[SPOILERS] Map Creation Thread

[SevenSpirits]

Go away, players. Come back when the game is over.

[SevenSpirits]

I need your help, fellow omniscient beings! Let's make sure that this map is relatively balanced and fun to play.

Here are the starting positions:
EDIT: As these are obsolete I've replaced the image embeds with links, which you can look at if you like, as if this was a museum or something.

Perpentach
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvo6...ot0071.JPG

Varn Gosam
http://lh3.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvpD...ot0072.JPG

Arendel
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvpl...ot0073.JPG

Flauros
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvp3...ot0074.JPG

Mahala
http://lh5.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvqF...ot0075.JPG

Hannah
http://lh4.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvqd...ot0076.JPG

Beeri Bawl
http://lh6.ggpht.com/_rzTaF8fTbec/TMTvqk...ot0077.JPG

The settler is always the middle unit, to be clear. Also of note: I gave the players normal settlers without the starting sight and movement bonus. This is because I'm afraid moving settlers could unbalance the game if people move close together. All other starting items should be as normal.

Things that should be symmetrical: NONE.
Things that should be relatively balanced (i.e. I tried to balance these somewhat):
1) First city tiles.
2) Positions for good secondary cities.
3) Proximity to opponents.
4) Access to strategic resources, particularly copper.

As someone with little FFH experience, I don't know how well I succeeded. So please comment. Also have an eye out for traversability. This script makes lots of chokepoints and sometimes blocks routes off completely. While this is intentional, in specific cases it might be good to open up some paths. (I already did this for a couple.) Thirdly, I didn't change the positioning of lairs at all. If you have a better idea as to their potentially unbalancing impact, perhaps you have some suggestions regarding those.

Also if you think the map script used will completely ruin the game, I guess this would be a good time to tell me.

[SevenSpirits]

Small update, I realized I'd forgotten to tweak the sizes of the bodies of water.

I bumped the largest lakes up to 10 tiles, making them salty, and made as many seas as possible 20+ tiles big so that boats can be built in them.

Also I just read that FFH removed fort canal capabilities so I narrowed a few more land paths to 1 tile wide to allow for canal cities.

[Maksim]

I'll have a few more comments later on about the individual details of the starting position, but I am a bit concerned at the amount of water you have on this map, and the fact that most of it is shallow and one or two tiles wide in many places.

With this setup, Octopus Overlords is very overpowered - Drown and water-walking Cultists become an obvious choice for everyone, which may make for a rather boring game.

Does anyone else feel the same way?

[Maksim]

I had a whole post with comments on starting positions but then had an epiphany - here's what I think the one true strategy is for this map.

Mass Drowns\Stygian Guards and water-walking Cultists. Promote them to Mobility I, so they have two movement points. Cultists Tsunami any enemies foolish enough to be near water, Drowns and later Stygian Guards pick up the pieces. Wounded units escape into water to heal up. Anybody who does not have water-walking units does not have a counter to this.

One tile wide land passages surrounded by water on both sides are particularly vulnerable to this strategy, as are coastal cities, and most cities will be coastal as there is not that much land near most civilizations' starting locations.

Sorry, but I don't think that would be much fun to either lurk or play.

[Mardoc]

I agree with Maksim. It also seems like a Lanun dream map - several sites where it'd be possible to put 3, maybe even 4 pirate ports per city. And pretty much every city can be on the coast, as well. The general consensus seems to be that Lanun are extremely powerful even with 2 ports per city and having to build some cities inland; I can just imagine their power on this map.

[Dantski]

It also seems like a Lanun dream map

Have to disagree with this, while Amelia would be able to spam pirate ports, the water doesn't exactly extend very far so her nautical Civ hero would be mostly useless. With enemy ships unlikely to threaten her cities, boarding parties would also be even worse than normal.

Anyway comparing initial starts

Perpentach
Plains sheep + desert incense, this capital will be desperately short of food early on as AH is expensive at the start, first couple of city sites after that are strong and he'll have good access to copper/gold/horses. Is the peaks blocking him to the NW an edited part of the map or not?

suggestions - consider replacing the sheep or adding another food bonus to the capital, looks like he'll not have access to Iron. Not necessarily a big deal though, could use some food next to pool of tears

Varn

No food but he does have 2 floodplains to counter that a bit. Settling east is obvious with this start and he has access to copper.

suggestions - I'd like to see a little more food again (especially north close to the mana node + gems). The furs to the SW are kinda isolated with the mana node and could use a deer or two. Again there's no Iron access but thats more or a balance question.

