.
Given the sheer number of griffons we're spotting, an early Hunting may be a good idea for more than just the deer and furs
Good news, though: first, gtAngel grew to size 2 as well. Not sure why he was delayed from the others; maybe he had some form of barb invasion too and worked suboptimal tiles. This means that everyone ought to beat me to size 3, though, so there's a very good chance Elli fires the WS while it can't hurt us.
In better news, though, both Calendar and worker #2 completed this turn. We'll spend a turn in revolt, then aim for quick growth and a settler, while researching toward Mining to unlock the gems and silks (forested silks). Worker plan is to get the rice improved pronto, then split up - one will go plantation the banana and possible start putting up roads to the sheep, while the other builds a road to the city2 site and to all the forested tiles we want improved as soon as Mining comes in. In particular, it'd be nice if we could have the silk and a farm ready for city2 by the time it's built.
In retrospect, I should have put just one turn into the 2nd riverside farm, and instead had three turns into the rice farm by now. We'll have the first couple turns of serious growth on a lesser tile. I know I had to delay the rice for the skeleton invasion, but it didn't have to delay this much.
Edit: Actually, on reflection, this won't necessarily be true. Next turn is a revolution, and the turn after we can have the rice improved before ending turn. The bigger question is whether it's worth giving up a base commerce for faster growth. Normally that would be a no-brainer, but there's a couple mitigating factors: going from 9 to 10 base commerce, due to rounding, takes us from 15 to 13 beakers. At least we're researching a no-prereq tech next, so it's not from 18 to 15.
More importantly, we want to sandbag our growth so that we're not affected by River of Blood. It'd be rather silly to sacrifice commerce for food if that results in us being hurt by RoB instead of unaffected.
Alright, Vindication! Ellimist fired off River of Blood last turn, now he's size 5 and everyone else is size 1. Except that one of us has two workers, a revolution to Agrarianism, and an Academy, while most of the rest have a whole lot of nothing to show for their growth.
Next turn we grow to size 2, and from then on we'll be maximizing growth. Hopefully the Academy lets us catch up to Elli. That or our own WS, which of course won't be happening for a long while yet.
In other news, Marsh slows workers a ton. 4 turns for a road, 7 for a farm or plantation - it's a good thing we've got extra workers. Have the rice and two riverside grassland tiles farmed already, and IIRC there's not too much more we can do without Mining. Full speed ahead for that tech, though, so it shouldn't be too much longer.
LOL placing a jungle on top of the marsh banana would have been evil. I didn't want to do that for a variety of reasons, however.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
Its the one reason I hate erebuscontinent - you finally hack out the jungle, and it turns out there was disgusting marsh beneath
I don't care so much on a resource basis, but a swathe of the stuff is pure evil.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
(March 4th, 2013, 01:55)Qgqqqqq Wrote: Its the one reason I hate erebuscontinent - you finally hack out the jungle, and it turns out there was disgusting marsh beneath
I don't care so much on a resource basis, but a swathe of the stuff is pure evil.
Wow, that actually spawns naturally? If you checked ahead of time, however, you should know that here is marsh underneath.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
0. Player Requests: The player's requests take precedence, even if they contradict the following guidelines.
1. Balance: The map must be balanced, both in regards to land quality and availability and in regards to special civilization features. A map may be wonderfully unique and surprising, but, if it is unbalanced, the game will suffer and the player's enjoyment will not be as high as it could be.
2. Identity and Enjoyment: The map should be interesting to play at all levels, from city placement and management to the border-created interactions between civilizations, and should include varied terrain. Flavor should enhance the inherent pleasure resulting from the underlying tile arrangements. The map should not be exceedingly lush, but it is better to err on the lush side than on the poor side when placing terrain.
3. Feel (Avoiding Gimmicks): The map should not be overwhelmed or dominated by the mapmaker's flavor. Embellishment of the map through the use of special improvements, barbarian units, and abnormal terrain can enhance the identity and enjoyment of the map, but should take a backseat to the more normal aspects of the map. The game should usually not revolve around the flavor, but merely be accented by it.
4. Realism: Where possible, the terrain of the map should be realistic. Jungles on desert tiles, or even next to desert tiles, should therefore have a very specific reason for existing. Rivers should run downhill or across level ground into bodies of water. Irrigated terrain should have a higher grassland to plains ratio than dry terrain. Mountain chains should cast rain shadows. Islands, mountains, and peninsulas should follow logical plate tectonics.
![[Image: PBEM25%20T14-size.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/PBEM25%20T14-size.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM25%20T14-demos.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/PBEM25%20T14-demos.JPG)
![[Image: PBEM25%20T14-AC.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/PBEM25%20T14-AC.JPG)
- the ability to shed population quickly and usefully, and a granary/smokehouse in every city would help weather Blight, too. 
![[Image: PBEM25%20T16%20scout.JPG]](https://dl.dropbox.com/u/16549110/PBEM25%20T16%20scout.JPG)
