1.) Map Setup
Mapscript: Semi-custom; continents were extracted from various Full-of-Resources Totestra runs and then knitted together based on what we thought would be interesting. Resources were re-distributed into a more even pattern, rather than in ridiculous clusters. There's two main continents, each with about 40% of the world's total landmass and about half the number of players, and then some astro islands, about which I'll remain silent for now. Yes, there's a bigass New World out there beyond the ocean! I feel OK saying that now, since many players have figured it out.
We tried really, really hard to preserve the original character of the Totestra landmasses while still balancing them for MP play. That includes keeping, somewhat, the huge desert/mountain/ice regions that the mapscript loooooves to generate. So, that's where the ice-floodplains came from; we floodplained up the ice rivers. Ice floodplains are a little worse than regular floodplains, because improvements take an additional worker turn to complete. To compensate, we tried making those regions a little nicer, with forests and deer rather than just plain desert. We also made the ice regions are little more hilly/mountainous and the desert regions a little flatter, just to distinguish them a bit more.
Capital BFCs: Brick designed 9 different capital BFCs, and then I copy-pasted one at random to each start. Each has 2 food resources, a 2nd-ring forested ivory, and a forested calendar resource. We then tried to distribute resources so that players couldn't get a big advantage/disadvantage by wandering their starting settler, while still keeping good spots for copper, horse, and iron. I think we did a pretty good job here; the only mistakes that I'm aware of are Krill's missing copper (SORRY KRILL) and Molach's extra food resource for his moved capital. IIRC all original capital spots have the exact same number of river-adjacent tiles, coast access, and choppable forests.
Players: The map was fully designed without knowledge of which player was where, and then Brick randomly assigned the players via random.org. The only consideration we made was that we made sure that 3 of the following list of 6 players were on each continent: Krill, Serdoa, Commodore, dtay, Gavagai, and plako. But, other than that, who-neighbors-who is fully random, so Krill being next to TheWannabe and HAK is totally due to the RNG. We thought it wouldn't be fair to try to game the system too much.
Neighbors: each player had 2, 3, or 4 neighbors, and the amount of land nearby each player was balanced based on the number of neighbors they had. Players with 2 neighbors had about 120 land tiles, players with 3 got about 140, and finally players with 4 neighbors had about 160. These numbers are based on how many tiles we had to work with total, plus guesswork.
If I did it again, I'd probably do 115/140/165 or something. This isn't perfectly balanced but then perfect symmetry isn't really possible on a natural looking map, so we tried to make tradeoffs that made sense instead. I think the balance wasn't too bad... we're seeing game leaders among each neighbor category.
Resources: Each player also got a capital-BFC ivory, either a whale or a fur, some bare mineable resource (silver/gems/gold) as well as two copies (three for silvers) locked in jungle, a capital-bfc calendar resource, and finally one copy of that locked in jungle. In hindsight, the fur/whale was overkill but I did like how the jungle jewels encouraged early Iron Working.
Easter Eggs: maybe 1 or 2 out there... or even 3...
2.) Mixup the Metagame
Rather than this being a redux of PB18, we thought it would be fun to mix it up a bit so that "standard" civ4 pitboss strategies weren't always the best or only way to win. We tried three things: a.) discourage the REX-into-Currency beeline (or rather, encourage alternate targets for one's first real Classical tech), b.) encourage pre-Knights war, and c.) provide a possible alternate path to late-game relevance that wasn't "stomp your weakest neighbor with knights or cuirs."
For each point in turn:
a.) First, the Currency beeline. In most big-map pitboss games, the generic no-brainer tech plan for the early game is to first get your worker techs then beeline Currency for your first real Classical-era tech while REXing as hard as you can. Ideally, you get Currency just as your economy is about to break and then that saves you. This works well because you gain the most land while giving up very little. Other routes (e.g. MC for Ind civs, Monarchy as a second classical tech for Oraclers, CoL for Org or Spi civs, HBR if you've gotten choked) are more special-case simply because the Currency route is so easy and so effective. Essentially, you have to have a good reason to *not* go for Currency right away.