Arendel

Plains hill sheep and clam is not ideal but manageable. Not much access to strategic resources, no copper (hard to see if the top one has any food near), iron is some way to the west and horses don't have that much food nearby.

suggestions - swap the Iron for one of the dyes to the east? Corn or rice 2N of the horses

Flauros

Grass pigs + 2 FP is plenty of food. Not really any great expansion options, east is blocked by a peak and south only has a single rice resource.

suggestions - Food! One close to south mana node (seafood or land) and one to the west fo the horses would beef up this weedy start a lot. Scrap that eastern peak. One of the teams without copper but with iron

Mahala

Not sure where the optimum settling position is here. Wheat is ok, cows are a bit weak. Copper is easily obtainable but he'll have to found a cold city to get it.

suggestions - only wine + incense for happiness, other civs have gold + gems! The food situation is better for other starts although resources are in short supply to the SE. Either the horse or iron cities won't have a food resource so some more there would be good.

Hannah

If this map is used, Hannah starts with a serious handicap, the plains hill sheep across the water won't help her until Sailing. Settling 1N of the horse would fix the food problem but make the capital seriously weak on production. There's no food to the SE.

suggestions - this start + surroundings need an extensive rework. Food to the SE + S is a must, pearls in the west (possibly changing the pearls furthest NE to fish or clam). Hannah has no metals closeby, copper is some way west and iron is some way east, at least she has horses.

Beeri

Starting food is deer (hunting) thats not good enough. There's also a lot of very restrictive peaks in this start. Has access to incense/silk/cotton/wine.The only metal in the starting picture is gems! They have horses but dwarven horsemen are awful.

suggestions - replace the starting deer, change some of the peaks to hills and give them some iron or copper (1E of Odio's Prison maybe?).


Also some questions

1. Whats the world wrap? Size?
2. How many cities do you want the players to be able to found in peace?
3. Whats the priority, balanced or unique starts?

I can agree on water walking being very powerful on this map. A tweak to remove some lakes, add some land but also expand a few 'seas' would be ideal.

[Maksim]

Loaded up the game (thanks for the Worldbuilder save), and granted myself a bunch of cultists all over the place to test my theory.

So, Tsunami - any plot within a a distance of two tiles (so a 5 by 5 square) is affected, as long as it is water, or has water nearby, is affected. The damage done is obnoxious - five cultists obliterated a stack of paramanders and RoK priests to about 20% of life remaining. They could then attack and kill the weakened stack. They also destroyed about half of the improvements on these tiles, all the while being perfectly safe from any counter-attack. They could also do the same thing from fresh water lakes!

Any coastside tile is affected. Problem on this map is that most tiles are coastside - most civs literally have around half a dozen tiles in their starting locations which are safe. Even if you were to build your cities non-coastal to protect them (and accept a limited number of tiles to work), most of your improvements would be coastal.

Caravels and other ships are limited to their own sea, so they aren't the answer - and as soon as bronze-powered Stygian Guards come online (str 8), they are weakened further.

The lack of counter-attacking capability on behalf of land-based units means that Octopus Overlords is the religion to go for, and a Cultist rush is the one true path; for such a diverse set of civilizations, play style approaches and ideas on what to do, having it all boil down to a bunch of Tsunamis seems inappropriate.

Sorry, but I just don't think this is salvageable. I would like to ask for a complete map change.

[SevenSpirits]

I had a whole post with comments on starting positions but then had an epiphany - here's what I think the one true strategy is for this map.

Mass Drowns\Stygian Guards and water-walking Cultists. Promote them to Mobility I, so they have two movement points. Cultists Tsunami any enemies foolish enough to be near water, Drowns and later Stygian Guards pick up the pieces. Wounded units escape into water to heal up. Anybody who does not have water-walking units does not have a counter to this.

One tile wide land passages surrounded by water on both sides are particularly vulnerable to this strategy, as are coastal cities, and most cities will be coastal as there is not that much land near most civilizations' starting locations.

Sorry, but I don't think that would be much fun to either lurk or play.

I'm not seeing how triremes don't figure into it but yeah, Tsunami seems kinda broken. The question for me is how much water can you have on a FFH map without it being overpowered? It's important to me that water be a little bit more prominent than on a pangaea.

This map had about 25% coast tiles; what do you think would be an acceptable amount?

I agree with Maksim. It also seems like a Lanun dream map - several sites where it'd be possible to put 3, maybe even 4 pirate ports per city. And pretty much every city can be on the coast, as well. The general consensus seems to be that Lanun are extremely powerful even with 2 ports per city and having to build some cities inland; I can just imagine their power on this map.

I'm not going to balance the map around one possible Civ that someone could pick, that would just be silly.

[SevenSpirits]

For reference, here's an example map with about 12% coast tiles (half as many), and with the water distribution one level more clustered.



On a comparable pangaea I'd guess the ratio of relevant coast tiles to relevant tiles is maybe 8%. Obviously the inland sea setup results in a little bit more coastal land though.