[SPOILERS] scooter's sunny sunday stroll

[SevenSpirits]

I'm not a fan of the map at all. Nevertheless scooter, whenever you complain about things without complete information, the price is you will say some really wrong things. Just a warning.

[scooter]

Nevertheless scooter, whenever you complain about things without complete information, the price is you will say some really wrong things. Just a warning.

So that it's clear - I know this and I'm acknowledging this so take all that I've said with a grain of salt . I'll of course re-evaluate a few things once the game is over, but I think my more general map comments are mostly fair (some of the specifics are probably hit and miss in accuracy or fairness).

[dazedroyalty]

If you play a cramped map that is AW with city razing required, that would negate at least some of the potentially unbalancing affects. Of course, the player would still have more land to expand into than others, but in PBEM31, for example, at least that would have meant more land for players on BOTH sides of the eliminated player. Having experienced the unbalance of pbem31 first hand, I can't argue that it's fun to have another player in a completely dominate position based on some lucky dice rolls. However, I also don't feel compelled to abandon the idea of cramped maps all together. Instead, I think we need to think carefully about what settings would be optimal for cramped maps and then make sure the game is set up clearly. I'd consider city razing and AW as important or, alternately, have some kind of enforced peace until a set Turn number.

[luddite]

Mist just admit it, you went way overboard with this map. All we wanted was a basic, normal map. I would have been well satisfied if you had just used a random map and balanced the starts. I appreciate all the work that you did, handcrafting an interesting setup, but it's totally not what we asked for and it's not well suited for a bts game with good players.

If the intention was for all 4 of us to get one oasis each, that's inherently unstable. If any single player got 2 they'd have a massive food yield, and having just one creates a border that's incredibly hard to defend. Hell, even if we did split the oases evenly, the pyramids would still be overpowered.

I still don't think Scooter's rush strategy was that bad, either, he was just unlucky that his neighbors both went with safe, slow openings.

[Mist]

Mist just admit it, you went way overboard with this map.

Hell no. It's wonderful that both you and scooter had a very specific and precise map expectations. But unfortunately neither of you voiced them and I don't read minds. I did not mess with fallout, there was no improvements, preplaced barb cities or obstacles, no 'treasure', no roaming barb units or superunits and with exception of the godforsaken oasis areas no tiles that don't usually happen in BtS. I did not go overboard, I made a lot of effort to restrain myself.

All we wanted was a basic, normal map. I would have been well satisfied if you had just used a random map and balanced the starts.

Again, you never wrote that anywhere. Because if you did, I'd back out, I don't do those kinds of maps, I'm not good at them and I find the process boring. And I think that if you did, at least one lurker that had a look at it would raise an alarm.

But nevermind, the map did not work out and that is in the end my responsibility. I apologise for that. I'm glad that it at least did not waste too much of your gaming time in the end. I think I'll stick with FFH from now on

[scooter]

If you play a cramped map that is AW with city razing required, that would negate at least some of the potentially unbalancing affects. Of course, the player would still have more land to expand into than others, but in PBEM31, for example, at least that would have meant more land for players on BOTH sides of the eliminated player. Having experienced the unbalance of pbem31 first hand, I can't argue that it's fun to have another player in a completely dominate position based on some lucky dice rolls. However, I also don't feel compelled to abandon the idea of cramped maps all together. Instead, I think we need to think carefully about what settings would be optimal for cramped maps and then make sure the game is set up clearly. I'd consider city razing and AW as important or, alternately, have some kind of enforced peace until a set Turn number.

Good post. I had thought about the "enforced peace" thing, but I hadn't considered things like requiring city razing and such. There are still side effects though - it makes attacking profitably even more difficult than it already is, which means pink dot settlements are even stronger than they already are.

