[No Players] Where the Lurkers Take Their Holidays

[Miguelito]

2 with no changes. Novit enim temere numerus Iesus qui sunt eius.

Having had to play PB66, I think mapmakers shouldn't punish players for signing up for games.

Also random desert hell deal with it lol is pretty much not what was asked for.

I liked pindi's concept of

My concept, loosely, is "Australia".  Players on the outskirts of an arid landmass where the outer edge is fertile and the inside is largely arid. 

But then why just throw one of them right into the arid inside?

Would prefer the map to be at least somewhat balanced. IE neighbors / approximate quality.

[Krill]

2 with no changes. Novit enim temere numerus Iesus qui sunt eius.

Having had to play PB66, I think mapmakers shouldn't punish players for signing up for games.

Also random desert hell deal with it lol is pretty much not what was asked for.

I liked pindi's concept of

My concept, loosely, is "Australia".  Players on the outskirts of an arid landmass where the outer edge is fertile and the inside is largely arid. 

But then why just throw one of them right into the arid inside?

Would prefer the map to be at least somewhat balanced. IE neighbors / approximate quality.

To stick with the cliches: Mjmd wouldn't recognise balance if it hit him in the face with a big stick.

Without seeing the map (a blessing, I'm sure, the joy of discovery still to come), the map looks like it can't be any worse than PB71, and PB71 was lower yield than PB66 by quite a way.

The only position that looks awkward from the minimap is the centre blue start, which has flood plains in most directions and lakes to irrigate from in the remaining. I seem to recall that in PB71 the lurkers and players valued the flood plains to a higher level than the local grasslands and food resources, and that map has limited grasslands so it appears, at first glance, to be of an equal level of "badness". I don't think the true centre is arid, there are bands of desert that affect all players.

And it's a 10 player game. Short of the ribbon of land concept at least one player is going to have more neighbours than others, so anything resembling Australia is going to be no better than map 2 in that area either.

I reckon map 2 is actually quite close to balanced, at least from the information available from a minimap (ie can't see resources, or forests).

[Tarkeel]

First off, comparing this to PB71 is grossly unfair. That map was sold as "hyper-random with minimum edits", and that is what it delivered. PB66 was also sold as "roll a map so we can get started" in the end, but that's not what people signed on for.

Secondly, agree that "desert hell" is not what was ordered, but Pindi's initial idea of a pangea-shape with grass on the coast, and desert taking the usual role of water in dividing people. For the two piggies in the middle I'd give them something of an oasis of comparative size to what others would be able to claim. Now these players could be moved to the edges and have the center take the role of astro-land, but that seems to be more work to accomplish.

Pindi, any thoughts on how you're making the starts, since that's what they'll need first/next.

[Krill]

Anything can be compared to anything else. PB71 is simply one comparator, it would only be unfair if that was the only one considered. If the aim is Australia, last I checked dry and desolate is par for the course.

If the goal was verdant and green then aim for Africa.

I'll take this opportunity to point out that a donut map would be a better starting point if you want good balance, takes less effort to edit that.

[Mousey]

2 is my favourite, but yellow is cramped imo and the map is pretty lopsided eastwards, lots of land that is only contested between the two east coast players. Light blue needs to be moved much further east (and maybe yellow a little bit east as well?).

1 looks good. Only note would be that the japanese red player in the SSE might have a bit of a land advantage (depends on the irrigation/resources) especially with that mountain range sealing their east border. But it's not critically imbalanced, so top pick if you don't wanna do any tweaks.

3 with your suggested change would be okay. But the south desert is kind of screwed on rivers compared to north (the china purple in the west gets a very safe south and a basically uncontested floodplain to the north, maybe swap the river to the south?) and the centre strip takes up too much of the map's focus, so I'm not sure it'd fit with your stated map goal.

4 light green in the NE also feels a little bit screwed on land here, and something about the map overall feels a bit meh.

[Miguelito]

I actually think the lushness level is fine, and I shouldn't have brought up desert hell. Mjmd named PB65 as a reference, and that was all brown with a few green sprinkles.

My issue is just with one start having up to 7 (realistically 5) neighbours, while everybody else has 2-3. That one player will be miserable. And there seems to be space on the eastern coast to move it there.
And then I feel like flood plains rivers are nice connecters through the desert, so I'd want them on both sides of the map.

PB66 was just mentioned because I'm still salty over our copper (and well our everything else, but that one should have been evident even on a random map), and Krill's screw the players quote served as trigger. Lurkers should not send players into misery knowingly (not claiming that's what happened in 66, but it felt punishing).

[Amicalola]

Agree with Mig.

[RefSteel]

Not sure if this helps, but just in case:

I liked pindi's concept of

My concept, loosely, is "Australia".  Players on the outskirts of an arid landmass where the outer edge is fertile and the inside is largely arid. 

This is what I was aiming for with the "tiltless" script I (barely) modified from Tectonics, but I'm not sure if the implementation is attractive. For example, using v2 (attached to the second post in the civfanatics thread I created and linked) with a Large, Arid Pangaea with grassland extension set to "Slight" and axial tilt set to "None," I get results like this:

Looking at that map, I made some small changes, moving two players slightly to ensure at least 15 tiles between starts and adjusting the interior floodplain rivers a bit.

I didn't check at all for e.g. resource balance (even strategics) and certainly wouldn't ship it as-is, and don't know if it's any better than Map-2-with-one-or-two-of-the-starts-moved, but it's an option if wanted. (And if the one twice pictured or a version of it in between the two forms, e.g. with the long interior river ~reverted actually looks worth using as a base, it's easy enough to send the saves.)

[EDIT: Note both for these cases and the maps Pindicator posted: Maps created by Tectonics are immense. Large maps like these for ten players mean on the order of 250 land tiles per player. The extremely arid land does mitigate that to an extent, but I don't know to what extent exactly.]

[Commodore]

Not sure if this helps, but just in case:

I liked pindi's concept of

My concept, loosely, is "Australia".  Players on the outskirts of an arid landmass where the outer edge is fertile and the inside is largely arid. 

I love this map.

[pindicator]

Ref that is brilliant. It's far better than anything I've created for a starting point.

Edit: I'm planning on doing this next part manually but I guess it can't hurt to ask: is it possible to make the script more mountainous? Especially in the center? Thinking choke points similar to my border with Thoth in pb71 in the middle. Probably with some open areas mixed in still.