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.
Interestingly, though, Seven's ranking system seem rather general, except overvaluing situational civs like Vikings and Dutch (and perhaps Holy Roman?). I compared Seven's rankings with the current scores in the ISDG 2012:
1. Pacal of Egypt – 8
2. Mansa of India – 9
3. Willem of Maya – 6
4. Elizabeth of Ottomans – 6
5. Mehmed of Holy Rome – 7
6. Darius of Aztec – 6
7. Ragnar of Native America - 5
Eliminated:
8. Isabela of Inca - 6
9. Boudica of Zulu - 1
I mean, most teams went with highly scored combinations - two leading teams especially so. The one team that chose very low scoring combination was eliminated first.
Since you seem to be intrested in trait values below is a link to you. In PBEM43 thread SevenSpirits has gone a bit further when evaluating the value of each trait in the particular settings on that game:
I recommend not taking it too seriously. Lots of hand waving there and your map settings won't be the same, but it is pretty intresting food for thought.
(August 5th, 2013, 02:29)plako Wrote: Since you seem to be intrested in trait values below is a link to you. In PBEM43 thread SevenSpirits has gone a bit further when evaluating the value of each trait in the particular settings on that game:
I recommend not taking it too seriously. Lots of hand waving there and your map settings won't be the same, but it is pretty intresting food for thought.
(August 5th, 2013, 02:49)Maga_R Wrote: I do like numbers .
Yes, I do like numbers - and apparently have too much time on my hands . One day I looked at the finished games at civstats and wrote down what leader was winning. This statistics is flawed for too many reasons : some games were probably played in vanilla or warlord, when trait may be different; for unrestricted leader, people sometimes register them as restricted; some leader may be banned in these games, etc. I also completely arbitrarily removed all suspicious results: game that ended after just a couple turns, duels and starnge winning conditions such as "the last player remaining playing". Ah, and I got bored and started to doubted wisdom of it half-way through. Anyway, after all these disclaimers, here are the results:
huayna capac (FIN/IND) Inca 7
august (IMP/IND) Rome 6
ragnar (FIN/AGG) Vikings 6
juius casera (IMP/ORG) Rome 5
mansa musa (FIN/SPI) Mali 5
mehmed (EXP/ORG) Ottomans 5
alexander (AGG /PHI) Greece 4
elizabeth (FIN/PHI) England 4
hannibal (FIN/CHA) Carthage 4
gandhi (PHI/SPI) India 3
victoria (FIN/IMP) England 3
asoka (ORG/SPI) India 2
brennus (CHA/SPI) Celtia 2
wang kon (FIN/PRO) Korea 2
gehghis (AGG/IMP) Mongolia 2
hatty (SPI/CRE) Egypt 2
bismarck 1
cyrus 1
frederick 1
isabella 1
kublai khan 1
louis xiv 1
mao zedong 1
montezuma 1
peter 1
Qin Shi 1
roosevelt 1
saladin 1
stalin 1
tokugawa 1
--------------------------------------------------
In the very arbitrary >1 wins category the stats are:
Since I suspect that Slaze may actually lurk this thread - and would not like to ruin his "random leader" surprise - I put my initial (and often changing ) preferences for the snake pick in the spoiler:
1. India
2. Inca
3. Pacal (Fin/exp)
4. Darius (Fin/org)
5. Mehmed (Exp/org)
6. Willem (Fin/cre)
7. Lizzy (Fin/Phil)
8. Huyana Capac (Fin/ind)
9. Sury (Exp/Cre)
10. Zara Yaqob (exp/org)
11. Vikings (berserkers!)
12. China ? (cho-ko-nuk ☺, pavillon ☹)
13. Egypt? Any agri civ
All comments welcome . I am especially lost in terms of civs . So far I am only sure I do not want to play again the only civ I played in MP so far - Sumeria. Especially that I had a neighbor with too many axes at that game, that was not particularly nice to me . Vultures suck big time against axes . Am I mistaken, or is it the only UU that is actually worse than its non-unique counterpart? I mean, if you do not play against archer-loving AIs .
Vulture's aren't necessarily worse than regular axemen, they just serve a different purpose. That +1 base strength makes a pretty big difference when you stack defensive bonuses on it(they can beat chariots while defending in forests, etc.)
