I'm back. Thanks. Turned rolled, so I doubt that we need a pause, but if we do, I can't do it.
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.
Um... so Yuri has been in the process of taking over for me. When I got a second email in one day about a turn, i thought, "Oh, I guess yuri played" but looking at civ stats, my turn apparently ended immediately after the turn rolled, which means it was under AI control. This is also clear becuase it still lists my name instead of Yuri's which means he hasn't logged in! In other words, two turns -- ugh! Three! new turn email came as I was writing this -- have been played by the AI!!!
It was actually not a hardware outage (yay?). Get this: a car crashed into a utility pole, which carried a fibre line. All Atlantic Broadband service for DE and MD was out.
The outage seems to be over now, so things should be back up now with no reload needed.
If the timer is getting low you may want to pause until anyone who was kept from playing by the outage has a chance to do so.
