Hey, what are your plans for the currently 3/0/0 sugar tile? Wait until calendar to improve it or cottage it?
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.
Sugar is already cottaged. In the last screenshot of Grand Slam I'm working it unimproved. The cottage was completed the very next turn. Calendar will be a while, and the three food sugar cottage is nice, because with that and the banana and the extra city-square food from the sugar plant I can pretty much grow as quickly as the happy will let me whip. I'm shuffling the cows around between the three cities as needed (it's nice having the flexibility!).
I've decided to move Orange 1S of my original proposed location (now 1NE of the cows). The location of pruple will depend to some extent on the state of relations with AT at the time. The NE site is safer and can't be boated, but it also can't build boats of it's own (they would have to come a long way from the north through canals) ... And apparently we ARE neighbors with Commodore. He's to our southeast. The impi there is turning around immediately and heading back northwards because he will be needed to protect the settler for Orange which I'm whipping out as soon as Grand Slam grow.
Turn 66 demos (yeah, I missed T65, but I haven't been tracking them since T40 anyway so it's not a big deal). We have a significant food lead. Decent MFG, and somewhat low in the GNP realm. Turn after next, all four of our cities will grow simultaneously (but I think I'll also whip 4 off that turn).
I'm considering sailing next, which we can get about 6-turns from now. That would allow us to get a galley in the water and potentially raze Azza's city. It would also allow us to get water trade routes with Commodore and Azza (not IC routes, but it'll be a long time before we have a road connection). I think Maths would be more beneficial though, both for chops and for opening up unlocking Currency.
My reasoning for moving Orange 1S is that I really do not want to chop in a monument. We'll want a library here for sure, so let's just plant with cows first ring and put the early chop into a granary instead.
My reasoning for moving Orange 1S is that I don't want to waste the hammers from the early chop on a monument that will take 10T to pop the borders anyway. We'll want a Library here, so let's plant with cows 1st ring, put that early chop into a granary, and get a much better city for the next 15 turns (snowballing into a better city overall).
Sorry I've been non responsive, just felt quite worn out by the end of ww20.
Anyway, I like the dotmap, and think the change is definitely necessary (we have to settle this one first as the other is too far from our borders and otherwise we don't get any first ring food.
I also think we're running a bit light militarily - though we can protect our borders atm, Id rather have a bit of a surplus force for exploring/barb hunting/reserve.
I think I've already pointed out why we can't raise it from the fog and I think that by the time we get it out it'll be around long enough for either a emergency whip or a garrison.
Where are we at with the scientists BTW?
I think its easy to get too bogged down in rexing without actually being ready to handle the economics of it, and I worry a bit that we might crash with this exponential growth - particularly as we've ended up with no early wonders.
Erebus in the Balance - a FFH Modmod based around balancing and polishing FFH for streamlined competitive play.
We have 3 impi, 1 warrior, and an axe in the build queue (due in 4). We are currently #2 in power.
Orange is the next city, but we'll slow down after that. We can handle 1 more city now. Probably wait a bit for our next city. I don't have a settler in production anywhere else yet. We'll be adding cottages all around though up to the happy cap (which we'll need to address still).
GScientist will come eventually (guessing about 30 turns, so about T100). Library (I think) will come after settler in Grand Slam, but I don't want to get the GS out of there because i want to keep working cottages. Vocano most likely will be the source of the GS.
Northernmost city. Plenty of food up there to support a couple specialists once the library expands borders to claim pigs, and with the wet corn and granary in place already we will rapidly grow to size 6 for the library whip.