[LURKERS] Setting Up Tents for a Ren Faire

[Mardoc]

Thanks for the comments, gentlemen. In particular, thanks for the perspective on strategic resources - definitely going to set them up in a way that makes them claimable with the initial settlers now.

I had been thinking of going with a mapscript due to the heavy emphasis on 'natural-looking' but without that concern, I think I may steal your concept, GJ, or at least most of it. Either that, or I'll just punt and go with a Torusland or Mirrorland. Using a mostly mirrored map is a crutch, but it's a crutch that I think I need, given a field capable of seizing the smallest advantage.

My biggest remaining concern with using your concept, GJ, is:

2) Enough water so that naval combat is a factor, but not so much that it dominates the game

Your map has basically no way to reach a foe except navy. So if I use it, I at least need to add some land bridges to allow them, theoretically, to have naval combat not dominate. It's a bit annoying, because I don't honestly believe a non-naval invasion will work, but I have to give them the opportunity to find that out.

If it weren't totally self-indulgent, I think I would make all of the gold/silver/copper on the map show up in a central island in the classic 5-ring Olympic pattern. As it is, probably I'll make 'medal islands'.

On the question of this:

Interestingly, if you include wine, then there's exactly 6 plantation happys, so you could just give each person like 5 or 6 copies of a single one. (try to consider tile yields tho, as e.g. 6 grass incense vs 6 plains wine would is really unfair for the wines guy; but, that said, you could make the incense plains and the wines grass, put river around the grapes, etc, to balance that a bit).

I think I've got a solution. If I group the resources in pairs, I ought to be able to get tile yields very close for each pair. That only leaves three unique sets, but that's still enough to allow for some trading.

Anyway, first focus is making their 7x7 initial areas. I think I will make one to post here first, probably tonight, and plan to give out the screenies tomorrow after incorporating any comments.

[picklepikkl]

If it weren't totally self-indulgent, I think I would make all of the gold/silver/copper on the map show up in a central island in the classic 5-ring Olympic pattern. As it is, probably I'll make 'medal islands'.

This is an amazing idea.

[GermanJoey]

lol, that's a great idea...

and, Mardoc - yeah, I think a pair of narrow land bridges from the center of each area towards each of its sides would work just fine. One idea is to make sure there's a small interior lakes or bays on each side, so that players can get boats across via forts without the player on the other side seeing them. That'll allow the land bridges to both allow a land-based invasion without dampening the possibility of a surprise naval invasion.

And let me know if there's anything I can do to help!

[Mardoc]

First things first:

Opinions on this as a 7x7 starting area? For the final, I plan to embed it in the center of a person's land, with the jungle herding them toward the pole (assume the ocean tiles are all fog). Picked those particular happiness resources because they all go obsolete, which seemed like a funny theme.



I did forget about

Marble, Coal, Aluminium, and land-based Oil

I will probably just add them all to the capital site; only the Marble is visible at the start anyway.

For Plantation resources, I'm thinking of the following pairs:

Grass riverside Sugar + Plains Incense
Grass Spice + Grass Dye
Grass riverside Wine + Grass Silk

If I've done my math correctly, each of those pairs of tile has the same total yield. Each civ gets one set, probably 3x of each resource so that theoretically they can all have all resources with trading. It's still not perfect, because a civ might prefer to have Sugar/Incense for city specialization, but it seems as close as I will come and still include variety in available happiness.

And let me know if there's anything I can do to help!

Most particularly - can you send me the map file you're using as a base, and a little walkthrough of how to use your tool to make the six-way offset tiled version from the 'cell'? I figured out how to do use some of your maptool's features last fall, but I don't think I got as far as arbitrary copy/paste. It would save me a lot of time if I can work on just one cell and duplicate it at the end.

Either post to dropbox or e-mail to RBMardoc at gmail, whichever's easier.

I do want to add more land; I think 2 tiles E/W and 1 N/S per cell would probably be enough, as long as the extra tiles became mostly land in the middle of the 'waves'

And, of course, continue to give me your opinions .

[BRickAstley]

FWIW I like the map direction from over here.

[GermanJoey]

Alright, this should do it for you.

1.) save these two scripts to your "input" subdirectory of civ4 mapcad:

http://media.rhizzone.net/civ/pb35.civ4mc
http://media.rhizzone.net/civ/pb35_finish.civ4mc

2.) save that worldbuilder file you have up there, with your 7x7 starting area, as input/pb35_start.CivBeyondSwordWBSave
make sure that there is exactly *one* settler in this 7x7 starting area! (important!)

3.) there's two lines you need to change in the pb35.civ4mc. these are lines 48 and 51:

Code:

new_mask_from_polygon 25 25 "17,5" "24,5" "24,12" "17,12" "17,5" => @startingarea
...
crop_layer $pb35_start.sa 17 5 24 12 => $pb35cell.sa

Basically, you need to change the square of created from 17,5 to 24,12 to be whatever coordinates it is in your worldbuilder file. The script will then extract your square and then place it on the sharkfin. If you're not sure about the coordinates, run the script and take a look at debug.html (which you can just drag into your browser)

4.) Open up mapcad, and type: run_script "input/pb35.civ4mc". this will actually run both scripts; one to generate the blank cell w/ your starting area, and the second one to tile it.

5.) The script will generate two saves for you: output/pb35cell.CivBeyondSwordWBSave, output/pb35.CivBeyondSwordWBSave (plus debug.html and starting sims). The first one is just the cell by itself, while the second one is the completed 6 player map.

