Looks like we could put a nice little city down there, which grabs the gems and three grasslands farms.
Unfortunately, it looks a bit distant from the capital.
So, options?
1) Ignore the distance and settle there anyway.
2) Leave the gems be for now, settle our second city to the SW or on the plains hill to our immediate east.
3) Put a city south of the plains hill, grabbing wheat and gems. Okay in the short run, lousy in the long run.
What are the difficulty level and world wrap settings?
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.
Two more turns played (looks like we've got some solid PYFT with this lineup).
Latest news is somewhat unfortunate:
We're now down a scout. And our warrior better get home in a hurry if we don't want to be down a capital...
On the bright side, we finished our first worker at EOT. First job is to farm the wheat. By the time that's done, I'll need to cook up some kind of micro plan. Looks like we've got all the map knowledge we're going to get for a while, so I might as well update the sandbox and see how the three possibilities I mentioned earlier compare...
Another turn played. Started farming the wheat, starting warrior is returning home, capital is building a second warrior.
On another note: since it looks like XXV is over now, I guess I can talk about it here. Which is good, because I think it can teach some important lessons for this game. Once again, I'm an Expansive leader on a friggin' enormous map, at Emperor difficulty. In XXV, I used the cheap settlers to overexpand and cripple my economy: even running City States, my breakeven science was something like 30% at the end. The question is, how do I avoid making the same mistake here?
1) Trade route income. Make Trade a priority. Go Fishing/Sailing for island cities. Run City States and Foreign Trade, so that each city has at least three trade routes (more where I build Stables, which I should do in plenty of cities).
2) The standard: semi-beeline to Code of Laws, run Aristocracy/Agrarianism, and add Construction/Sanitation soon thereafter.
Construction doubles as a military tech: I'll want chariots anyway.
These aren't entirely mutually exclusive: I'll want Sanitation eventually even if I go route 1), and I'll want Trade eventually even if I go route 2). But I can't very well run both City States/Foreign Trade and Aristocracy/Agrarianism, and I should decide soonish which one makes more sense on a map like this.
![[Image: Civ4_Screen_Shot0004.jpg]](http://s12.postimg.org/pujyjuavh/Civ4_Screen_Shot0004.jpg)
.![[Image: Civ4_Screen_Shot0005.jpg]](http://s22.postimg.org/51ip1m4wh/Civ4_Screen_Shot0005.jpg)
![[Image: Civ4_Screen_Shot0007.jpg]](http://s10.postimg.org/4ai91iwm1/Civ4_Screen_Shot0007.jpg)
![[Image: Civ4_Screen_Shot0013.jpg]](http://s15.postimg.org/flfro0unf/Civ4_Screen_Shot0013.jpg)
