[SPOILERS/MAP] Wherein I make Brick a new resource and blanket the map with it

[BRickAstley]

Obviously I'll also do the same with Wood, so we can play Civilizations of Catan.

[BRickAstley]

So I've been pondering a few ideas for how I want to design the map around in my head, and I'll either get some sample rough maps or Paint sketches up on here soon for review.

I think I have two main concerns that I wanna address as far as geographical balance:

1) For intracontinental, I don't want any of the civs to start in a place where they'll be naturally trapped between the other two, who will only have one neighbor. This can be addressed by either having them start in a triangle-ish arrangement, or having each continent be a continuous strip of land, so each civ has neighbors to their north and south (or east and west, I'm not a directional snob.)

2) For intercontinental, I want all of the civs to have equal chances at being able to contact the other continent. That mean having more than 1 island bridge, maybe 3 that are spaced around?

Let me draw up some ideas I had quick (though work is picking up so it might be a few hours) for your viewing and critiquing pleasure.

[Merovech]

I'm not sure it's as balanced (what's the wrap?), but your first map is definately more interesting.

[BRickAstley]

These would both be Toroidal. So for the first map there are 4 ways off each continent to 2 different mini-hub-islands. That one would have more of a far away feel like regular Continents, until the Astrology days came and everyone would have a new and really close neighbor.

Also, I rolled up the list of players again to get continent placement and got:

Continent 1) MusicMan, Shoot the Moon, Sian

Continent 2) Kyan, mackoti, nakor

Sounds good to me, as I was afraid of something like Music or Sian stuck in between Kyan and mack. Any lurker objection to that placement?

[spacetyrantxenu]

I like the first design better, looks interesting. I think for fairness maybe don't have the feeder islands in a straight line, but maybe staggered so that if Civ A settles one island, Civ B can still get around or settle the other island, to make for competition settling those islands as well, rather than whoever gets the first island gets the whole chain.

[spacetyrantxenu]

If you rolled it randomly, them's the breaks.

[Merovech]

I like the first design better, looks interesting. I think for fairness maybe don't have the feeder islands in a straight line, but maybe staggered so that if Civ A settles one island, Civ B can still get around or settle the other island, to make for competition settling those islands as well, rather than whoever gets the first island gets the whole chain.

Agreed. I like idea 1 much more than idea 2, and I think this is a clever modification.

[BRickAstley]

I like the first design better, looks interesting. I think for fairness maybe don't have the feeder islands in a straight line, but maybe staggered so that if Civ A settles one island, Civ B can still get around or settle the other island, to make for competition settling those islands as well, rather than whoever gets the first island gets the whole chain.

I'm having trouble picturing what you're saying unfortunately. do you mean having a few islands side by side? two entrances from each direction?

And keep in mind that there are already two island chains to each bigger island from each continent, since there is a wrap around.

[Bigger]

I like the first design better, looks interesting. I think for fairness maybe don't have the feeder islands in a straight line, but maybe staggered so that if Civ A settles one island, Civ B can still get around or settle the other island, to make for competition settling those islands as well, rather than whoever gets the first island gets the whole chain.

I love map A as well. But I'm not sure this is necessary Xenu - it looks like with the wrap there will be 3 sets of islands leading out towards the other continent - roughly one per player.

Now there will be a rush to settle either of the two big islands, but who cares. I imagine early on the little islands will be ignored (for settling) and just be used to extend coast and allow a galley/workboat to make contact with the other civ, no?

[BRickAstley]

I love map A as well. But I'm not sure this is necessary Xenu - it looks like with the wrap there will be 3 sets of islands leading out towards the other continent - roughly one per player.

Now there will be a rush to settle either of the two big islands, but who cares. I imagine early on the little islands will be ignored (for settling) and just be used to extend coast and allow a galley/workboat to make contact with the other civ, no?

There are 4 sets leading out from each continent, 2 going to each intersection point. So for mini-island one, that will be reachable from Continent 1's north and south island chains, and Continent 2's east and west island chains. With 4 ways to exit each continent, I would think that it would be easy to send contact if people so desired. Maybe that center island could be split into different pieces, to keep it from becoming blocked off.

Plus, there will be resources on these islands and chains leading to them, but they will not be anything super powerful, just there to allow some settling for later naval ventures. If someone has a big push to settle the islands, then that might win them extra revenue via the GL, but the territory will not be grand enough that that will be The Winning Strategy TM