Mapmaking for Dummies [Mapmaking Thread] [Yes there are spoilers] [lurkers only]

[AdrienIer]

I thought the map was ok but I was the one who asked for the last change so I wanted another opinion...
At this point you should just consider it finished.

[greenline]

OK then I declare the map finished

[Dreylin]

PM to BRick & Xenu along with game settings, etc.

[greenline]

sent it off, let's hope it doesn't crash on starting

[AdrienIer]

based on those Whales I suspect the land east of us cuts south; the alternative is that the mapmaker is a troll who orphaned whales on purpose, which is wrong even if there's a good song about it.

Oops I missed the orphaned whale on review... Well it's not a terrible resource to orphan, the 3/1/3 tile isn't critical and you can easily get it in your borders anyway for the happiness. Still, your first complaint as a mapmaker : congrats

[greenline]

I don't think I intended for any whales to be orphaned; that one might be accessible from the other side of the land bridge. OTOH I know I wasn't paying as much attention to whales because whales are crap.

First. Password.

itnizk

As anyone reading the other threads probably noticed (or as would be apparent from civstats if it was up), I moved on T0.
S-SE, revealing a riverside wheat.




Settled there. I gave up the bonus shield for the hill start, but picked up the wheat tile (riverside), coastal so I can lighthouse those lake tiles, riverside for my capital (though barely, a levee will take a very long time to payoff).

I think it will take a long while for the wheat to pay off over not having a plains hill start, but I could be wrong. At any rate this means Elkad will have to settle farther out for copper (copper is in every direction but the one he moved towards) so he probably set himself back here

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

He picked up 4 coast tiles. Yay?

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I don't think I intended for any whales to be orphaned; that one might be accessible from the other side of the land bridge. OTOH I know I wasn't paying as much attention to whales because whales are crap.

First. Password.

itnizk

As anyone reading the other threads probably noticed (or as would be apparent from civstats if it was up), I moved on T0.
S-SE, revealing a riverside wheat.




Settled there. I gave up the bonus shield for the hill start, but picked up the wheat tile (riverside), coastal so I can lighthouse those lake tiles, riverside for my capital (though barely, a levee will take a very long time to payoff).

I think it will take a long while for the wheat to pay off over not having a plains hill start, but I could be wrong. At any rate this means Elkad will have to settle farther out for copper (copper is in every direction but the one he moved towards) so he probably set himself back here

GLH/colossus will be powerful here. He has probably given himself a head start on those, and can probably grab certainly GLH with minimal effort.

[AdrienIer]

I don't think I intended for any whales to be orphaned; that one might be accessible from the other side of the land bridge. OTOH I know I wasn't paying as much attention to whales because whales are crap.

No I checked on the latest map linked in this thread, it's orphaned. But it's certainly less important than Elkad's move balance wise.

Edit : Gsorel/DMOC/Ichabod team is going to run into Gawdzak on turn 2, I can't wait to hear how they feel about that.

[greenline]

Want to see something super tilting?




There's over 2600 land tiles on the map, but AGG Zulu is our neighbour 10 tiles away. Kind of mind boggling to see how that's possible.

Haven't moved scout yet. What should we do? Find out where he is? Keep exploring normally? Warrior rush?

OK - turn 2 is up here.

DMOC, Ichabod - I could use some advice. We have 2663 land tiles, 12 players, and significant coast around our capital. 2663/12=221 tiles for each player. That's a full first ring for each player.

And yet:

Gawdzak had yet to move when I played so this suggests the Russian capital is only 10 tiles from ours. Recall that Gawdazak is our doppelganger Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG) of Russia (Mining, Hunting).

Here is the situation:

I will think more about how to handle this, but I figure we have three options:

1) Proceed with a two worker start.
2) Build a settler at size 3 (t28). We settle for the border 30 or the whale t29 - elsewhere if we need time to hook copper.
3) Research The Wheel->Mining->BW and build a settler at size 2 (t26) to settle the border t27. We don't see copper until t31.

Option 3 gives the best chance of settling for the fish, but it is risky. I think Gawdzak will research BW first and so could hook copper - worst case even without The Wheel - and push before we have a chance to respond. I bet Gawdzak chose Russia exactly because of the starting techs and planned a quick first settler perhaps followed by Stonehenge.

We get visibility on Gawdzak's capital on t4 - I figure we select a tech and commit then.

Demographics:

Here is what the quickest settler would look like:

t10: The Wheel is complete. Research Mining.
t12: Worker is complete. Put one turn in to a warrior.
t13: Put one turn in to the settler.
t14: Start growing.
t15: Sheep is pastured.
t16: Road towards the cow.
t17: Mining is complete. Research BW.
t19: Grow to size 2. Warrior is complete.
t20: Cow is pastured. Settler in 6t with 3h->1h overflow.
t22: Road towards border. We have the worker turns to road a forest.
t26: Settler is out.
t27: Settle.

The playthrough continues in the album, but a lot would depend on what Gawdzak does.

A tough situation. If IMP/Russia weren't such a fast start things would be a lot easier for both teams, I think. It would be very easy for Gawdzak to play aggressively and gamble that we will play passively. Except defect-defect for us is to just build Shock axes. I think we would be compelled to do this if, say, Gawdzak planted aggressively and then was successful in landing a religion.

(just wait how they react when they find out there's also copper by the fish+sheep+cows+whales+silks site)