Pitboss 13 Settings Discussion

[Commodore]

Well if we're down to 17 players, that makes B&S a lot more viable too.

[Old Harry]

Do we have rules for unit and city gifting?

Also are we using pure CTON diplo or the system with attack/stop trading with proposals in too?

[Krill]

Suggestion: Use the full of resources map script if you need to generate a B&S map. It is a script that allows greater customization of hte map scripts contained with in it, one of which is the B&S map script ie can remove tundra and snow from the generation process of a B&S map, if you wanted or decrease the amounts of them occurring significantly. That should increase the amount of viable land.

Big and Small Huge is really fricking huge, but since there's a lot of ocean there are currently fewer land tiles per person, each player would have in between 150-200 land tiles not counting islands. I could try rolling some maps with a low coastline, and that would probably push each person's land in the greater than 200 tiles land.

This number includes ice and tundra, so usable land is significantly lower than that (Torusworld it also applies to but there is significantly lower amounts of each). To put this into perspective, most PB games have over 200 tiles per person on average, the average for PBEMs is around 150 or lower. The other problem with B&S maps is that quantisation of land between players due to the island starts: some players do get significantly more land [/i]unless[/i] the map maker basically rebuilds the majority of the map. Now, I did say before that I'm OK with the map maker doing that, but should still be known that it would be closer to a hand crafted map than a random one.

[SevenSpirits]

Here's the link to resource-fixed B&S: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1116...r_Luxes.py

Btw I generated a huge B&S map to see what it looked like and I have to show you this:

[Qgqqqqq]

If you're counting me in the 17, then I think I'm teaming with Lewger if it helps any.

[Commodore]

Do we have rules for unit and city gifting?

Also are we using pure CTON diplo or the system with attack/stop trading with proposals in too?

"Don't be cheesy" is the guideline. I have no problem with selling a thing, or offering/demanding for peace, but if you're doing it for spite, don't.

I'd say pure CTON, avoid spelling it out, etc. Maybe if it's questionable, ask Brick/the lurkers about the offer first.

[Krill]

PB8 map was a beauty.
You can always replace jungle with plains/desert mosaic with occasional oasis thrown in...

Now that PB8 is over I can comment on this.

The PB8 map is a monstrosity. It was the most unbalanced yet playable maps I've ever seen, and that was the best one I could generate. In all fairness, Serdoa ought to have berated me for the entirety of that game because of the start he had, and I would have deserved it. Something we forget when he make these games is that we are playing them for fun and some of the maps we see aren't that. One of the reasons I don't want to play another Big and Small map is that the majority of them leave you insulated in a little corner of the world and you have few players to interact with: Commodore had only one person to deal with for the first 125 turns of the game, Slowwcheetah could basically ignore everyone and go play sim city for the entire game. I don't know about anyone else but I would not be particularly trilled with having to play sim city for the next year, because to me that just isn't fun.

End of the day, that's why I don't want to play another Big and Small map.

[Krill]

If you're counting me in the 17, then I think I'm teaming with Lewger if it helps any.

I've not actually counted you in any numbers, but thanks for the heads up, I'll go address that now.

[pindicator]

I just wish Torusland wasn't 90% land bridges...

[Krill]

Pindicator:

I have rolled some torusland maps of a size similar to suggested, and I just wanted to let you know that compared to an edited huge B&S style map, unedited Torusland maps have almost double the "Total Map Unfairness", according to novice's analysis tool.

I'm not sure how meaningful this is, I think what you see is mostly an effect of each player having more land tiles in the Torusland map.

So I would eyeball the calculated land quality for each player instead of relying on the TMU measure. The TMU measure is used for optimizing balance within one map when using the "rebalance starting positions" option, it's not meant for comparing one map to another. (At least not maps with different dimensions and settings.) My gut says that Torusland maps are more balanced than B&S maps.

I agree with Commodore though that Torusland maps have a somewhat bland geography. Maybe roll a 124x124 torusland map and add more oceans?

To put this into perspective, a 124*124 map has 50% more land. That means about 5000 tiles of land can be sunk into the ocean to make a more natural looking map and we'd still have enough land to play with a vaguely balanced map, the same as a 100*100 map without that editing. Selective editing would basically mean that no player would be isolated, there would be less land bridges, it would look more like a snaky continents map, and it could be more balanced. I'd still suggest inland oceans as the better map to use as a starting point for such balance though.