(May 25th, 2013, 19:57)Cornflakes Wrote: Here's an idea ... since Kuro has a dream start and appears to be misusing it, we can have a little mini-game competition here in the lurker thread. Someone can create a save of the starting position and upload it here. Then all interested parties can play through and submit their best opening, say through T40? (or T50?) Closing date can be end of the corresponding turn in the actual game, and whoever submits the best opening by then wins
A 10-tile radius from the capital should be sufficient for planning city plants within the first 40-50 turns, but we may have to wait for a couple more turns of Kuro's scouting (unless Commodore has the map and could start us a SP game with his start).
I really should take this gauntlet...You know what? If I get some good news on Wednesday, I'll have the time to run a few sims here. If I don't, well, I can't in good conscience run sims here unless I also finish optimizing my PB12 start, and I'm not sure that I'll have time for both.
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 only conclusion I can come up with is that the guy has close to zero understanding of how to play out a start: Read: He's stupid.
I've run 2 sims. One of them involved growing to size 2 and going BW first whilst building a workboat. Then build and slave a worker. Including the revolt, I can get a city settled 889 to overlap 3 food resources on T26 with 1 worker and 1 forest chop, the deer and fish hooked. Both cities are size 1 though. With some tidying up I think it's possible to make this start somewhat more presentable.
The second sim was a straight forward build worker at size 1, hook corn and deer, then the worker loiters because it has nothing else to do. Because of tech costs, slavery doesn't come quick enough to slave out a second worker (why would you anyway) and slaving out a settler for 2 pop takes until T31 due to the revolt, but can get most of the second worker (if not all of it with a chop) by T32 (or be 2 turns from the third settler if you wanted to settle 8899 and 666). Growing to size 5, the figures mean you get the settler out one turn later but you are constantly working all 3 food resources.
One of the points I'm unsure of is the capital location. I actually think that settling 6 adjacent to the deer is a better city location, because it still enables the northern city to overlap 3 food resources, so it's a great second city, but then you could also settle a city on that little spit of land to overlap the corn and fish, but also have a clams tile, plus it makes a great Moai city. When I ran a few sims after moving the settler, it's quite interesting, because the better second city site is the 447 on that spit of land, and it can grow to size 2 (using corn) just around the time you would revolt to slavery to whip out a workboat for the fish, if you build a settler at size 2 with the improved corn and deer. Afterwards the capital can grow to size 3 and towards size 4, and to ensure there is enough pop to keep every food resource worked and double slave a worker at size 4 with a chop or mine/chop from the first worker. That's a much better start IMO.
Seems pretty slow, and cap has 11 turns whip unhappy. The two out-of-city warriors are potential next plants, probably iceball city is next but it's relying on the second deer which isn't in the WB save (hint, hint). It'll also need a library to connect copper which is probably doable in a timely fashion with a second deer hooked up.
(May 24th, 2013, 08:36)Commodore Wrote: So, theories about the map layout? You have the UU-counter triangle, the restricted pair, and "Ouch to Russia in the Ren era"...what else?
Wow, just spotted that your 'restricted pair' if that's the right ones, both have the expansive trait, and surprisingly, it's WLP who wants to be thinking about coastal plants, even more than Kuro needs to. WLP has cheap lighthouses and harbours (as well as the expansive rest) and is well placed to race Kuro to the GLH for mid-term benefit, even more so for the island plants if they exist.
WLP wants to be coastal planting by his traits, and expanding across the water too. But he has a shitload of land to grow into. Kuro's pressurised start, and Carracks, also give him the opportunity (and a better, much earlier one) to send settlers overseas. Warfare with his closest neighbour may prove fruitful too, if it can be achieved convincingly on either the east or west side. Or wholesale of course heheh.
Interesting scenario, the expansion masters in that spot. The one with plenty of land who has major advantages getting overseas and planting coastal cities with an easy opportunity to isolate his neighbour, and the neighbour who can grab offshore isles with ease but cramped and served well by war if he decides to attack.
