[SPOILERS] Rusten prepares to face the music

[Rusten]

Top power dropped from 101k to 82k. 100+ is a ridiculous number for turn 60. I'm going to go ahead and assume that was OT4E. I guess the lurkers are happy to see some action but I really don't get such committed classical rushes. I like to poke and choke with an advantage to weaken, but getting 10 axes before T60 (or whatever he has) can't ever be good, can it? Either OH has provoked and settled too much in his face or OT4E is being way too aggressive. The map isn't that crowded, is it?

Certainly would not expect this from Qin of Carthage, unless he somehow has HBR already, but that shouldn't be possible. It all seems weird to me, but whatever the reason is I welcome it. This is actually exactly what I feared one of the new players could do towards me, but in the end it's the experienced OT4E. 

[Rusten]

I had a look into my crystal ball and it revealed HBR before T80.
Stockpile --> mathematics --> HBR+archery --> literature --> sailing --> calendar.

If Aretas keeps looking ripe for the taking then I will whip+chop a group of HAs and surprise attack him.
City 4+5 have enough production and forests to go at it alone. SW can finish the HE+SoZ in the meantime and be the long-term contributor.

Possibly sailing before HBR if I need to settle the island.

[Rusten]

Somebody got a GS this turn. I'm guessing TBS (Pericles), but could also be mackoti (PHI/IMP) I suppose. At any rate it made me stop to reconsider my plans a little. I'm not the only one who would benefit from GL+NE and I'm so close already with poly+aesthetics. Regardless of Aretas ripeness I think the better path is:
Stockpile --> mathematics --> literature --> HBR+archery.

Not a big delay at all. Still T80ish.

Also worth noting that barbarians are being a nuisance, but so far it's only warriors. I might get the HE unlocked just from barb battles, which points further towards quicker literature.

[Rusten]

Finally settled my aggressive border city (Wowee Zowee).




Going Madrassa first for defensive purposes and needing to win the tiles ASAP. It might even be the most productive opening in a vacuum as it opens up better chops and faster rice, but there was no need to look this up. The early culture is important strategically.

Named it after one of my favourite albums by Pavement. One of my biggest influencers and Stephen Malkmus still defines "cool" to this day. Could've easily been one of the other albums, they're all good.

I might not have mentioned this before, but part of the reason a HBR rush on Aretas is particularly appetizing is that he teched archery first this game. Clearly he wants to rely on archers and they're no good against horse archers. His power is stagnant (I'm finally at about average) and at this point my only worry is making sure that I am the one attacking him. I don't want to get beaten to the punch. The downside is that he has so much EP on me that I think he will notice me teching HBR, but I'm confident anyway.

[Rusten]

Will soon settle deer+Oasis. Chose this site first to the N-NE because it has a lot of forests. Will chop another settler on size 1 with the workers accompanying the settler (boosted by mathematics).
Have a peace treaty with naufragar after he went through my territory with his wb and used the time to send my units scouting. Found another good city spot to the west bordering Aretas (again). Whipping a quick settler for that too.

But more interesting things are happening in the rest of the world. Judging by civstats OT4E's attack has run out of steam and he lost a city to OH this turn.   Probably the one that he captured to begin with.
mackoti is the first to have researched a classical tech other than myself (that I noticed anyway). I'm going to assume that's mathematics. He's Suleiman so he might chop the Pyramids or something if he's found stone. I guess there's also a chance that it's aesthetics, but I highly doubt it.

Another wonder that I imagine will get built soon is the Great Wall. Not for the barb restriction, but because having a great spy for scouting could be of value this game with map trading disabled. I thought about getting it myself, but I can't find the time/resources. You wouldn't really want an idle great spy sitting around as your first GP, but you could easily overtake the passive GPP and get it second/third or something, finishing it with a courthouse spy specialist. There are drawbacks to this, but it's a unique advantage in the game for later ages.

[Rusten]

Time for a talk about map balance. I got vision on naufragar's 2nd city this turn and it made me anxious.
Disclaimer: I do not have complete information and this is only based on perception so far, but in case there are any future mapmakers reading then please take note of this.