So, we thought it would be interesting if other techs were viable. In PB27, there's lots of great options: Alphabet as a tech in itself (especially for exploration and routes - more on this later), Metal Casting even for non-Inders because of the easy available of metal happy and the heavy forestage, Construction for WE and the new Colosseums, Aesthetics/Literature because of the Marble availability, CoL for a religion and courthouses, and especially the often neglected Iron Working, for the jungled jewelry and uber-RtR swordsmen, as well leading into Compass, which has Quays and is also the last prereq tech for Optics.
b.) Next, early war. Early wars are fun to watch, but generally not so good for your development. Putting good stuff in jungle means that players wouldn't set themselves back by getting iron working early, and all of us would get to have fun watching players smash into each other with UU swordsmen and such.
c.) Finally, an alternate path to the late game. This refers to the fabled Astro Islands that y'all will just have to wait patiently and see, but, trust me, they've got some pretty goddamned good stuff on 'em. It's often thought that "New World" maps are pointless in multiplayer, but I don't think that's necessarily true in these giant pitboss games that reach Spaceship launch. If New World islands had existed in PB18, for example, they'd have been totally a huge deal.
I thought a New World would be a good way to balance neighbor luck a bit, at least partially if not fully counterbalancing it by itself. What I mean to say is, ordinarily, if your neighbors are strong players, then it is likely that you won't be able to conquer them with horchers or knights. Meanwhile, what are you supposed to do about a vet on the other side of the map chewing through a green player? Think about plako's or xenu's positions in PB18... plako eventually conquered his continent, but the resistance was so high that by the time he finally succeeded, other players were far, far ahead of him. What was he supposed to do?
So, it'd keep the game more interesting if lack of easy early conquest does not mean instant irrelevance... a diligently exploring player may realize the existance of the Astro islands early enough to realize that an Astro beeline may claim an entire civ's (or two!) worth of land at far less effort than banging their head against a stone wall. That brings us to...
3.) Islands and Exploration
Our big theme for this map was to encourage exploration. We even made a cheeky post in the tech thread before the game started that basically said, in more florid prose, HEY EXPLORE THE GODDAMN MAP Y'ALL, THIS WILL BE A USEFUL THING TO DO. But, we also tried to design the map to reward exploration as well.
So, how to do that? Let me back up a bit...
As some, but not all, players have noticed, a big curveball for this map is that there were no ICTR available pre-astro! There is not a single goddamn island accessible pre-Astro, even by funny border pops. The thought was that this would slow tech pace down in the classical era, with the jungle jewels offsetting this a bit but not as much as you might expect. A civ with a dozen cities on T100 in PB18 would gain +24 free commerce per turn pre-Currency from foreign routes, +48cpt with Currency and as much as +72cpt with Currency and the GLH. A pair of extra gold mines doesn't come anywhere close to this, especially when you consider that the gold mines are in place of 2 cottages. So, we'd end up with a nice, slow classical era, full of strife popcorn. Which, I think, is what we got, especially when you remember that the ancient era ended in this game by like T40-T45 because of Krill's goofy changes to the first-row techs and the extra palace gold. The classical era has already lasted 60 turns so far this game, and is still going!
Now, what does that have to do with the actual islands that do exist? Well, we wanted to make sure people had time to realize that there still
were islands! There is in fact a lot of them - huge, insanely lush new world islands. Noone can see them yet, but by exploring the continent, guesstimating the number of land tiles per player, and finally comparing that to the total land tiles on the map via the score calculation, you'll realize that about 20% of the map would still be unclaimed. However, to realize that you need to explore, and thus we wanted Alphabet to be important. Thus, we prevent ICTR so that the only way to get 2c trade routes are via open borders with another civ, making Alphabet a great economic tech, and thus players now have a way to break out of their home base.
So, now all your prereq techs for Astro, most of which are usually ignored until the last second, are now worth getting early. Alpha is good. Iron Working is good because of swords, iron tiles, and jungle jewels. Compass is good too, as Fin and Cha players will want to get Quays ASAP and Exp wants their Harbors. Finally, Optics should actually be a pretty decent economic tech here in PB27. Because this is an RtR game, Known-Tech-Bonus (KTB) becomes a big deal starting at the medieval era. However, unlike PB18, you can't just send out a pair of workboats in opposite directions and end up meeting the whole world. Here, you gotta work for it! However, this means its a bonus that you can get while your lazy neighbor doesn't. Well, that was the idea at least! Fun fact: when Brick rolled the random combos before the game started, the only two combos we thought should be auto-rerolls were Pro Inca and Phi Portugal, because pre-T100 Carracks would be completely broken on this map.
![[Image: UGrBdED.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/UGrBdED.jpg)
