Lurking - The Not-So-Silent Service

[Kaiser]

Ok, I stumbled back onto the CIV6 interface and its horrible ergonomy, why can I not save the map generation settings but have to re-enter them every time I generate a map?

I have ran a couple of similar but slightly different generations and would like your feedback on what type we should settle. Here are the current generated ones:

V2 Island Plates



V3 Large Islands



V4 Small continents



From a balance perspective these are all going to be a nightmare, but I can try adjust here and there to get land volume and quality a bit in line. The main challenge will be player distances. The first continents map from Tuesday would have been the easiest to adapt in this regard, as I need to add channels anyways and we could end up with players in 2/5/7/10 o'clock positions.

I will continue playing with different settings, especially the extras (clusters, chains, tectonics, ...) but would love some feedback if you guys think one oh the basic scripts should be focussed on.

[suboptimal]

What settings did you use to generate the large islands and island plates maps? That might show the most promise, particuilarly if the players are starting near, but not on, land masses. I could attempt to generate a bunch of maps using both scripts tonight and see what falls out.

[Tarkeel]

I think V2 and V3 are most representative of what the players expect, and both look pretty to someone who has no idea how the map will affect gameplay.

[Kaiser]

Ok here is the setup for the Got Lakes? map script:



Select Large, but due to land amount we might want to look into Huge instead?



We will get backto this one in detail. The standard settings here should be balanced start positions, set everything outside of the island landmasses to none and rivers to detailed, I think.
I also decided to crop the polar regions, and go for a azimuthal two suns setup (pole in the middle and on the borders of the map)



Here and on the bottom of the other one I checked start on seperate landmass for landbased, waterbased and city state starts.
I also turned river level to low, as otherwise the whole map has freshwater in combination with detailed rivers.
Circumnavigation => none, Tundra and Desert => low, Biodiversity => standard

Make sure to not have any "randoms" in there anymore



Here I checked no snow and no Ice as well as no coastal ice as these tiles are a waste on an already constrained map. I also checked the luxury distribution and the hollow mountains to have more space on the islands.



This is the one from above with some explanations, I think these are the main settings to play with:
- map type (red)
- extras (for additional map features / clusters)
- definition of the poles

Let me know if you have questions, I just did another Island Plates (red area) map with these settings and it came up like this



V5 Island Plates

[Kaiser]

I was thinking that we could actually could put two people from opposing teams on the same landmass, but I am not sure if the players are ready for such an interpretation of their map requirements.

We also need to consider what to do with the CS, I will almost certainly have to manipulate them to be all on islands of coast. Are we:
- just selecting islands in proximity (RNGesus style)
- going to make them at least a little AI defensible (for example only one sea access tile)
- making them near worthless in production just providing a luxury ressource and a place to throw down a harbour

[MJW (ya that one)]

I've read on the wiki that longships ignore zone-of-control. Ouch. I'm pretty sure thrawn wins this.

[suboptimal]

I attempted to create a few maps using the settings above and didn't come up with anything that looked good. That process is...painful.

[Kaiser]

Yes it is, I finally rolled a map which I think is a suitable candidate for the game with 4 zones which would work as the team areas.



I marked the 4 areas which are about right sized for the team starts, they just need to be seperated.
In terms of layout this is not to good, but I think I can push yellow SE and Purple NW to have a slightly improved team spacing. This requires more work as I will have to fracture the respective big islands a bit more and connect the smaller ones into bigger areas to hold 4-6 cities.

What do you guys think, should I start working on this base map?
Should I try to shift yellow and purple for better team spacing?
Any opinion on the CS? I currently tend to just plop them down on existing nearby islands (meaning each team gets 4 CS)

[suboptimal]

It looks reasonable though I think you're right about shifting yellow & purple to get more space. One thing that might be a concern is the large amount of coastal water - dunno if there should be more ocean in there as a bit of a added separation between teams.

After generating nothingburgers with the Got Lakes script I did try my half-assed map generator. It resulted in maps that were a bit contrived in terms of start locations (they all tended to be evenly-spaced circular blobs of about 150 tiles), fresh water is lacking and terrain may be a little goofy in spots but they're more spaced out. The main advantage is that I can let it churn away for a while and come back to 50 maps to browse through. One example:

[El Grillo]

Does Civ6 tell you which governor choices other players have made? I keep reading about Victor 3 promotions from ljublana as if he's convinced thrawn will go for them so he has to go for them as well, but thrawn's plan seems to use Pingala as normal. Is there any chance for an unexpected mismatch in combat strength here? I suppose the longships can always just retreat to ocean if threatened.