Not only does it get to share pigs with capital (presumed), but it gets another strong food resource in first ring and is on the starting river. This is the kind of spot that I was looking for with my settler but was unable to find. Instead I had to share rice and SEAFOOD. I can't stress enough that seafood does not qualify as a normal resource in the early game. Building a 30 hammer work boat is a huge investment at that point. Furthermore the tile is improved later as you cannot have a worker in place upon settling but must create the work boat from scratch. You also need a new technology.

For reference you can look at my starting area in these images:

As you can see I have no such city spots available. The only river cities that I could plant to share food with capital were seafood (crab lake or clam). Only having seafood available for the cities that share river+resources is a huge disadvantage and I'm very surprised it made it through testing if others have livestock/grain. Civs with the latter are much better off from turn 1.

Main point: please do not treat seafood as remotely similar to an irrigation or pasture food resource in the early game.

[Rusten]

Just for the record, I don't expect a perfectly balanced map and I really appreciate the time mapmakers put into it. It appears to me that there has been an attempt to make the starts balanced. However, taking the points in the previous post into account this is not the case.
I am bringing it up because I fear that it is considered balanced when in reality it's not even close.

[Mardoc]

Only having seafood available for the cities that share river+resources is a huge disadvantage and I'm very surprised it made it through testing if others have livestock/grain. Civs with the latter are much better off from turn 1.

Main point: please do not treat seafood as remotely similar to an irrigation or pasture food resource in the early game.

Two comments:
- Is the river access really that important? It saves you maybe 6-8 worker turns on a road initially, or else you lose out on 2 commerce/turn. I can't imagine being unable to come up with worker labor by the time that resource connectivity matters.
- Especially with a map this big, the end goal is mostly 'map variations are smaller than other random variables'. It's a ton of work already to get to this point, and mirror maps were explicitly dismissed. I'm sure that it was possible to improve the map further, but once you're past the threshold of other luck, it's hard to justify the time investment and the delay of game start.

'Other random variables' include the civ/leader picking process, but mostly neighbors. There's a huge swing in your chances of winning between neighboring the top and bottom players in any game, but especially in the flagship games like this one with everyone welcome, no sorting by ability.

[Rusten]

Yes, it's not about hooking up resources, it's about the 2C per turn. And yes, it makes a huge difference. You're only netting about 10-12 commerce per turn when settling your second city. Adding +2 to that is a substantial increase and gets you worker techs quicker.
I will also add that even disregarding the river I did not have a single city spot which could share capital food while still getting a new 5F or 6F resource. Not even in the second ring of a city.

I do not require a perfectly balanced map personally, and I very much appreciate the fact that a 25 player game is a crapshoot. A lot of uncontrollable variables come into play, but what I'm talking about is controllable. Just because you can't control everything doesn't mean that you can't try to reel in variance where you can. I consider my position to be very good despite 'complaining'. This is not sour grapes – merely an observation.

If the balancing act more or less stopped at the starting BFC then that's OK, I understand that there's a lot of things to do/fix. If, however, there was an attempt to balance the area surrounding the capital then I feel the need to step up and let you know that it's not even close to balanced. My argument is that if my «crab» is considered to have the same role as naufragar's «pig» then this is completely false. The tiles simply can't be compared. 
Being able to share a good food resource while also enabling another resource with your 2nd city is essential to start your snowball. If one civ can do this and another can't then it's clear who's favoured.

If you agree that it's imbalanced then we have no argument. My worry is that there's a misconception on what's balanced and what's not. If an attempt has been made to balance 2nd city locations then this has failed. If no such attempt has been made then all is fine.

[Mardoc]

If an attempt has been made to balance 2nd city locations then this has failed. If no such attempt has been made then all is fine.

Well, I wasn't deeply involved, as work was busy at the time, but I don't believe 2nd cities were part of a balance pass.  Capitals and general land quality and resources, but not to the level of detail of thinking about how to play each start.

Definitely was a result of insufficient time and energy, not any belief that crabs and pigs are equivalent.  With perhaps a side order of the continual tension between balanced, natural-looking, and unpredictable enough for scouting to be worthwhile.

I would definitely agree that the ranking of position-in-the-game and the ranking of player skill are only going to be loosely correlated, and part of the noise in that correlation is going to be the map.  I personally think that it will be swamped by other factors, but I'm sure that will be a topic for the postmortem thread.