SevenSpirits Wrote:What is a situationally useful tile?
A tile that carries a higher value in a given situation (turn or turns) than its nominal yield would normally [STRIKE]carry[/STRIKE] indicate.
There are two examples in the above plan:
On T7 I work a plains forest, while conventional play would work a grass forest. This gives an extra 1H of overflow into the worker, so it finishes in 5t instead of 6t (40/40 instead of 39/40 on T12).
On T20 I work the ivory instead of the improved sheep. This gives enough overflow into the settler, together with finishing the camp on the elephants ASAP, to build a 4-turn settler.
Yeah, it's a manifesto, it's not necessarily supposed to be internally consistent.
That said, an improved tile is in almost all situations more useful than an un-improved tile. Working the plains forest over a grass forest is a special case here, that speeds up a later worker with one turn. Going the other direction, sometimes when you're going to build a critical build, you want to work a tile with a lower yield two turns before you will start it, so you are one hammer away from finishing the non-critical build the turn before you start the critical build, so you get the highest possible amount of overflow.
Did another quick sim, where I went Agri -> Hunting -> AH, and improved first the rice and then the sheep. Fishing and WB waited until just before I started the settler.
The verdict: decent, two workers in good time, but the settler was delayed until T28, and I see no way to speed it up with a turn. Teching was also a little slower.
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.
Granted, I was thinking about the Zulus myself - decent techs for this start, the scout start doesn't hurt as much with the extra warrior, the ikhanda is nice (if expensive), and impis are excellent, but they're FIN/CRE. If they wanted a good counter against the WCs, they had the Mayans there for the taking, with resource-less holkans and cheap ball courts.
So they have a leader that is excellent in general terms, but I believe isn't ideal under these conditions, and an excellent civ for this game that has no synergy whatsoever with their leader.
Merovech Wrote:Are archers the decent unit that you want?
Not archers, skirmishers.
They're like archers, but strength 4. Ie, they're as strong as spearmen or WCs, but get all the other perks of archer units (cheap, first strikes, hill and city bonuses, resource-less). The main thing about them, however, is that there is no natural counter against them. They're strong enough to get decent odds against most units in the open, and to defend reliably.
Among the units that can be used to break an early choke, they're probably #1 in the game - the holkan and dog Soldier are probably the only units that comes close. They're probably second only to the impi and the quechua in performing a quick choke.
That said, I will pretty much have to adjust my force mix with the situation I face. If I need to combat the Stick&Brick (Zulus), I will need axes and some skirmishers. Against AutomatedTeller (Egypt), I will need axes and spearmen, but skirmishers can still be effective. Against Catwalk (India) I can just spam skirmishers.