Part of my comments come from my own bias. My favorite part of a Civ game is the exploration and expansion phase. For me, looking at 3-4 city sites (and the sites those dots naturally open up) and trying to decide which to go for is really enjoyable. PBEM32 was technically "gimmicky" if you want to call it that, but I had a blast with it because there was lots of room to expand and there was several directions you could go with it and several options to prioritize. What makes a Civ game fun is having lots of options. It's also why players tend to enjoy the more "lush" maps a bit more because there's a lot more dotmapping and city management choices when there's excess food than when you basically have 1 food/city at best. Generally speaking, the more legitimate choices you have, the more enjoyable the game is. The problem with cramped maps is you have fewer choices and the game is often decided very early. I don't think this makes them impossible, just difficult.

(also, sometimes more enjoyable for players can be less enjoyable for lurkers and vice versa)

Example: PBEM32 was dominated by Serdoa because we were given a lot of options, and he made the best choices with the options he was given. He correctly identified the power of several wonders on that map (especially that the already-strong Pyramids was given a significant boost on the map with high-food and stone in capital BFC), and he prioritized them and got them. He made the best choices, and it paid off for him - but the map enabled you to play it in a ton of different ways. If it had been more one-dimensional, it would have been less fun. The only real "critique" of the map is I felt the west (of each player) wasn't quite strong enough to be attractive so that was one less "option" in my mind, but even that's a really minor point.

Anyways, that again strays a bit off-topic... But the general point is slightly bigger maps increase the amount of options a player has. I'd rather the player approaches to playing have a bigger impact on the outcome than chance and/or the map. If that makes sense. Again, this is all SUPER easy for me to say given that I've never actually done a PBEM map ... But I think it's still an interesting thing to discuss.

[dazedroyalty]

Another consideration is that a cramped map should be considered a shorter game. If someone expects 200 turns from a cramped map, they are upset/disappointed because they had the wrong expectations going in.

[NobleHelium]

Uh, I told you guys that Mist was not going to give you what you wanted. I "raised an alarm" way before the map was even made.

[scooter]

I'm not going to be updating this thing consistently now, but I figured I'd give a few brief points to give you an idea of what's going on.

1) Sian and AT each captured the city they were attacking - AT took the Oasis site and Sian took the gold site right on my borders. I figure I should mention this since I criticized each of them saying they prob can't take those spots. In my defense that still was accurate; however, since they both attacked at the exact same time, I ended up losing them both. Also, AT got really lucky attacking my Oasis spot so that hurt too.

2) AT has played this well, but Sian got way too greedy. He captured that city, I recaptured it, he took it back, so it's been back and forth... However he finally took it and then went over and settled the gems site way over on the other side of my empire! Both sites were still smothered in my culture. The beautiful part though was he didn't know AT had been attacking me! So AT's force shows up from the Oasis and razes the city, and right at the same time I'd gathered a good force of WCs which were able to raze the city he took from me because he split his defense between those two cities. So yeah, Sian now has 0 spoils to show for his big invasion of me, which is probably the dagger in his game.

[scooter]

So I haven't been reporting obviously... But AT marched a stack with catapults and fairly signficant units right up to Jamaica. I'd accumulated around 15-16 War Chariots, but Spears on hills is not a great target for those. So what I did was I withdrew out of Jamaica except for a couple defending spears and dared him to take it, figuring I could easily wipe his wounded stack. In fairness to him, I hid around 5 War Chariots in my southern city which he could not see, so he probably figured I had around 9-10 instead. If I hid any more it would be obvious I was hiding them, but I figured that was a nice number so that he felt threatened but ultimately OK in taking the city. So as planned he took Jamaica, so it was counter-attack time:



YESSSS. Absolute slaughter. That was fun. That's an 11-2 kill score. I got a couple lucky wins overall (and one unlucky loss and a coinflip loss), but it makes up for AT's great luck in his attack on Aruba, so we're even. Many of those War Chariots only had 3XP so they'll be getting 2nd promotions now too which is pretty cool. Anyways, that was probably a brutal blow to AT who had hoped to gain some serious land here. Nevermind the fact that Pindicator has now lapped the field (built MoM and who knows what else - haven't checked event log recently). However, Sian gave up on me after I proved stubborn on that defense too (he could never hold anything), so I'm wondering if he whirled around and is going to make a run at Pindicator. Who knows. Kinda hope so just for entertainment sake. The game is done, but would be nice if Sian could provide some fireworks before its over.