New Civ4 Pitboss (38?)

[plako]

I'm still in.

[GermanJoey]

Still in here, too.

[Old Harry]

Confirmed:
1) dtay
2) superdeath (1st time player)
3) Mr. Cairo

5) B4ndit
6) Rusten
7) Donovan Zoi

9) Old Harry + Fintourist
10) GermanJoey
11) Dreylin
12) OT4E
13) Dark Savant
14) 2metraninja
15) Mackoti
16) The Black Sword
17) AdrienIer
18) Pindicator
19) WilliamLP
20) Commodore
21) naufrager (1st time player)
22) plako
23) elkad
24) spacetyrantxenu
25) Boldly Going Nowhere

Out:
8) Chumchu

Needs team mate:
4) ghostpants (1st time player)

Great, if we assume that ghostpants finds a teammate we have 24 players. Which seems like a good number...

[Old Harry]

It looks like 2 leaders/1 civ/3 re-rolls is the pic method of choice. Is the list public or do we only get to see our own choice? (i prefer public as we have an idea of what might still be available on re-roll.)

The schedule is:
- a lurker rolls us our initial combos
- 23rd - krill rolls a map and gives out starting screenshots
- Approximately one week of map checking (lurkers) and combo-trading (players) ensues
- 30th - game goes live
- 31st - the world holds a party to celebrate with fireworks at midnight

Krill - have you got time for the new version of the mod and to roll the map? If not we'll be fine with v2.8.x, but I know you like a challenge...

We need a subforum!

[Krill]

If the mod is just the village and town change, ikhanda nerf and that one other change its a 30 minute job.

The map I need directions for, ideally asap.

[spacetyrantxenu]

We need a subforum!

http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/forum...hp?fid=295

[OT4E]

It looks like 2 leaders/1 civ/3 re-rolls is the pic method of choice. Is the list public or do we only get to see our own choice? (i prefer public as we have an idea of what might still be available on re-roll.)

I think if you make it public you will kill the main idea of rerolling.

[chumchu]

I can team up with Ghostpants no problem. That is a reasonable time commitment and I would enjoy being in a team.

[Old Harry]

Nothing better to do of a Friday night than collect some map comments below. TLDR is:

- 24 players
- No piggy-in-the-middles
- Do something about early tech costs (not sure what)
- Dreylin and Chumchu want a smaller map than normal (80-100 land tiles each) dtay wants normal size (160ish) and I like his reasoning, I guess that makes it mapmakers decision?
- Difficulty Monarch (Or maybe prince for early tech costs?)
- Size Huge
- Barbs On
- Villages Off
- Speed Normal
- Events Off
- Commodore favours cylinder (although I didn't spot him mention it), I'd prefer toroid, dtay & Ghostpants  says up to the mapmaker (so long as the continents don't cross the map edge.) I think that means aesthetically pleasing toroid wins?
- Mitigate global warming somehow... (Forests on mountains?)

Anyone think different?

Krill - do you need to know anything else?

Map: Normal bound of lushness, preferably cylindrical (have a bit of commodore in me), at about the level of map-balance as PB27, maybe a bit less.

For context, what I mean by that is PB27 had not literally mirrored starts, but pretty symmetrically accessible "types" of things, ie something like your metal-happy was 3 cities away, 1 calendar happy in capital, copper in 2nd city next to X food, etc. By the geometry of the map was pretty much not mirrored at all. Putting aside whether or not PB27 astro-islands only was balanced (for my part, I don't really care, it was still cool).

Stuff we never change:
Difficulty/Size/Barb/Villages/Speed: Monarch/Standard/On/Off/Normal

The rules for the game sounds fine. I have one map suggestion, make the map smaller per player than usual (80-100 land tiles) as we are so many. The idea is to get a bit of player elimination to speed things up and to avoid an unwieldy endgame where every contender has 50+ cities.

I'm happy with a fairly balanced map, I'd like to have a go at mirrored starts as I haven't played a game like that, but I doubt that'll be a popular option.

If we go for a cylinder and have a lot of players can we avoid having civs stuck in on the equator with enemies on all sides while others have happy polar back lines? (I'm thinking PB18 where dtay, pindicator and others had more trouble than my team, BGN, TBS and others did.)

(Essentially I'd like a toroid.)

Also second the chumchu's suggestion for smaller starting areas to reduce late-game empire management. We could also "vassalise" defeated players - they become dedlurkers for the empire that contributed most to their downfall - to help on that front and with holidays, etc.

