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.
(April 16th, 2013, 21:25)gtAngel Wrote: Waiting for turn 50 for a big update on everything. Very little has happened so far beyond hitting enter each turn, so I have no motivation
I will be looking forward to it! Sorry that the turns have been boring.
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.
No problem, it's just the nature of FFH, especially since I didn't have any good calender resources to abuse early on and I had to make a bunch of warriors to keep the lizardmen at bay. I'll be posting my update either tonight or tomorrow morning since T50 is upon me.
So it seems that we have our first dead civilization. Condolences to Selrahc of the Illians - that is an unfortunate way to go. In other news, I'm chugging along towards code of laws and even got a research boon, which is pretty nice. River of Blood was cast before most people were size 3, dramatically slowing down the game for everyone not named Decius. I disagree with the timing personally - it would have been stronger if he had just waited a few turns so everyone would be size 3 first.
Top 5 Cities
With only four people left, this screen can reveal whenever the first expansion happens, and it has already happened! Someone has managed to get a second city all the way to size three. It's not too surprising though - I'm working on a settler myself and was forced to build several warriors to defend from angry lizardmen. Looking at the demographics it seems like most people have a second city, so I'm a little behind in that regard but given that my second city location kind of sucks I'm okay with it. Speaking of land...
Central Lands
Southern Lands
Eastern Lands
Northern Lands
Northeastern Lands
Calabim Lands
The Far East
This is all of the land I have revealed. The area around me is fairly good, outside of the multitude of forests. I'm actually planning on finishing Code of Laws and then going straight for Mining to clear out these forests. It will turn on a Wines resource as well, which is nice. Overall I will have a slow start, but I feel confident that I can leverage the large area and relative safety around my capital to more than make up for the initial slowness.
My tech plan right now is Code of Laws->Calender->Crafting->Mining->Runes of the Earthmother->Hunting, with the plan getting less and less solid as it reaches towards the future. The plan here is to get aristograrianism up as fast as possible because I don't have any strong commerce resources available any time soon. After that I want crafting and mining because everything good around me is covered in forests (and I have a wine resource) so I want to chop the offending forests away. Runes is a good followup for that - it gives me some defensive early game units I can use before I start relying on recon units, and it allows me to expand and hire aggressively without crashing my economy because of the passive +gold effects everything in the religion has.
Anyway, that's my current plan. Feel free to offer suggestions, critique, agreement, or anything else. I'll try to be responsive to any posts made here. Update wise I will probably be very infrequent until I have my second city out, and then more frequently until eventually I start updating regularly. It all depends on how soon actual decisions need made regularly. With all that out of the way, here are the graphs and demographics:
Demographics
Graphs
Looking at this I'm kind of in the middle or on the low end of most things. While not great, this isn't terrible either. Sidar shine in late mid game to late game so I can accept some stumbling and weakness early on, especially considering I have no strong resources to shoot me ahead.
Anyway, that's all for now. I'll get my city screen up here next turn because I forgot to take a screenshot of that.
I'm rather surprised by your decision to go for Code of Laws before Calendar and Mining. It'll be interesting to see if that works.
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.
The way I see it, early game is bottlenecked by research, mid game is bottlenecked by production. Code of Laws is the most research I can get out of any tech given my starting location, so that's what I prioritized. Calender only gives me 1 food 1 health from resources and Mining does almost nothing until I get a second city.
At least that's the theory, now I just need to make it work in practice
Looking at the demographics it seems like most people have a second city, so I'm a little behind in that regard but given that my second city location kind of sucks I'm okay with it. Speaking of land...
Where are you planning on putting that second city?
Probably to the west of the lake tile. That gives me a lot of farmable grassland, a wines resource, the ability to share the rice resource, and eventually the silks resource, all without having to go too far from my capitol.
I just don't have many options: The west is water, the south is all forests, no rivers, and only a single resource that's usable, and the east is unusable jungle. So it's just a matter of whether I prefer sheep or wines and I expect to have crafting done much sooner than animal husbandry.
Yeah, even though the areas overall are pretty balanced, I might have placed the jungle slightly too close to you. Edit: ehh, I stand by my decision right now. We'll see how it affects your development, 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.
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