Just one question: what's on that tile 2S of the settling party (not sure what the dot means... is it a lair?)
Initial thoughts:
1) The AC is already at 5! Armageddon ho!
2) Settling in place grabs a bunch of specials, but also a lot of water tiles. SW looks more promising: only two water tiles, one of which has fish. We miss out on the sheep, but we won't be able to pasture those anytime soon anyway.
Need to see more of the immediate surroundings before deciding. Fortunately, we've got plenty of scouts.
3) We start with a heroic scout. Presumably everyone else does, too. Awesome for the Sidar: they can eventually promote that scout into a ghost with Sever Soul and Aeron's chosen (ouch). But an even better move for them would be to wane for a super-early shade.
Anyway, I'm thinking that scout is too valuable to send exploring. After scouting the immediate surroundings, I'm thinking it stays to guard Evermore while we go worker-first. We can start making use of it once we've upgraded it (horsemen can't upgrade to Fyrdwell, right? So we're probably better off upgrading along the recon line.)
4) Don't see any wines, so no opportunity to take advantage of starting with crafting. Looks like we've got plenty of food and some production, but are light on commerce. Typical elven forest start.
(January 24th, 2013, 14:46)NobleHelium Wrote: The tile 2S is an ancient tower. It gives a visibility bonus to units on the tile.
Yeah, it just looks kind of weird in the overhead view.
Merovech's Mapmaking Guidelines:
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.
According to the FFH Wiki, you can promote horsemen to Fyrdwells. So the mounted line wouldn't necessarily be a dead end for our heroic scout. Though I don't actually see any of the 3rd tier promotion possibilities as particularly viable: stirrups, feral bond, and poisons are all expensive techs that are out of our way.
So, I made a little sandbox for myself to try out some openings. Under the pessimistic assumption that there are no tiles worth working other than the ones I can see, and the optimistic assumption that the tower is on an unforested plains hill (I think?),
I see three options:
1) Found Evermore on the rice for the bonus food. Long term that's probably the best use of the rice, but I miss out on fresh water and the chance to put a Deruptus in my capital. Short term, it looks like I can build a worker, two warriors (growing to size 3) and then squeeze out a settler by EOT 28
2) Found Evermore south of the rice, on the river. Same strategy gets me a settler at EOT 29 (but not a second warrior).
3) Found Evermore on the plains hill where the ancient tower is. Looks like I can do worker -> 2 warriors -> settler by
EOT 26. Disadvantage is that I get of water tiles; very bad for the long term potential of the capital.
All three strategies get me ancient chants on EOT 32.
Of course, all this is assuming no confounding factors (River of Blood, barbarian mayhem, etcetera).
Anyway, hopefully some better options will present themselves once I see more of the land...
(January 25th, 2013, 03:53)Ryan Wrote: Question : why not north of the rice ? Seems like a really good spot for growth .
Misses the silks. That's the best pre-improved tile we can work, and our only source of commerce pre-education.
(Assuming, of course, that we don't find something better in the fog.) The sheep tile won't help us until we can pasture it (which is probably a very long time from now).
(January 25th, 2013, 05:01)Ryan Wrote: If one scout goes to the ancient tower, another one to that 1n rice that should show you a lot right?
Yep. That's definitely the first move. And depending on what we see, maybe the settler moves to one of those locations, since it gets that bonus visibility.
Agree with teching Agriculture and Calendar first. Also, I don't think we want too much water in either of our cities. We're Elves, our strength lies in land tiles. Also agree with the Silk being a priority tile for us to improve. I'm fine with a landlocked cap basically.
As for the GP bulbs: GoN is bulbable too, after we have WotF. As is PH of course. But GoN is actually a better bulb option as it's THE key technology in our game.
TBH I'd make a hunter out of our heroic scout. We'll have Hunting soon enough. Not sure about mounted, guess that's more map dependent.
Dedlurking: Tatan / CFCJesterFool / Nakor in Pitboss 8 as Mansa of India. (already dead )
Dedlurking: HidingKneel in EitB PBEM XXV as Tessa of the Ljosalfar.
(January 25th, 2013, 10:36)UnforcedError Wrote: Agree with teching Agriculture and Calendar first. Also, I don't think we want too much water in either of our cities. We're Elves, our strength lies in land tiles. Also agree with the Silk being a priority tile for us to improve. I'm fine with a landlocked cap basically.
Although there's another possibility worth considering: we could postpone calendar for the moment and go straight to chants -> education. Farmed plains forest tiles are 2/0/2. For an expansive civ building settlers, this is a lot better than the
5/0/0 rice tile or the 4/1/0 riverside farms, doesn't cost a turn of anarchy, and gets us to our real source of commerce (cottages) more quickly. Not so great for growing the city after the settler is done, though.
I'll have to goof around with the sandbox some more tonight.
Quote:As for the GP bulbs: GoN is bulbable too, after we have WotF. As is PH of course. But GoN is actually a better bulb option as it's THE key technology in our game.
Devils advocate: this is supposedly a huge map, and we're the only expansive civ in the game. I think we want to grab as much land as we can... in which case, we can postpone the GoN civic for a while. The land we've seen so far is heavily forested, but if the rest of the map is not, priesthood could be key to making the most of our horizontal expansion.
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