An idea I had awhile ago that might help with this, based on something that I once saw used in a Civfanatics team succession game contest, but never actually tried using: strategically pre-placed roads and/or railroads on the water to "virtually shorten" the naval distance between far-away points. Thematically, you could think of it like the Gulf Stream or some such. For example, a long railroad in the deep ocean could help "connect" two far-away continents after Astro. Or a few sections of short (2-3 roads) around a coastal area could allow more civs to interact around the same territory. Or a few isolated coastal roads would help allow you to give backfill island access to a civ that doesn't have a lot of accessible coast. etc.

Or hell, we could get all One Piece up in here and have a multi-lane naval railroad running right through the center of the entire map...

At any rate, I throw another hat in for trying to avoid "pickle-in-the-middle" civs. (or at least, don't make me one!)

In terms of guidance - Here is my take on the map and what I intended as the initial post. I intend none of this as gospel if a bunch of people object and obviously have no inherent authority here, but do tend to think these things go more smoothly if someone just asserts guidance and then others talk about it:

Size / Buffer between players: I think this should be more in the realm of normal than particularly tight, along the lines of 18/27. I never remember the tile-counts that generate what amount of space, but something like civs 2nd/3rd rings are neighboring depending on city placement. Tight maps I think are harder to balance, generate a bit of a different gameplay than "bog standard", and I think can ironically generate a slower turnpace than more spacious maps, up until the very lategame when you do reach empire-size problems. I would rather optimize for the majority of the game that most people will play in than the final piece where 2-3 people matter.

Level of Balance: PB27 level balance. Maybe a touch beneath. Pretty balanced. Not mirrored starts, not mirrored shapes. I think the attention to detail and the thought process GJ (et al) appears to have engaged in for that map (pb27) is laudable.

Lushness: I meant standard range of lushness here at RB, not base civ map generation. If anything lusher like pb27. I agree with the post GJ had here  in the PB27 lurker thread here on why lusher maps are easier to balance and allow more variation in play.

Map Shape/Wrap: Mapmakers discretion. I like Krill's suggestion, which I think boils down to a toroidal map where you don't let continents cross the N/S border. Basically Toroidal but aesthetically pleasing. Sounds a lot easier to balance than true cylindrical. Don't really want to play a donut as a few suggested, but if you think you got a great donut idea somehow, shrug.

Map Size Setting: Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't we usually just leave the literal size setting at standard so as to leave tech costs the same, and then just make a map of whatever tile count we want? I would do that.

Islands and astro-islands and how interactable are continents and are there barb submarines and how many 1-tile deer islands: Mapmaker discretion  

Toroidal but aesthetically pleasing sounds like a good compromise between balance and, well, aesthetics if commodore is ok with it.

i guess you could always make generous use of mountain ranges if you need to make a cylinder where everyone has similar backlines.

Going to have to be some large mountain ranges tho....

well... as long as we don't have to pay Brick per tile...  

Size / Buffer between players: I think this should be more in the realm of normal than particularly tight, along the lines of 18/27. I never remember the tile-counts that generate what amount of space, but something like civs 2nd/3rd rings are neighboring depending on city placement.

For the PB27 map, we tried to aim at around 140/160/180 land tiles per player on the main continent for those with 2/3/4 adjacent neighbors. (IIRC, the total land tiles per player was something ~175ish or so, including the Astro islands) In hindsight, I think the 2/3 neighbors worked out about right, but those with 4 neighbors probably needed just a little bit more help.

A map's size setting generally isn't messed with too much because there's a tradeoff: decreasing the world size decreases tech costs, but it also increases city distance maintenance. So, for example, PB18 and PB27 were WORLDSIZE_HUGE maps, and PB37 is a WORLDSIZE_LARGE map. But maybe we could lower the difficulty setting to compensate for that? WORLDSIZE_LARGE with HANDICAP_PRINCE?

p.s. and thanks for the kind words about the PB27 map!

I mean, we don't need to make the starting techs so cheap that they're PB27 level, right? We just need to lower their Huge-map cost somewhat so that if we get random civs, or a 20 person snakepick, then somoene won't get up screwed over by their starting spot. (and also the ancient era doesn't last for 100 turns). Note this also has the benefit of putting a lot less pressure on the mapmakers to make sure that the requested non-mirrored starts are fair for all players.

IMHO, we should just lower the bases costs of these techs so that their real scaled cost in the live PB38 game is about what they'd be on a "standard" worldsize map.

i personally as a newer player would like to have as few of islands/sea warfare potential going into the map as possible..

I'm fine with the recently proposed options for selecting civ/leader. I like the idea of releasing your not utilized civ or leader back to the general selection pool.

Map request: Wherever possible, use the map to mitigate the effects of global warming. Forests on all mountains for example, as well as forests on ocean tiles that would not impede naval combat. I'm not sure if boats would receive the terrain bonus and I'm too lazy to sim to find out but if there are areas of the map that are unneeded for players' use then put some forests on these where practical.

[Commodore]

Like 27? That on a cylinder.