6.) open up pb35cell.CivBeyondSwordWBSave in the worldbuilder. make whatever changes you want to make. save, and copy this back to output/pb35cell.CivBeyondSwordWBSave

7.) open up mapcad again, and type: run_script "input/pb35_finish.civ4mc"
This will re-generate the 6-player map using your modified cell.

8.) open up pb35.CivBeyondSwordWBSave in the worldbuilder. make any changes you want, add some asymmetries, add landbridges, add the Ren starting era units, etc. Unfortunately, my tool doesn't know how to handle late-era start games, so you'll have to make a few fixes in the worldbuilder save directly. Luckily, there's a really really easy way to do that plus assign snakepick stuff at the same time. Here's how:

a.) create a new 6-player ren era start game, assigning picks to whatever the players will choose in the snakepick. check whatever other options you want. (e.g. no tech trading, no events, etc)
b.) open that file in notepad. ctrl-f for "BeginMap". select all text from that line to the start of the file. press ctrl-C.
c.) open up PB35.CivBeyondSwordWBSave in notepad. ctrl-f for "BeginMap." select all text from that line to the start of the file. press ctrl-V. press ctrl-S.

and that's it! whew!

[Mardoc]

Joey, thanks! I admit, I was expecting a list of commands, not a script that just needed to be run with slight modifications

I did know steps 6 and 8, but I appreciate you being thorough. Actually...if you were to genericize the names, this would be a useful post to copy into either your tool intro thread or your existing walkthrough/manual on github. Well...maybe in a couple months to be safe.

------

So, no comments on the starting screenie? Either I'm awesome, or else people aren't sure what sort of feedback I want. I don't believe the first possibility, so have some specific questions I'd like to have feedback on:

Does this start look fun to play?
Is it lush enough?
Are there interesting decisions to make?
Do you see a spot for city 2 - ideally a couple possibilities?
For that matter - what are your thoughts on the found-in-place that I'm pushing? Do you actually want to found in place? Should I give them more flexibility?
Is the terrain militarily interesting?
Even if you don't see a way to fix it, let me know if you see a problem with any of the above!

Do you see any tiles that are abnormal enough that you would care as a player? For example, I know that jungled furs and lake whale both don't exist on natural mapscripts - does that bother you? Are there any others that bother you if my examples don't? I don't have all the rules memorized.

Are there enough food tiles, hammer tiles, commerce boosters?

[Old Harry]

Does this start look fun to play?
- Well the start is always a slog for me, but this looks alright

Is it lush enough?
- Sure, although some players may get screwed by jungle spreads.

Are there interesting decisions to make?
- SIP and direction of the second city, then how to go about sharing food.

Do you see a spot for city 2 - ideally a couple possibilities?
- My second city would probably go to the rice, but it depends what the surrounding terrain is. Will that be similarly mirrored or might the furs be stronger for some players?

For that matter - what are your thoughts on the found-in-place that I'm pushing? Do you actually want to found in place? Should I give them more flexibility?
- I think SIP looks the best start, but given that Iron, Copper and Horse are revealed I don't think you need to force SIP, giving more flexibility might give interestingly different strategies.

Is the terrain militarily interesting?
- Hard to say without seeing the rest of the land its attached to.

[Zalson]

Some questions (which may or may not be useful)

Do you want all the rivers to be straight? Or is that a convenience thing?

I think the lack of food resources in the corners mean that there are only a few optimal settling locations. That might be what you're going for, though.

Players would start on the iron?

Are you going to have the starting 7x7 revealed?

[Mardoc]

Thanks, that's some stuff to think about.

- Sure, although some players may get screwed by jungle spreads.

Did I leave jungle where it could spread to any tiles people would want immediately? I don't mind if they have to hack through varying jungle later on, but I don't want it to be a problem for them before they've built their first handful of workers. They do at least start with iron working, so it's just a question of additional worker turns, not total inability to use the tile for ages.

Do you see a spot for city 2 - ideally a couple possibilities?
- My second city would probably go to the rice, but it depends what the surrounding terrain is. Will that be similarly mirrored or might the furs be stronger for some players?

Planning to have the whole map mirrored, except for varying calendar resources and maybe a couple odds and ends further out.

- I think SIP looks the best start, but given that Iron, Copper and Horse are revealed I don't think you need to force SIP, giving more flexibility might give interestingly different strategies.

That's a fair point. I suppose I can't control distance between players anyway, since they will be sending out a settler in a semi-random direction immediately.

Is the terrain militarily interesting?
- Hard to say without seeing the rest of the land its attached to.

Fair enough. Rest of the land isn't done yet .

Do you want all the rivers to be straight? Or is that a convenience thing?

Not necessarily, it's just that rivers are a pain to draw and I wanted to be sure they could hook their iron and horses without roads.

I think the lack of food resources in the corners mean that there are only a few optimal settling locations. That might be what you're going for, though.

I was worried about making the food too dense, but I do expect there to be food in the fog close by as well. Could add a couple more. I guess the jungle ought to be enough to push them toward the map edges at first, don't need to also starve them into that decision or make it the One Right Choice.

Players would start on the iron?

Yep. Well, they would start on the center tile, I could move the iron if it makes more sense to have it somewhere else.

Are you going to have the starting 7x7 revealed?

Yep, that was their request.