As for your list, I think you're overrating Mehmed(EXP/ORG), even if this turns out to be run on emperor, I'd still say FIN/CRE -> EXP/ORG. Also you seem to have him at 5 and 10? Was that a typo? Finally the vikings are a very risky to pick blindly. For most starts, Fishing/Hunting are very weak starting techs. They are 50% cheaper than Agriculture or the Wheel, so you're immediately put at a deficit in beakers and that is exacerbated by having to research expensive worker techs to hook up grains and livestock. That said, trading post is a top 5 UB and CR2 berserkers upgraded to rifles are scary(see PB5). I would only pick the vikings if you saw your start before picking and you were given AH/Fishing food or something of that nature.
(August 6th, 2013, 09:00)Oxyphenbutazone Wrote: Vulture's aren't necessarily worse than regular axemen, they just serve a different purpose. That +1 base strength makes a pretty big difference when you stack defensive bonuses on it(they can beat chariots while defending in forests, etc.)
As for your list, I think you're overrating Mehmed(EXP/ORG), even if this turns out to be run on emperor, I'd still say FIN/CRE -> EXP/ORG. Also you seem to have him at 5 and 10? Was that a typo? Finally the vikings are a very risky to pick blindly. For most starts, Fishing/Hunting are very weak starting techs. They are 50% cheaper than Agriculture or the Wheel, so you're immediately put at a deficit in beakers and that is exacerbated by having to research expensive worker techs to hook up grains and livestock. That said, trading post is a top 5 UB and CR2 berserkers upgraded to rifles are scary(see PB5). I would only pick the vikings if you saw your start before picking and you were given AH/Fishing food or something of that nature.
Yeah, you're right, my #5 and #10 are the same . I guess I meant cre/org, corrected now. I know I probably overvalue Mehmed - as I said, my experience is limited to only one MP game, when I played Mehmed of Sumeria. And while I hated Sumeria, I loved Mehmed. I understand that Vultures can be good against non-melee - but human opponents tend to build axes . In that game, I was involved in 2 wars - in both I was on the offensive - and vultures proved so bad I barely built them .
On the other hand, I loved Mehmed. Perhaps it is because both EXP and ORG are such "direct benefit" traits - they give access to many extremely useful building at very discounted prices .
I agree that Vikings are very situational - and very risky. I am tempted, but I do not think I would choose them without seeing a coastal start. Although having amphibious maces and rifles plus Navigation I ships out of the gate could give us huge advantage.
BTW, turns out I know nothing about "typical RB map". I had even no idea that contact pre-optics is given . Can somebody enlighten me? Does everybody having contact pre-optics means that navy or water-based strategies will not be important? Looks like we will be playing with 8 teams, each team will likely get a generous piece of land to settle - that is how I understand "education game" .
As a general rule you just cannot pick a none Agri civ on a blind start and expect to do well, unless you know you are playing an islands type map (in which case...it simply less risky to not pick it but still not a great idea).
(August 6th, 2013, 09:58)Krill Wrote: As a general rule you just cannot pick a none Agri civ on a blind start and expect to do well, unless you know you are playing an islands type map (in which case...it simply less risky to not pick it but still not a great idea).
Thx, Krill. But we are likely not playing islands map, right? it was not explicitly stated.
What do you guys consider best starting techs? I have heard both agri+wheel (fastest pottery, most expensive techs, always something to do for a worker) or agri+mining (=China , fast both to pottery and bronze working, worker can always build a mine, I guess).
.
: some games were probably played in vanilla or warlord, when trait may be different; for unrestricted leader, people sometimes register them as restricted; some leader may be banned in these games, etc. I also completely arbitrarily removed all suspicious results: game that ended after just a couple turns, duels and starnge winning conditions such as "the last player remaining playing". Ah, and I got bored and started to doubted wisdom of it half-way through. Anyway, after all these disclaimers, here are the results:
- and would not like to ruin his "random leader" surprise - I put my initial (and often changing 
. I am especially lost in terms of civs 
. So far I am only sure I do not want to play again the only civ I played in MP so far - Sumeria. Especially that I had a neighbor with too many axes at that game, that was not particularly nice to me 
. Vultures suck big time against axes 
. I guess I meant cre/org, corrected now. I know I probably overvalue Mehmed - as I said, my experience is limited to only one MP game, when I played Mehmed of Sumeria. And while I hated Sumeria, I loved Mehmed. I understand that Vultures can be good against non-melee - but human opponents tend to build axes 
.
.
