Map Making Thread (SPOILERS!)

[chumchu]

1) I'm thinking about that one as well. What I should have done was to place the starting warrior more coastal rather than more inland. I expected the tile bleed and the fish to tell players that coastal start was a real possibility. I was too subtle but I do not feel that I should mess with the starting screenshots now.

2) I wanted the players to each have a monopolies so the only real choice was calendar luxuries. 4 wine/incense is a good pantheon but not broken as it requires you to work weak foodhammer tiles in the early game. The generic ones like 1 happy or 1 hammer per city should be ok in comparison. You also have to invest to get the pantheon. The difference between having a calendar lux and a mining lux is much bigger to my mind than having wine rather than sugar. Salt or citrus is even bigger.

3) Both continents have one cultural, military and maritime. 3 Religious are on the bigger islands. 2 maritime and 2 cultural are on the poles. There are 3 natural wonders: Lake Victoria in Africa as you spotted, mount Fuji in Japan Nw and Uluru in Australia SE. All players have a chance at them if they scout their islands early, anyone planting a coastal cap will obviously have an advantage. Polynesia would have a huge advantage and is the only civ to have a realistical possibility to settle one of them early enough (think turn 40) for it to be game changing.

[Azoth]

1. I agree that you shouldn't mess with starting screenshots. But you could simply reveal some more hexes in game as a gift to the players (if that's possible in the map editor). With a 4 tile minimum distance between cities, only ~12 tiles between players, and some of that space claimed by city-states, I can see someone getting locked out of good expands if they plant non-optimally.

2. Yeah, for a 5-player game, you could go Silk/Sugar/Cotton/Dyes/Spices, but you need something else for 6. I guess Fur/Truffles were not an option because they can give extra food with a pantheon.

3. No Mercantile at all then? I suppose they're not as important in MP (not that they're too important to begin with) because players will probably trade luxuries freely? (And, wow, 3 Religious is a lot. It makes the pantheon issue less important. You can always clear a barb camp/sink 500 gold to get faith from a city-state.)

[chumchu]

1) How do you mean exactly? If they plant more inland they should have more backline to fill. If they plant coastal they might get less of the continent but should have a head start in colonizing the islands.

I could tell the players to scout properly but I do not want to force them to play the map as I intended it.

2) I could have gone with tundra cocoa for the 6th but that would look silly. Fur/truffles are worse than plantations without the food pantheon and better with it. They are good for secondary luxuries for all players so that is where they are.

3) They are on the poles, I meant 2 mercantile and not 2 maritime in that sentence. The effect of the 3 religious on the early religions depends on how well the other players have been scouting the sea, again polynesia could have gotten a free pantheon that way but we will unfortunately not see them in the game. I think getting triremes out will be super important and I reckon that they will be built after the first wave of settlers for most players so turn 50ish. Clearing camps for the religous states might be more difficult than usual as they are on relatively small islands.

[oledavy]

As promised: map feedback.

So, I won't hedge on my praise for this map, I think it was rather brilliantly conceived and executed. I only have a few things I can really suggest that could be done better:  

1. Put a few more mountains out (enabling Machu Picchu, Neuschwanstein, observatories, etc). I don't recall seeing any mountains on the home continents besides the one in the center.
2. Lushen up the land directly between the players just a little bit, make it worth competing over more.
3. A little biased, but I think the inland capital location needed 1 non-forested hill in the area. Otherwise, loved the 3 start options. My glancing over threads does make it seem many people didn't know they had a good coastal option though, and that would maybe need to be made clearer for similar maps in the future. 
4. Strat resources oversight, but eh, it was your first time making a civ5 map, and is very understandable.


Other comments: 

 - I love the way islands were integrated onto the map. I'm very sad I never got to discover them, particularly your Japan/Australia/Africa.
 - I think your general method of balancing strat resources was really solid. It's a pity that we won't really get to see it play out here.  
 - Luxury balancing was also done really well.
 - I know from his thread Ichabod doesn't like the two 3-player continents format, but I sincerely believe it's the best way to balance a 6-player map like this without crafting something gimmicky. I agree with your decision making there.

Should there be more Civ5 MP here, I think this map is a perfect template for mapmakers going forward. 

However, if I was to play another game of Civ5 here, I would want to seriously consider a mod that at the very least mods out increases in tech costs with additional cities. Let's make Civ5 a true 4X game. I would be very interested to see the notes on both you and your friends' mod, and would generally agree that something to buff melee and nerfed ranged would be a solid change for the game.

[chumchu]

If you want to look more closely: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/2511.....Civ5Save

1) There is one mountain per player in their backlines by the coast as well as the one in the absolute center of the continents. There are more on the larger islands. This was also meant as a way to make the islands and the center better while leaving the players one guaranteed spot for wonders or maybe a science city. You could add some more but you do not want to clog the continents too much.

2) Also comes from the island/continent balance of the map. The islands must be better than the continents to balance colonisation vs. conquest. I think the latter is stronger in general if you can do it early/cheaply as Ichabod did. Your cities on the continent can support each other much better than far off colonies. That being said the center is a fair bit better in my opinion as it has more rivers and fresh water tiles. On balance I think maybe one or two resources in that direction might be worthwhile, not that we did not have conflict over the center in this game =)

3) Totally agree. I realized my mistake when some players did not see the tile bleeding. Putting the warrior on the sea side would have fixed this. People must know that there are a decent coastal option as inland is generally better.

4) To much time making HoMM 3 maps does that to a person =p

Thank you!

About two 3-player continents. I was hoping for a mexican standoff that can be broken with a good timing push. Ichabod's aggression was too early for Pindicator to matter though. I think a Pangea or donut with nice islands can work as well but that still nerfs coastal civs and is hard to give everyone equal access to each other and the islands.

I would be game for more Civ 5 MP.

There is a fair bit of changes in the mod so I suggest that you try it out for a SP-game to see how they fit together:
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a...ts.550671/

This is a SP mod so it could use a few changes to work in MP like removing the per city altogether instead of just sharply lessening it.